daeron

yah just rip the alternator out and get a ride to a parts store to have it tested. thats the easy way, it only takes about ten minutes to pull the thing. just make sure you disconnect the battery, ALWAYS ground cable first, then positive cable, before you start removing the alternator. if you unbolt it before unhooking the battery, you're liable to short the hot wire out on the back and make a big spark and scare yourself half to death....

Nev-R-Seez +++ its more important than loctite in my book. of course, my book wasn't written with an aluminum block... but i dont care. nevrseez is the bestest stuff to have in a shop, evAr!!!!! lugnuts, exhaust and intake bolts, suspension bolts, ANYTHING that EVER could possibly get wet or rusted or tightly bound needs to be brushed with nevrseez... torque and lockwashers can usually keep anything tight, and anything that REALLY needs positive locking gets a castle nut and a pin anyhow, right? okay, so loctite is important too.. but nevrseez is more overlooked.

bgd: i think i hear you loud and clear. i come from the datsun camp originally, and over there we have so many different opstions for block choice, crankshaft choice, piston choice, and i dont want to even get STARTED on the cylinder heads they made.... my point is a datsun guy can "engineer" so much more on his engine stand than we could (and so much more than 99% of em could even understand, ) that it just makes me wonder... what IF there was a good MPFI head with a better quench design, and a larger compression chamber to allow for the reduction of compression for the forced induction motors.. etc etc. who knows what we coulda done with one of these little boxers if we had DOHC heads for it, or even just the option to up the displacement to 2.0 liters +....

ill go ahead and resurrect the ol' timing belt cover debate.. you dont absolutely HAVE to put the front covers back on.. if they were at all difficult to remove, then you might want to give it a pass. if any of the bolts were difficult, it is HIGHLY recommended to just drill holes straight thru, and secure the cover with zip ties if you MUST have it there. the little captured nuts inside the rear cover get stripped out and spin in their holes, which makes it a royal PITA if you ever have to go in there again... then again, with any luck youve got 60K before you have to go back in, so its up to you. just a friendly suggestion

+1, probably tranny mounts. get a buddy, jack the car up and support it proerly, crawl underneath, and have your buddy rotate the wheels with the car in gear. you'll probably see the transmission slip around a little, and immediately hear your clunk loud and clear. Whether I am wrong, or right, you will know soon enough.

yah that second one was really good. now you got me bit by a nasty expensive bug....... my dad has been a closet alfa romeo nut for deacdes, and he has a '66 2600 spyder that was never really imported into the US.. its LHD, 2.6l DOHC all aluminum engine, 4 whl disc, about lebaron-sized.. the body was built by pininfarina, which was a coachbuilding firm in italy. the same body, with a different front clip, similar but different suspension, and interior, was also a ferrari and a maserati (ithink) but the things in shambles.. we are contemplating selling the driveline to fund restoring the car and installing a 280ZX turbo driveline, because we're Zcar guys already.. but back to my bug, imma have to find me a boxer alfa now. Eff the ideas of a bmw 3, or a hot 510, or the soob, or any of that.. my four-door second car has to be a boxer alfa :- ) do you know what kind of car it was in, bgd? time for google, i suppose... mwahaha....

ive been told that the washer spacer idea is a BAD thing to do, but its never been really explained why.. other than that its non-unified stress. From what i HAVE heard, one piece wheel spacers ought to work for you.. but good luck finding a set big enough to wrap over the soob lug pattern. maybe something designed for six lug 4x4 jap trucks would work? but my point is from what knowledge has been dictated to ME, washers are unwise, but a solid, one piece wheel spacer is only a drawback to whatever extent it changes your tire offset. since different wheels are liable to have different offests anyhow, and since the difference is minimal, i usually ignore this factor unless the difference is visually obvious. I used to be fairly cavalier about wheels, and spacers, and lugnuts, etc.. until i kicked a rear wheel off a car while driving down the road. it is not only possible, its EASY to lose a wheel if you put things together wrong and let me tell you.. it is NOT an enjoyable experience!!!

the term "ignition module" is a generic one... if it is an electronic distributor on a carbureted vehicle, rest assured there is some sort of module related to the ignition containted within the distributor. This is what GD is talking about, and also what everyone who was talking about replacing the distributor. I am interested in knowing what the auxiliary component inside the cabin you are talking about is.. its all academic to me, though, since my car is FI and the ignition is completely different.

i'll give you a heads up. sometimes the starter control circuit on these cars develops an issue. the key switch operates the low power line going into the solenoid, right? sometimes the wiring thru the switch on these cars has gotten old, and there is too much resistance to get good current to the solenoid terminal.. so you go to start the car, and all you get is a click click, and sometimes even the click goes away. it seems like a bad solenoid, but its not... and the simple fix is to install a relay in the circuit. IF you run into this problem, do a search including my name, starter, and relay. that should return all the info you need, ive been going on at length about this in the last month or so. I mention it because the gear reduction starters, and the direct drive starters, are liable to have different wattage requirements and you never know. my car would do the old starter fine, usually, but the new one, unh-uh.....

My younger brother seems to swear by GM SynchroMesh gear oil for transmissions with shifting problems. I have yet to try it, but he had a gearbox that finally refused to go into 2nd, and he switched out to the GM syncrhomesh and after a little while it was shifting into second with an occasional bit of friction, but otherwise smooth. Not a gear to slam it into, but if you drove with a bit of sense, it was easy and it ran.. until the trans was replaced with one of choice. (he was building a CRX HF, the 1700 lb econobox, into an SI) this was in a honda transmission, but he says it works great in any vehicle with synchros... has anyone ever heard of this? I mention it because i have thought of it numerous times, but not having a stickshift myself :( I have yet to post a thread on it. and I'm no brat guy, but what i have read told me from the outset that this swap is going to be more complex, and less satisfying, than you could possibly hope. you could probably IMAGINE worse, but i doubt it is worth your time. better to try and hold off until you can find a fivespeed gearbox.. it sounds like you want this car for a toy, not as a putt-putt daily driver.. you wanna Drive it, right???? Hang around this forum and read up about the different options available, because the gearbox selection is more or less intimately tied with the driveline overall (full time/part time, dual range or not, etc) in just about any of these cars. There may have been fewer options for the brat than for my car (the later loyale-style ea82 series) but you dont want the one out of the 87. sounds like its one of the electronically controlled autos, and theyre good gearboxes i guess.. but not what you want. just be patient, and maybe try this synchro mesh fluid.. i can ask him about it and get more details if you dont know what im talking about (i must confess i have yet to buy it or see it in a store) but has anyone else ever heard of what im talking about, or tried it? EDIT i guess it must have been the remark about the wires on the transfer case... that made me think of the electronic automatic trans, my bad. the 3at is a crummy transmission, believe me. who wants to mate a four cylinder with a three speed???!!!

i must say that i did wind up making sure i grabbed a starter out of one of the other automatic cars while i was at the kunkyard..... but there was only one stickshift, and every car out there had what appeared to be the same starter (the gear-reduction type) where mine was differen,t a direct drive. However, Ive looked at the starters in every soob ive seen in 6 months.. and almost ALL of them were gear reduction type. i havent seen a diverse selection (no ea81, no justy or brat, no turbos, only a couple 4wd, no d/r, etc etc) by any means, though. what starter did you wind up using?

trace the vacuum line from the intake manifold, to the canister, out into the line crossing the firewall, and into the engine bay. there are a couple of joints in the line where its possible something has gotten old and cracked, or simply been popped off. listen to your car real carefully when your sitting parked, at idle.. is it running nice and smooth or is there a little bit of a buck to it? my vacuum line got disconnected and i didnt notice it (only using AC in the summer) until i realized that i had this misfire at idle.. i looked everything over and finally got to the least likely corner of the engine bay and found my problem. At least while i was there, i fiddled with the connector to the factory cruise unit and got that to work, for the first time, EVAR!!!! and i know it wasnt the vacuum problem with that, as i had tried turning it on as soon as i got the car.. i know it failed with the vacuum canister intact. i dunno if the cruise worked off that vacuum circuit or not, but that was two birds with one stone, that day.

funny. mine wasnt gear reduction, and all the ones i was seeing in the boneyards were. i took the leap, though, and it was the same thing.. i wasnt that concerned. hence my above post. id be willing to bet we could find starters out of another japanese car that would work just fine, too. just a matter of cross referenceing and test fitting. but who wants to do all that?

the button above the off button (mine arent marked so i cant recall the labelling) is a two position switch. you go from off, and hit it once, its on one position. hit it a second time, it pops out a little (i think, otherwise it pops in a little) popped in is recirculate, popped out is fresh air. if you move the lever up to heat, its blowing heat and not AC. there isnot a way of recirculating the air for the defroster... that, or it is always recirculating. sorry for the two vague points, but my switch is kinda busted up right now.. it works fine but the little ears for the screws that hold it flush up against the inside of the dashboard are broken on the switch, so the entire apparatus is kinda pushed back and needs to be replaced. that being so, the buttons do not physically function quite right, and sometimes need to be punched quite forcefully.. hence the broken faces of them all. as for recirc on defrost, i dunno, but i know you cant switch it.

you can also go to tirerack.com and enter your stock tire size.. click on one example, and find "sizes" and click on that.. that page will tell you the outside diameter of that tire, and every other size in that tire's product line. find a 15 inch tire that has the same outside diameter, and youre looking at the exact same overall gearing, and your speedo will stay accurate too. EDIT Phizinza was just kind enough to inform me that that was my 666th post. MWAHAHAHAHAHA:headbang:

from what i understand the 5 speed swap really isnt a horribly complex affair. Its a major job, but if you and the car can afford to spend an intimate week together, that should be ample time to get it done. I havent done it myself but thats because i have another car that needs to be worked on desparately, and i use the soob to drive pizzas. it cant afford the downtime.

allright now maybe this is my elementary knowledge speaking here, but wouldnt the design of the resistor block indicate that the blower motor is easily infinitely variable, depending on input voltage? because the resistor block simply adds one, two, or three wraps of resistor wire into the circuit between the switch and motor.. the switch would feed power to terminal 1,2,3, or 4.. T4 would be straight thru, no resistance, high blower.. and each lower terminal would add one wrap of resistor wire into the circuit. it just seemed to me like this resistor block is a dummy, four step way of adding a resistance value into the power feed circuit and could be replaced by a simple rheostatic controller.... but again, i can talk a little smarter than i can really think about all this stuff, AND i havent seen any of the components in question yet, since i havent opened up my car. am i wrong in my conception of things?

this is often not apparent until its already been disassembled. if the job has been particularly frustrating, its a point thats easily missed by us amateurs. I took mine apart more than i needed to the first two times, and it was only when i was looking at it disassembled the second time that I realized i had been doing too much work.

fifty bucks says itll work. a month ago i was asking the same question and now i say that.

I like using suntan oil for scent in the car... gives that "beach" smell that Kraker from seinfeld was so nuts about... another good scent i like in the car is fresh gardenia blossoms... smells like honeysuckle to me. not necessarily powerful stuff at cancelling foul odor, but i smoke clove cigarettes. what odor?

i have a GL-10 that has a different wheel, but thats the only other soob wheel i have seen with the nubs at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel.. and i REALLY like those. it is every bit as useful as having two more steering wheel members up there for grabbing ont, but it just takes a slight relaxation of the grip to slip the wheel thru my hand, where a solid member going to the hub of the wheel would interfere. I prefer my steering wheel, with more of an A shape to the members going from hub to wheel.. the points of contact are down at like, 5 and 7 instead of say, 4 and 8 on that wheel.

adding aftermarket gauges would be a worthy mod, and you could get a little mounting pod to go in the cavity below the stereo and ashtray if you wanted to tuck them out of the way somewhere. thats what im planning on.

gold wheels are nice, but painting rough mag wheels like that gold can come out less than nice. it takes the right color paint to look right, thats one of the things i have against it. its not gold wheels, but painting wheels gold, yanno? the effect is not the same when the gold paint is used for accent instead of all over, thats why i put it the way i did.

I am a self-proclaimed "tweak freak" who has acquired a great working knowledge of electrical switchery, but the concepts involved in making such an infinitely veriable speed selection are beyond me. this entire thread has fascinated me because its all stuff ive known about, and known how simple it all was, but didnt know how to build it myself. does anyone have any resources that i can use to learn more along these lines? one project thats on my "to-do" list is engineering variable speed intermittent wipers onto my Zcar.. its gotta be a simple matter of replacing the single speed intermittent relay with a variable resistor-type relay circuit.... but thats as far as i can get. I know i can LEARN how to do that, but i dont know where since im not in college anyone got any helpful links, or places i could go? i'll probly try wikipedia, but i dunno what i would look up. maybe in my Brittanica....

its a good junkyard pocket item, pick one or two up and have a spare around. that way if one acts up, you swap it out for one youve already got handy, refurbished so to speak, and then get one or two more in the JY next time. i mean, its shoplifting i suppose, but pocket sized items at a junkyard thats charging you for admission... i guess im a thief. sorry. i buy plenty of alternators and other stuff, and i never go and load up my pockets without getting a "token" item at least.