Archive for the 'car' Category

Received my exhaust downpipe kit to fit the 4AGE 20 valve header pipes from sv3power. It/he is a company that specializes in exhaust components to fit the AW11 first gen MR2. I’m pretty sure it’s a single guy fabricating parts per order. It was the only place I found that had flanges to fit the 20V manifold, of course the 20V one is slightly different than the 16V. I found on his site an unassembled downpip kit that looked like it would work well since the MR2 is set up the same as a FWD Corolla except the motor is in back. The exhaust manifold is the same. So here is the kit. It was a little less assembled than I thought, I guess I thought the pieces that were together would be welded already, but they were only tacked. Looks like my welding skills, or lack of, will get a workout!

Continue reading ‘Exhausting’

With a bit of hiatus till next rally-X, the timing was good to do a bunch of work on the rally FX. Most of the major work was done and I’d put enough miles to break in the new clutch and LSD. I was itching to test it out, and this past Sunday was an auto-X event. I decided to slap on my old 13″ racing wheel set and go for it! Decided Saturday morning to swap over the rear swaybar too. That one is a Whiteline uprated adjustable bar.

For anyone keeping track, here’s what has happened to the rally FX: Continue reading ‘Triwheeling’

Spoke too soon, I am sitting here at corner of Young & Isenberg dead in water. Car hesitated once badly on freeway, now completely dead. Pretty sure it’s the fuel pump.

I feel like such a doof. Last night Mitch called & we went to the Daikon Festival in Millilani. I’m a bit dissapointed, by the time we got there, there was no daikon! What’s up with that?! Anyway, on the drive out the rally FX was acting pretty wierd and doing a lot of hesitating and check engine light flashing. I pulled the code earlier which indicated coolant temp sensor.  I figured this as a shake down drive, drive home was not any better, and it seemed pretty random. Stalled a couple times at lights, but made it home. So this morning I drained the water, which was in the plan anyway, but pulled the water temp sensor. I’m not exactly sure how the ECU uses this sensor, it’s not the temp gauge sensor for the dash, it’s not the temp switch for the radiator fan, it’s not the cold start temp timer switch. The meter test at room temp was good, but I swapped it out with the original rally FX one for good measure. I then started skinning back the wiring loom to expose some of the wiring for that sensor. Visually it looked ok. I cut the connector and a length of wire off the end, then spliced in a connector from spare harness. I metered the wires of the part I cut out, it tested ok. Damn, I hope its not a problem with the wiring furthur down the harness. After soldering and heatshrinking in the spare connector, I plugged it in and started up the car. It seemed better, but then I heard the miss and saw the CE light flash. Damn! I wiggled the harness around and it indeed seemed to be associated. I worked my way down the harness wiggling it as I went to try & find where the problem was. Doh! I found it, the bolt for the grounding point for that part of the harness was loose, I’d forgotten to tighten it! I felt like an idiot, I’d spent all the morning and into lunch cutting into a perfectly fine wiring harness. Tightening it and plugging everything back in, the car ran well and I drove it out to SCCA. There still is some phantom missfiring, but it’s nowhere as bad as last night, and it doesn’t trigger the CE light. At least it’s liveable, we’ll see how it goes.

Will it ever end? Got correct water pump, got it installed, the water pipe back in, the starter fits too! Filled the water up and on the final liter, there it was, the drip.  I feel around & try to get a look, it seems it is not the water pump. There is the water outlet just above it, and it looks like the leakage is seeping from the bottom of that. I pull off the fitting and look at the gasket. It’s not actually a problem with the gasket, but the aluminum on the head has erroded away enough at the bottom edge that it looks like the gasket doesn’t have enough flat surface to seal correctly. The one downfall of the Toyota OEM coated metal gaskets. I can either go with an aftermarket fiber gasket, or try get another Toyota gasket and use some RTV on it. I’m torn, I much prefer the Toyota gaskets. To really fix this problem I should take the head back to the machine shop and have them weld and machine the surface, but that would be a hell of a lot of work to do over. Yuck. Time to sleep.