Well, NAPA actually found the correct hose! It’s not quite exact, but looks close enough at the important parts. 
Started the process of changing the hose. To do that, needed to remove radiator so I drained it. Dude, if you wondered what brand of shoyu was using in the brakes, you’ll wonder what brand latte was running in the radiator! Ok, there’s a tinge of green at the begining, but by the time it was almost all drained…. Continue reading ‘Car-ma Comes to the Persistent’
Archive for the 'car' Category
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Uh oh, scarecity of parts for the over twenty year old Corolla is rearing its ugly head. Looking at where the spooge is, I’m pretty sure the power steering lines need replacing. Unfortunately the main pressure lines are discontinued at Toyota parts. Started calling around, Napa found listed, but when I picked up & took home the part, it’s not even close to what I needed. So I have two options, I might be able to take the old lines to a hydraulic shop and see if they can fabricate lines, or I can attempt to convert to manual steering.
At least the throttle cable I needed was in stock at Toyota.
You know, I don’t especially consider this car “old school” but at 20+ years this is inevitable. And it not being a big “classic” car, there isn’t a big inventory of reproduction parts.
Oh, and I took some 3M rubbing compound to the headlight and hood and it’s quite amazing!
So Saturday decided to take care of some little stuff & look at the hachi roku. First off to finish bleeding the brakes. Some more kroil & pounding with deadblow mallet got the crusted on wheel loose. Here’s what the before and after looks like on one brake.
After ignoring the car yesterday, I ran out side this morning to give that wheel a squirt of Kroil. Noticed a nice slick of oil under the engine. Guess that’s the leak Allen mentioned. It’s a pretty good one. Don’t know where its coming from yet, appears to be dripping from rear of block, but the engine is tilted so hard to tell. Looks even more like I’ll be swapping engines, but I forgot about the water pump deal, will have to figure out what to do with that. More details later.
The red AE86 Corolla has finally made it to docks, so I recruited Derek to help me pick it up from Matson. Some frantic calls to my insurance finally got me a copy of temp insurance minutes before Derek arrived in the bwop mobile. So jump in and it’s off to Sand Island. I show him the secret shortcut to bypass the Piikoi/Lunalilo St. mess and we make it onto the freeway in no time. It’s almost 3:00 so the traffic is getting heavy, but we see it still moving so once we get through the merge it’s moving decently. Decide to chance going to Nimitz under the airport viaduct and take the U-turn, then bam we hit traffic at the merge as a fire engine comes up from behind. Uh oh, this can’t be good. We crawl along to the Sand Island Access Road intersection to see one of the massive traffic light poles got a nice smush going. Nice one! Luckily we make it to Matson just in time.
It rained all weekend, so no XC ride. That sucks.
It rained yesterday, so no St. Louis FR ride. That sucks.
This morning the failing Optima battery on the FJ80 went too flat to crank the engine over. That sucks.
I can’t spin by Lion Coffee Cafe off Waiakamilo since I’m behind a desk all day, so I’ve been bringing coffee from home. I ran out of “Premium Roast” and opened a bag of some flavored variety that was originally destined to be a holiday gift. I don’t like flavored coffee. That sucks.
Someone tell me what have I done wrong?! Allen just called me with the wonderful words everyone loves to hear, “I’ve got good news and bad news.” Crp. There’s that alarm and remote start thing we talked about in email. Well, the truck delivered the cars fine to Matson dock. Matson guy was about to sign off on it, and no one’s really clear on what exactly happened, but the FX decided to go off on a jolly jaunt on its own. They managed to chase it down, someone jumped in open window & grabbed the e-brake and it was eventually stopped. But not before running into a Coke machine though. Sounds like damage is not severe, paint on bumper. They’re going to try and disable the alarm and get a new key made, it broke in the chaos, and get it back to Matson by Friday. It could have been worse. Sheesh, sounds like I better go visit jinja and get a blessing! And don’t install remote start in a manual tranny vehicle, and don’t let Circus City install it.
Okay, I haven’t written much about the ongoing saga of me and my cars. Well, after much delay, the “new” cars are on the way! yes, I said cars, as in plural. The original FX was carted off by the guys from Lost when they returned the Cruiser. So here is she is in her last days having donated most of what was worth keeping:
And so in an somewhat odd turn of “car”ma, the new Corolla’s are coming from non other than the guy who gave me the first FX16, which by the way was a great little car and ran way better than the second FX which got smacked around. The new ones were picked up Tuesday in Vegas!
How’s this for ergonomics – In the current 1G Chevrolet Cobalt compact sedan, the parking brake lever and the center console armrest are incompatible. If you get the upgrade package that includes the armrest, I take it that the manufacturer assumes you are in a user demographic that doesn’t use/need the brake…
Thanks to Velcro for the photo.
I got back from Japan on Monday morning, but have been too busy to post anything yet – and I still have to post Whistler MTB stuff too! Anyway, here are a few tidbits for the car-fans out there.
The most obviously numerous cars I saw out East were Toyota Vitzs and Suzuki Sprints. The Vitz is known on the USDM as the “Yaris 3-door”, but occurs on the JDM as a 5-door only, and is not available with a M/T. Those up North of the border can get the Yaris in both 3 or 5-door versions (dammit!). The Toyota Belta 4-door sedan was fairly common also. This is available on the USDM as the “Yaris 4-door sedan”. This car replaces the Platz (USDM Echo) on the JDM. Continue reading ‘JDM’