Sunday, January 5, 2014

Been Busy.....

Tinkering on the "new" car. So far I've changed the oil and filter after adding some Bardahl "Motor Flush" and running her on the highway for about 30 minutes, changed the transmission lube to Red Line Synthetic "MT-90", changed the differential lube to Red Line Synthetic 75W90 with 4 oz of Red Line friction modifier for limited-slip differentials, trouble shot and replaced the rear speakers (one had an open voice coil, and the other had broken wiring), troubleshot and got all the interior lights working (blown fuse; no shorts anywhere), troubleshot and got the power mirrors working (another blown fuse; no shorts), and gave her a really good bath. Scrubbed the rims twice to get most of the crud off, but they'll have to be pulled and individually detailed.

Now that she's clean, I found about half a dozen good sized stone chips that need to be touched up. NONE of the auto parts stores around here had Toyota paint code 040 "Super White" paint, so I ordered a couple of the little Dupli-Color paint "pens" to touch up the nicks.

Today I pulled the battery and cleaned out all the (very minor) corrosion that I found. Treated the metal with some rust encapsulator, primed it, and then painted it with the only can of the correct color paint I was able to find.

Installed a new battery of the correct size (the battery in there was about half the size of the correct one!) after the paint dried, and took the wife out for a late afternoon cruise.

Next week I'll get her smogged, and head to AAA to get the registration updated.

After that, I'm waiting on all the parts I've ordered to rebuild the front suspension. The passenger side boot/bellows on the steering rack is split and needs replacing, so as long as I have to tear it down that far to replace the boot, I'm also going to change both front struts and the top strut mounts, all the tie rod ends (inner and outer), and replace all the bushings with performance oriented "Poly" bushings. I'm also going to replace the rear shocks, but even though I ordered all the replacement bushings, I'll hold off on that a while.

Also received my new FUNCube Pro + dongle, so I'll be playing with that one and comparing it to the original FUNCube dongle I have.

5 comments:

  1. That's quite a bit of work for a weekend. Sounds good so far.

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  2. LOL, and now it begins... And your wife will soon be complaining about your 'mistress'... :-)

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  3. She's actually in favor of me having this to tinker on, and she's been helping!

    A lot of the interior restoration involves sewing things back together, replacing worn out/aged elastic bands and cords, and other matters which she knows quite a bit about.

    And she's just itching to drive a manual trans car again.

    Plus, it gets me off my duff and physically moving around a *whole* lot more than my Amateur Radio hobby, she thinks the car is "pretty", and turned out to be a good value after some of my friends on the Celica Supra forum said the car is really worth at least $4500~$5000.

    The East Coast and Canadian guys say that one of these, in the completely rust free condition this one is in, would go for $5000~$6500 where they live.

    So, as long as I stick to the budget we agreed upon before I got the car, she's fine with it.

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  4. I've always heard that Motor Flush can knock loose some big deposits that make you have to drop the pan and change a screen. What's your take on that?

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  5. I've heard the same thing, too, which is why I went with the Bardahl flush, which isn't as aggressive.

    Before I put it in, I looked in through the oil filler cap, and it looked pretty clean in there, so hopefully I don't have huge accumulations of sludge and varnish.

    http://www.autozone.com/autozone/accessories/Bardahl-Engine-and-automatic-transmission-flush/_/N-260b?itemIdentifier=248644_0_0_

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Keep it civil, please....

Annnnd.....We Got Zip.....

 Total snow was about 6~8", but half o0f it melted as soon as it hit, and we never had more than 3" on the ground at any one time....