cygnusx1

Just a story about buying parts at the local shop, and the frustration of it all. My 2002 WRX which I bought new in July of 2001 now has 140K miles. It has pretty much been flawless the entire trip. I went to buy a set of rotors for it and brought them home from Advance Auto a few months ago. I painted the hats and proceeded to install them. Whoops! They are 1/2" diameter too small. Darn! wasted paint and now have to go exchange them. I get back to the store and tell the guy that they don't fit. He takes them back and disappears for about 10 minutes. Then he comes back and gets on the PC. He says the parts are correct, according to the numbers. He even shows me the screen. Yes, but they don't fit. OK I'll take my money back since there are no other options according to him. These are them, period. I get on ebay and buy a set of four el-cheapo rotors for about $150. I confirmed with the seller that the diameters were correct. Great. They come in and THEY FIT! Yahoo. Now, little by little since then, the brake pedal seems to be getting lower and lower and lower. The car is also wandering right under braking. Time to get to the bottom of it. I get the car up on stands, and look at the pads. All seems good. I decide to do a fluid change while I'm at it. All good. No problems bleeding. Then I start the car and put it in gear on the stands. The left front caliper drags. OK inspect. The slider pin on the bottom is seized. I do my best over the next couple of hours to take it out. Eventually it snaps off inside the casting. Now I wish I had a milling machine. Nope. I grab my drill and progressively drill out the pin but my hole is off about 1/32" The bolts won't line up. This is getting screwy, time to find some new parts. I call Subaru for info. "We can have a new slider pin in a week or so, or you can buy ONE new caliper for $350." I pretty much hung up. $350 for a two piston slider! GFY! Back to Napa this time. "We can have you a rebuilt set of calipers for $100 each this afternoon." Yeehaw, now we are cooking with gas. They call me to go get them. I go pick up the calipers. I paint them. I go to put them on. WHAM! They don' fit. They are about 1/4" too short. Hmm...remember those rotors that were 1/2" smaller? @(*&(*^$@^$@_!!##. They have the same problem. "These are the right calipers for your car sir. It's all we got!". I get my money back and sulk. I go to the new Advance Auto in town. I walk in, I ask, they walk out with calipers in hand! I open the box. No brackets! WTF. I need the brackets. "Oh, sorry we can't get left ones with the brackets." I really need a left bracket. "Wait we can get you a left, loaded caliper with bracket, but not a right one to match." FUDGE. I walk out and they apologize for not being able to get me two clipers wth brackets for 11.5" stock rotor WRX's. I go back to NAPA the next day, armed with all the part numbers from RockAuto.com. I get an eager clerk who makes a few phone calls and finds me an OEM Subaru caliper with bracket for the left side. $100, and can have it in one day! The right one will take a week though. So hopefully THIS ONE FITS! It comes in today and I pick it up. This time, I test fit it BEFORE, I paint it. IT FITS! Woohoo. I now have the WRX back on the road after 5 days of screwing around with what should be a SIMPLE caliper fix. Next week I'll replace the right side too. You would think that the part numbers were correct with parts that actually fit a relatively new and common car like the WRX. For some reason, somewhere in the rebuilt/aftermarket parts world, someone listed the WRX with 11" rotors and everyone dances to that tune. In reality, the rotors are 11.5". Diagnosis. The lower left pin was siezed so the caliper was flexing when I used the brakes. The pads would wear and then the caliper would pop back open when I got off the brakes. This placed an ever increasing gap between the pads and the rotor. Thus the increasing, long, and soft pedal travel, and the pull to the right. Z's are so much easier!

That's funny you mentioned that...I always ponder weather I would rather be a driver, or the cheif engineer of a race team. I think I might like the engineering/tuning more than driving.

I am in Putnam County. About 4-5 hours South. I spent a lot of time up in A-Bay on the St. Lawrence back in my youth. I doubt I'll be able to pop up and tune your car anytime soon but I can help you out with your maps via the internets.

Where are you located?

Happy Daddy's Day! My son let me sleep about 3 hours last night! Even though I am beat, we just came back from exploring the countryside in the WRX. We found some pretty remote dirt roads up in the hills. We had lots of fun. Now off to my dad's for a lunch.

I already installed an original alternator but it would be good to have the Maxima alternator swap wiring documented in a thread for others to use. Good luck with the India trip!

Mine is running perfectly well also. I just can't stop!!!!

I wish I still had the part number for the cylindrical paper one I found at the Auto parts store...but it had a 2.5" neck so that would not work anyhow. What about the diesel p/u trucks?

I suppose I could research this a little but on the T connector from the Z harness, which wire goes to which pin on the Maxima alternator? The Maxima alternator has a top and bottom spades that are parallel.

I thought I was done...but I am thinking now, that I can get some more power off boost, by bringing the timing plateau from 35deg to 38deg advanced off boost. Then I want to graduate from 14psi boost to 18psi boost....so... Here we go again!

OK maybe not photography but...lightning videophotography. Photos are at the end of the video which are frame grabs.

Oh yeah Tom...sorry to hear that you insured it for $18,000. That means that any attempts to offer you money for that awesome car, would only make you want to wreck it, because I can't never afford to offer you $18,000. I can't wait to see it on the road! You picked a damn rainy year to put her on the road too. We havent seen sun for about 40 days now! I think the Sumitomo HTR's are were formerly known as the Dunlop D40M2 which was a penominal tire. They had really tight sidewalls and great steering response.

The OP proabaly means: "Please visit my website ova here: http://...yadayadayada.com"

Thanks. Let me know if you make improvements to it. I am thinking of doing some tuning updates soon. In particular, I want to work my base ignition timing up a little. I think the plateau is a bit conservative at 35 degrees max @3000 rpms. I think I can go to 37 or 38 at the plateau.

That will clean up nicely. There are a ton of mods you can do that will greatly improve the car and not detract from it's "early-ness value". Good luck!!

It won't be too loud. I run T3>2.5">2.5"Magnaflow Tail Muffler. When I drive it mellow, it's plenty quiet for casual converstation. Even with the windows up or down. When I get on it, it gets much louder outside, but not much louder inside. The turbo is really good at muffling. Here is a video with mixed soundclips from inside and outside. These are all taken with the windows open. You can hear that when I am off throttle, it's almost silent. On the highway, road noise exceeds the exhaust.

ZX TRANS NON-TURBO Drill hole to mount tab extensions: Mount tab extensions: Use shifter with longer tail. (custom made, or from some earlier Nissan truck. Not sure which one) Result is VERY short angle and throws front-to-back. Left to right angle does not change but a shorter overall knob height will reduce the distance left to right. Expect increased "nothcy" feel.

This is one of those questions that is tough to answer. If you had your system tuned by a pro on a dyno you can stop reading. If you do your own tuning...you know what I mean. When is enough, enough. I have been tinkering with my MSII for about 4 years now. I am still tuning! I feel lucky. I only blew one head gasket, no pistons, or rings lands...I think, I hope. Right now I can run the car full tilt in all the gears at my max boost of 14psi, it pushes me hard into the seat, and then I can drive it back home in one piece. When I drive it casually, it runs better (smooth-driveable) than my factory WRX. The L28ET is giving me 20-23mpg around town. What does it do on the dyno? No clue. It feels damn good though. With the stock injection it made 260rwhp. It feels quite quicker now than it did back then. Am I done tuning? NOT! Why is that? Am I sick?

Radar detectors are legal here! But they don't work with cars that are radar attractors. It cancels out.

As we evolve, our a$$holes will move further and further away from our noses. This is ADVANCED technology, VERY avanced.

Yeah if my dad hadn't told me about how the 911 could go around exit ramps so much faster than our Alfa Romeo when I was about 10....and he later gave me the Alfa as a rust bucket with a blown head gasket and messed up mechanical fuel injection. He said if I could fix it and pay the insurance on it, I could drive. So I did. Here I am. He helped me learn a lot...and still does.

The adhesive seems fairly strong but I don't know how weather resistant the glue is. It's 3M brand adhesive backing. Certainly water proof. The entire strip is made of clear silicone or some clear polymer. All of the lights and electrics are completely molded inside the polymer strip. I'm sure you could dip the strips in water. The only part that might be vulnerable would be the very end where the wires are soldered. That end is covered with shrink tube and could easily be further sealed with a dab of sealant. The solder joints are pretty weak because the wires are super thin. Try not to flex the end where the wires are connected too much. I broke a solder joint trying to stuff the shrink tubing between the chrome ring and the headlight bucket. I was able to remove the shrink wrap and repair it.

Helping me put in the new alternator today. Someday he'll be posting here...probably making fun of his dad. And when we went outside we saw this! She must be looking to lay eggs in our yard somewhere. I helped her cross the street and get to the woods but she was PISSED. Those snappers are downright nasty. She was snapping at me, and trying to take off my fingers. We had to get her into a garbage pail and carry her into the woods so she didn't get run over. TURTLE POWER!

I bet they would look even better with tinted covers. They are VERY bright when you look at them directly. I have them pointing straight up into the headlamp due to the way I taped down the strips. If you point them right at your eyes, they actually blind you.

I opened up the alternator and found that one of the brushes was much more worn than the other. The brush pressure was very low. This was probably the cause for the reduced output. The bearings didn't look great, and it looked to be a re-manufactured unit, from the shoddy soldering and the mixed and matched bolts. I went to Napa and will have a replacement this afternoon. I also scoped out the '90 maxima unit while I was there. We tried swapping the pulleys but with the ZX spacer behind the pulley, there were not enough threads on the Maxima shaft. Also, the Maxima uses a different connector. I could have made it work, but between making a custom spacer, and then screwing around with pulley alignment, and wiring, I bit the bullet and ordered a ZX alternator. I think 60amps are enough for what I do.