daeron

hey folks, this is an OLD trick of mine... i dont have any pics, but i just found a new part source for my 'leet performance brake fluid bottle........ i first discovered it with a top from a bottle of squeezable parkay... but the trick i have up my sleeve to show y'all is this.. get a cap with a flip top lid, and use it fer yer brake fluid. it helps keep stuff clean, and brake fluid isnt very nice to paint, yanno? my most recent find was the lid off of a Honey Bear. no telling whether all honey bears are created equal, but most brake fluid bottles are so the parkay bottlecap should work anywhere. yah, nothing along the lines of rocket surgery, or brain science... but its SO incredibly helpful, i thought i would do the decent thing and shout it from the rooftops. Thank you, Come again!

i know it because i went thru four timing belts on my geo (I4 cyl, thank GOD it was a tolerance engine) because i couldnt replace my crankshaft oil seal. the bolt had been loctited on, and it took us until the third belt was on its way out to find an airgun big enough to zap the bugger off. and i tried EVERY other trick in the BOOK... well, EXCEPT the rope-in-the-cylinder trick.

well, "rubber" hasnt necessarily meant natural rubber latex since WWII... so its not necessarily cheaper than rubber. secondly, wait till you get to take an economics class again, not being a jerk, im just saying that, the simple fact that it is a "performance part" guarantees that itll be more expensive than stock simply because. its a demand thing, if they charged less they would sell more units, but in the end not make as much money. once you take the economics class, it WILL make sense i promise you.. its the unfair-seeming side of capitalism, unfortunately.

thanks, ed!! you rock!! irnoically, i havent been inside a ratshack since my friend, Ed, told me they didnt sell ciruit componentry and thingies like that anymore, that they were bascially a glorified wireless/overpriced electronics store anymore... but my friend Ed lives in Boca Raton, Florida.... if you know ANYTHING at all about Boca, then you might understand why none of his local radio shacks carry things like resistors etc anymore.. i asked him if they even had solder, and his verbatim response was, "They perobably still HAVE some solder.. but when they run out, i don;t think they'll be getting any more...":lol: i guess he was wrong. i must look into this. wikipedia time! Beataru: there is a constant current going through the switch, regardless of the selection. before it goes into the fan, however, the switch routes it through a block of resistors.. a resistor is something that resists electrical current, and the result is heat. You see resistors every day; the most common is called a "lightbulb":banana: any electric heater is also a resistor of a type, as are stove and oven elements. However, those resistors resist current with the production of heat or light as their sole purpose. This resistor block has three different circuits; the one that gives the highest resistance is switched on when you are at "1," and then the remaining power is routed to your fan. when you have your fan on "4," there are no resistors inline between the fan and the switch.

well, i see your point. i assume you see mine, too.. while we are on the subject, is R-12 any better a refrigerant than r-134a?? someone asked me the other day, and i couldnt answer them. im just curious why you haven't swapped out, i suppose. i know all about the "why" of the change and everything, just not how the two refrigerants compare in effectiveness/efficiency... as for "servicing" it, i am a BIGTIME ecologist etc... but the way i figure it, we already made the refrigerant.. its gonna wind up up there sometime.... of course, by this point you could probably find someone with the scavenging equipment to SELL it to!!

good god i dont believe no one in my family was kind enough to suggest that. thank you, i thought i was friggin nuts. WTF, why cant they put bleeders where they need em!?!????

if your car is running very rough after a timing belt replacement, and it was running fine before hand, chances are about 99 to 1 you set one timing belt (or both) off by a tooth. ill save you some headache tracing down this problem: just re do them. if you left the covers off, thats about 70% of the work right there. alot of people recommend replacing the bearings in the timing belt tensioners too.. but if you can examine the bearing for play and find none, and it seems to roll fine, then just re grease it and be done with it. beataru: thats the alternator/accesory dive belt tensioner. we are talking about the timing belt here, its a toothed belt, so now slipping is possible, hence no squealing. not trying to be a jerk, just sayin but it can be easy to do, i forget exactly but as i recall there was a seam somewhere (i think between head and valvecover) that made you want to set it by the seam, and its a hair off.. i remember looking at it on my own and thinking "gee, that sorta makes me wonder if its a tooth off.. and it could go either way.." anyways, i bet im right :- p and i normally dont put myself out on a limb like that.

i just hacked my way thru the net and found that, for the price on the full-car kit for my Zcar, summit racing equipment was cheaper than anyone else.. it was odd, all the other companies had the same price.. about 175.. and summit had it for 150 and change.. its like their markup was lower. thats why i thought i would mention it. i dont have the URL handy, google it.

russ: question for you. have you ever had the cooling coil out of the car? I have the same problem with my car, just not enough oompah to keep it good and cold in the heat of the day (maybe not 100 degrees, but 92 at 95% humidity is far worse...) Ive often wondered how difficult it would be, and what the return might be, to try and clean off the condensor coils, because i know the car has been smoked in (in a couple different ways) for MANY MANY MILES with the AC on. I live in a house with window unit ACs, and we smoke inside, (AND i have a cat) so I have to remove my AC twice a year and clean it to keep up efficiency. I think it would be a worthy investment of my time to purge the system, remove it, clean it, and reinstall it. I might consider picking up a junkyard unit to refurbish in this manner to just make it a swap, but then again i wouldnt know about the integrity of such a unit... so i dunno. Any thoughts on the idea? i dont wanna waste my time, but you havent seen what my AC looks like after missing a semi-annual cleaning........

well dang, that means that i AM right and its not blowing on 1, and that the switch i got to replace mine isnt gonna fix that problem. O well, good that i read the thread before i got into it. I wanna build my own, i think... because if i can do that then i can do it for a number of things, and ive often thought it would be nice to know how to build a speed changing switch assembly. I understood the basic principles behind it, but didnt know how to do it from scratch.. it seems that since i have a spare switch anyhow, i can go do the junkyard fix, examine how its set up, and then have a spare resistor pack to build my own with. any helpful links, or should i just go to howstuffworks.com or wikipedia?

GD- do you own an arbor press??? they are SOOOOO useful its absolutely not funny... i never had even seen one to conscious recollection until i got a job a year ago at a place rebuilding auto tools (air guns to welders to hydraulics and back) and i cannot WAIT to get one installed up at the shop... they make press-ons and -offs SO much easier, and more precise, that once you have had one you cant work without one again. im ignorant of anything on the ea81, so it might not be of any use in this situation.. but i cant imagine how.. if you dont know what an arbor press is, its basically a press with a rack of teeth and a pinion gear sorta like a steering setup.. but there is a press attached to the rack, so you just use the leverage from the pinion gear arm to press races, pulleys, bushings etc into and out of holes. look it up at a tool website and as soon as you see a photo you'll understand perfectly.. but you cant really use a hydraulic press as easily as an arbor press.

thank you. that was my first thought when i finally learned about the whole extraction thing.... any expansion chamber would act almost as a capacitor or damper to even that all out.

ive always pumped the pedal at least three times, fairly quickly, held pressure, and only THEN released my bleeder valves.. the more you pump, the more pressure you build up and the more you force the air to the bleeder valve. When you are done, you should get good pedal pressure on a single pump. and he said bleeder valves, not bleed them at the brakeline fittings... or am i wrong? i seem to recall not being able to find any bleeder valves on the MC on my 87 gl10 NA.... i mean, if youre kosher then great.. but those two comments seemed like they might help you in the long run. If not, then they'll probly help me, cuz it means im wrong about something.

white smoke indicates the possibility of an intake manifold gasket.... but thats hearsay. and it doesnt explain gasoline and oil smells, and it also wants a loss of coolant to support it.. but its not unheard of. Its never happened to me though, so like i said.. its "hearsay." I heard, i now say. SOMEone else (who knows more with confidence) should either back me up or shoot me down.. lets see which! but since it wasnt as bad as a headgasket i thought i would throw you a bone of hope

what kind of alternator is that? is that the stock EA81 unit? I ask because it would appear from the photograph that the internally regulated 90 amp hitachi alternator out of a 86-94 maxima _should_ fit right in there. Ive never seen an ea-81 in my junkyard tho, so its been about eight years and i knew virtually nothing about subaru beyond my dads XT6 (it was COOOL) and they were like japvolkswagens.. you could CERTAINLY try finding one in a junkyard and try the retrofit on the car there... and its a spot on match beyond the actual diameter of the casing itself. the mounting ears are spaced in the same locations. look up my name and maxima alternator and theres pictures of the maxima vs the stock ea82 unit. im running one in my GL10 and its fine. well, was running until i saw how off my pulley was (a bit more than 1mm, too much) Ive gotten a new pulley but havent stuck it back in yet. i dont need it, cars bone stock.. but i got it anyhow, cuz itll fit in my Z. beyond that, nice lookin wheeler! THAT is what i want to take out with my redneck buddies when they go out swampin in the glades out here..... except i cant say i would go with white for the bumper and guard, but whatever floats your proverbial boat. those tires are my style, too.. mismatched but mated up pairs of used tires :- ) (no im not cheap, im tight-knuckled!!) anyhow, it looked like you needed all the amperage you could get, but it didnt look like the stock unit exactly either.

thats AWESOME, i had just come across that same tire and was thinking about buying a pair for the front of my soob. i live in florida, so my biggest priority is going to be wet traction... lots and lots of rain down here. the numbers seem to point towards them being good on tirerack... how do they fare in wet compared to other tires you've had??? i HATE spinning my tires loose in the rain, and they use this wonderful reflective paint to paint the thick white lines you stop at (before.) This wonderful paint just HAPPENS to have a virtually zero friction coefficient when it gets wet....... so I often find myself spinning up to 20 mph on the speedo, before i realize ive lost traction.. and then have to let off the gas, shift into second, and third by the time i hit 30.. and im stuck with the slow accel all the way up. this is just ONE of the reasons I hate my automatic. i dont believe in shifting it, but i finally found thru a thread on here that i guess i can go ahead and drop it into first at the redlight and allow it to shift when i want it... but that still makes me edgy. i did NOT notice that they were rated at 115 mph. thanks for the post bgd, i found these tires like a week ago.. somewhere i posted about them, i think it was the "studded nokians" thread.

Phiz: thank you. once you explained it, it became utterly clear.. i just needed someone to spell it out for me so I knew i was right. i understood the relocation of the MAF and why it helped, i just never REALLY had equated or understood the difference between BOV and BPV before. as for the exhaust, i must have been thinking the wastegate.. thats what vents excess exhaust flow thru the impeller and back into the exhaust, right? ive handled over a dozen turbos, we have a small collection up at the shop from someone elses parts gallery... so since the wastegate is tied in with the turbo, and often built internally, i suppose thats what i must have mistaken for the bypass valve you folks is talkin about. I thought somehow the BO and BP valves were related to that circuit. oops! going from abstract to real knowledge is hard for me without concrete examples. hence, why i have no REAL grasp of spark timing, came profiles, or much suspension yet... since i havent had any breakdowns in those areas, nor have i done much pre-emptive work. but all these things are falling into place the more i do. I cant wait to build a head for my Zcar; there are like eight different head castings to choose from, a couple different valve options, and once i get down to bottom end, so many piston/CR options it could make a soob engine builder sick. BTW that IS a real nice setup, good fab work. dont forget that until any catch can may be installed, your intercooler is serving as one, so you are liable to get buildup in there before you soil your MAF.

allright, let me see if i understand this thread entirely... I really dont know turbocharging systems in very great detail, as its all abstract theory to me never having owned a turbocharged car. A normal turbocharger has a bypass valve that vents the positive pressure coming out of the intake side of the turbo, into the exhaust system, right? and a blow off valve is a bypass valve that instead, simply vents that excess into the atmosphere then? and that is why my buddy's SRT-4 goes PSHHHHH every time he shifts under acceleration? so a BOV is simply a glorified bypass valve that typically vents to atmosphere instead of the exhaust, and makes a cool noise while doing so? and Phiz doesnt care for the sound of it, and prefers a turbosharger with the standard bypass that vents excess pressure into the exhaust. Ryostyle is talking having moved his MAF sensor (or whatever its actually technically called on the soob) up between his intercooler and his TB.. so i take it that a BOV is located then, on the intake piping somewhere? and then, that it would be electronically controlled, right? i have an auto mechanic's textbook that i would normally consult for something like this, but my buddy with the SRT-4 just borrowed it because he douesnt really know too mucha bout turbocharging systems either and he was having problems because his car was going up to 30 lbs of boost!!!!!!!! no lie, his boost gauge pegged at 26 and he was wrapping it almost around to the starting point... he discovered that the PO (cars only got like 18K!!) must have re routed some vacuum lines, and TOTALLY bypassed the wastegate actuator.

yah, i really think that ethanol as a vehicle fuel is a wash as far as "eliminating our need for oil" It could be great if it were accepted across the board, and maybe in a decade or two it will be, but for my buck, all i think about in terms of fuel choice is A, economic impact from oil expenditure; B, the finite amount of crude reserves on the planet; and C, most importantly, the emissions aspect of it. At the current time, when i add all the factors in my head and weigh them according to my own significance, it is STILL a far more cost effective, emissions effective, and oil effective (so to speak) "green" fuel to convert over to LPG. I may be wrong, but I see too many hints of warnings about this whole "E85" gimmick to trust that its really that much of a departure from status quo. I have heard too many references to US automakers suppressing patents on "green" cars for the last several decades to trust the marketing blitz that is going on about ethanol blends these days. maybe im just a paranoid left-wing nut. i simply refuse to believe anything on television at face value, and often presume something is false simply because TV expected me to believe it was telling the simple truth. Something tells me i am PROBABLY right more often than wrong in that. these marketing schmucks have armies of psychologists on their side telling them how to make us buy their crap. who is on our side teaching us how to see through their BS?? nobody. now, purely scientifically, alcohol is a MUCH more sensible fuel than gasoline and i would never say anything to counter that. If you want to use E85, i applaud you wholeheartedly. I just go further than not believing the hype. I see the hype and frown, and start looking for snake oil. when i cant find the flaw that makes them hype it up, i get REAL worried. Its sort of like buying clothing at an outlet store.. if you find a $100 pair of Ralph Lauren dress pants, and theyre marked $15, and you cant find the problem they had that caused them to wind up in the outlet store.. do you want to buy them?

Davalos: Any time i "fill up" i go beyond the pump clicking off. there is no telling how much bubbly foam has built up compared to your last fill up. I wait until it clicks itself off a couple times, and honestly frequently fill (slowly of course) until i hear it gurgling.. when it gurgles on a fill up, and i reset the odo, and then refill it to gurgling point again, im confident that the pump shows how much fuel i have burned to get the odo reading i have. does anyone know of a reason why i should NOT fill my tank that much???? im concerned more for the vehicle than the gas station, or the local fire marshall. Its a habit i got into with my 75 datsun.. the Zcar has an old-skool, leaded fuel filler, so its like 2 1/2 inches in diameter or more, and i can actually SEE the fuel when i "fill 'er up." can you tell i try to avoid stopping for fuel as much as possible???

I cant say that I would personally buy a DVD, or a complete set of anything, but the idea of doing "chapters" and making them available for individual download for a nominal donation fee would be great... that way anyone could view a chapter to get them thru their current issues, and might then buy the whole thing. It certainly makes good sense as an idea, like you said, for a Video USRM. doing it as chapters would also offer you the advantage of being able to produce it a step at a time, and sell a sort of license or subscription for an overall fee or individual downloads. I really think that someone looking for help installing a timing belt would LOVE something like this, and it really would be better than any step by step description could EVER get. T-belts are simple enough, but anyone here is aware of how many questions CAN come up. However, anyone here would say to any friend who had bought a soob, "go ahead and do it. I will watch you over your shoulder and make sure you do everything right, and you WILL be done in less than six hours." right? I would say that, even tho I myself wouldn't buy a total set, I would pay five or ten bucks to watch a good thorough video on headgaskets that showed head cracks that were tolerable compared to those that were too bad. That visual aid alone would justify paying for it, in my eyes. Add to that some information akin to the Hayne's Manual standard color page on spark plug conditions, (How to know youve been running too hot, not getting proper coolant flow, too much pinging, need new valve guides, etc) and that is an INCREDIBLE resource for someone who, like I am, is an advanced amateur mechanic who has yet to gain a full umbrella of experience. I've never pulled heads before, myself. AND since you are spending as much time as you do on here answering the questions anyhow, the question of investing your time for a nominal, delayed financial return is almost moot. its basically a trickle-in slushfund.

too bad no pictures!!!! was the pig sitting in one of the back seats? edit wait wait, i thought of another one.. Moving a 750 pound pig!?!??!? That sure is Some Brat!

i guess i hear you on the all original... good luck with the fabbing. nothing says loving like parts that dont fit like they did in your head...

might the adjuster bolt/pin in question be different lengths on different soobs? ive never seen one as i have an auto, but it sounds like your standard linkage issue to me :- ) look things over carefully and picture them functioning in your mind to make sure you are achieving proper gemoetry with whatever you bend or alter. you might also want to take two of the rods, and cut one off rather low, so that the splicer doesnt need to pass thru anything. IE, instead of just spinning a splice nut onto the end of the one bolt and then adding an extension there, cut the bolt shorter so the splice never has to pass thru this collar youre talking about? you get my idea? not sure if its coming across too clear. from what ive heard, i would disable the hill holder on it if it were my car.. but if it were my car it would be driving around flat florida. call me biased.

i actually just did some deeper research on tirerack.com (i have never really surfed the site too much.. ive been in the "used tire" tax bracket for too long...) and I found that a 185-60r13 is the same diameter as the stock sized 175-70s that came on my GL10 (and i would have thought most EA-82s/older gen soobs??) so the 185-60 puts more rubber down there at the same diameter for speedo purposes...