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’
Author Archive for taro
Page 77 of 88
Monday, Scat sends the feelers out for a evening freeride down St. Louis. It’s been a while since I did that, so I was itching to hit the downhills. The night before saw some rain at my place, but the day was shaping up sunny and hot. 
By the end of work, clouds were rolling in, but Scat, Ckucky, and I were in! Met up at Ckucky’s to be greated by the wonderful aroma of someone cooking dinner. Dang, I’m hungry already! We cram everything into his work van and take the drive up the hill. As we climb in elevation, there’s a noticeable drop in temperature, and when we park at the top, we’re greeted by a drizzle and that grassy smell of rain in the air. We’re not detered, in fact there’s no mention of calling it, we unpack and gear up. Continue reading ‘Saint Loui’
Monday, June 9, found me on a Hawaiian jet for Kahului, Maui with my boss. A later flight, less crowds at the airport, everything went uneventfully. Pick up our equipment and jam it all into a Chevy Impala, which much smaller than the land boat you used to think of, still has a pretty big trunk. Drive out to Lahaina is also uneventful. Weather is postcard blue skies. I end up dozing having the luxury of being a passenger. We’re installing system at new Genki Sushi in Lahaina, in new mall accross the street from the cannery mall. The install goes pretty smoothly, although no benefit of air conditioning this time around makes for sweltering hot house.
Break for late lunch, boss asks what I feel like eating. I don’t really know what’s around, he mentions Mexican. Mexican is good, we end up at Maui Tacos, which is debatably “Mexican”. I wonder if this is the original Maui Tacos, seeing that we are in Maui. Anyway, on a side board I notice they have tacos el pastor so decide to try theirs. I get two as a combo plate. Ends up being a pretty decent pile of food. Flavor is decent, perhaps not as flavorful as might want, but its not bad. The pork is little cubes nicely browned, not drowning in oil or shredded like kalua. The beans and rice are unspectacular and I don’t eat all of it. I don’t touch the greasy looking chips, they look as greasy as the ones I’ve had at the oahu location. The condiment bar is a nice feature of Maui Tacos, soda refills are free. The counter service guy was pretty pleasant and efficient. So as long as you’re going for So-cal Mex, this was a decent value, I’d give it right in the middle of 2.5 smiling monkeys, with no bulging forehead veins on the angerometer. Continue reading ‘Maui Das Y’
Alright, auto arm & lock really pissing me off. Went to fill gas, leave key in ignition with radio on, alarm auto arms and locks doors. Would have been royal pia if I hadn’t left window open.
(0)I hate machines that are set to be smarter than you, but end up being annoying. Alarm that I reconnected in car auto locks on ignition, auto unlocks on ignition off, and most annoyingly auto arms. When I turn it off, I want it to stay off, not turn back on while I’m working under the hood!
(0)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’
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?’
That’s right, Sunday, at high noon, Ken, Nathan and Reef met up and headed to the Koko Head Park dirt jumps. I actually rode up in the blazing heat to join up with them. I thought they were daft for choosing this time of day, and yet here I was. The one good thing was that there wasn’t anyone else crazy enough to be baking out here. We had the jumps all to ourselves. Â Kinda nice flailing amongst friends, no worries about looking like an ass.
It was bone dry, the upper table jumps were getting eroded, but the middle jumps were packed down and maintained well. The newest one had quite a good kick to it. It actually was quite fun. Nathan was managing to clear the little speed bump doubles, I swear he was getting more air off of those than the big jumps! I know he was working a heck of a lot harder to clear those. As the day went on, a couple of regulars showed, hit some jumps, then went off to ride Kailua. A trio of groms rode through, and at the end of the day, one of the old fart guys came to hit the jumps. We were actually amazed at the lack of riders on this long Memorial weekend day.
It was something different for trials riders, I think we’ll do it more!
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’
This past Thursday evening dinner choice was Little Village, located on Smith Street, downtown. A mid sized eatery for the area. Chinese food, Fabio was hard pressed to give it a style. When we arrived, it was fairly crowded, a little unexpected as past visits have been pretty quiet. Interior decor is a bit unusual, it seems the thought was to make it feel like you’re eating outside in a “little village”, in the comfort of airconditioning. It does give it a bit of a theme park aura. There’s a little faux oriental style bridge leading to a double door facade seperating the farther dining area. We were half expecting some kung fu fightin to break out and some various martial stunt man to come crashing through the round window.
Anyway, on to the food. As is common for somewhere like this, we go family style and order Monoglian beef, seafood noodle, and the spicy steamed fish. Dave started of by ordering an iced milk tea. Warning, it seems you’ll be batting 50/50 on this. His first instance, he ordered a milk coffee, and found himself with a milk tea. He enjoyed it so much he orders that exclusively now, but now it seems half the time gets iced coffee, which is what he found himself with this time. The ticket from their computerized POS system even prints it out, go figure. 
 Continue reading ‘Spontaneous Orgasm’