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Carta posted:I'm envious of anyone with a paved driveway or garage :-( You need a fair sized patch of astroturf. Just drive that fucker right on it. Fairly soft, durable, and you don't get dirt and bugs in your ears.
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Apr 24, 2010 16:34
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Started cleaning up this 22 year old pile of junk so I can get to putting a locker in the diff and rebuild the whole thing. My diff is leaking and my drums are destroyed.   My poor baby's rear end is sitting on jackstands right now waiting for me to get around to doing this. Life sucks without my truck. Fermented Tinal fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Apr 24, 2010 |
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Apr 24, 2010 16:57
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I FINALLY finished installing a new timing belt in my 1998 Ford ZX2. I also replaced the water pump, valve cover gasket, the serpentine belt, replaced the coolant. I cleaned out my garage a little bit and moved the stand up tool chest I got for Christmas over to a spot by the door into the house so I can grab tools without having to crawl around cars and get my feet all dirty. Tomorrow I replace the alternator in my brother's (maybe mine in a couple days) 1995 Acura Integra. PBCrunch fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Apr 25, 2010 |
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Apr 25, 2010 03:01
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Replaced the passenger's side door panel map pocket in my 1980 300cd. Because the interior color is a terrible and rare 70's dark red, it took me a year to find a replacement map pocket. Gold and henna red is such an abysmal color combination, it was special ordered new by the first owner, the founder of a Fortune 500 company.
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Apr 25, 2010 04:04
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A couple days ago I drained my (very burnt and disgusting) auto tranny fluid, and today I swapped it again. It's gonna need at least one more change in a week or so, but it's already shifting a LOT better and sounding smoother. I'm too lazy and cheap to have a shop exchange it, so I'm just changing as much as I can drain out of the pan. Also changed my oil, which is actually like four times as much work. Next up is my burnt rear end power steering fluid, but I should probably do my tie rod ends first and make sure I don't need to replace the whole rack.
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Apr 25, 2010 04:12
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Exi7wound posted:You need a fair sized patch of astroturf. Just drive that fucker right on it. Fairly soft, durable, and you don't get dirt and bugs in your ears. I saw this ingenious idea in action last week at VIR, which has sand in the paddock on which to park. The guy next to us had a nice mat of faux grass large enough to keep both his C6 Z06 and lounge chair free from dirt.
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Apr 25, 2010 04:12
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So I heard a  grinding noise from my front driver's brake starting the day after my state inspection. I checked the sticker and they pulled LF and RR wheels this year, so I just figured "bastards didn't clean anything and just whacked the pads back in after mic-ing them without anti-squeal."...I bought myself some anti-squeal since the last bottle I had got loaned out and never returned, along with some brake cleaner and a bottle of starting fluid for the jeep. Off comes the wheel.   indeed. So I grabbed my uncle's tracker and went and bought pads... All I can figure is they broke the pad when they slammed the caliper back into position. This also explains the whole "Well I back up out of my driveway, and when I get to the end of the street and am nearly stopped there's a nasty THUD! noise from that brake..." From that pad remnant shifting from one end of the caliper to the other. Thankfully I drive like an old man so I didn't damage the rotors or anything, that bit of pad did the best it could. Now I feel like I should be planning apexes! New pads/bleeding.    Bleeding because I just changed the Master Cylinder in July and I'll be damned if I'm pushing that horribad fluid back up into it when I push the piston back in...
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Apr 25, 2010 05:35
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Cupholder install. On my third try, success! I mounted it pretty high to make sure it would never be in the way of my knee when driving. On the door is pretty much the only place on the driver's side where a cupholder can be mounted. On the passenger side there's one or two more options, but I wanted to evaluate this idea for a bit before adding any more. So far, so good - no spills of my 600mL bottle today, even with over-aggressive accelerations and taking corners a bit quick.
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Apr 25, 2010 07:21
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I put it up on Craigslist  Gotta get the down payment for this Jeep I've been eyeballing at a local dealership however 
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Apr 26, 2010 00:56
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MY SUBARU! Ahem. Oil change, Sefoam treatement, Oil change. Made a huge mess of the second oil change, but hey, first time I've done this. Last time, I tried this on any car, I couldn't find the drain plug.  But this time, success! even if I had to throw some sand on the driveway afterwards. Makes me feel... good, and kinda smug too. *Tommorow: Plates and Registration, the town clerk permitting. In the near future: Gaskets gaskets gaskets. And I've been thinking of possibly doing a full rebuild/cleaning of the engine and the tranny if I have a week, or two, or three off. E:*I'm not/wasn't very mechanically inclined.
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Apr 26, 2010 03:16
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Yesterday, I bought all this, for the princely sum of $4.75 through the magic of gift cards. Thanks to my sister and my parents, who bought my car christmas presents (seriously, the cards were addressed to "1988 Honda Prelude"  ) Pictured: WD-40, PB-Blaster, 4 x brake bleeder screws, 946mL of DOT4 brake fluid, new HVAC blower motor, Fram air filter (it was the only one they had).Brake fluid drain-and-replace will be next weekend. But today was "air day"; I replaced the air filter, and the HVAC blower motor. The old blower was noisy, the new one is much quieter. I also tracked down and fixed a minor fuel leak that was causing fuel smell inside the cabin. But my engine's air intake system is weird, and I do not understand it. Ye olde air filter  The filthy, filthy housing it came out of  Notice the hole in the back wall there? That leads to a very short pipe, about 2 inches long, that just opens to the airspace at the back of the engine, near the firewall. I don't understand. Air is supposed to come into the housing and get filtered via a big pipe from the front of the engine, that has two branches (one above the radiator, the other vertically down next to the battery). But the air filter housing has this back door! WTF? The fuel leak source  The hose closest to the firewall had come off of the metal pipe. Given the proximity of the cabin air intake (just off-camera above) and the fact I saw no major change in fuel mileage or engine sound / performance, I'm going to agree with my neighbour who thinks the detached hose is a "standby" fuel supply, and doesn't normally carry much gasoline. Plugging it back onto the pipe solved the fuel smell problem I'd had earlier. I should have looked for something like this before
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Apr 26, 2010 05:02
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ExecuDork posted:The fuel leak source Those are all vacuum lines, no fuel in them, there's no such thing as a 'standby' fuel supply. It could be the purge line for the evap system, try tracing it to the charcoal canister. That is the only way gas vapors would be in one of those lines, which go through a water-temperature activated solenoid and suck the vapors from the charcoal canister into the intake manifold.
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Apr 26, 2010 05:21
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A wider view of that part of my engine bay The lines I'm holding in that earlier picture lead along the firewall-side of the Fuel Injection module and plug into it on the right side. They run between the EFI and that black box bolted to the firewall. I don't know what that box is, but the charcoal cannister is directly behind the air intake pipe (the big black bent-90-degrees thing); the top of it is barely visible in this picture. This is my current working assumption about the layout of the engine. There's another, similar cannister below and a bit to the right of what I'm calling the charcoal cannister. Sorry if this is obvious to you guys, I spend a lot of time staring at my engine and scratching my head.
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Apr 26, 2010 05:46
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The big black box is your vacuum control box. It holds your MAP sensor and a bunch of other really delicate and relatively expensive-to-replace electronics that the computer relies upon to operate correctly. The canister directly to the right of it should be your charcoal canister, and the canister below it should be your fuel filter (the braided red line on your throttle body connects to the charcoal canister, if that makes it easier). I'm pretty sure that the line that was unplugged goes to your Air Boost Valve, based on how you described it. It doesn't do a whole lot besides, well, boosting the amount of air in your intake, so it's probably fine. You were probably smelling fuel because the engine was running rich with that line disconnected. You're doing exactly what I've done for the last two months or so: stare at the engine, poke a bit, then go "wtf is this thingy?" I recommend buying the shop manual for it, since that has been an invaluable resource for troubleshooting my 92 Accord that is laid out pretty similarly. At this point, I've read pretty much all of the Fuel section three times through. 
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Apr 26, 2010 08:01
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Carta posted:I'm envious of anyone with a paved driveway or garage :-( Today I moved my trunk-release button from the optional/civvie location on the door panel to the conventional Interceptor location in the center of the dash, and installed a smaller button in my gutted fuel-door-release button. Like so:  Also got some plastic polish to freshen up my headlight lenses, but haven't used it yet. Chillbro Baggins fucked around with this message at 08:42 on Apr 26, 2010 |
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Apr 26, 2010 08:40
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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ExecuDork posted:Projects. Does yours have A/C? Blower motors are funnnnnnn. I'm on my 3rd one now. Last one I replaced when it was 5F out, at night. Bleh.
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Apr 26, 2010 10:44
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Speaking of A/C, I fixed the A/C on my fiancee's Toyota over the weekend. We pulled into the AutoZone, and I made three separate runs inside for the voltmeter, jumper wire, and new OEM relay. It'd been out for like two weeks and it cost me $60 total to get it going in four minutes, right there in the parking lot. It's really not a big deal as far as fixes go, but I'm still pretty proud, as I called the relay being broke about a week ago.
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Apr 26, 2010 17:37
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I spent two hours trying to do a alignment with tape measures, string, a level, and an angle finder after the tyre place refused to do it for me as I was way too low for their machine. They put on the 4 new landsails though. So good I can barely find any info on them on google.
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Apr 26, 2010 18:53
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Wife was away this weekend, excellent opportunity to get some garage time and make the go kart a little nicer. Engine doesn't have a generator? Let's just use a car battery instead.  Click here for the full 2048x1536 image. I found the battery box in my shed. Wooo free stuff!  Click here for the full 2048x1536 image. I wanted a switch panel of some sort that would be somewhat sealed. 3"x5" index card storage to the rescue!  Click here for the full 2048x1536 image. Oh did I mention they are 100W offroad lights?  Click here for the full 1536x2048 image. Flexing the muscles of my camerphone  Click here for the full 2048x1536 image. Bonus picture of garage of silver toys (which was completely unintentional, I assure you - I don't even really like silver)  Click here for the full 2048x1536 image.
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Apr 26, 2010 20:31
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Tore out the power steering system from my 87 supra. Test fitted up a mustang manual steering rack. Didn't like the look of welded up steering shaft and U joints. To bad the company doesn't just sell the pinions by themselves so I'm out another 300$. On a plus note Toyota used a 3/4" ID for the steering column. Just now I ordered a new 5.0 stang rack and a (9/16 26 spline x 3/4 smooth bore) u-joint. Gonna cut off the supra u-joint and have a local shop TIG weld the new u-joint on. Bonus pic of carnage. I put a backup system between the 2 shafts. Stupid idea it looks bad and don't ever try to weld in an engine bay. 
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Apr 26, 2010 20:36
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Bought it a new set of shoes. Got them on eBay, £72, complete with tyres (which will need replacing sooner or later but they'll do for now). They're going to be getting a good clean and possibly a respray over the next couple of days.  
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Apr 26, 2010 21:25
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ExecuDork posted:A wider view of that part of my engine bay Here's what's inside the mystery box, in case you were curious.  I cracked mine open a while ago and replaced the MAP sensor (the black boxy thing on the left) while troubleshooting a surging idle problem I was having. It didn't fix it - the problem turned out to be a massive vacuum leak at the intake manifold gasket. Seems there are support braces that run from the engine block to the intake manifold, presumably to keep the full weight of the intake manifold from hanging off of the mounting nuts. Well, some hack who had the car before I did was apparently loving around with the engine one day and decided to throw them out.  So, I got replacement brackets and some other goodies (fender, exhaust, brake caliper, etc) from a guy parting out a car on the forum and threw them on when I replaced the manifold gasket. No problems since.Content: I finally got some liquid rubber stuff and resealed my taillights on Saturday. I put masking tape on the parts of the lights I didn't want the rubber poo poo on, but wanted to wait for the rubber to fully cure before removing the tape. I was going to take the tape off and button it up today. As luck would have it, it has been pouring rain all day today, so the tape stays until at least tomorrow afternoon. I also found out that my taillight gaskets are shot as well, but gently caress paying dealer prices for some crappy foam rubber cutouts. I ordered a sheet of neoprene from Amazon, but it's supposed to take 4 weeks Ah well, it's been kicking around for 21 years already, I guess one more month won't kill it.And, the rear diff for the BMW is fully assembled Now, I'm just waiting for a decent day when I've got some time to toss it in and test it out.
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Apr 26, 2010 23:57
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Tried to fix the infamous Mercedes W123 glovebox of rage. It didn't work, there is still a GM We R Profeshnul Grayd™ panel gap between the box and dash.  The interior on this car isn't too bad, besides the floor mats that turned pink. I still need to fix the seat springs/replace the pad in both seats, find a driver's side map pocket, replace pass. side kick panel, redye some faded carpet, fix the rear coupe windows... Might as well redye the seats with Leatherique while all of the interior is out 
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Apr 27, 2010 00:09
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Sponge! posted:Does yours have A/C? Blower motors are funnnnnnn. I'm on my 3rd one now. Last one I replaced when it was 5F out, at night. Bleh. I have the shop manual for my car (yay internet PDFs!), and it has been helpful. That's how I guessed at the identity of my charcoal canister, and I was leaning towards "fuel filter" on that other thing. I find the illustrations remove so much for clarity that it becomes difficult to locate things. Could you leave something in for context, like the firewall or the suspension towers or something, please?
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Apr 27, 2010 01:56
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ExecuDork posted:Indeed it does have A/C. However, this is the second time I've gotten under my glovebox and taken out that motor (you may remember my first bit of work on this car, replacing the resistor). It doesn't *quite* just drop right out when the screws are undone, but the level of yanking and cursing is fairly minimal. Then it squeezes back in with a similar amount of cursing. Swapping it yesterday took me less than an hour, and that includes my usual very slow work-pace and plenty of just staring at things to try to guess what their function might be. Yes. We can share the pain of unbolting the blower box from the firewall, the cursing as we try to wiggle it enough to drop the blower out. Also the anguish of dropping the drat nut from the cage spindlefor the 5th time trying to put it back in...
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Apr 27, 2010 02:13
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Sponge! posted:Yes. We can share the pain of unbolting the blower box from the firewall, the cursing as we try to wiggle it enough to drop the blower out. Also the anguish of dropping the drat nut from the cage spindlefor the 5th time trying to put it back in... My blower motor is held in place by 2 of the 3 big brass screws because back in October I dropped the third one behind the kick-plate (or whatever it's called, the passenger's feet rest against it) and I've yet to feel energetic enough to pull out enough carpet to get that stupid thing off and fish around in the space behind it. There are at least 3 different screws back there, but I never hear them rattling around, which I interpret as they're good and stuck in some deep dark hole. gently caress it.
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Apr 27, 2010 04:11
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ExecuDork posted:Dropping fasteners... Dude, that's where your ECU lives. Might as well make it handy to pull that carpet up. When your Check Engine light comes on, you read the blink codes out of the ECU via a little porthole to the circuit board that an LED blinks through. Its not hard to do. My biggest beef was putting the cage back on the shaft while inside the box, I don't have the clearance to pull the motor out with the cage attached, so I had to cut the grille behind the glove box a bit, and then use 9" hemostats to put it on/off. That little flanged nut fell into the cage more times than I care to remember, I had to pull it out with a magnet on a chunk of wire. Much blood was shed. And I did this at 10PM in the middle of January with the windchill in the -5F range, door open, kneedling/laying on concrete. Totally worth it though, defrosters are needed.
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Apr 27, 2010 04:17
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Sponge! posted:Dude, that's where your ECU lives. Might as well make it handy to pull that carpet up. When your Check Engine light comes on, you read the blink codes out of the ECU via a little porthole to the circuit board that an LED blinks through. Its not hard to do. I don't know exactly what's different between your car and mine, but my blower motor is really quite easy. I don't have to unbolt anything except the motor itself, once the glove box is out of the way (and that's held on by 5 screws, counting the little cover panel thing). The motor drops about 2/3 of the way out, then I just have to push the wall of the plastic electrical connectors against the firewall back half a centimetre while pulling down and back on the motor. Is the reason there is no 20-year-old Honda megathread simply because it would be occupied entirely by you telling me what to do with my car, and Black88GTA dropping in now and then to tell us about how he misses driving his Prelude when he drives his V-12 BMW? 
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Apr 27, 2010 04:32
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ExecuDork posted:Oh, sooner or later I know I'll have to go digging in there. I've seen instructions somewhere for shorting a circuit on the engine side of the firewall and watching the blink codes from there, no carpet-ripping required. But I should get down and see all those wires and connectors and so forth for myself. The angle of my floorpan prevents me from dropping the motor out, by unbolting the blower housing from the firewall I can get the required angle to remove it... As far as the differences go, there's suprisingly little, mechanically. You have the MPFI system, I'm on DPFI. That makes for some differences in the intake snorkel(your wonderful black box of electrical magic.), but otherwise the guts are nearly the same as a civic, with a lot of parts being interchangeable. Our interiors are the same color too. :P
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Apr 27, 2010 09:58
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Polished my headlights. I really need an electric buffer, but they're better than they were. Also found my car's previous owner -- the dealer said he go it from the DEA, but the paint code on the door tag says it came black/white, and somebody on Crownvic.net said the options looked like TX DPS, which scratches in the repaint seemed to confirm (and the respray was very well done, which is a DPS hallmark, as I learned from researching SSP Mustangs a few years ago). Today at lunch I was idly looking at the trim tag again, and happened to turn my head -- and saw TWO stickers on the B-pillar with "Texas Department of Public Safety" and a number (one paper, one foil of the type you find on school desks proclaiming them "property of..."), and another one with just the number and a barcode.
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Apr 28, 2010 01:16
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Today I threw more money at my car. Repairs are up too 8k AU now but it's looking sexy. On another note the xenon headlights I bought turned out to be broken. When I called the company I bought them from the guy on the phone conversation went something like this:  Hey, These xenon headlights I bought of you have had the ballast cut out and normal headlights put in them... WTF? Those where the only ones I had in stock? But you sold me xenon headlights... not normal headlights? -whine- They are still xenon headlights!  Not if the loving xenon doesn't work!After that I basically fired up and accused them of actively trying to scam me. Eventually he said his boss wasn't there and he'd call me when he got there.
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Apr 28, 2010 01:31
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I installed a cool air intake and new brakes on my new RX-8. After driving an Elan for the past few years it was really nice to get into something with an intuitive design and a really comfortable ride. Nice to know it corners as well as my fancy-shmancy European sports car did. I can totally see why there are so many Mazda fanboys in AI now, I'm gaga for this car.
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Apr 28, 2010 01:40
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tobu posted:On another note the xenon headlights I bought turned out to be broken. When I called the company I bought them from the guy on the phone conversation went something like this: This is why I'm scared to buy any aftermarket headlights for my car. I don't have to worry about my OEM halogens leaking in the rain or blinding oncoming drivers or failing to work after a week. Plus I get really suspicious when I see five companies selling the exact same light while charging five different prices. TRUST NO ONE
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Apr 28, 2010 02:00
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The Prelude got some love today. Up until now, I've been riding around on severely corroded, out-of-balance 14" Z-Racing alloys from probably the early '90s, with tires of similar vintage. 3/4 tires were severely cracking (one was replaced last year), and the compound was hard as a rock due to age. Here's how it looked a few hours ago: Tape on the taillights - remnants of the sealing I did on Sunday. This would have come off yesterday, but it was pouring rain out. So I drove around looking stupid for one more day. Oh well.  The jack BARELY fits...it always needs some coaxing (lifting the car up with your shoulder, while simultaneously wedging it in there). Accordingly, it's a bitch to pull out when you drop the car back down.  So I needed tires really bad. Turns out that selection of decent 14" tires is fairly limited. Plus I wanted to upgrade anyway because these old wheels suck, seriously. As luck would have it, the Ebay gods have smiled upon me and bestowed upon my old Honda the gift of new shoes! Konig Monsoon 16" alloys, with decent Toyo Proxes on them. Yeah, they are probably 10 years old, but in nice shape. Definitely an improvement over the old poo poo, anyway.  I took it for a test drive, and it now takes corners 1000x better than it ever did before (since I've owned it, anyway), and the shimmy / vibration at 60 mph is completely gone now. I did pick up some annoying road noise though, but not too bad. Worth the trade, in my opinion. And I pulled the tape off the lights and reinstalled them, but no pics of that as it was dark by then.
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Apr 28, 2010 02:22
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Reinforced the sagging driver's seat in my 1980 300cd with strips & rolls of shag carpet, underneath the seat pad & springs. The result: the seat doesn't sag anymore and is firmer. The P.O. was obese so this was a very good decision. Also replaced the idler arm bushings, they were causing some odd steering characteristics that I couldn't figure out. Too lazy to remove injector hardlines to reach some burned out glowplugs. It's the summer and the car fires up readily anyway 
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Apr 28, 2010 02:58
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Ziploc posted:I have a soft spot for little hatchbacks with tasteful and understated mods. I love it. Great looking car. Haha thanks! Registered for my first auto-x on May 2nd. Hope I can eek a little fun out of the egg! Also i'm slowly tucking away money for a blitz supercharger....we'll see how well that goes.
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Apr 28, 2010 03:02
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Black88GTA posted:The Prelude got some love today.  Looks great, and I'm glad to hear the handling improved.I'm impressed you can get any jack at all under the front center lift point. I haven't tried, though perhaps rather than a jack I should just put together a lever with a long 2x4 and a large brick... Thanks again for suggesting I buy such a great little car. I'm still really enjoying mine.
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Apr 28, 2010 03:31
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ExecuDork posted:Hooray! Edit: For content, I drove my ride today, and enjoyed the fact that it shifted smoothly, accelerated strongly, and idled fairly normally. I think I can finally say it runs better than it did when I got it two and a half years ago. Coasterphreak fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Apr 28, 2010 |
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Apr 28, 2010 04:51
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Black88GTA posted:I love seeing these Preludes on the road. When I'm driving my XT, the Prelude drivers do a massive double-take since the front of my car is Prelude and the rear is Chrysler Imperial.  Click here for the full 1023x766 image.
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Apr 28, 2010 05:07
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MATLAB 1988 posted:I love seeing these Preludes on the road. When I'm driving my XT, the Prelude drivers do a massive double-take since the front of my car is Prelude and the rear is Chrysler Imperial. Coasterphreak posted:I am so many kinds of jealous of both of you.  It's great fun. Here's a picture of me driving in an Ice Rally-X event in March.  Another member of the racing club was so impressed with my Prelude that he bought one, too! $900, complete with squeeky belts and 4WS (I am jealous of his 4WS). 
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Apr 28, 2010 05:27
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