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AE86.weblog |
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I did a lot of rust removal today after work... working on the area underneath the pedals and driver seat. Lots of crevices in there to work on. Although about 3/4 of the surface area is finished, all the work is left to do in all the cracks and crevices. I'd say there's easily another evening or two left to clean all that up.
But it's getting done. Which is more than I can say for the past 4 years. |
- posted by //Ender-DI @ 9:02 PM
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Well, there's been mostly a whole lot of nothing going on over the past year. I recently got the 86 back from Gabe and now I'm starting to restore it. Let's see... a few of the recent highlights - in no particular order:
- The rear end noise is gone, courtesy of T3
- A freeze plug in the engine block popped out so I got a new one and installed it
- Jesse Sanchez of Fleetcolor Auto Body fixed the crappy kouki rear wheel arches - now they're spiffy clean ones like the zenki style.
- Yesterday, I dropped off two Enkei mesh wheels to a shop to have them media blasted and/or dipped to get rid of the crappy spraypaint job they have. Then I can finish restoring them.
- Trini and I started washing out the interior and spraying it with rust treatment paint in preparation for carpeting
The interior paint has been the most recent event. I now have the rear hatch area painted and the part that goes under the bottom part of the rear seat. I even removed the rear hatch weather seal and all the fiddly bits in the hatch's door jamb to paint over all that too. Today I'll continue to clean and paint and hopefully get the driver side done where most of the damage is. If you recall, the clutch leak had leaked fluid under the carpeting and it ate through everything, including the paint. Now there's tons of surface rust. Hopefully today I'll be grinding it down to a shiny surface again, clean it up, and paint over it. That's the part I'm most worried about.
I can't wait to get this interior put back together. I love my ae86, but it's in such a sad state of neglect. It's running beautifully, now I want to put it together, and make it look like I actually like the car.
A mental note of what is left:
Get it smogged... again.
Finish the interior
Replace the stolen head deck
Replace the HVAC controls
Fix/recharge the AC system
New brake master cylinder
Replace transmission fluid
Replace the doors with clean dent-free ones
OEM JDM rear bumper
Install S12 lip
Paint the car
I still *REALLY* want the Acura Voltage Blue for my car. I'm just not sure it's feasible right now. I want to do the paint right, but funds are low. If I skimped, I'd still have a red engine bay and probably other parts of red poking out. I have half a mind to sand it all down and go get it Maaco'd red again. But I'm SICK of red cars. Red Supra, red AE86 #1, red AE86 #2, red Galant. Bah. I don't even like red, but somehow I keep ending up with red cars. I keep hoping that my friend will open his new body shop soon so I can build him a website so he can paint my cars. Heheh...
A couple weeks ago, someone asked me if my car was for sale and during the conversation, it occurred to me that I've had the car for about 8 years now. Time flies. |
- posted by //Ender-DI @ 3:22 PM
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Now that I'm getting excited about the return of my AE86, I'm coming up with some plans for it. Here's what's in store:
- Rustoleum the interior and put the interior back together.
- New carpet kit from Nifty (I get an employee discount! hehee...)
- New sealed-lamp Sylvania SilverStar headlamps (tired of fogged up crystal/Euro headlights)
- Maaco SPL paint job. The bodywork is pretty much finished and I'm too broke to get a good job. Jesse from FleetColor will get the wagon, if anything.
- A new head deck since some scumbag stole my Panasonic CD/MP3 player. Grrr...
- I might even install my super-nifty Momo steering wheel signed by Tsuchiya and Orido
- I'll need to figure out what wheels to throw on it. I'd like to put on the ET cross wheels I have... but they need work.
I'm sure there's more to come... =) |
- posted by //Ender-DI @ 5:44 PM
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I found out shortly after I received the drive shaft from Max, I realized that while there was indeed some play in the carrier bearing, that was not what was making the noise. Something in my new 3rd member assembly was wrong. =( I had just put in a good-condition used ring and pinion as well as a brand new LSD. I'm not sure what happened, my guess is that the backlash slipped somehow.
Soon after that, the guys from TechnoToyTuning were at a Private-Events Drift Day at Buttonwillow Raceway. They had brought down two AE86s on their 3-car trailer. With one spot left on their trailer, they swung by and picked up my poor little hachi. Due to many personal reasons, they've been storing it up there ever since waiting for my go-ahead to fix it.
Well, the time has come! They're going to be fixing it and when I go to pick it up, I'll put on the TRD spoiler and maybe a couple new doors!
Once I get it back, I can order a new carpet kit and start putting my baby back together. I've missed my Nami a lot. =) |
- posted by //Ender-DI @ 5:16 PM
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It seems that anymore, I only post when something goes wrong. On the way to work this morning, I was thinking that I should post something to my blog about needing some maintenance: Tranny fluid, LSD fluid, oil change, rear brake pads, flush radiator.
I decided to go home for lunch, and on the highway, something starts making a horrible thumping noise somewhere between my shift knob and my rear axle. Couldn't tell if it was the brakes, the new LSD/Ring & Pinion, a wheel bearing, or maybe even the driveshaft or the transmission. My first thought was, "OMG, did I put the 3rd member in wrong?!" I pulled over to the side of the highway and got out to inspect the car. Nothing was immediately in trouble. Nothing was loose, nothing was smoking or on fire. The wheels were spinning freely. So I decided to limp the car home. It was making all sorts of noise and I was really worried and stumped as to what it was.
Well, not having a ride back to work, I stayed home for the rest of the day. Once it cooled off outside and my car cooled down a bit, Will and I checked out the car. Turns out the center carrier bearing on the driveshaft is completely blown out. It has about 3/4" of play in it.
Fortunately, Max Perez of Illegal Garage is THE MAN. I called him up at about 7:30pm and he's sending out a driveshaft first thing in the morning. If you ever need AE86 parts, call or e-mail:
Max Perez
(866) 327-7399 - toll free number
MAXFROMMISAWA@AOL.COM
So... hopefully the AE86 will be back on the road come Monday or Tuesday. Maybe now that I can't easily go anywhere, I'll get that maintenance done. =P |
- posted by //Ender-DI @ 8:57 PM
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On the way home from Will's house tonight, I start hearing a thump-thump-thump noise coming from the back of the car. I pull over when I hear it, but there's not a damm light around. I poke around the back of the car and when I shove the car, I can hear that something's loose back there. It makes the noise mainly when I shove the car left-right, so my first guess is the adjustable lateral rod, but that doesn't really make sense. In the darkness, I forget to check the lug nuts. I'm guessing there was probably one left on the wheel at this point.
So I continue to limp the car home for about 3 more miles. Just as I'm about to turn into my driveway ... literally one car length from the gutter... the back end of the car drops down and the rear driver side Rewind goes flying past my door. HOLY $#!+! Fortunately, I was only going maybe 5 miles/hr. Maybe less.
The axle landed on the rear rotor's dust cover and skidded about 3.5ft to a stop. The wheel rolled almost to the end of the block. I retrieved the wheel, went into my house, got a flashlight and braced for the worst.
Not a shred of damage - other than a banged up dust cover. Holy crap. Didn't even damage the 5Zigen exhaust. None of the suspension damaged. Praise the Lord!
I think the scariest thing is that I had my son with me in the car. It could have flown off while going down the highway... lost control... hurt people. *shudder* I don't know if someone had been trying to steal the wheels or what. The other thing is that I just put the Rewinds back on the car recently, so it could have been my fault. But I know I went around the car a 2nd time and re-checked all the lugs, so I don't think it was my doing.
Anyway... what a night. And now.. it's bed time. |
- posted by //Ender-DI @ 12:25 AM
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I haven't posted anything in a LONG time. Let's see what's happened since early March...
Most important thing... The night of April 19th, both cars were broken into. They grabbed the stereo from the AE86. Left all the other stuff I had in the car. Tools, DVDs, CDs, Mirrors... They tried to get the shift knob, but it's secured with set screws, so it doesn't just unscrew. They also emptied the ash tray since it had change in it. WTF. Unfortunately, it had the little 1/4" MOMO decal from my shift knob. It fell off a while back and I put it in the ash tray to save it. Now it's gone... because some lowlifes were cheap. Bastards.
Steering rack almost fell off. The steering kept getting more and more loose... The bushings are wearing out, so I figured they were just getting bad. Turns out that one of the two bolts that hold the steering rack to the cross member was all the way out. I resecured that and it's much better now. Imagine that. hehe... It looks like the previous owner ghetto rigged both bolts. I made sure it's secure now, but I'll wait till the engine is replaced before I put in the new bushings and put in the proper mounting hardware.
Looks like a 20V swap is in the making. Probably in the next couple months. The old bluetop has 214K+ miles on it now and it's had a long hard life. The previous owners didn't take care of it at all and now I flog it on a regular basis. Tim Wehe of X-Zost Garage will probably take care of the swap. It'll be a good chance to get a lot of stuff accomplished.
I'm almost thinking that if I can find a clean SR5 COUPE shell, I'll swap everything over to it at that point. There's almost nothing left in my hatchback, and now I'm doing a motor swap... might as well just stick a 20V in a SR5 coupe. I've had big love for the coupes for a while now... This could be a good opportunity to make the change. |
- posted by //Ender-DI @ 8:22 AM
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Wednesday, March 09, 2005
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I guess it would help if I wrote this down...
On the weekend of Feb 26th-27th, I went up to Will's house and installed the new third member in the car. Complete with new Precision Gear zenki LSD and ring & pinion! No more howling R&P, lots of locking LSD action! It's been a little over a week now and it's very nice.
The install was very straight forward, but I had a hell of a time getting a slide hammer for the axles. That took forever, so we ended up running out of light and not getting it finished on Saturday. I spent the night there and finished it up the next morning. If it weren't for the slide hammer problem, it would have just taken just a few hours.
The only thing I didn't expect was that in order to get the axle out, the brake dust shield has to come out with the axle... and the brake line is attached to the shield, so I ended up having to disconnect the brake lines to remove the axles. That's not that big of a deal, but that did mean that once everything was back together, I had to bleed the brake lines. Weak. Oh well.
Depending on how the pics turned out, I may do an install article on it. |
- posted by //Ender-DI @ 8:20 AM
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Saturday, February 19, 2005
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Wow! Already got the new wheels this morning!! Gabe and the rest at TechnoToyTuning are my heroes! So I guess what I'll do now is take the new Falkens off the rashed Rewinds, put the new Falkens on the new Rewinds, take off the two half-way decent Kumhos from my Panasports, and put them on the rashed Rewinds and make those my beater drift wheels.
Excellent.
Thanks again, Gabe! |
- posted by //Ender-DI @ 8:19 PM
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Monday, February 14, 2005
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WEAK! I had a bit of an accident going back to work from my lunch break. I ended up grazing the center median badly curb rashing 3/4 of BOTH driver side wheels. Yes, the brand new Konig Rewinds from T3.
Oh well, I already have two more on the way. heheh... |
- posted by //Ender-DI @ 9:21 PM
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Sunday, February 13, 2005
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Will and I hit up the junkyard again today... it was "50% Off" weekend, and since we saw that stupidly low mileage SR5 there last weekend, it was time to head on over and grab everything we could.
I got some fiddly bits for my car - namely the very pristine door weather seals and the hatch weather seal off a different SR5. I also got a battery tie down since I've misplaced mine. *WTF*
Will got a passenger side door and the hinges from both doors. When we got back to my house, we pulled the passenger fender and door and put on his new fender he got from me (now with a shaved antenna hole) and mounted the new door.
We also swapped front corner marker lights since he wanted kouki ones and I had zenki eyebrows... now all is right. |
- posted by //Ender-DI @ 8:45 PM
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Washed the car today.
Note to self: primer paint surface only needs to be hosed off. Using a wash mitt on it left little white fuzz all over it. |
- posted by //Ender-DI @ 2:15 AM
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Friday, February 11, 2005
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| Well, it's been about a week since I put on the Momo RaceAir Leather shift knob. Combined with the TechnoToyTuning short shift kit, I can't get enough of it! This has to be my favorite feeling shifter. The ball is just the right size for my hand, the position of the ball is about 1/2" higher than the stock knob and the T3 short shift kit makes gear selection a breeze. I love it!! |
- posted by //Ender-DI @ 8:10 PM
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Sunday, February 06, 2005
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Last weekend, Will picked up a 1985 Corolla GTS! Yesterday we went to the junkyards and picked up a bunch of fiddly bits to get his car up to speed.
He found a clean first gen Integra lip that we're going to install on his USDM bumper the way we put an MX-6 lip on mine. I always wanted to try a 1st gen Integra lip, but I could never find one in any kind of serviceable condition. It's a nice lip, but we're going to have to remove nearly 5" from the center and seam it together. We also put on two decent condition door panels I had to replace the totally beaten ones that were on his car.
Unfortunately, his car massively failed the smog test. A BUNCH of stuff was visually wrong, including broken EGR stuff and a rigged igniter. So he'll be working on that.
I ended up picking up the trim for my windshield. Apparently Gabe took it off mine to put it on Al's first orange coupe for the D1 search. Unfortunately, I didn't get it back once he wrecked his car. haha... I also got another hood prop since mine disappeared while it was up in Placerville. Never did find out why it was removed...
I also did a few little things like hook up the power controls on the bezel, installed the new Momo shift knob, got the screws I was missing to install one of the front corner markers and turn signal lenses. I also replaced one of the turn signals that was badly cracked.
I can't wait to get my interior back together. Riding around in Will's complete AE86 was nice. Having the interior all stripped, with a whining ring and pinion, and HVAC controls stuck between cold and hot makes for an unpleasant ride.
Speaking of the ring and pinion... my new one is on the way! It's a whole third member, rebuilt with new bearings, a good condition R&P, and my new Precision Gear LSD. It should be here tomorrow. I can't wait!! |
- posted by //Ender-DI @ 10:21 AM
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Wednesday, February 02, 2005
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| The new wheels went on tonight! w00t! |
- posted by //Ender-DI @ 8:47 PM
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