seattlejester

Is your car modified? Running more boost? I would be tempted to throw a wide band in there at least just for the gauge, narrow bands have a pretty narrow range it would be nice to know if you are running an AFR of 12 or 10.

Got my alignment done. It all started off pretty bad. The night before I decided that the driver side in the front was still too far out, so I pulled some camber by moving the top similar to the rear. It ended up pouring rain that night and the next morning the entry gate had flooded to the point where I believe my floor boards would have been soaked if I tried to drive through it. I had to go through the back gate, but they had decided to do construction and were using thick metal plates at the top of the hill. There was a lot of swearing as I had to basically jump the 3 inch gap from the plate to the road. I felt the plate smack the seat bolts most likely mushrooming them and then I felt it smack my fuel cell cover. I later confirmed this with a nice new dent near the sump. Super glad I made the guard and also glad I didn't weld the opening shut or else it would have cracked somewhere instead of denting. I had heard good things about Tru-line in bellevue, they had reviews from several racers and autocross drivers which meant they were comfortable with adjustable suspension. I e-mailed the list of items installed per their request and they seemed unfazed. Plus it was only a couple blocks away from my car so it was an easy choice. I had wanted to talk to the individual doing the alignment to tell them that the Driver side cannot have the track width adjusted via the bottom as it was set for the minimum room allowed for the axle and maximum thread engagement, but the secretary said they would figure it out. That was probably the only unfortunate part of the whole alignment. I rolled in, they were running a bit late, but the thing is they told me, the guy in the shop came into the waiting area, and informed me that they were running late as my car had to go on their low lift as they did not realize how low it would be, he apologized and asked if I would like to come back later to just pick up the car when they had finished. I think that is just good service. I decided to sit through to answer any questions that might arise. The toe was spectacularly wrong. I think 60mm of tow out in the front 30mm per wheel, with a more reasonable 10mm toe in in the back. After all was said in done, they got all the camber under negative two in the back and a close to negative one in the front. The toe and thrust and all that was pretty much dialed in perfect. Their margins are set so tight that you can only expect to get a good alignment. They even take the time to go over everything with you at the end, when I asked about the driver side, the shop guy said he wished he had been told as he did bring it closer to the body. Hopefully my margin I left was large enough that whatever he used wasn't too much to cause binding problems. Car is really something. It feels almost effortless to drive now probably helped by the LSD instead of the welded diff and the wheels pointing straight. Transmission is still making quite a racket, calmed by pushing down on the shift lever (still hoping for the trans mount to be the culprit). Tablet no longer wants to communicate with megasquirt. Going to have to try and update it or erase the app and reinstall it. Planning on doing some more cosmetic things to the car. I want to build a bash bar to replace the front bumper and I think I'll paint my Enkei 92 all gold and throw some white lettering on the tire.

Cool find!

I went with grundy, my insurance agent gave me both quotes and it was something like 270 vs 450 or something for grundy vs haggerty for 17k of coverage. They seemed to nicer about modified cars, I sent pictures of my car when I asked for the coverage a couple years ago and they didn't bother me about the plethora of things that were different. I was told haggerty on the other hand would want to put me in modified which may explain why they wanted to charge more.

Small update, car makes zero skipping noises, skipping was due to loose lugs. Got so excited I got ahead of myself. Don't worry I found the problem immediately. Toe was really far out in the rear, the two perpendicular arms were 1/2 an inch off from each other. Made the car want to rotate on a dime. I used a tape measure rather then my eyeballs and got it much more parallel, car drives straight for the most part. Camber was also really far out, the rear hit about -4* on my level angle gauge. I ended up notching my strut tower dimple to make room for the adjustment knob. With it maxed out towards positive, the car sits with about -1* of camber according to my gauge. I took the car in for an alignment. I figured I got the rear close enough and I could use my lifetime to give me a picture of how far the front is off. To their credit they were completely happy to adjust the car, the tons of modification didn't immediately disqualify me as I had heard some other places like to do. Unfortunately the tech noticed the lack of adjustment available in the front to control the toe. I think this is a case of someone adjusted it poorly at one point and I clocked my steering wheel to compensate. I had planned a more thorough alignment down the road so I bid them farewell. On another note to the tech's credit, he pointed out to me that he scraped my seat bolts putting them up on the rack. They took quite a hit as it looks like it might be bent and some of the threads were flattened. I'm going to have to probably cut these off the next time I want to mess with my seats. To the discredit of the whole situation, before I said anything the manager or what not says "oh it's fine." What the hell? He doesn't get to say how I feel about the damage done to my car that is for me to decide. If I wasn't back there talking over how to adjust the arms with the tech, I probably wouldn't have even been told. That irks me a great deal, and that is why the only thing I go to them is my lifetime alignment. I tipped the tech for his honesty and went to my garage to eyeball the alignment. I think I got it sitting much happier I clocked the wheel 1/6, unfortunately it looks like the splines are off as it still isn't equal side to side They are both at least 1.25 turns side to side, but it basically shifts you a little more to one side over the other based on how you clock the steering wheel. For the effort required to redo my hub boss, I can live with not having it perfectly centered in the steering rack. More or less equal threads on each side now. I still need to check that the front arms are the same length and try to even out the camber a bit. Started to also take care of some minor nuisances: Stalling when warm: The car would stall in neutral with the clutch out once warm. It makes it difficult to stop on a hill when you have to step on the clutch, step on the brake, while giving it a little bit of gas. I suspect I set the idle fairly low when cold and once warm it would dip below a happy point. I brought my laptop to look at the idle and bumped it up to 950 while moderately warm. That should bring it do 800ish when real warm. Hard cut: Also noted a wicked miss at full throttle. Rolling into it doesn't bring on the problem, but flooring it causes a cut off. Either it is running massively lean because the acceleration enrichment is still off, or the boost cut is kicking in as the wastage can't bleed the pressure fast enough quick enough. I'll have to take a drive with my tablet running and my laptop logging to find out. Driver door: The window never closed right on my driver door. The shape is right and with the adjustments loose I can get it to close, but once they are tightened it sits cockeyed in the channel leaving a gap at the top. I picked up a couple replacement doors so I figured I would start preparation. I checked the normal spots for rust and found the seam split in the rear up by the window channel and a couple rust holes at the bottom. The driver side door mirror was pulled off and the holes welded shut. There should be a special place in hell for someone who uses self tapping screws and tightens them so much that it pulls up the sheet metal in the middle of a curve. Took a lot of grinding and hammering and welding to get that looking somewhat acceptable. I also picked up a new set of guides and dovetails so that should make the door close much nicer, without my door bars that also means I probably don't need to run my door pulls and I can switch back to handles and probably put my door card in with the arm rest. Front chin: Using zip ties is quite annoying and similarly bolting the front chin on when you have to remove it to jack up the car is also annoying. I want a quick release, but I do not trust those eBay rubber band style ones. I found a design online for one that uses quik latches. It would mean shaving my front chin, but I think two buttons and one or two bolts to take off the front chin will be much safer then zip ties, while still being more convenient then bolts.

4 bolts give you supposedly one or so degree of additional camber adjustment. I'm at about -1* now so I am pretty happy with how it sits. Mine shipped with the camber adjustment on max negative camber. With the max negative camber setting, the adjustment knob sits dead middle in the hole for the shock in the rear of the car, I believe it is similar in the front. As Justin said to gain more positive camber you have to either remove the knob or notch the shock tower shock hole outboard. I decided to notch the shock hole, I removed basically the raised portion and clearanced the side for the knob to sit without interference, the knob sits a little above the shock hole, but it makes it easier to install if you clearance it to the knob instead of the thinner nut, it also allows you to tighten the shock nut with without having to drop the entire upright. These are very inconvenient to adjust camber. You either have to take the rear suspension out of the car, or disconnect the spindle pin and lower it enough to get out of the shock tower. This is the price we pay for bolt in installation. I think this is to be expected. With the camber adjustment moved to max positive, I gained enough to have a decent camber setting. My alignment is still off and I need to address a few minor things, but I took it out today. Ride is really compliant, I expected it to be harsher, but it is comparable to my old spring and shock just less movement. Also no noise from the front or the back. We even took a corner a little hard and the suspension loaded up nicely. I still need to get an alignment and address some other unrelated faults so I will have my in-depth review down the road.

That is a pet peeve, but the last guy I met goes to school in seattle and had his car stored elsewhere. I noticed that this is your first swap. Do you even have all the parts? I think you need to space the trans cross member, did you already get it modified? You need the engine brackets from the stock motor, you need the T5 drive shaft, possibly shortened, high pressure fuel pump, wiring for fuel pump, both wiring harnesses.

Could be fun. Bit of a drive though. If you get replacement mounts you are going to need to drill for the locating pin, they are cast off on the 2 or 3 companies I have dealt with.

The 3 bolt holes were there to allow the factory roll bar/cage to bolt in for homologation rules as far as I understood it. I'm not sure how you know the bar is weak as each piece is custom made as no one I know has made any available commercially. You might be thinking of those cheap flexible bars people bolt to the upper seatbelt mount that they sell on Ebay for other cars. Car looks good, hopefully you've addressed that harness mount.

That looks really good, the earlier 2000ish burgundy was a bit too purple, but the 2010ish and on looked really nice. Matches the wheels real nice too!

Goodness, that looks fantastic!

Would appreciate it. Planning on adjusting the tops in a couple days then hopefully an alignment on Friday.

Fusible links? Replace with maxi fuse, tons of posts on it. You can also replace them with new fusible links. Just need to carry a couple extra.

We have a WTB section below. Also this is the S30 section, you want the S130 section.

Hmm I still have about 3 inches to go then and I would be scraping the floor by that point if I didn't have bigger frame rails. By all the way out, you mean you pushed the plates all the way positive right? I figured that would be the case. I have way too much camber and I doubt that I will be able to bring it back into line with the small amount of adjustment. Good tip on the adjuster hitting the sheet metal, I'll have to clearance that while I have it out. Just an FYI, an adjustable LCA is really only going to help add additional negative camber. To get positive camber you would have to pull the arms shorter then stock and at that point you would run into problems with the axles binding. Most likely the solution would be the 4 bolt camber tops or pushing the camber top further outboard.

How much do you have remaining on your adjusters thread wise? Or are you bottoming out the threaded adjustment? Any tips on adjusting the camber?

Kind of interesting, seems like something got into their and got smushed by the valve into the piston. As long as the valve isn't bent, and there are not any propagating cracks from the divot, I would probably just run it especially with another motor being built. Granted if something got in that was big enough to cause that kind of divot, I would be worried that the valve would be bent which would mean that any type of tune you do will potentially be off as the valve doesn't seal completely. Did you run a compression test before taking off the head?

To clear this up, what do you mean by new turn signal switch? As in one from another vehicle? Or a NOS switch? It can look fine, but once you take it apart and roll the rocker and look for scorch marks that is what is going to be telling like the video miles posted. Is the action on the turn signal crisp? Or kind of mushy? That will also be telling. The connection for the switch is actually really easy to access as it is just soldered onto the pack of the particle board that makes up the back of it. Power goes in the center and then out to either the left or the right based on the stalk position. This should be very easy to see with a multimeter set to voltage. If it is not going out of the switch then the switch is the problem. It is pretty easy to check the bulb holder, unplug it and run continuity from the plug end to the bulb socket while giving it a wiggle if it comes and goes it is desoldered. If it is not the bulb holder, then it is the wiring harness or fuse box. Eliminate the possibility for each one and you will find your problem.

Can't say for sure, I don't know when the insert will bottom out, visually I have about 3.25 inches of thread remaining before I hit the adjuster ring that locks the preload perch, but it could bottom out before then, I guess that would be the real test.

Sorry to revive, but marking for future reference, thanks for blazing the trail guys!

Rears installed, damping feels pretty good and the ride is really compliant, I'm excited to dial these in. One thing of note is that these come with the bolts at max camber. I installed these with adjustable arms and added a little track width so I ended up at way too much camber almost negative 4* out back. I'm going to have to adjust the tops to neutralize quite a bit of that, I was wondering if anyone found a nice way to go about it with complete disassembly? I'm hoping once you undo the spindle you can lower it enough to adjust the top without pulling the axles. And the extreme low kit goes stupid low. I can barely make it over a 2 inch lip before my exhaust which is really tucked compared to the factory one starts scraping, and I can still drop it almost 3 more inches. You could probably tuck rim if the wheel wells didn't get in the way, but at that point your differential and front cross member would be dragging on the floor. At my current ride height I can barely slip a jack in the front or rear.

Have you checked the bulb holders? They can become unsoldered sitting in the front of the car vibrating for many years. Run a continuity test to see if there is a connection from each bulb circuit, also the hazards and the turn signal are on different circuits so be advised that they won't be sending power down the same wire if memory serves correctly.

Ok, whoever wants these lower is insane. That was with 2.75 height adjustment remaining in the rear. I ended up high centering on my exhaust on a 2 inch lip on the garage. I had to raise it 1/2 an inch just to avoid scraping. This is of course with a very small 23 inch tire, so if someone had a tire closer to stock they could get away with probably lowering it almost an inch or so. Eyeballed my toe and it still feels real sketchy. Car wants to turn on slightest provocation. Steering wheel feels like it isn't doing much at speed. Way too much camber in the rear as well, I put an angle gauge on it and it was about 3.5*. I think I'll have to take the strut top back out and move the tops to dial in some positive camber. Car is no longer making knocking noises. The steering is real nice going slow, once speed is picked up it gets real light. Only one squeaking noise coming from the transmission tunnel. I'll have to replace the trans mount when I get the chance. Car barely makes skipping noises. So close to having it up an running. Plan is to take the struts out, max out camber plate to positive camber, adjust toe again. Once that is all set I'll setup my appointment to have it professionally aligned.

Recommend rollers for the bottom unless you have a permanent spot. Makes it real easy to move around. And you can put a hole in the bottom of it to washout out as long as you keep the heating elements detachable.

First off, this would be more suited to the trouble shooting section. Second, spraying water on the belt to prevent squealing is an absolute first for me. From what you are saying it sounds like your belt is slipping. Belt is worn or you need to adjust your belt. If that fails then your AC compressor has a worn or seized bearing/clutch and is putting enough load to make the belt slip. Alternatively it could also be a seized water pump and the extra load the AC compressor applies to the belt is causing it to slip.