Hrm, monday freeride is totally rained out. Pick up a new battery from Sears. Expensive. Heavy. Noticeably heavier than the Exide Optima clone I replaced. Go home and fortunately the rains have stopped. Quickly take advantage of that and fix the bad alternator wire. The soldering is a little iffy. The heavy gauge wire is too big even for the butane iron on full blast. Reinstall the alternator and belt. Install new battery and replace bad clamps. Car starts no problem. Yay! Then I go to measure voltage. It’s only running 12 volts, and when I stop engine, voltage goes up. Looks like alternator is not outputing anything. I then watch the dash, the charge light does not come on when I switch ignition on. This indicates that there is no power getting to the alternator to initially start it functioning. Damn. After checking fuses, I quit for the night. I’ll have to recheck the alternator plug, and also here’s one I didn’t think about until reading up on alternators on the net. If the bulb is burnt out, the alternator won’t work.
Archive for the 'car' Category
Page 35 of 39
Raining like madness last night. Lay in bed for a while watching the lightning show. Drift off to sleep. Wake up early, weather still rainy, go back to sleep. I wake up again, 9:00 and it’s still looks dark outside. I think this is the first day this year that actually feels like winter.There’s a break in the weather, I eat lunch. I take advantage of the weather and go out to work on the last bit holding back the FX. I swap side mirror. Before I quit yesterday, I swapped the washer motor. It was easier than I thought, but I had to track down the gushing of water out the bottom when I tried the washer. That annoying electric valve for the rear washer which is broken in every FX and is really expensive isn’t just broken, the bottom burst when I tried the washer! Anyway, that’s easily bypassed. Continue reading ‘Car-ma, Bad Wiring is the Enemy’
Whew, ok, I don’t feel so bad. The connector I cut out of donor wiring was not part of the removable harness, so I had to cut it anyway. Anyway, while it was still early, took care of the bigest thing, had my dad help me swap the rear hatches. Next I swaped over the side markers, wired the blinkers back to original (this is also why when I first got it, it was doing the rice superfast blink action because the bulbs it was driving was not drawing enough power), got the bumper back on. It was looking tantalizingly close so I worked through lunch. Continue reading ‘Brain Fart, Sucked Back In’
Shoots! Woke up this morning and while still lying in bed, I realized I could have unplugged the small section of harness that connects to the front marker lights and just swapped them instead if cutting the connector and resoldering. It would have then been pristine stock wiring. Bleah! I’m surprised I didn’t dream about working on the car.
What, the FX have cooties and it needs de-ricing? I suppose you could say that. As I left for work this morning, took a quick look and noticed the rear side markers are gone. They’ve been shaved and bondoed over. Cr*p, I hope they don’t notice when I safety. The tail lights have some side wraparound, but its not reflective. I come home early in hopes of getting enough done tonight that I can safety it tomorrow. So I start on the front turn signals.
So after last night’s frustration with the AE86 horn, I go to pick up the FX from Matson. Had to scramble around to get insurance since I didn’t know until late yesterday that the FX was already here. That goes very smoothly, kudos to my insurance agent, and I find awesome street parking downtown right behind the building! Having been through this before, found way to Matson, counter person processed my pickup, and after a bit of wait was taken out for the inspection. As expected, the guy told me they had to jump start it and it’s idling. Have to chuckle as it’s doing the exact same up/down bouncing idle the AE86 is doing. I know what that is so not concerned. Continue reading ‘Car-ma, You Give Up to Easy, Grasshopper’
WTF! Had to put off working on the car till it was late enough that I wouldn’t get bugged by things wanting candy. I figured all I had to do was replace the liscence lights and I’d be good for safety, so I got that done. The one thing I didn’t check was the horn. Aw F! It don’t work! I’m going to take the morning off tomorrow to go pick up the FX (yes, it came a week earlier than I expected!) and I figured it would be a good time to get the AE86 registered and safetied also. Curses, this one last thing is going to hold things up! Busted out the wiring diagrams and the multimeter again. Trace things to the horn switch. There doesn’t seem to be a ground connection. 
Damn it, I end up taking apart the steering wheel and bits. The hell? The steering shaft is isolated from ground? How the hell is this supposed to work? Ugh, it’s late, I’m tired, and you get no picture because this f’n computer card reader isn’t working either! At least the card reader works now….
Stopped by Servco today to pick up a $40 fuel filter for the FJ80. While I was there, I asked about the pricing for the gas struts for the liftgate and the bonnet. They are starting to get a little weak, but still have a little life left in them. Bonnet struts were about $70 each, and the liftgate ones were about $125 each! WTF?! I guess I’ll be looking for 3rd party struts if the time comes to replace them – either that get a $2 broomstick.
On my way out, I wandered through the showroom to browse the new ’08 Toyotas. They had a Yaris S 3-door with all the packages plus some TRD parts going for $19.5K! WTF?! I think a ’08 Scion xD goes for below $16K bone-stock, and that already includes most of the stuff that the add-on Yaris packages include. Granted, that particular Yaris had an A/T to drive up the price, but still… Put the TRD wheels on the xD for $2K and you’d end up still saving money and get a 1.8-liter 1ZR-FE and a couple of extra doors to boot!
Geeze I feel like such a doofus. Went home early to work on car since I got the title on Friday and want to get it safetied and registered ASAP. Fortunately the factory wiring diagrams have been scanned and available on net. So I printed up relevant pages and pored over it. I started testing voltages and eventually figured out the fuel cutoff relay & ECU wasn’t getting power, which both fed off same place. So next I started tracing continuity of wires. Started eliminating within the interior. Tested that power was getting to the ECU relay, so the problems was somewhere between the ECU relay in the engine bay & the cabin. I pored some more over the diagrams & looked for the designations for connectors as test points. Found one I didn’t recognize, and after hunting around in the engine bay, I finally found it hidden, and unplugged. I’d forgotten to plug it back together! Damn! But I was glad it was something simple. So I plugged it in, connected battery, and went to start it. Cranks, oh, I hear it catching! Uhh, it died. WTF? Try a couple more times, each time the same where it’ll sound like it’ll go for a couple revs, then stop. I look at the diagrams again. Hell, what can it be?! I go to test the voltages at the ECU again, and double doh! I forgot to plug the ECU back in from when I tested earlier! What a doofus! Plugged it in and everythings all good now. So just need to clean things up a bit and replace the liscence plate bulbs and should be good for safety check. Still needs a bunch of issues taken care, one of which is leaky brake master, but it’ll go now! What a relief!
So after taking off bits, I’ve finally put back new bits. Most of it goes pretty smoothly. The generic hydraulic hose I got for p/s return hose is too small, but the old one looks ok so I reuse it. About ready to run again! But before it get’s too late in the evening, I decide to bust out the random orbit polisher.