Well, the parking brake is still acting strange, the tightness changes randomly, but it works. It was good enough to pass safety so everything’s all legal now. Still lots of work to do, but at least all the paperwork is taken care of, whew.
Author Archive for taro
Page 82 of 88
Last night decided to try & fix the parking brake on the FX. Went over to the donor and pulled off the piston assembly. Something seems to be wrong with the cylinder adjuster on it, doesn’t move. The new FX, other than munched boots, and a missing lock pin, seems to work fine. Odd. I start messing with it and finally figure out that the problem is that the brake cable is too tight! The brake needs to release tension all the way in order for the self adjuster to ratchet and… self adjust. Whew, easy fix, and while I was at it I switched rubber boot from the donor. Looks like Saturday will attempt safety again!
Darn, I had hoped to have the cars legal this weekend and even join in a bike ride. It’s not like I don’t enjoy working on cars, but working on these two cars for the past days kind of wore me down so I didn’t do anything with them tonight.
Anyway, going back to the weekend, after the Saturday fun, I went out to take a closer look at the power steering of the AE86. Cleaned off spooge and ran the car for a bit. Strange, the new hose connections look fine. Don’t see any leakage at all, I figure if the high pressure line is leaking should be seeing some good spray. Continue reading ‘Be Cautious of the Car-ma Passed to You’
Who is that goofy guy they got for Fearless Planet? His delivery of lines was just a shade shy of my “ah ha ha ha, you inferior human beans!” Nathan told me he wasn’t sure what they were going to do with footage after they came back for the second shoot, which was with goofy guy. Now we know. Basically the footage that you can’t see Goofball face is Nathan. The magic of editing! Thankfully gratuitous skids was identifyably Goofball. Don’t think they used any of the footage I helped with. Well, at least Nathan got credited.
After all of Saturdays running around getting car stuff done, turns out only the AE86 got all legal. So I decided to go ahead and drive it to Wayland’s for dinner tonight. The transmission was making it’s whining sounds, but everything else seemed alright. Some burning oil smell that seemed to go away, I attributed that to left over brake fluid & power steering fluid that dripped on exhaust manifold burning off. This engine was really made for right hand drive. On the LHD we have here, the brake cylinder & P/S lines all end up on the same side as the hot exhaust. Anyway, things seemed to be going alright, although the burning oil smell would come and go. I got to Kalihi area on the H-1 when I saw that I was trailing big clouds of smoke out the back! Holy chrome, I pulled off the freeway onto Waikamilo and pulled into gas station. Popped the hood & took a look around. Either the fitting for the replacement p/s hose I installed wasn’t tight enough, was leaking, or was leaking somewhere else. It looks like it was spraying p/s fluid all over the place, which would collect and drip onto the manifold, producing the Spy Hunter (come on, you don’t remember that old arcade video game?) smoke screen. People sure stop following behind you in a hurry! So I turned around and nursed it back home. I laid down quite a few more screens, but made it home ok.
So the next time some kid asks me that question, I can rightfully answer, ‘why yes!’ Today on Discovery Channel they should be using some of the footage shot a few months ago with Nathan riding. You won’t see any of me, the most you might see is my back tire. The show is Fearless Planet. It should be interesting to see how what we did will actually be used and show up on the screen. We’ll see if my name shows up anywhere in the credits, looks like it’s scheduled for 8PM, catch it if you can!
That was quick & easy, the connector for the alternator wasn’t on good. Pluged it in good, cranked up the car, 14V baby! And while I was looking for wiring gremlins, looked at why the fans were constantly on. Yet another problem all the FXs I’ve had suffered. Looked over the FSM. Finally found it, doh, now I remember! All my FX’s also had A/C that was disabled/removed, and in so doing a pressure switch was either unplugged or chopped out. This switch runs in series with the fan temp switch so if it’s simply removed, the fan gets stuck on. The proper way to do it is to jumper it, or like how I did on previous and on this one for now is to just take the pressure switch and plug it in and leave it dangling. Aaaah, silence of no fans with cold engine. So wow, finally both cars are ready! The AE86 has a leaky brake master, but that’s easily fixed and can pass safety even without.
And after messing with all this alternator stuff, I just realized I am the man of alternators. Allen installed a new one into this FX, and stuck the old one in the trunk of the AE86. In all likelyhood that alternator is probably still good. I have the one in the 2nd FX, and one on the original FX block. So I have 4 FX alternators. Maybe if I took one of my bikes and hooked a belt to all of them I could power my house during a power outage….
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.
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’