Thursday, January 29, 2009

pipe arrived -

and it's the wrong size :( Turns out the pipe I used as a guide wasn't a pipe at all. It was a coupler meaning it's bigger than the big that bears the mark. Ho hum. Builders merchant at weekend.

I did hit boost even with the crapo VTA setup, felt good. Very good.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

BOV recirc pipe on order -

was hoping it would be here for this weekend but alas not. Pity as the weather today was cold but very dry. Ah well, always next weekend I suppose.

Have driven car once since clutch change, yep it worked fine. Going to add some boost soon....................

Monday, January 19, 2009

Clutch - Day 2 - finished

OK, I've updated Day 1 with pics and some video, Day 2 as below.

Now I have to confess, I was veggin in front of the tv all morning while Calum and Larry were working on the car. I got picked up around 130pm as there was nothing I could do before then. My spannering skills are well known, ie I hold the spanners cause when I use them I break stuff. Anyhow on with the story.

Day 2

All torque mounts nicely tightened up so that part is ok.

Induction kit nicely fitted but er at the mo it's Vent to Air as the existing Recirc pipework is too short. One wee trip to B&Q coming up in near future.







Oil Pan No 2 changed and new non rusting unit in place. New oil filter in place too. A point of note here, even after draining the oil there was still about 0.5Litres of oil sitting in the sump. Turns out to remove it all you'd have to jack the front of the car and just the right rear corner up to clear out the oil pan. Of course, no one ever does.

Gearbox very nearly had to come off again as there was an issue with a plate that sits between the box and engine block. Fortunately this was dealt with by just slackening some bolts and then the problem bolts went in ok.

Once front bumper was removed I then set about removing the old chargecooler pre rad. Broke the horns as well so another job in the near future. All chargecooler pipes removed, pain in the butt that was. Will re visit the chargecooler theme in the future but not this year.

Sheared bolts from the old front fog lights removed from the bumper bar. Sadly I don't have video of Larry getting all personal with the angle grinder. Sparky 2....

Clutch slave cylinder refitted and removed then refitted. There was a bolt that was missed on the gearbox so er remove and try again.

Starter motor refitted - question is would the blighter work!

There were some issues with the gear linkage bushes, basically one was gubbed the other had a fair old slack in it. One was awkward to fit one was okish. Something for future replacement but ok and connected at the mo.

Drive shafts refitted after some cleaning of the suspension struts.

Both rear brake pads and carriers cleaned up, sliders copper greased as they were both er solid. That explains why the handbrake was so crap.

All under trays fitted after the removal of the chargecooler pipes. Yup that took ages as more bolts had seized and snapped. Ho hum.

This was quite late on in the afternoon so it was time to start refilling the coolant system and the gearbox and the oil. Much gnashing of teeth and bruised knuckles it's all ready to fire up.

First start, check for leaks, gearbox, engine and coolant. Once we were happy nothing was leaking we then topped up what we could and Calum went out with the car to ensure everything worked as expected. Of course, we left the exhaust off as it would get removed should any problems have been found. Must admit, it didn't sound bad at all. Oh, the starter worked as well :-))




No leaks were found so exhaust refitted. Should point out here much cleaning was done of the mating surfaces and yeah I ain't looking forward to that being removed in the future.

The coolant system was then properly bled and that took forever, as it always does. That and a huge 13Litres of coolant to fill the blighter.

Exhaust ready for intermediate pipe



Larry checking nothing is amiss. Can't fault his attention to detail



The clutch is quite low to the floor and the aforementioned shifter bushes have made the gearchange a bit notchy. However, Kenny had dropped by and suggested a slight adjustment on the clutch pedal as it had some slack. Hey presto clutch has slightly more travel and no slack thus gearchanges are really smooth now. The clutch feel itself is very light so no doubt I'll stall it a few times til I'm used to it again.

All in all I'm very happy with the job and I can't thank Calum and Larry for the time and effort they put into it. Cheers guys, I'll get a round in this year at some wee drive ;)

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Clutch in and working -

car re-assembled but I'm too tired to type it all up tonight. Calum and Larry are stars however, fantastic amount of work done to get this all finished. Mention also to Kenny who provided a tip on clutch pedal height, now much better thanks!

Will hopefully the complete Sunday write up done tomorrow and post some pics

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Change of clutch -

progress update.

Day 1 in the workshop:
Taking the exhaust system off proved unexpectedly complex and tiresome. The intermediary pipe decided it wasn't going to come off.


Nicey nicey



1hr lost persuading it to split resulted in much swearing and WD40 brute force and some praying. After that Calum got really hacked off and got out the angle grinder. The pipe was mere moments from hitting the ground, or so we thought...

Prepare to be ground!


Calum getting his favourite garage toy out, the angle grinder. The exhaust bolts did not fair well out of this at all.



The exhaust however still held on with only paste. Good stuff that.

Eventually we got the darned thing off but it held on well which didn't bod well for the rest of the day.

Airbox and gubbins removed in prep for access to gearbox bolts



Look at the space in there! An MR2 engine bay with space? Some mistake officer?



Larry had joined us at this point which meant Calum had some real help with the heavy stuff about to start. Good timing sir!

The driveshafts, they came out ok, some issues with suspension bolts but nothing major. Suspension struts were changed just over 4.5years ago so it was expected they would come off easy enough. Mind you, the exhaust has been on less than 2......

Starter motor would not budge for love nor money nor the hammer nor even the pry bars. This resulted in having to remove a water pipe from the main coolant system to free up the gearbox. So now a coolant change is being carried out too. Eventually the gearbox came out. This is now 6 hrs after work started. Ho hum

Clutch removed from flywheel. Some meat left on the friction plate but also some heat marks on the flywheel indicating possible pressure plate failure as opposed to the clutch failing. Either way, new clutch required. Hopefully the new clutch will bed in nicely, flywheel face smooth, no roughness nor visible scoring. Just the heat marks.

Old clutch, not bad for 114k miles on a turbo'd motor. I clearly drive slower than Miss Daisy :(





Pressure plate, mm some heat markings on there


The flywheel showing heat scoring. It will be fine..............







Starter motor removed from gearbox. Mating face given a good talking too and sanded for good measure. Next time the blighter will fall out when the bolts are removed.

Gearbox input shaft and general area tidied up, however will give a nice light clutch and fit all back together again.

New Exedy std clutch as below complete with release bearing and clutch cover plate. Nice and meaty but not too heavy on the leg


New clutch fitted, gearbox bolted up and mount attached. Clutch cylinder installed and gearbox linkages attached.

End of Day 1.

Still to do.

Torque mounts still to be attached and er torqued..........
Gearbox oil to be refilled <- note: this is not optional on an empty gearbox.
Reverse switch and speedo drive to be re-attached.
Re-attach all boost piping removed to facilitate gearbox removal.
Remove leaking flexing Oil Pan No2 and replace with no leaking / flexing unit.
Change Oil Filter and then refill sump with oil.
Install induction kit in place of standard airbox and resonator chamber.
Re-fill engine coolant <- note: this is not optional on an empty cooling system
Try clutch and gear selection, not sure of placement in order of this.
Remove front bumper and then remove chargecooler pre rad.
Fix horns while there - meep meep just doesn't cut it. Never has, never will.
Possibly re-attach front foglights.
Start car and go through nightmare bleeding of coolant process. This is dependant on the starter motor not in a huff after the pounding it got being removed
Re-attach exhaust and do road test.

Will update after tomorrow's work. This being dependant on success and pub visit.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

why I don't program -

cause I'm really really bad at it! Spent some time messing around with a web page I have that gives you tyre sizes / profiles and what size rim it will fit. Usual stuff found on many pages except I wrote mine so it returns all valves between whatever limits you set. Saves a lot of typing, select max width and wheel diameter you want, fill in your std wheel data and then hit the button and hey presto, results including speedo error are returned.

So I thought I'd modify this so you can get both axles done at the same time. Except I wanted it to use the same function to do both results. Well that requires a wee bit of savvy and I'm found lacking again. Ho ho, though I think I've solved it now it's not as neat as I'd prefer. Pah, not like anybody reads the sh1t anyway!

Thursday, January 01, 2009

happy new year -

I hope your hangover is no worse than mine! Was a great night so I have no complaints. Not gonna be driving for a while either lol.

There's been some loud talk about the drivibility of V6 mr2's v turbo units so when my new clutch is fitted I decided to give it some testing. Usual in gear increments and might even do some through the gear punches.

Right now, got some dave pearce on and chillin - if that makes sense lol