The Automotive (& other mechanized vehicles) thread

[Iommic Pope]

Slayer.

[Achtane]

My car is powered by shitty eurobeat. The slipping clutch acts as a built-in anti-hoon measure.

Someone at work has a Range Rover and I try to park my crappy little beater next to it whenever possible.

[lordgalvar]

Love that rx-8...the 4 bucket seats is kinda cool.

Found some roller rockers (1.65) and a better timing chain/gears.

My dad is trying to get me to work on the mustang. Eh, he's trying to talk me into keeping it stock haha. Nah.

He just got a rear end for his Morris minor...I think it is some form of Chevy 12 bolt. Pretty sure he is going to go ls3 in it and probably twin turbo. kinda boring haha.

https://www.pacemaker.com.au/headers/ch ... ned-detail been looking at those....hooker discontinued all Ford inline 6 headers. I think it may just come to making my own someday; it may be for the best to tune the headers with my intake to help fight reversion with the side draft mikuni phhs (I won't have the space for long velocity tubes/stacks).

I've also been thinking about doing some weird stuff like turbo'in' the mikunis which is rarely done but possible. I might just build a cold air kinda style air cleaner box (which was my original plan). Don't even have jets for the mikunis yet or anything....just stuff I've been thinking about when I work.around the house haha.

GISM is good driving music. And Kraftwerk. And Slim Cessna sometimes.

And look at this Ford Capri engine...kinda cool:


Also discovered these recently:

http://www.predatorcarb.com/home.html

I actually found out about those carbs when I asked my dad about kendig carbs that were on this pinto (which is an interesting car...they acid bathed all the panels to reduce weight and did a whole bunch of strange things in the days before valve float was fixed):
http://www.mustangandfords.com/features ... to-03.html

Here is a kendig:


Edit: freaking double split sentence thinking not.edittib

[Chankgeez]

Yeah, you should definitely make that Mustang as badass as you can.

In other news, I kinda want this Harley:

[Achtane]

Anyone have a magic tip for removing an impossibly stuck-on exhaust bolt? There are four bolts that connect the exhaust of this car at the halfway point between the manifold and the end. They are STUCK.

I can't really even access them easily because, as always, there's no fucking room. I've hit them with a hammer to try and break the rust seal, soaked em in PB Blaster, tried vice grips, tried those bolt-gripping sockets, and now they're just rounding off.

I really don't want to attempt to grind them away one-handed and then repair the thread or whatever the fuck is involved.
All this to loosen a power steering line. So much pain.

Burn in hell, GM.

[bigchiefbc]

Love that rx-8...the 4 bucket seats is kinda cool.

Thanks, yeah the 4 decent seats were kinda a must for me with the little tyke being no so little anymore. This was the sportiest car I could think of in my price range with 4 real seats.

I wouldn't mind throwing a new exhaust on it, just want to make sure it doesn't screw with the warranty first.

[crochambeau]

Anyone have a magic tip for removing an impossibly stuck-on exhaust bolt?

No magic: penetrating oil, impacts, soak, heat, and repeat.

If you're already rounding the bolt off it might be a lost cause. Patience comes in handy, if you have the luxury of spending a few days on encouraging the bolts.

Is it a cast iron head? If so, and you have to cut it off, I've heard of people welding something to the threaded end of the bolt and working that out (once cooled) as the cast iron resists bonding with the weld.

I've always had decent luck just taking time with it though, and you want sharp jabs not constant torque on the nuts. Constant torque is only good for installation and fucks removal half the time.

In other news, the harmonic balancer failed on my better half's car, so I get to R&R that fucking thing somehow. I'm thinking of using the starter and a breaker bar to crack that nut, once the replacement part arrives.

[crochambeau]

The harmonic balancer finally showed up today. I sucked it up and bought a cheap electric impact wrench because I reasoned while I could probably get the nut off using nefarious means I would still have to put it back on.

All told R&R took about an hour and a half (between getting home and opening my celebratory beer).

[lordgalvar]

Did you use a centering dowel/washer or anything? I'm going to have to replace the damper when I rebuild and am a bit curious. I think I am going to get ATI to build me a custom one with rebuild able parts.

[crochambeau]

No, I was really heavy handed on it:

1) Remove shredded serpentine belt.
2) Loosen lug nuts, lift that corner of the car & remove wheel.
3) Strip out asinine plastic screws holding the splash screen in the wheel well, proceed to clip those out with wire cutters.
4) Zip the nut off the damper with impact wrench, it appears the Harbor Freight junk is up to this task... well, one time so far.
5) After mounting the screw in puller, I discover that the rotational force required to pull the balancer off the crank shaft exceeds the rotational force required to turn the engine. I resort to zipping that screw down with the impact wrench. NOTE TO PAST SELF/ANYONE WALKING IN MY FOOTSTEPS: it would be better to exploit available screw holes in the puller to affix that in some way to prevent rotation, as zipping the screw in with an impact wrench will friction weld the conical shaft centering insert to the drive screw.
6) Enjoy your pulled and failed part.

I had watched a youtube video in which the greasemonkey had procured a longer bolt to thread into the crank and manually press the new balancer into place, this was done at risk of fucking the threads in the crank and I don't have time for that sort of shit... so:

Positioning harmonic balancer on the crank to start in aligned with the keyway can be done by hand, but it becomes press fit from that point. I've read plenty of dudes screaming about how using a hammer is a terrible idea, and in so far as placing an odd wear event on milled metal I am inclined to agree, however, this is a 1999 Buick Century and I'm all out of fucks to give.

7) Hand fit/align replacement harmonic balancer on the shaft.
8) Understanding that there are two pieces of metal connected by a layer or rubber, and not being an ass hole (for the time being anyway) I understand that any hammering needs to be in line with the crank, confined evenly to the inner plane of the pulley, and hopefully gentle enough that I'm not doing damage to either the crank or the bearings. With that I grab a 22 mm socket and a six inch extension, rest the socket on the inner wheel wall of the balancer and hammer it into place with a dead blow hammer. I went at this more like a craftsman and less like a roid rage gorilla.
9) Zip the bolt into place, affix the wheel well splash screen with zip ties, and finish up everything else by the book.

Being able to rebuild the balancer might be nice, but the geometry of this one has the rubber under load driving the belt, and that would be a hard system to recreate in situ.

[Achtane]

It's amusing and reassuring to read about someone else's exploits involving the same horror of an engine bay.

Thank you for your service.

I had one of those Harbor Freight electric impacts for a while but I returned it because it couldn't manage to put a pulley on my power steering pump. I feel like my life would be so much easier if I had a half-decent one.

[lordgalvar]

Thanks crochambeau!

Everything is a pain in the ass when getting into it haha. My ford.escort I had years ago would freaking kill sensors and have vacuum leaks no matter what I did.

My wife's old 2001 Malibu was the worst though. The head on the v-6 didn't fully seat and from the factory there is a spot with black silicon to seal between the water, oil, and outside. I rebuilt that over a few days in a tandem parking garage when security wasn't there. The only thing easy was the serpentine belt.

Impact wrenches are a bit of a doubled edged sword...ive had them do damage. I use the heck out of my current DeWalt cordless but I loved my old Milwaukee one (the batteries were shit though).

On the mustang, the damper/balancer is the pulley (v-belt). Trying to see if ATI will have anyway to convert over to serpentine. Their design is like modular and seems like it could adapt to anything (so they claim). They want my current one to kinda copy or match to specs. (Also, it is like race approved or something so if I ever do take it to a track, no problem).

I've only seen the damper done with the threaded rod/positioning rod. Currently I can see mine wobble a bit...wouldnt be surprised if it original to the car. Luckily, I will be doing mine when I rebuild the engine outside the car. I'm probably going to get the crankshaft balanced at the same time. I'm going to be degreeing the cam and all that junk too.

Kinda crazy that the balancer failed in such a new car.

The mustang always smelled like gas. I picked up a new rubber hose for the tank just in case...the old one was cracked all the way through on the non visible side...I just thought it was running rich haha. The gas tank is basically part of the cab with only some vinyl and a seat frame between the trunk and cab. Haven't driven it to see if it helped yet. Switched distributer caps too which seemed to fix another vacuum leak. Drove my dad around for a bit and he thought I tuned it pretty good (which made me happy).

[lordgalvar]

Went to the drags at Famoso too.

This one is for Changeez: old style dodge funny car (body moved back)

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GTO Gasser

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[Chankgeez]

Went to the drags at Famoso too.

This one is for Changeez: old style dodge funny car (body moved back)

Perfect except for the color. Anything but yellow.

[lordgalvar]

Yea, didn't care for that yellow or sharpie detail...the fender welds looked a little "for show" too, but it was cool to see something like that. Most of the neat mopars were in the normal dude pit which they hid way far away behind the swap meet...didn't get to over there.

Here are some 60s Ford/merc falcon unibodies:

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IMG_20171021_111524583.jpg (118.71 KiB) Viewed 4463 times