Published on July 10, 2008 in car and rant by risu. Closed
Anyone out there have a Toyota Camry Hybrid? If so, then the blood of the lead engineer who developed you car is on your hands! The Aichi-ken Labor Bureau ruled in favor of the family of the 45-year engineer that they be entitled to compensatory payments from his work insurance. The engineer who died in January of 2006 typically worked 80-hours of overtime per month in the time leading up to his death. All this work was in preparation for the roll-out of the first-generation USDM Camry Hybrid for the North American International Auto Show. If you have a second-generation Prius, Highlander hybrid, or RX-400h, you might be just as guilty.
Published on June 24, 2008 in car and rant by risu. Closed
I was sitting in back of a new Jaguar XF the other day in Kalihi of all places. I immediately noticed that the shiny boot (trunk) lid was offset and skewed in the opening – to be precise, the gap between left and right was unequal, and the right side of the lid sat 3-4mm above the adjacent fender.
This vehicle definitely wouldn’t pass the ‘ball bearing test” from the 1980’s Nissan/Datsun TV commercials.
Pretty slick looking car though. Too bad the coachbuilding workmanship is so poor. Looks like it probably costs all the money and gets terrible fuel mileage.
Got the bolt holes slotted by Roy the machinist after work today. Half an hour and they were done perfectly. Head home, insert the Koni cartridges, pull the old struts, swap springs. Instal new strut assemblies and even take time to wash the wheels.
It takes a little jockying to get the lower bolts in, but nothing more than usual. It all goes together nicely, oh what a relief! The clearance under the strut is pretty close, but it works! Install wheels, torque everything up, took two hours for this final install. Go for test drive, feels good. Bouncing is much more controlled. I turn up the damping adjusters some more and definitely matches the spring rates better. Looking carefully, having the upper hole drilled does lift the suspension up a bit. The back rides a little higher now. Hopefully this doesn’t mess up the caster too much. We shall see how this all drives, nice to have this finally done!
Last week work on the FX was spent on the starting and cleaning up some smaller issues. Starter solenoid wire indeed has a rat bite. Wonder if they can make wires that are unappealing to rodents, for some reason they like chewing wires. But the wire itself is intact so I don’t think it’s the source of starting problems. I cut out the section and splice the wire. Move to the inside of vehicle and search for the relay. Did I rant earlier about the manual saying it’s in the wrong place? So here’s my jumper wire fix to bypass that relay. To get better access to this wiring, I decided to take out the ventilation fan and a/c evaporator (or is it condenser, always get confused which). And there’s that cascading effect of as long as I’m taking this out, should take care of other things, so one thing leads to another and the dash has now exploded into this mess. Woohoo, yet another Scat nightmare!Continue reading ‘FX Cleanup’
Published on June 7, 2008 in car and rant by taro. Closed
Ugh. Time to try and figure out what’s going on with the starter on the FX. A while back I was having chronic hot start problems, or so I thought. Went through a bit of work to put new starter on the opposite side of the engine away from the exhaust. Seems to have been okay for a while, but a couple weeks back I had yet another instance of non-start with hot engine. Popping the hood and waiting for twenty minutes or so seemed to fix it. Then a couple days ago it happened in the morning with totally cold engine. WTF? I twidled with some of the wiring in the engine bay. It eventually started and I drove to work. Didn’t have problems with it throughout the day, then in the evening after hanging out at Collector Maniac the boys were going to eat at FTP tiki burgers at Ala Moana. Damn it, the starter won’t go. Tried popping hood and let things cool more, twidled with wiring, noticed the starter solenoid wire has a rat bite in it, but all to no avail. Luckily I was parallel parked on the street pointing downhill, so just letting the brake out let me easily roll into the street and gain momentum to do a bump start. Phoned the boys I would be heading straight home. Continue reading ‘Electric Gremlins’
Published on May 30, 2008 in car and rant by taro. Closed
Being at an impasse with the rear struts on the FX, decided to look at some smaller issues. Sunroof is slugish. I pulled the motor from the previous FX, it was actually new replaced just before I bought it, and also pulled the fuzzy edge trim since current FX doesn’t have it and just has ugly edges. Replaced motor, greased up tracks, put on edge molding. Looks nice, closes. Ugh, doesn’t open! Attempts to, cracks open a bit, and stops. What is going on? I remove the trim and the sunroof opens, still slugishly. It turns out that the fuzzy panel on the sliding roof section has been out of it’s correct track all this time. I pop it back, put the trim back, and the roof slides better than new!
Next up was the driver window. Lately it’s gotten quite, cranky. I figured it was like the original FX and the gears on the toothed crescent shaped thing on regulator was stripping out. I pop the door panel off. What the heck is that blue thing? It’s a door lock popper solenoid, assumedly stuck in by the alarm installers. This explains why the action of the lock mechanism was never nice, the throw on the solenoid is adjusted so the mechanism doesn’t click all the way it’s supposed to. I readjust it, not sure if the popper will work correctly, but I’m not concerned with that. The installation is a bit of hack, but with something like this there isn’t really any other way aside from getting the factory power locks. Just wait until I get to the other side though, I’ll find it later, the solenoid doesn’t even match and the sheet metal is hacked up leaving pointy jagged edges worse than the meanest China build your own PC case. Continue reading ‘JDM?’
Published on May 28, 2008 in car and rant by taro. Closed
So after my blunder with my junyard struts, I’m forced to go junkyard diving again. Called around to other yards and it sounds like they don’t have anything that old. So I find myself at ABC again, I called them and didn’t realize it as they’re listed in yellowpages as something else, and they were the only ones that were hopefull. Actually even before I get through the gate, I see an AE92 Corolla, looks like they’re ready to haul it to scrap metal as its on the bottom of a stack of cars. I measure the struts, and they measure too small, WTF? Am I hallucinating? But right inside of the gates are the new cars, and there’s a ’99 Corolla sedan. I measure the strut case, and it’s the correct size! I take a quick look around for anything else, this Corolla is the only new one. Damn, did I luck out? This Corolla is quite clean too, just brought in, suffered rear end damage. It’s so new that after prying the trunk liner free of the crumpled metal, I find the spare tire and jack still there. Choice, I don’t have to go searching and draging some crusty ones from somewhere else in the yard! Continue reading ‘Strutman’
After the previous night’s frustration with drillling, I decided to seek out professional help. Found RHT Enterprise listed under machine shops and location was in town, right off of Ward Ave. Spun by on Tuesday while out on a service call. Found the space after walking around a bit, I had actually walked right past it the last time I had my alignment done. Knocked on door, seems no one was around.
Today, wednesday I gave them a call and he called back. It seems he’s there after work and weekends. Made an appointment and went by right after work. Small space, but he has a good size mill, lathe, bandsaw crammed in there. It takes him half an hour to mill out the four holes exactly where I want. Sweet. During the days he’s actually at UH. Pretty cool guy, I’ll go back if I need to.
After this is done, I’m excited to head home and get this done! As soon as I get home, I break out the angle grinder to take off the unneeded tabs. Showers of sparks later, they’re gone, and I clean up the struts. Looking good. Continue reading ‘Midnite Mechanic, FAIL’
Picked up a steering rack and rod ends and headed home after work. Had dinner first, no worries about power tools tonight, and trying to wrench when bonking is no fun. Plus gotta let the car cool down. By the time I start it’s late, almost 9PM. I’ll just see how far I can get. I’ve done this three times previously, everythings been anti-seized by me, it’ll all comes apart smoothly. Looks like I have to apologize to the Korean manufacturers, the source of the fault is the outer tie rod end, not the inner made in Korea rod. I don’t recall where the ends came from. It’s all being replaced anyway, the new ends are greasable too. Reassembly goes smoothly too. It takes me a bunch of fiddling to adjust the toe setting to something acceptable. And so now it’s almost 3AM. Yikes, but I was on a roll and finished. No test drive though, time to sleep!
Sunday 18th, hoped to sleep in, but again the construction guys are up banging around the house in back early. Sheeze. Oh well, it’s getting too hot anyway. After lunch I give Jeff a call to see if I can borrow his spring compressors to take apart the junkyard struts. I had at one point thought of undoing the top cap nut on the strut while it was still in car, then jacking up the car until the spring was free. Figured there wouldn’t be any flying missiles, but I didn’t want to take the chance. It was afternoon by the time I got to Jeff’s and picked up the compressors, it was blazing hot. Glad I used my dad’s Suzuki with a/c. Continue reading ‘Root’s Machine Werks’
it seems like chainring spacers are some kind of mystical vintage part. I've asked at almost every shop in whistler with a service department. Quite a few didn't even know what it was and couldn't comprehend what I wanted to do. Finally found some at Fanatyk Co but only ancient crusty mechanics know about these and they have poor eyesight or something. I asked for 3mm and he even used a ruler, he scrounged up 4mms.
