Archive for the 'car' Category

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Buy Hawaii First?

Published on August 9, 2011 in car by snm. Closed

Boo, that’ll teach me. I decided to order some factory Toyota parts from a place I found online, pretty decent price for A/C compressor so gave them a try. Unfortunately East coast and UPS Ground is really ground, as opposed to coming to Hawaii where ground magically becomes air. I put the order in last monday, it started its trek Thursday, and it finally made it to CA today, Tuesday. Meanwhile some other parts I ordered at Sand Island Toyota parts on Saturday, came in this afternoon. Factor in my frequent customer discount and shipping and Hawaii wins in this case, no contest.

So the flywheel that went out USPS on wed the 3rd got here on the 6th, the LSD went out USPS on 6th came in today the 9th, ARP headstuds went out UPS on the 3rd got here on 5th, clutch just shipped UPS today expected 11th. I just picked up shiny remachined (& apparently welded) head. The only problem is that first order is the key to almost everything, it has the main gaskets that I can’t proceed with most of the work on the FX until I have them! Damn it!

Parts

Published on August 2, 2011 in car by snm. Closed

The rally FX is increasingly reducing to bits. The head is in the shop getting a valve job. Tonight I dropped the transaxle, clutch, and flywheel. Hopefully can get it all back together as planned. With all the parts off now, the seals actually look good, but I’m going to change them anyway. Rebuild one of the spare transaxles with LSD, then convert the starter to MR-2 supercharged starter version on the opposite side of block. I don’t have the correct cover plate, so I’m modifying the existing by cutting a new hole and will weld up the original hole. We’ll see how that goes. I’ve sourced a 20V 4AGE “blacktop” flywheel off the net, it’s the lightest OEM 4AGE flywheel, and also a 20V OEM tubular exhaust header. Hopefully I can get that to fit to the existing collector and flex pipe, it’s a little different, but hopefully close enough to work. Lots of work to do, hopefully I can get it done in time. It’s come to finding and waiting on parts to arrive.

Pop Goes the FX

Published on July 24, 2011 in car by snm. Closed Tags: , .

OK, over the past week had been working bit by bit on the rally FX. After the last event, I managed to limp home with the leaking manifold. I thought it was running so rough because the leaking manifold was allowing air into the system causing the O2 sensor to read wrong and run rich. I replaced the gaskets and studs and nuts I’d lost and tightened down. It wasn’t as loud, but still ran lousy. I swaped over belt idler so I could completely delete the A/C compressor, and in the process reset the distrbutor and timing. Also verified spark signal at each sparkplug wire. It still ran wonky. I saw crud was being spit out the exhaust and I was begining to worry. I looked at the radiator fluid and the oil, though a little low, they both looked fine and clear. Odd. I replaced the O2 sensor, still ran bad. I started unplugging the spark plugs wires. Uh oh, unplugged #3 and there was no change in engine idle, looks like cylinder 3 is not firing for some reason. Hmmm, unplugging #2 also showed no change in how badly the engine was running. What’s going on here? Maybe injector problem? I’d have to look up which banks fire together, this was a possibility. I pulled the spark plugs and 2 & 3 were covered in black, none of the white/gray combustion color.  Finally I pulled out compression tester and it revealed extremely low compression on cylinders 2 and three. Ah damn, looks like a blown headgasket after all. Looks like I’m tearing things apart and doing a head rebuild. Wasn’t quite planning on this so soon, but looks like I’m going to be doing a bunch of work on it now!

GM Door Control Linkage Retaining Clip Repair

Published on July 24, 2011 in car and rant by snm. Closed

The upper latch on the work van back door suddenly ceased functioning. A quick examination revealed that the little plastic clip that holds the bent end of the pull/pushrod into the latch mechanism had broken, so the L-shaped end of the rod had nothing to control its high propensity to wander around inside the door frame. Toyotas and Nissans usually have secondary guides to limit the wandering of the linkages, but all GM had was a fat piece of foam insulation that only acted to keep the rod from rattling once the plastic retaining clip broke. Not wanting to have the van out of service for such a minor thing, I made a replacement part using a piece of metal pallet strapping. All the tools used were whatever was lying around at work, which wasn’t much. I would have tried making something out of zip-ties, but I couldn’t think of a solution in short order. If you had a little scrap Kydex or some other thermoplastic sheet, you could probably make something a lot nicer. Continue reading ‘GM Door Control Linkage Retaining Clip Repair’

Race Ready

Published on July 17, 2011 in car by snm. Closed Tags: .

Over the weekend I was able to get replacement Monroe strut cartridges up front changed out. That one shock was indeed blown, you aren’t supposed to hear little pieces rattling around inside. Next, seeing that all the goodness had escaped out of the rally FX’s airconditioning, I spent the earlier part of the week removing the A/C components. I was planning to transfer it over to the daily FX anyway and lightening the load goes with this being the race FX. Got the condenser, accumulator and the plumbing out, figure that should be good for more than a few pounds. The compressor and evaporator are still in there as those two take some work.

Then on Friday night, day before the race, I got the bug into my butt that as long as I was going that far, I might as well swap radiators. The radiator that was in the daily FX was a plastic tanked, aluminum cored unit. Doing the scientific soda A soda B comparison by lifting in left and right hand, it’s’ noticeably lighter than the all brass one. Easy swap.

Continue reading ‘Race Ready’

What Have I Created?

Published on June 20, 2011 in car by snm. Closed

Sunday was our first Fathers Day Rally-Cross. Most of the mechanical issues with the FX16 were dealt with, I even had the time to work on little things like replace the made in China replacement window cranks that slip on the fluted shaft, swap center console, move over the racing harness. On the drive out to the track though, the damaged shock cartridge bothered me more than I thought it would. During the event it would become even more obvious, I’m going to have to replace it.

But despite that, the car drove well. Well enough that I had to do a double take on the new digital scoreboard! Well enough that after Cory’s Subaru was knocked out of running by a broken engine mount and I offered the FX for him to drive his runs, he turned in some of the fastest times. Fast and clean, so much so that we are pretty sure he won overall! Duking it out with even the turbo STi’s. Cory was loving it, he was practically gushing how awesome it was to drive. That’s the first time I’ve heard someone say that engine has power. I guess it’s more the smooth power curve, not the peaky turbo power.  I can only imagine how the FX will be when I fix the shocks and put in a LSD. That should bring the wheel skipping under control and allow a bit more of the power to get to the ground. I think I’ve created a little dirt monster, looks like a plain little econobox that lots of people mistake for a Tercel, but get it into a little dirt patch and it’s a fun little fiesty bugger! Continue reading ‘What Have I Created?’

Cars Cars Cars

Published on June 13, 2011 in car by snm. Closed

Weekend working on cars. Got the driver side floors on the 510 painted and started to look at the passenger. That was enough with that, I needed to work on the rally FX since next event is in a week. I’ve actually made a lot of progress on that. I pulled out the damaged strut side and pulled it apart. And in a nice bit of timing, NAPA called to let me know that one of the few remaining FX16 CV shafts in the nation finally came in. Took around two months, but it even looks like the correct part! It’s misidentified as the shaft for a Corolla diesel,  although maybe there really does exist one? As a bonus, the shaft is noticeably thicker, and heavier, but still fits. With the strut out, the shaft comes out with only a few bolts. As I suspected, the shaft is bad.  I get the new shaft in, although not before accidentally popping the end cap off and spooging grease all over.  I don’t have the strut parts yet, so can’t go any further on that. Continue reading ‘Cars Cars Cars’

Half Done, or Half Started

Published on June 11, 2011 in car by snm. Closed

I’ve been on a push to finish one side of the Tin Roof 510 floor so I can attempt to use up the rest of my can of POR-15 that has sealed itself up after its first use. Tip for if anyone uses this stuff, try to plan to use it all up the first time you open. Even if you follow the directions and try to keep the lip of the can clean of any POR-15, the lid will still seal itself closed if you recap it. The stuff is tenacious. I read later a tip advising using two pieces of plastic wrap under the lid. Maybe that would help. Anyway, yesterday I finished the welding of the interior front left side floor. The rear seemed to be pretty intact so my plan was to clean it and POR15 it. In the process of cleaning though, some of the rust  did perforate. Damn. Busted out the tin snips and welder and I would like to say I zapped in a couple patches. Unfortunately it became a bit more work as I burned more holes and added more little patches and gobs of weld. Yuck, guess really should have made a large patch. Dunno how well this will hold up.  I guess this will do for now. Oh, and this is the easy side!

Lessons in Welding

Published on June 7, 2011 in car by snm. Closed

Well, after I don’t know how long since I started this, I am finally almost done putting in the driver side floorpan on the Tin Roof 510. Today I made yet another patch, this time for the front firewall area. I was repeatedly blowing holes and generally making a mess and not getting much attached to much there. I decided the base was still too far gone and I needed to patch furthur in. I also drilled holes to pull the panels together with nut and bolts and rivets. What a revelation! So now I know, get as tight a fit as possible. While it is possible to fill gaps, it will more than likely be an excercise in frustration. I only blew a few holes and made one fire getting this patch in. Much nicer. And while it may not look the prettiest, I am getting better. I actually just about used up my first spool of wire too!

Bad Bottoming

Published on June 5, 2011 in car by snm. Closed

Started to try and find the cause of my 80A main fuse blowout, I set about pulling the starter out. In order to do so, I need to remove the oil filter, so I figure time to do an oil change. I jack up the front of car onto stands, then turn the steering to get better access to the oil drain plug.  Grab the wheel and turn, when I woggles in a very strange way. WTF? I examine the wheel assembly and see daylight around the top of the strut! That’s not right! What has happened is the strut top mount rubber has seperated, yikes! I remember at the last rally-x having a run where it sounded like it bottomed hard, hard enough that I flinched. Later when I was poking around under the hood due to driveability issues from cracked intake hose, I remember finding that strut top rubber cap had popped off. I remarked that it was amazing that there was so much shaking that the cap popped off. Looks like that wasn’t quite the extent of the problem. Guess I better look for some bottom out bumpers, I’m running without, and it looks like I may have damaged the shock insert also. To add insult to injury, I discovered the oil drain plug has been crossthreaded, luckily it looks like chasing the threads with a tap fixed it.