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’
After determining that the rear Koni shock inserts will not fit the FX16 casing, headed to the junkyard this  past Saturday. Look at pic and you can see the insert is longer, and also the diameter is bigger. No amount of hammering will get that fit into the FX casing pictured on top. So Saturday afternoon headed to ABC in Pearl City, the pick and pull I often go to. I wander around the yard checking out all the Toyotas. So far all the strut casing I’ve seen and measured don’t match. I do find a AE92 Corolla SR5 that someone is going over. I leave him to his scavenging as I go look around some more. Nothing else looks good. There’s also nothing else unusual or of much interest to me. Continue reading ‘Junkyarding’
Friday, May 16, vog haze is super strong, to me it looks worse then past weeks strong vog. Anyway, the weather aside from that has been clear so the Friday night ride is on! This time I scram from work on time. 5PM on a friday, I expect the traffic getting onto the freeway from the Lunalilo to be a mess, but instead its moving. In fact once on freeway it’s flowing right along and I cruise along to Pali. Dang, it takes me only about 25 minutes to get to the Castle fountain and park! Jeff, Sara, and Chris are here, and Jeff rubs his eyes in disbelief that I’m so early. Continue reading ‘Hammer Girl’
The Koni Sport one way adjustable struts arrived yesterday. I was wondering if it was my complete order as the box looked rather small. It was just that they were all crammed in, no padding to speak of. Set of two struts per logo box. Here’s the contents of the rear strut inserts showing one strut. To install these, you need to take your old strut assembly and cut the top of, drill a hole in bottom, pull out all the old bits, then insert this new strut, and bolt it in through the bottom. So earlier in the day I took an old set of struts over to Ckucky’s to undo the top nut and drain the rears. Drilled hole in side and was wondering if we’d get sprayed by oil from letting the nitrogen goodness out. Either the pressure is low, or the goodness had left already, no oil showers. Continue reading ‘Koni Kurses’
Sunday 4th: The drivers door on the FX has been saging, actually every FX has had this problem. After 20 years with the use and weight of a big 2 door design on it, the hinges wear. The current FX it had suddenly also gotten noisy, groaning when opening & closing. Looking at the lower hinge could see the metal bushing was basically disintegrating. These Toyota hinges are not designed to be rebuildable, you’re supposed to replace, at more than $100 from the factory, ouch. Browsing online I can’t find door hinges for a twenty year old Corolla. Decide to try an old trick, often times car manufacturers will have the same hinge on the opposite side oppsite position, meaning the upper right hinge might match this lower left hinge. So a trip to Root’s Toyota wrecking yard and I soon have a upper passenger hinge. As you can see, they’re different, but the same. Original lower hinge is on the top here. It has a bigger plate for the side that goes to the body. However, closely eyeballing it, the holes look the same. I go ahead and bolt up the smaller bottom hinge. It does seem to fit, the door swings better now. It needs some adjustment that is difficult to do singlehandedly. But I manage to get it ok. Could use some more adjustment, but good enough. Trying to put that bigger hinge back onto the spare parts FX to keep the door on doesn’t go as well. It doesn’t seem to quite fit, and it’s not because the larger plate. Oh well, nothing a little monkey force won’t fix. So there you have it, semi-dirtbag auto repair trick!
Published on May 11, 2008 in car and Review by taro. Closed
I described this to the guys as a wheel aligment doohicky thing. It’s actually a pretty nifty gadget for measuring the alignment of your wheels/suspension. It’s basically a jig with a calibrated bubble level that you set against a wheel. Set it first on the ground and zero the bubble, then set it against wheel with the three contact points flush and even against the rim. You can then read your camber off the bubble. You can also measure caster (the tilt of the steering axis) with this same device. To do this, you turn wheel 15 degreesfrom straight, there’s an angle cut on the end of the bubble level to help set this. You then zero the bubble on the caster scale. You then turn the steering to 15 degrees from straight in the other direction and read the bubble scale. Finally you can measure toe using the additional accessory arms you can see extending forward and rearward from the bottom of the jig. Measurement here is kind of caveman by using a tape measure to a straight bar you hold to the wheel on the other side, or if you’re rich, you buy two sets of these doohickies. Continue reading ‘SPC Performance FasTrax Alignment Doohicky’
Published on April 29, 2008 in Food and Review by taro. Closed
So this monday everyone pulls out crotchety old man excuses to not do a St. Louis freeride downhill, even though the weather is great. So what do we do instead, we go eat! In fact when the event’s eating, the group becomes even bigger, with six of us converging on McCully Bicycle. The plan is to head to Hide-chan down the street for dinner. CKucky and myself have been there a few times already, and Scat is a well known regular. So much so that he gets showered with bonus freebies from Hide himself. We decide to walk, which is just as well since it’s ridiculously close by, and parking is small.
Hide-chan is located on the corner of S. King and Isenberg, right across from the Moilili Star market, with an unassuming appearance. Tug hard on the door, the spring is strong. Inside is small and bright, seating for around 30 people. A genuine familly run shop, Hide cooks, wife works the front, along with one other guy and occasionally the daughter. They’re from Okinawa so the menu is Japanese with a number of Okinawa dishes, most obviously the goya (bittermelon). You’re started with a simple salad of iceberg and some carrot slivers with a shoyu dressing that I find quite yummy. Then you can proceed onto the main course. Many Japanese standards on the menu, along with specials posted up on the walls. You know when people ask, what’s good, and you answer everything? Well, so far everything I’ve tried really has been good that it’s hard to pick. So far I’ve had the eggplant stuffed with pork and katsu styled, the menchi (hamburger) katsu, goya champuru, and this time around the special of kisu tempura. The food quality and preparation has been great every time. The tempura is wonderfully light and crisp. Really, if you were served the same thing in dim light, with candles, fancy booths, piped in koto bg music, in laquer boxes, you wouldn’t know the difference. Instead you’ll get a skillfully prepared honest family style Japanese meal at a great price.
Really gets the maximum gleeful monkeys from me. Perhaps the only slight negative would be it’s small, so I wouldn’t be in a rush. As far as I can tell, it’s Hide doing the cooking, and that’s it. Ask Scat, he always pokes his head into the kitchen to say hi. There’s also a sign on wall saying No Alcohol, haven’t asked to mean none at all or it’s BYOB. Would be nice to enjoy a good beer with meal, but it’s no problem going without, the great food more than makes up for that. They close fairly early, 8:30 Mon – Thursday, later on Fri-Sat, and closed on Sunday I believe. Definitely recommended.
Published on April 11, 2008 in car by taro. Closed
Saturday, I’d gotten the 4AGZE starter motor to replace and relocate the balky starter. Relocating the starter requires changing out the bellhousing splash plate. Somehow I was able to install the transmission myself.
Here you see the old plate, the hole for the starter on the front/exhaust side of the engine. The new plate you see the hole on the other side. It’s a little hard to see, but the starter is now buried in there to the left, under the intake side.
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.
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’
