cruizin01

Afternoon Gents. Sort of a misserable, frustrating update this week. Had the car back at the tuner to try and sort out the cold start idle issues. He said he made the adjustments necessary to get it sorted. And he did as far as the cold start idle was concerned. So I picked it up again up at ON3 last Thursday. I get .5 mile from my house, pull up to the light, clutch in and the car idles down and shuts off. Then wouldn't restart. SWEEET. I push it through the turn (in the pouring rain) luckily its down hill so I attempt to bump start it from 2nd and it fires back up. cool, at least I can get it home. In the garage I rev it a bit and the idle drops down and shuts off again. The car sets a fault when it dies and wont restart until you clear it. I found a SIB about it so I think fixing the idle will solve all that. Still frustrating. On the short trip home I immediately notice the engine has a vibration now. Like if I were to have installed super stiff or solid engine mounts. I drove it a bit this weekend and it feels like everything is gonna vibrate off the car. The charge pipe rattles, the fender rattles, the shifter feels like its gonna fly off the car around 4k it buzzes so bad. I looked the car over looking for a busted mount or something and cant find anything. It makes NO sense. Its not like a misfire or anything, I pulled each coil just to check. No codes in the ECU. My mind keeps coming back to if the bump start could have messed something up internally to the engine or flywheel. (still vibrates while coasting, but seems slightly worse under load) It appears to rev ok but seems like it might be down on power, its that or the vibrations are so distracting that it just feels off. So then to make things even better I pulled the oil filer just for kicks and found a small about of metal in the pleats of the filter. That oil and filter may have 100 miles on it? I dont even know where to go with the thing now. Pull the valve cover and front timing car and look for possible timing chain/balance chain issues? (chains are sorta common on ecotecs I guess) Maybe do a compression test? The car made good power so I assume thats gonna check out but maybe not now that is has a vibration... Pull the trans and check the flywheel? Not even sure what I would look for there with a dual mass. See if it has excessive play? Im open for any fresh ideas....

I love it! Im not an expert on any of this but my thoughts are this; The more comfortable you feel in a situation the less likely you are to feel the need to go to extreme measures. There is a name for it and I cant remember exactly what it is but its basically what your mind does in these situations for self preservation and you take any steps necessary. (Pull my firearm so there is zero chance of someone taking it and using it on me). Sure you could use that training/skill level to kill someone but Im willing to bet that happens a very small percentage of the time. Even choking someone out has a very small chance of someone having long lasting effects.

Sweet!

Sam Harris interviewed Rener Gracie last week and they discussed the lack of training police offers receive on average. I think most states require less than 700hrs of training to become a police officer. Its interesting that most basic professional jobs require 2x that much training. Cosmetology school requires 1500 I think. I think he said the average cops is required to have 6hrs/year of some sort of physical violence training. He's advocates for jiu jitsu training for cops to help them cope better in violent situations where they dont always have to resort to deadly force. He also talked about how many cities (New York) now have policies that dont allow leo's to try and detain anyone using there neck, back, stomach areas because of the Floyd murder. This is the end will mostly likely result in additional deaths which just stem from cops not being able to detain people safely and deadly force being used. You guys can now go back to arguing about race.

I dug around and looked at a few of the options on those electric setups. I think they are all just a little too bulky for this car. I think Ill stick with a tried and true hydraulic system. Should require way less work if I can get all the correct parts.

Yeah I may look into that. I dug around a little yesterday and think I can use a Regal mounting bracket that holds the alternator and regal ps pump. Chase Bays has a e30 LS swap hoses and fluid can that I think would work on my setup. The existing Z3 rack should work as well. About $600-700 in parts though. The car is back at the tuner this week. I installed a new throttle body and "correct" pedal. Neither one made any difference in the idle rpm especially on cold start. The tuner says he's somewhat limited due to the tables available in HP tuners. It sounds like these torque based management systems can be a pain. I doubled checked all my hardware, I pressure tested the system to 15psi and smoke tested everything. So he's gonna go back through it and try and get creative with it I guess.

You sound like ALL of my friends. I dont. I just dropped the car off and let him do his thing. Ill try and get some in the coming weeks of me out and about a bit. Thrash me now for my lack of media content! :bangbang:

Afternoon peoples, Had the car up at ON3 for a couple days this week to have Bob work out the tune on it. I was having some high idle issues with it so he dug into that and the short of it is Ive got a bad throttle body. It worked fine except it wouldn't come all the way back to zero. The minimum tps was around 10%. I have a new one that Im hoping to install tonight, that should solve those issues. I dont think I'll have to have him retune the car. I told him to keep it mild for now because the stock clutches on these cars dont hold a lot of power. And I wanted to see how it drove with nearly stock boost. It made about 260whp on the mustang dyno and 270tq. With way too tall gearing the car still moves about pretty well. I definitely need to find a shorter rear diff. It currently has a 2.93 geat and if I take into account the stock solstice tire size the correct gear would be around 3.42. So at some point id like to find another rear end. The 5th gear isnt usable until your over 70mph. Im pretty happy with the car so far though. The manual steering gets a little old, I may look into trying to find a place to mount the ecotech pump and possibly making lines to attach to the z3 rack. Anyway I'll shut up. Ill update after the throttle repair and to any other fixes.

For sure, "fun" is gonna require more than a 200hp small block build ;-)

Cool cool. This one sounds like it'll be more my style of truck.

Been messing with getting a working tachometer in the car. There are some commercially tach adapters but they were $100. I found this little diy unit on ebay for $40. You basically just tap into a coil signal wire, then power and ground and output to the tach. There are a bunch of little dip switches depending on your engine and ignition system. Works great. Spent far too many hours over the past week doing an amateur paint correction on the car. As I posted previously I started with a heavy cut using wool pad, Meg 105 and a rotory buffer. I then stepped down to a random orbital and some Megs 205. Several areas needed several passes. There was some white overspray that required some light wet sanding. The roof is pretty bad and I decided to error on the side of caution and leave a lot of the scratches as to not cut the paint too thin. Several of the panels have clear coat chipping so I just blended them as welo as I could. You dont notice until you walk right up on it. I applied a coat of Menzerna sealant to protect the paint the best I could. I might apply more or something different. It was just what I had laying around. I still want to refinish the black trim and recoat the lower black areas as they need attention but overall I'm pretty satisfied with the results.

Have you had blood work done? That would be a good start to making sure everything is where its supposed to be.

No doubt. Ive never had anything old/older like this. Its a nice change of pace to not worry about how perfect it is. I did the drivers rear quarter, door and front fender last night. It looks like a whole different car. Still gonna be a 10 ft'r but Im perfectly happy with that.

I appreciate it.

Hope everyone's weekend was excellent. A handful of updates for this week. I continued work on the interior. It needs a few new items that I havent purchased yet but I cleaned up what I had and made the best of it. Of course I dont take enough pictures but Ill maybe add some more soon. I removed the old purple window tint from the back glass and 1/4 windows. The black rear seat and side panels were installed. I pulled the old beige door panels off and put new clips on the black panels I got from my friend in Cleveland. I installed the new to me anthracite carpet. The console I cleaned up the best I could. I installed a new ebrake boot. I ordered a new shift boot but decided to clean up and reuse the original one. I cleaned the seats up and reinstalled them. I really like these seats and if I keep the car I think Ill buy new leathers for them. The sunroof had been slightly open since I bought the car so I assumed it was jammed/broken. The manual crank was missing and the mounting plate was cracked. I found a chinabay replacement and went about installing it. Surprisingly everything works. Just have to be gentle and help the wind deflector a bit when you close everything up. I installed the new 4 wheel pads and rotors from Rock Auto. $90 shipped after tax for 4 rotors and 2 sets of pads.. :fuckyeah: While installing those I installed 2 new fender liners to keep rocks/etc out of the fenders. I took the car out for the first time on the road last weekend and it immediately got hot. Coolant temps over 210* in a few minutes so I brought it back in. Seemed like the tstat wasn't opening again. The radiator and lower hose would be cooled but the coolant temps would be 230*. I went about replacing the Tstat with an ACDelco unit. I did find some nice peppercorns that found their way inside an open hose from its time sitting in dudes barn before I got it. Unfortunately that didn't fix the issue and it still got hot. I left the system sit open overnight when the upper vent hose disconnected. In the morning I raised the coolant tank high up over the engine and drained some coolant out the vent and let it warm up again. Fixed! I dunno what I did but it must have got all the air out. Now my only issue is the cooling fan. It keeps blowing the mini 30 fuse in the fuse box. But if I pull leads from where the fuse is installed and put a normal 30 amp fuse on the leads the fan runs fine and doesn't flow the fuse. Thats probably confusing. Anyhow Im still working on that. Other than that I think the car is about ready for a Dyno tune. It drives pretty good. No major issues. The brakes are still uhhh aren't great? I think the pads still need bed in. The manual brakes take a little getting used to. It drives pretty good other than that. Those springs I installed are pretty soft so it rides great. I can't do much with it as the car bucks when you get into boost so the tune but be in some sort of velet mode. I schedule a tune with Bob Morrison next week. Yesterday I decided to mess around with the paint and see how it would react to some rubbing. Ive never used a rotary buffer before so I figured this would be a good candidate to start with. I used a wool pad and some Megs 205 and it cut that oxidation with the quickness. Super impressed. It does dry up quick and leave some holograms but a quick pass with my random orbital and some more 205 and they're gone. I cant wait to do the rest of the car. Its gonna be a pretty solid 5-10 footer and NOT pink!

I use Boyd Brothers Tree Care for all my tree needs. They always do excellent work. Probably not the cheapest around but I always know what to expect.

Haha, I like your creativity. Yeah I might, there's some talk of slimmer spring pads I might start there first. It actually doesn't look at bad in person but still bothers me.

Got the tires installed today on the wheels. Was able to throw the exhaust back on and mount up the new shoes. Took her for a Maidan voyage down the driveway. VERY manual car with the manual brakes and manual steering. Needs brakes BAD. Rotors are super rusty. Just ordered some crap from RockAuto for cheap. The exhaust is quiet enough to live with, surprisingly. Here's a really crappy IG video. Im hoping the cricket noise from the HPFP area on the engine is normal. My BRZ made one sorta similar but this is a lot slower. Im happy with the wheel and tire fitment but the front end is still about an 1" higher than I would like it. Maybe it'll settle some? Maybe I can cut the springs...

Happy Thursday peeps, Im a little behind on posting but Ive still been steadily knocking out work on this pile. I installed a couple new front brake lines before attempting to bleed the brakes and clutch system on the car. The brakes bled without any major issues but I couldnt get the clutch system to bleed. After digging around I found fluid running out of the bellhousing.. FUUDGE. So I pulled the trans which was somewhat of a bear due to the bolt positioning. I found the stupid hack that had installed the slave cylinder didnt tighten the fittings.. ugh. Anyway back together it went without any major drama. I was able to bleed the system and have a working clutch pedal. My buddy gave me a steering wheel so I ordered a shallow hub to mount it. I like the position but the horn doesnt fit so Ill order a taller horn button. I picked up my driveshaft from the shop and got it installed. The rear yolk was tight against the subframe opening so I had to space the rear diff down to center it more in the opening. It seems to clear everywhere else. We'll see once its under load. That completed the drivetrain and I was able to make the rear axles do spinny things. The clutch and transmission seemed to all operate correctly I got a vibrant rear muffler and start cobbling together the exhaust from left over stuff from other projects. Its a combination of cheap stainless and some aluminized pipe. Not ideal but it'll get me going and I can determine if it sounds ok or not. I finish welded everything last night so Ill probably scuff it down and throw some bbq paint on it. The car came with new 325i h&r springs installed which made the car sit front high and were super duper stiff so that wasnt gonna work. I decided to order some 318i vogtland springs to put under it. They are inexpensive and not super stiff. I also installed some e90 upper front hats to bring it down another . 5". They may need removed if its too low. I sold the OZ wheels that were on the car. I dont like the style and they were honda offset so the fronts needed spacers. With a limited budget and minimal availability in 4x100 I decided on these XXR's and some 215 Federal tires. I hope to get them mounted and installed today. Shes about ready to move under its own power. Hoping for a burnout test in the next couple days.

For whatever reason I just looked at Clays official website and realized those blue cars on the front page are me and my buds from like 2014ish. Clay must have been really hard up for content at that point. haha.

Sucks, but I get it. How will they enforce keeping people from showing up anyway? Block the lot?

Very cool. Dumb question, why do they lay the 2x4's horizontal on the walls?

That's awesome. Fun little sleeper aside from the fender exits.

What's to stop this stuff from being direct shipped to customer from outside the U.S? I understand that doesn't solve the issue with business's that build and sell stuff here, but Im just talking out loud.

Thanks Shaun. Timing hopefully works out and it'll be burning rubber just as the weather gets nice.