I'll see if I can get a pic up. The spots on my roof and the one on my hood are rough to the touch and are light grey colored (my car is green.) And in a few other spots it looks as though the clear coat is wearing through, as in it's still green but there's a border around the patch. I have an 02 Acura TL.
Yes, in fact my trunk looks almost just like that. The spots on my roof are a little worse. Strangely enough, I spent last year in Alabama.
It sounds like someone might have got a little over zealous with a buffer and ate through some layers of clear. If that's the case, you're looking at a re-paint unfortunately. edit- I just happened to come across that pic by googling "acura TL paint problems" I wanted to see if it was a known flaw but most instances were from a DIY guy not knowing what he was doing.
Must have been the previous owner then. I've had the car for a little over 4 years, but the problem really showed up over the last year or so. Anything I can do to slow down the progression, or am I just fucked? Thanks.
Be jealous of these skills. This guy pushes an Enzo to the limits on the track, check out the opposite lock, especially the 1 handed drift. Things happen, uhm, quickly in this car.
I have a CV joint with a torn boot. I can just barely, with the wheel fully cranked and accelerating quickly, start to hear the telltale clicking. Two questions: A) Has anyone tried the various replacement zip-up, glue together, or bolt together replacement boots? Any success? B) Will I actually get any time out of them if I try a replacement boot, or once I've heard the clicking, is this thing doomed? Typically, I get a fair number of miles before the clicking sounds bad and I know it's time to replace it. Just trying to figure out if a replacement boot would extend that by any meaningful amount. I'd consider replacing it myself but I have no garage and no good jacks at the moment so it's a bit of a challenge.
By the way, if anyone needs any wheels, let me know. One of my best friends owns Pacific Western Performance, and works with Kodiak, Fikse, and Forgeline to make custom wheels for dirt cheap. He's a high-volume Fikse and Forgeline dealer, but can get killer deals on just about anything. You can see some examples HERE Here's the stuff we had him make for our 24 Hrs of Daytona run last year: Here's a set of custom offset, 3-piece full-on race wheels that he did for my car, for under $2k.
Gotta one up me don't ya ND? I post four wheels, you post 30. Jerk. Just joshing, that style is a lot like mine, but mine are still bigger...Yours are probably half, if not 1/4 of the weight of mine though, so it evens out.
My largest (rear) wheel weighs around 15 lbs without rubber. Reduce your unsprung weight (wheels, tires, etc), and you will not believe the difference it makes in overall performance. EDIT: iPhone typo. 15 lbs, not 5.
In case you weren't aware of the benefits of reducing unsprung weight: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.tirerack.com/wheels/tech/techpage.jsp?techid=98" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.tirerack.com/wheels/tech/tec ... ?techid=98</a> There's a reason why race teams can pay up to $8k for a good set of race wheels.
Each of my wheels, without rubber, weigh about 38#...so yeah, big no no for performance. Good to know about unsprung weight though, I had no idea.
You can reboot a CV shaft. You have to remove the shaft to fix it though so since yours is already clicking just replace the whole shaft. The clicking is ball bearings that are damaged and/or out of place. There really isn't any glue type stuff that would work, you're most likely already missing some of the boot itself and it just won't hold up to the constant turning. If you drive till it breaks it might leave you stranded though. Since the differential is open, when it breaks that will be the only shaft to receive power.
Also, if you get significantly heavier wheels than stock, you might also want to look into upgrading your brakes. All that extra rotational weight of the larger wheels can decrease your braking performance more than you think it would. You might want to go out and do a few emergency braking manoeuvres to see if you notice a difference in your braking distances.
And to this point, you might also want to see if there's still CV grease in there. After all, the whole purpose of the boot in the first place is to hold in grease and keep out contaminants. If the boot is fucked, it might have cleaned out a bunch of the grease. Simply adding some CV grease in there, and maybe even zap-tying the boot a bit to keep it together a bit better (depending on how fucked it is), might help it last a bit longer. But I'd listen to Arctic_Scrap... if it's clicking, something's already wrong, and you should probably get it fixed sooner rather than later.
After being put on hold for the last seven months, I finally got to finish installing a 4th generation F-body coolant tank on my Trans Am. The coolant reservoir on 4th gens ('93-'03 Camaros and Firebirds) is a combination battery tray and reservoir, and it goes under the battery, out of sight, unlike the huge, ugly 3rd generation ('82-'92) pieces. I needed to replace mine anyway because it developed a crack, and I couldn't find a good used one anywhere. Installing the 4th gen piece requires cutting a hole in the battery tray. On Camaros you can pretty much just put it in like that, but the fenders on Firebirds are different, and I had to mount mine a little higher, so I made a new battery tray/floor and welded it in. Now I have a less cluttered engine bay and a superior coolant tank (much sturdier than the 3rd gen piece). Here's the new tray welded in.
Here's the coolant tank installed without the battery. You fill it up through that spout, and it has its own dipstick to check the level.