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Comrade Flynn posted:$250k was just the work. He's probably in the car for around $350k. Must be nice to have that much money to spend on a toy. I'm with GF - I'd buy or build my own shop for that. What really got me is that he let the guy continue to work on the car after so many missed deadlines and broken promises. One problem is that he sent the car to a shop that was apparently far away enough that he couldn't drop by weekly or so to check progress, and they clearly took advantage of that. Pretty naive and trusting for someone with that kind of cash to blow, too.
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May 10, 2013 06:04
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AlternateAccount posted:So am I the only one who's first experience jacking up a car was with one of these? Had one of those in my '70 Cutlass. Used it ONCE. Scared the crap out of me. I found an awesome plus-size scissor jack kit in a '90s Suburban (I think. Definitely a Suburban) in the yard during the height of the Cash 4 Cars thing. That lives in the Cutlass' trunk now, replacing the small trolley jack I kept in there. The scissor jack in my wife's Astro van was decent, too. I particularly liked the ratcheting jack/lug wrench handle. Should have kept that when I traded in the thing.
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May 16, 2013 20:45
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ultimateforce posted:That is seriously EVERY S13. RX-7s, too
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May 17, 2013 21:33
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Galler posted:No, Dallas PD. My district bumped up against that area though. That's funny - one of out former Desktop guys was a former cop, then he got fired for, er, including the wrong people in a reply, and is now a Dallas cop. I honestly don't know if he's happier as a cop or not. Then again, Workstation/Desktop support barely qualifies as IT (I myself am a computer janitor, i.e Workstation support.) As far as mechanical failures, I wish I'd have taken pictures of the driveshaft in my cousin's F150. Not only did the front u-joint go dry, he let it go long enough that the rollers all disintegrated, the cross shaft wore through the cup and into the slip yoke, and finally wore enough that the driveshaft fell out one morning. I had to go find another slip yoke for the stupid thing, and install a new u-joint. "Oh, hey - it was vibrating on the highway a bit." This was the same truck that had the ignition retarded so much it would barely get to highway speed. Sometimes not. I have no idea how that happened. I'm just glad he got a newer used car. I was tired of fixing the damned thing, particularly as he rarely had the money to do it right. Darchangel fucked around with this message at 18:08 on May 21, 2013 |
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May 21, 2013 18:02
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kastein posted:If that is where I think it is (looks like Vermonster or some similar event) it probably was a horrible car cancer patient with almost nothing holding it together underneath. Started out as near scrap, left as scrap. No real loss. I was gonna say rust issues. That's the entire rear of the unibody hanging out there. Once again, I am very glad to live in a nearly rust-free state...
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May 29, 2013 00:19
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Powershift posted:Sharp curve ahead. Is that like the absolute worst way to make a universal volt pattern wheel or something? Holy crap.
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Oct 6, 2013 02:23
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Pope Ron Paul II posted:How not to remove a stuck fuel injector; I present to you exhibit A. The fact that they have a tool like that in the first place tells you something.
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Nov 8, 2013 23:17
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PainterofCrap posted:Seconding. We're pretty sure that's how they build 1st and 2nd-gen RX-7s, too. Damned heater core is in the middle of the dash behind the radio stack. From what I've seen, basically the same location it is on Volvo 240s, and just about as annoying to get to.
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Nov 29, 2013 20:55
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ShittyPostmakerPro posted:Oh poo poo, I'm having a Tubgirl flashback here. I don't know which is worse: the reference, or that I know why it fits. e: quoted wrong post.
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Dec 8, 2013 01:56
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Seat Safety Switch posted:I can't swear through my nose. This man speaks truth. And that made me laugh more than it really should have, I expect.
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Dec 12, 2013 21:14
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Geirskogul posted:The Northstar V8 is the worst engine ever designed. I submit that it still better than the HT4100.
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Dec 19, 2013 00:05
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CommieGIR posted:Some simple upgrades fixes that. There are some engines that no fixes will save. The 350 Olds-based diesel was OK in it's last years, when they gave it beefy enough head bolts, a decent head gasket, and a water separator. It was even better if you put a turbo on it. Still a slug compared to modern turbodiesels. I don't know a great deal about the Chevy pickup 350 diesel.
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Dec 19, 2013 23:49
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kastein posted:1991 Comanche, factory 4.0L, factory 2wd AW4 automatic, d35 rear, p225/75r15 tires. I haven't managed to break 18 MPG in my '95 Cherokee, and it's a 4-banger, 5-speed. Mostly city driving, though. I'll have to take it on a long highway trip and see how she does. Probably should just drop in a 4.0 if it's going to get the same mileage. I'd appreciate the extra 60 horses. Also: holy gently caress that 350.
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Dec 20, 2013 21:26
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wilfredmerriweathr posted:According to my research the 4.0 gets better fuel economy than the 4 cyl. Yeah, that's what I keep hearing. The 4-banger wasn't my choice - this was a freind-of-the-family type of deal that was too good to pass up. I would have rather had the 4.0, but for $600, in as good a shape as it's in, I'll take it. The 5-speed was a bonus, too. The 2.5L is fine for the daily drive I do. I would love more oomph, but if I really have a craving, I have a '90 RX-7 for sporty, and a '70 Olds Cutlass for muscle. The little truck does a fine job of hauling bulky stuff, and is way easier to get in and out of than the RX-7. Better mileage, too.  If the engine ever gives up I'll stuff in a 4.0L. Maybe if I just find a cheap one. Or another deal on a Cherokee. I'd kind of like a '95-up 4.0L 4x4 5-speed, if I can find one. '97-up would be nice for the more modern interior.
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Dec 21, 2013 21:12
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xzzy posted:The original beetles had a hose that went from the spare tire to the washer fluid reservoir to pressurize it. I imagine that works just great, until you want to use the spare tire as, y'know, a spare tire. Now it's flat, because you were cleaning your windshield. Superior German technology. Clever, but stupid.
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Dec 23, 2013 18:19
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BraveUlysses posted:Not to dissuade a wide-eyed engineering student, but should you go into automotive engineering you will find that ease of maintenance is not a priority when it comes to corporations designing cars. Corporate life as an engineer is not nearly as exciting as you might hope. My dad, who is a mechanical engineer, and has done his own auto work since he was a teenager, has bitched about automotive engineers almost every time we've done major work on anything newer than my '70 Cutlass. He's done mostly aerospace stuff for the last 20 years +. We both understand the realities of assembly lines and costs, but I tend to agree when it's some dumb little thing that ends up making us spend another hour or more because they couldn't move the loving bolt or whatever 1/4". Or some little plastic bit that ALWAYS breaks because they save 10 cents not making it out of metal. Or, my favorite, riveting and/or staking everything together instead of using god-damned bolts and screws. I know, cars are designed to be built, not taken apart, but drat...
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Jan 31, 2014 23:13
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nitrogen posted:In Los Colinas where I used to work, we had one hell of a boondoggle of a monorail there. For the longest time, it only operated for a few hours in the day, from like 11a-3p for lunchtime. Since DART expanded to the area, it runs longer now to ferry people from the DART trains now. Yeah, those things are pretty pathetic. I don't think I've ever seen it moving.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:57
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I'm in the same general area as STR, and I've never seen doors on a car wash either. I can certainly see why you'd want doors up north in the winter. Didn't notice them when I've visited up there, probably because it wasn't winter.
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Feb 19, 2014 07:35
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That is art. What does that even sound like? Huggable Bear King posted:how the gently caress do you keep driving on that?! it must've sounded awful...and why is it always BMW's? If you can afford that, why wouldn't you have Roadside Assistance? I mean, my bargain basement insurance has free towing and roadside...
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Feb 25, 2014 23:01
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Maker Of Shoes posted:Top Gear India special. Wasabi the J posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caDuxElh2l0 Safety Dance posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW45Dq0FPKY&t=95s Thanks, guys! Now I want an off-road XJS...
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Feb 27, 2014 00:48
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Kotaru posted:Apparently someone on Reddit took pictures of something Sock touched; http://imgur.com/a/sPeQJ Deathreaper posted:Found this on FB today - Your average Mazda Protege in the wild (Quebec / Ontario). Had the unfortunate experience of owning one as a first car a few years back. Mine rusted so bad that the driver rear shock strut went straight through the strut tower and into the trunk! Had seen the rest of the body rust coming but never that part. Powershift posted:And i thought this was bad. This is a 2004 mazda 3, and the other side was just as bad. Dear God almighty, I am NEVER moving north of the Mason-Dixon. My 40+ year-old Cutlass has sat outside 90% of it's life as far as I know, and it looks 500% better than any of that (made in Lansing, but lived all it's life in Texas.) My worst problem is a swiss-cheesed drivers floor pan caused by a formerly-leaky windshield. Salt is an abomination before the automotive gods, and should be punishable by making the dingleberries that mandate it's use forever drive 20-year-old Northern winter beaters year-round, forever.
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Mar 23, 2014 12:16
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LloydDobler posted:Do you have one of these? If not it should help: http://www.harborfreight.com/1000-lb-capacity-engine-support-bar-96524.html#.UzM0dZ3naHs I used a piece of 1" steel pipe, two 2 x 4s with holes bored to fit the pipe, and ratchet straps to do the same thing when I pulled the trans to do the clutch in my wife's Spectra5. The 2 x 4s sat on where the fenders bolted to the body under the hood, and the holes were bored high enough in the boards for the pipe to clear the tops of the fenders. Worked pretty well, actually. I'd go up a few sizes in board and pipe for an American V8, though. 
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Mar 26, 2014 21:48
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Sagebrush posted:Old RX-7s had trouble meeting emissions standards even before catalytic converters were a thing, mostly because of unburned fuel and incomplete combustion products (long, narrow combustion "chamber" = cool combustion = lots of soot) so Mazda's first solution was something called a "thermal reactor". Basically an air pump into a chamber high up in the exhaust system that allowed the combustion to complete and turn the soot and CO into less objectionable CO2. (ie: fuel keeps burning inside the exhaust system). Could it have been that? That's what I was going to say. Unique to the '79-80s, and that extra 1" or so tail pipe goes all the way to the back. It was basically an afterburner. Fart Pipe posted:Ooo Ooo, can I play? Did this the other day with my truck. Too bad I recorded it with my phone because it sounded mental I did the same when I had the muffler off my '79 RX-7, but it just sounded like the world's angriest weedeater. Un-muffled, un-turbo'd rotaries sound like poo poo. too many high-frequency harmonics or something, I read once. Now, my '70 Cutlass sounded pretty good with open headers, but apparently I failed to record that. On the plus side (?) the RX-7 does some pretty good after-fire's on it's own, say, down a hill, decelerating. spog posted:Back in the day of carb'ed bike, my friend had a trick when overtaking assholes. As he was about to pass them, he'd briefly kill the ignition, before restating, just as he passed the driver's window. I did manage to blow up the muffler on my '68 El Camino many years ago by doing that. A nice load BOOM, then a much more aggressive exhaust note. Replaced it with a Cherry Bomb glass-pack, which sounded way better than the stock style muffler that I blew up.8ender posted:Holy poo poo your friend is the wrong person to own an RX7 This, no doubt. rotard posted:I dont remember the fix, but the problem is the secondary injectors arnt firing as they come alive around 3k on factory ecms. On a friend's, it was the injector wiring connectors coming loose because the locking tabs had broken. Zip-tie fix. It could also be clogged injectors, or a sensor issue, like maybe the TPS not letting the ECU know the engine is off-idle (it's really just an idle switch on the S4s). My '90 S5 did that once, though it cut out around 1500-2000. I'd start with clogged or otherwise not-functioning secondary injectors first. They;'re easy to get to and test.
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Aug 26, 2014 19:28
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Javid posted:The squirrel is more intact than the fork is. I'm surprised the spokes didn't just filet it. Cyclists and their fetish for lightweight parts that juuuuuust barely are able to do their job under normal conditions. I'd be terrified to ride a bike that the SPOKES are stronger than the forks on.
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Aug 27, 2014 01:01
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torpedan posted:I feel like I got fairly lucky with the 5S of my office. Basically instead of being an overly organized sorting and labeling event, it turned out to be a glorified throw poo poo out day. The net effect on me was near zero as I had already thrown out most of the stuff that I inherited with my desk anyway. I would have at least 3 drawers labeled "Random poo poo". In truth, if not just to piss off the manager/meddler.
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Aug 27, 2014 01:03
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The Royal Nonesuch posted:Mine were OEM (have a switch on the dashboard for them) and as far as I can tell the stock location for the relay was screwed into the side of the engine bay just above the battery. So, if the screw popped out or the stupid little plastic casing broke, it would fall down behind the battery like that (mine had). Liquid Communism's Jeep is a 97+, so it's got different wiring than your '88. My 95, if it had OEM foglights, would be like yours, and yes, it's just attached to the inner fender. It's also wired in a really convoluted way so that the fog lights only work with the park lights on, but not the headlight high beams, AND feed a ground back to the switch to light it up when it's on. I know this because I acquired a replacement bumper for my PO-bent one, it has OEM fog lights (which are actually Blazer brand, but with a Chrysler pigtail), I've acquired a factory fog light switch, and I want it all to work OEM-like. I had to repaint mine because the chrome was all rusty (don't like chrome anyway), but the lenses are glass, so I won't have that melty problem Liquid Communism had. CommieGIR posted:I always wanted to get one of those and put a diesel in it.  They did that from the factory (you probably already know this).
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Oct 15, 2014 01:04
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Thanks, guys. That made for a food laugh while catching up at lunch.
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Nov 7, 2014 21:28
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IOwnCalculus posted:Future mechanical failure. If I'm understanding what this is correctly, doesn't that need to allow for twisting at the bushing as well? The aftermarket one appears to be using a Johnny-joint to allow for the axle to move up on one side while dropping down on the other, a common situation off-road. Even a large rod-end would work.
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Dec 2, 2014 06:21
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Yeah, I screwed myself into Street Prepared when I put poly bushings in my '79 RX-7. No other performance mods besides Tokico Blues and a K&N, so I was definitely doing it for fun, not to win. Still did OK locally - mid pack.
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Dec 9, 2014 16:32
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Godholio posted:I've got a video somewhere of what my 327 Corvette sounded like with the mufflers off. It blew a big loving hole in one at a stoplight, so I just pulled them while I waited for a new exhaust to arrive. My Cutlass sounded pretty decent with open headers, but I think it sounded way better with the Magnaflow exhaust on: http://wright-here.net/gallery/v/kevin/olds/magnaflow/CIMG0998-med.MP4.html I don't appear to have a video of the open headers, unfortunately.
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Dec 24, 2014 03:18
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Horse Divorce posted:You can't see it too well at the very start, but there's smoke puffing out the breather at the rear of the valve cover. Check out the puffing when I pull off the pvc vac. Um, yeah, that's broke. Fucknag posted:Looks like it's missing a pair of washers to spread the load across the entire mount, so instead all the tension was clamped in the radius of the nut. Did it come with them? I was going to say the same thing.Whoever installed them forgot some parts. I hope it wasn't you, LV.
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Dec 27, 2014 05:16
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Holy gently caress, I am never buying a VAG anything.
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Jan 12, 2015 21:11
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veedubfreak posted:As to straight cut timing gears, is there any actual benefit over regular timing gears? Seems like every air cooled engine these days has them instead of the nice quiet gears. For racing purposes, they have less lash than even a double-roller timing chain. Stronger, more reliable, basically, with the noise as a tradeoff. They can be made helical, or at least angled, so they don't make quite as much noise, but the noise is a desired racy-sounding thing. One of the brands I once looked at makes a quiet version, and a noisy version. edit: Fart Pipe posted:My old International and my buddys Ford flahead both have timing gears and they dont make any noise. I think those aftermarket ones that sound like blowers are cut to make sound on purpose. Pretty much. It sounds cool, for varying values of cool.
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Feb 3, 2015 20:10
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Liquid Communism posted:If you haven't seen this, go read it : Things I Won't Work With. Ah, yes, the source of my absolute favorite line, regarding chlorine trifluoride: "It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water-with which it reacts explosively."
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Feb 11, 2015 00:52
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FogHelmut posted:Except corn requires extensive fertilization, which is largely derived from natural gas. Not to mention the fuel for the equipment to plant, maintain, and harvest it. And it;s really not that great of a source for ethanol, either. InitialDave posted:So are petrol and diesel, people just don't think on long enough timeframes. That's what I keep trying to tell people.
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Feb 24, 2015 21:30
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kastein posted:ehhh that's easy. Toyota did that poo poo on my wife's '79 Celica, too. They were an absolute bear to get out using only a bench vise, albeit a beefy one.
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Mar 12, 2015 23:41
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I remember seeing that poo poo in a Haynes manual (I think) and just wondering WTF.
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Apr 21, 2015 23:48
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spog posted:Colour? In a Haynes? Heresy! I think it was actually Chiltons. I probably still have the book, because I seem to hang on to them despite no longer having the car they were for.
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Apr 22, 2015 04:31
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kastein posted:It's like you guys just realized haynes and chiltons are full of omissions, inaccuracies, bullshit, outright lies, oversimplifications, and terrible ideas I'm well aware of Chiltons and Haynes. I own a first-gen RX-7, where they attempt to use the same manual for '79-85, when there were quite a few changes made in '81, and major ones in '84. Also the Olds Cutlass manual that covers like '66-'87 in one 3/4" thick book. The bodywork thing I saw came form the manual I bought back in high school for my Chevy Monza back in '87-8, I think. First experience with Chilton's, but even then I knew that bodywork didn't work that way. Hillridge posted:Don't forget 40 pictures of the easiest, most obvious steps, followed by only a non-illustrated, one sentence description of the most difficult and non-intuitive part of whatever procedure you're doing. That, too. Most. Infuriating. Thing. Ever. CommieGIR posted:"We want to make it illegal for vehicle owners to work on their cars. Let's make it harder to change the oil and check the fluids" - Auto Manufacturers Oh, gently caress that forever. Throatwarbler posted:But GM was already using plastic timing gears 30 years ago? And the nylon teeth on the aluminum timing chain gears on Chevy V8s back in the '80s worked ever so well, too.
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Apr 22, 2015 21:00
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Geirskogul posted:
I still can't wrap my head around where he poured the brake fluid. You'd have to have a hell of a leak in the MC to the booster, then a tear in the booster diaphragm, if the fluid was coming from the MC. How much you want to bet he filled the booster with fluid through the check valve hole, then plugged the hose back in? Only thing I can think of.
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Sep 9, 2015 21:08
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