The Automotive Thread

Well, here's some more car porn. Monster Tajima's sub 10 minute run up Pike's Peak.

 

Any opinions on Beck Arnley brake components?

 

I dont normally sell them, but nothing wrong with the brand name. They do import parts, but have some domestic.

 

I was looking at getting and OBD II reader, where you just buy the program and cables and hooked it up to the laptop. I have seen and used one brand before. I was wondering if any of you out there have ever used a particular brand before and any up/downs with it. Thanks.

 

About a month ago when it started getting warm out, I tried to use the A/C in my car for the first time, only to find out it was just blowing warm air. Bought a recharge kit, and it worked... For a single day.

After doing some research, I found out about this stuff. The first can I used didn't actually work that well, and ended up pissing all over the place. The whole A/C system wasn't running since there was absolutely no coolant left, so the stuff in the can had nowhere to go. Put some R-134a into the system to get the compressor to kick in, and added in another can of the sealant. Finished it up with the remaining coolant, and I've had ice cold air in my car since!

So, if anyone has a problem with their A/C not holding a charge, I would definitely recommend trying this stuff out first before biting the bullet and having to spend a boatload of cash getting your system fixed.

Side note: Who the fuck in their right mind decided putting the access point to the low pressure side of the A/C system needed to be directly below the alternator/serpentine belt? Got a nice burn from the alternator on my forearm while doing this work.

 

I'm always hesitant to use any form of seal/stop leak type product. I feel like it just masks a bigger problem that's probably caused by something else, so it'll happen again. But on an older car that you don't want to get into, could be a good thing.

 

I originally posted this in the "Can someone help me with this" thread, but a rep very wisely told me this would be a better place. I just spaced and that was the first place I thought of. So, here is what I wrote there.

This is a little long so please bear with me and please help if you can with advice.

My wife has a 2005 Subaru Forester. Recently the car was making strange noises when she started the car and the air was on. It was a brief sound and didn't happen if the air was off or the car was on for more than a few minutes. We thought she might either have a problem with the air conditioner or the serpentine belts.

Well, we had one friend look at the belts and said they looked fine and he thought it might be what we thought as well. He told us to just drive it and get it checked out or fixed sometime in the near future when we could. Didn't think anything was in immediate danger.

About a week later, about 1/4 mile from home, the two serpentine belts shredded. Thankfully she was close to home. Her air stopped and the battery light came as expected. She was able to just drive right into the garage here.

So, now we're thinking that it was just at least one bad belt and it broke and took the other one with it as they both wrap around the harmonic balancer and if one goes, I'd assume the other would be taken with it.

I go to the store, buy new belts and put them on. I've only replaced a serpentine belt on my Toyota Corolla and that was stupidly easy. This has at least tension bolts. Still easy though. I replace them, tighten them to 1/4" give. Everything is perfect. I turn the car on and go look and one of the belts is half off. I turn off the engine really quick. Maybe I didn't tighten things well enough. I do it again. This time the inner belt comes off on the inside and is ruined.

I don't have much experience except in changing oil and basic basic maintenance. I looked closer this time and the harmonic balancer is no longer tight and has ground a little bit into the timing belt plastic cover and that is what pulled the belt off the back.

Now, I had a different mechanic friend come over and he said that I didn't damage anything except it ground into the plastic cover a bit, but who cares. I just need to get a new harmonic balancer and the one new belt as the other wasn't damaged.

I know there are some serious auto experts on here. Can that part just break? He's never seen one break on a Subaru, but has seen it on many other cars. Is there a chance that there is a bigger problem going on that caused that balancer to break? He said no, but getting other opinions is good. He's got a lot of experience, but I'm just a little nervous and like to be as informed as possible.

Any info or insight would be greatly appreciated. I'm going to call the dealer and some stores and other shops tomorrow to get info and pricing on the part. He said he'd put it on for me if I got the part. It seems to only be 75-100 for the part. I just want to make sure this is all I probably really need to do.

Thanks.

 

I did a little searching and found that the key and key way that holds your harmonic balancer in place can fail. Apparently the keyway for the harmonic balancer is the same key way for your timing set so if there's damage to it that is a bad thing. It's the 2.5l motor right? I've never personally heard of a balancer breaking. The cover that it ground into is most likely the timing set cover. You need to find out why that happened as it's also part of the problem. Grab ahold of the balancer and see if there's any play in it. Try taking a strait edge or plum bob and seeing if your belt driven accessories are in line with the balancer.

 

Disclaimer, i have never worked on a boxer engine, i am just going off general trouble shooting.

More then likely what happened is when the belts when originally went, is that wrapped around the harmonic balancer and caught some something else, and as the engine is going around, it just wound tighter, and messed up the balancer, or the bearing inside of it.

I have seen some pretty messed up shit happen when a belt lets go. Some times it takes out your radiator hoses, i have seen it once take out the actual radiator.

 

This is awesome:

 

I'm looking into getting a welder.

Basically, I want to do simple stuff, no TIG or anything like that. I'd like to be able to do most any basic automotive welding (like welding in the patch panels I have to put on my Bronco's quarter panels) or welding together tubing (like what you'd put in a roll cage). I would also like to be able to weld together flat stock so I can make metal bracing to put up a tree house for my kids.

What would you guys recommend?

 

You don't need anything fancy, but get something nice. Question, do you have a normal 15amp 120V plug(standard hose plug), or 50amp 230V(6-50 plug)? I sell therymadyne at work, and believe you can get a entry level 115V for around 600, and a entry level 230V for around 800.

And if you are doing patch panels on a vehicle, i would go with the 2part epoxy they use in all the body shops now. It is a little expensive, but you never have to worry about warping you panels, and it is very easy to use. Any questions, shoot me a pm, and i will get back to you when i get home and dont have to use shitty online catalogs.

Quick question of my own, anyone mess around with an S2000 before? Any plus/minus's? Thinking of picking up one, another reason, i am out of town, going to look at an 02 S2000, with engine problems, they are asking 10K, was 12K, been there for months, cheapest ones i have found that are in good condition are 16K if not 20K. I am could probably get it for around 7-8K. Anyone got any input?

 

I'm in the middle of refurbing my basement shop, I can have a 230V line put in. The patch panel is for this. Both fenders are basically the same:



It goes through to the inner fender, so I am ordering both patch panels for both sides of the truck. They are surprisingly cheap, which is nice. There are a couple of other spots on there I need to weld when I do the body work, too.

The problem with those (other than they are one of the biggest targets for thieves) is that it's kinda like a Fox body Mustang with a V-8: You know whoever owned it probably drove the shit out of it. If it has engine problems, it's probably related to that.

 

What kind of engine problems are we talking about? Minor-annoying shit that the PO didn't want to deal with, or major-headache shit involving a tear down and rebuild or a new engine entirely?

Disclaimer: I have never driven a S2000. That being said, they are pretty revered by enthusiasts as being one of the most "pure" sports cars produced in recent times that is realistically obtainable for the Average Joe. They are supposed to be an absolute blast on the track, and apparently are setup almost perfect from the factory. Some people upgrade the rubber, and that's about it. Suspension, exhaust, etc. can all be left alone.

Cons include being attractive to thieves, not tall-people friendly (I am 6'3" and was told I would have a hard time fitting comfortably in one), and since it's not a torquey motor you have to rev the piss out of it to really have fun. I have heard visibility with the soft top on is almost non-existent, and due to the gearing highway driving can become a chore due to the drone.

They are supposed to be great cars overall if you enjoy spirited driving, I would just be a bit apprehensive about the problems you may run in to buying one with a possibly grenaded motor.

 

My roommate is looking for a set of e36 M3 cams. Engine code is S52. He found a couple of sellers that are willing to get rid of them for between $250 and $350, but if of you idiots here can do better, and have pictures, that would be awesome.

Thanks!

 

I have never been more disappointed in a car before. My dad told me it was in bad shape and needed some work, thought he was exaggerating a little bit. Bad shape was a mother fucking understatement, this car made a crack whore look sexy.

I barely got into the mechanical side of it. I just looked at the body and under the hood, it made me weep little bit. It looked good from about 10ft, you got close and cried a little bit.

First off, wider sized tired were stuffed in the wheel wells, it looked liked he put coil-overs on the car, to stiffen the chassis up so the tired wouldn't hit the fenders. There is less then an inch between the rubber and the fender. It worked mostly, front left fender looked like the tire came up and hit it.

The front grill area is completely missing. The lower vailance is zip tied to the upper bumper, not really that big of a deal, you just got to get the right clips and put it together right. Because the front grill is missing, there looks to be a whole in the radiator, someone has soldered together.

Then there is the paint job.... begin in the north and having shitty snowy winters, you expect rock chips. Well when they decided to paint this car, they didn't sand or fill in the rock chips, they just painted, so they are a bunch of little holes/dimples in the paint where the rock chips were. I really think they were trying to hide something here. I can see why they did this, possibly to help stop the rust from forming or a few other reasons, this on self isn't to bad, i could of over looked it. But when they painted the door, they didn't take off the interior panel and pop out the exterior door handle paint and put it back on. They just masked over the door handle and painted. So you can see it starting to flake off from around the little seam between the handle and the car. Also the paint job looked really thin, when the flakes were falling off, it just looked like a shitty job.

It looked like he was trying to do a customer interior door panel job. The top section of the door panel, say about 1/3 of it above the molded arm rest had this yellow fabric(matched the colour of the car) that was didn't looked like it stuck properly. And it looked like there was an aftermarket tweeter sitting in the middle of this piece of yellow. When you tried to close the door, the door handle is molded into the interior door panel like it is on most vehicles. Well this seemed very loose, as in when i closed the door, the handle moved and inch or more. When I investigated this, i saw that the panel had no clips on the back side to hold it to the door frame, and i could pull it away from the door. If i lifted i could of probably take the whole door panel off the frame. And the glove box was missing.

Then I looked under the hood. Didn't look to bad actually beside the hole in radiator. There was a standard 5 prong relay just screw into the side fender, with a couple of loose wires just hanging out, a power wirer, and a wire going somewhere. Then i looked a little further, and saw the wire going into the head light area. So who knows what was going on there. Looking around the head light area i saw what looked like two headlight plugs. I looked more closely at the headlights on the outside, not sure, but look after market with a little bit of carbon fiber on the top part. I know from the factory they come standard HID projectors, and in the HID modding world, the factory headlamp assembly have the best HID projectors around. So there is no reason to fuck with them. But who know where this wire was going.

When i decided to turn it on, at this point, i am already crying on the inside, and know there is no fucking way, my bid will ever be accepted. But i just want to hear it and see if there is anything majorly wrong. The check engine light comes on, i asked the sale guy what this is about, he tells me that the previous own, put some sort of tuner/chip on it and that is why it is there. Since there is no glove box, and i know this is where Honda generally puts the CPU, i poke around and see if i can see plug and pay tuner, i don't. I go to where the OBD II port is, i don't see one. I wonder if the CPU was flashed, but at this point i already know i am not getting the car for what i want to pay. So i really don't enquire to much further. It had a weird vibration at around 3k rpm, but once you got to about 4k, it seemed to go away. I didn't take it out for a spin, this was all just from revving it in neutral.

It looked to have a carbon fiber hood/trunk. But when i popped them open they both had metal on the under side of them. I am not really into this type of mod, but from my understanding the reason they use carbon fiber is to lighten the vehicle, so why use metal? Maybe they needed it for structural integrity, but there was much more to look at so i really didn't question it to much.

They is probably more but that is all i can think of at this moment, and i am tired of tired typing. I just don't know how/why someone would run such a sexy car into the ground like this. It really did make me sad that such a nice car, isn't so nice anymore. I really wasn't worried about to much mechanical problem. Even if the engine was pretty much fucked and i could get a good deal out of it, i probably would of made some sort of offer. I have never done a full engine restoration before, but i know enough people through work who would give me a hand. But all the body work that has to be done, that will just cost way to much. I do not know what they go for in the US, but in Canada, they were something like 50K brand new. Used in this year 02 or around, the cheapest i have seen them go is 16k, but more around 20k. They were asking 12K, the sales man said they would give it to me for 8,900. But even still, most i would give them for that is around 5, 6 at the very most. The car would have to be completely stripped and redone to be usable to my standards.

Very disappointing weekend.

 

Bummer. A buddy just sold a set of S52 Sunbelts not too long ago.

Has your roommate checked bimmerforums.com? They have a pretty active classifieds section.

 

Just strapped my girls new shoes on. Some Vossen CV2's matte black machined with a stainless lip. They are wrapped in 20" Nitto NT555's 245/35 front, 275/30 rear. Secured by some Project Kics Neo-chrome R40 lug nuts. They are pretty aggressively set up,as they poke out in the rear about 1/2 an inch, but I like it.