Author Topic: The rest of the fleet...  (Read 12615 times)

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Offline toplessFC3Sman

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Re: The rest of the fleet...
« Reply #30 on: January 16, 2017, 07:03:44 AM »
Yea, I'd like my next DD to be RWD - I miss the playfulness of it on wet or snowy days. Plus, most RWD cars now are performance-oriented, so you usually get a limited slip diff with RWD cars. Either way, thats a few years out at least.

Offline toplessFC3Sman

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Re: The rest of the fleet...
« Reply #31 on: April 17, 2017, 09:49:10 AM »
Most of the exhaust hangers broke off the increasingly rusty Mazda5, but somehow the exhaust itself was still intact and not leaking. I didn't want to deal with trying to disassemble the whole thing to get out the section from the header most of the way back, and of course dealing with the inevitable broken bolts, problems sealing afterwards, and lots of other little problems that come along with rust.


So, time for some in-situ repair. Basically, its just taking one of the exhaust clamps used for holding together slip-on connections, and building something off of the exposed ends of the U-bolt to hang from the rubber hangers. So, some square-section steel tube, threaded rod, assorted nuts and washers, and some aluminum tube to slide over the threaded rod to protect the rubber exhaust hangers, and the result was:






Basically, everything is assembled to make sure the nuts are in compression against something so they don't loosen, and the ones on the end have threadlocker.
Ugh, rust...
« Last Edit: April 17, 2017, 09:54:08 AM by toplessFC3Sman »

Offline toplessFC3Sman

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Re: The rest of the fleet...
« Reply #32 on: June 14, 2017, 01:47:04 PM »
So  I replaced brake pads twice this weekend because I ate through two  sets... DE at Mid-Ohio, and I wanted to see how the pads that I ran on  the street (Akebono ceramics) held up. Needless to say... not well. I  destroyed a set of brand new pads over the first day, and some that were  a little bit used in 2 20-min sessions. To finish the last 2 sessions, I  had to run out to a parts store and pick up a set off the shelf... they  weren't great, and didn't grab very well, but at least they were  something. On the plus side, I think they shifted the brake bias to the  rear, which along with the greasy track surface at the hottest part of  the day contributed to the general loose-ness of the car and a pretty  big slide at the end of the video below.

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The engine overheated a bit at the end, so I coasted in at the end of that lap. No permanent damage, except the dead brake pads and it looks like the gas gauge no longer reads the top 1/4 of the range... Oh well, the sender is original at 200,000 miles, and I've replaced two of them at less then half that in other cars so I figure it's been over-due.


So, which one is out of place?


Melted tires...


And destroyed brakes...



« Last Edit: June 14, 2017, 01:50:37 PM by toplessFC3Sman »

Offline toplessFC3Sman

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Re: The rest of the fleet...
« Reply #33 on: June 27, 2017, 09:18:09 AM »
Looks like the last two sessions of the day, with the replacement parts-store brand brake pads, ultimately did in my driver's side caliper piston. I went in yesterday to replace the rotors and pads, and found that the caliper piston had just kind-of crumbled (at least the outward face). It still is holding fluid pressure, but the boot is torn and the front face is, well...


yea.

Replacing the brakes on Bessie (the manual Mazda5) was also a bit of a bear. The old front rotors were pretty worn and eating through brake pads, and the rear pads were marginal. Replacing the rears went fine, with the only WTF moment being that someone had previously used the wrong bushing for one of the two sliding pins on each rear caliper, which not only bound up very badly but didn't really fit in the hole in the caliper, allowing the inner bore within the caliper to corrode very badly (pinching the pin even more). It took a little while to clean these up, and fortunately the bushings are the same part as on the Saab so I already had a few spares. Oddly enough, the 5 & the Saab also use the same rear brake pads, but the rest of the caliper casting looks different.

Moving on to the fronts, I just could not get one of the rotors off of the hub. It was rusted so solidly that there wasn't even any play to try to work it off or get penetrating fluid in there. Ultimately, this happened...








I was careful not to damage the hub much or lug studs at all, but had to hack the rotor itself apart to get it off. The other front rotor popped off easily, since some kind gentleman of a mechanic put antiseize on the hub before installing the rotor. Who-ever you are, thank you!

Offline ITSWILL

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Re: The rest of the fleet...
« Reply #34 on: July 16, 2017, 01:55:07 PM »
I didn't see this before but it reminds me of the nightmare we had on Rich's RX7, except it was both front rotors galvanically corroded/ bonded to the hubs.
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Offline ~Groll69~

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Re: The rest of the fleet...
« Reply #35 on: July 18, 2017, 01:30:57 PM »
oh yea, and getting those rotors changed out was absolutely horrible.
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An RX-7 is like having a slut as a gf! She will love you, but she will also screw around with the guy at the parts store, most of the local cops, your insurance agent, your apex seals, your bank account and your credit card!!!

Offline toplessFC3Sman

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Re: The rest of the fleet...
« Reply #36 on: August 16, 2017, 07:12:45 AM »
Yea, it was on there pretty solidly. The worst brake job I had was helping a friend with their late '90s Acura CL... In this design the brake rotor is attached to the back-side of the hub flange, so to remove the rotor you had to push the driveshaft out of the hub (which was inevitably very badly corroded), then remove the hub & bearing assembly from the suspension upright. Predictably, the bearing assembly was so badly rusted to the upright that we ended up having to disassemble the whole corner of the car to take it to a machine shop to have it pressed apart, and even then their press wasn't enough to get it to budge without some angle-grinding work too. What an awful design that was...

Offline murz

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Re: The rest of the fleet...
« Reply #37 on: August 16, 2017, 07:52:21 AM »
Wow, that sounds absolutely awful. I'm going to need to replace the rotors on the vert soon, and it's got me nervous.
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Offline toplessFC3Sman

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Re: The rest of the fleet...
« Reply #38 on: November 13, 2017, 11:05:14 AM »
Lots of little things have happened to the various other cars (and ones in my inlaw's family... went to town on one with a 16 lb sledge hammer...), but the most visually exciting has to be the new wheel color for Annalie's winter shoes.

They were getting pretty badly corroded in spots, causing the original paint to bubble & flake off. Two of them would also develop a slow leak every year, despite having the tire place un-mount the tires and wire-brush the inside of the bead on the wheel. So, since I need to do a bunch of sanding and sealing anyway, why not make them a fun color?





Just got Michelin X-Ice 3's installed on them - I had liked the Hankook i-Pikes that I had before (and they lasted about 55k miles), but they weren't offered this time around. They were good for deeper snow and seemed to keep their composure relatively well on the highway, so we'll see how the Michelins compare.

Offline ~Groll69~

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Re: The rest of the fleet...
« Reply #39 on: November 13, 2017, 01:23:11 PM »
nice.  Looks good.
"Long Live Rotary"

An RX-7 is like having a slut as a gf! She will love you, but she will also screw around with the guy at the parts store, most of the local cops, your insurance agent, your apex seals, your bank account and your credit card!!!

Offline fidelity101

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Re: The rest of the fleet...
« Reply #40 on: November 14, 2017, 08:56:46 AM »
I like that green a lot.

Offline toplessFC3Sman

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Re: The rest of the fleet...
« Reply #41 on: April 11, 2018, 06:54:44 AM »
Well, I've been pleased with the Michelin X-ices this year, although I unfortunately never got to try them out on the frozen lake. Oh well, next year... The green is holding up surprisingly well for a rattle-can job too.

In other news, the Saab has gotten both rear calipers replaced because the parking brake mechanism failed and would not engage. This pic was from Sept, and the other one happened a few weeks ago.


My in-laws Chrysler Pacifica (the mid-2000s crossover, not the current minivan) got handed down to my brother-in-law and lost an engine mount that literally just rusted away, allowing the engine to move around the bay by 4 inches or so. No pics of that, but it involved partially dropping the subframe to replace it and the rear mount, and discovering that the subframe is showing some serious rust issues that will likely take it off the road in a couple of years.

Then, a worrying clunking noise started afflicting the front end of Bessie the Mazda5 - I figured it was the front ball joints since they felt a little loose, but the noise was actually the front sway bar bushings. They had become so loose, the end of the bar could move back and forth by an inch or more at each end. The plan had been to lower the front subframe a bit without removing it to unbolt the sway bar brackets, since they are wedged between the subframe and unibody. Then, I could get the bar measurements and old bushings, run out to the parts store, and put it all back together.


This worked fine on one side, and I was able to get everything off and confirm the problem.


The other side... not so much. One of the bolts came out without too much fuss (beyond the still very limited access to the bolt head), but the other one snapped off in the subframe. Well crap... that lead to removing the whole subframe to drill out and re-tap the broken bolt hole.


At that point, I was running out of time, so instead of trying to find replacement bushings, I wrapped the bars tightly in electrical tape and cut off the excess so that they fit snugly in the bushings. Then, I wrapped the electrical tape in two layers of teflon tape (for sealing pipes) so that it would slide more smoothly and not try to peel the electrical tape off. This is a temporary solution, but for the moment its been holding up well with no clunking.

Then, finally, in January the drivers' side rear sliding door of Bessie came off the rear track while we were out for dinner one night, and I needed to get it back together and working well-enough on one of the coldest nights/mornings of the year that we could limp it along til warmer weather. This has been a fairly consistent issue, since the van has an interlock switch that will block that door about 1/3 of the way in its travel when the gas door is open, to avoid crashing the sliding door into the filler nozzle or gas door. However, this interlock tends to not only stop the door, but force it off the track in the rear, and the interlock can freeze in place so it stops the door despite the gas door being closed... Eventually, this happened enough times that the rear slider rail was bent, the rear rollers were messed up and coming apart, and the door fit poorly.

Anyhow, it started feeling rough again a couple weeks ago, but we were fortunately able to find an almost identical Mazda5 (same color even!) in a junkyard about 6 miles away, so I bought the whole door, rear track and rollers off that car to replace our whole door. The rear track had been changed in that time and was beefed up right in the spot that ours had bent, so it looks like Mazda was aware of the issue and fixed it in later model years. Now, the door fits and slides much more nicely, but I still have to finish stripping down the old door to remove potentially usable bits before scrapping the rest.

I think that gets us up to date with the other cars anyway...


Offline toplessFC3Sman

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Re: The rest of the fleet...
« Reply #42 on: April 23, 2018, 07:19:01 AM »
I did an HPDE at Waterford Hills on Sunday with a friend, and the weather was great! I took the Saab because of the roll bar issues with the 'vert, but in general she did well despite being a bit outclassed and on all-season tires. There was an AMG GT there, Mercedes CLK63 AMG Black series, lots of BMW M's, a Lotus 7 / Caterham 7 replica, an Exocet, and of course a ton of track-focused Camaros, Corvettes, Miatas etc.

Of course, every time I do one of these, it seems like Annalie develops a few new issues - not unexpected for a 12 yr old car with 214k miles, that was never really meant or designed for this. On the drive there, the engine developed a misfire when WOT between 3-4000 RPM, so I was shifting a lot more than I normally would be since I didn't have any replacement coil packs with me, and tightening the plug gap didn't solve it (although it did seem to help). There is also a vacuum leak somewhere, as the idle is a little high and bouncing, and I think I can hear some air escaping under full boost. All the extra shifting seems to have started to tear one of the engine mounts, since it seems like there is a lot of extra looseness in the drivetrain now. Also, there is a small but noticeable exhaust leak, probably near the muffler in back. In good news, the EBC Yellows seem to have held up very well - none of the overheating brake issues occurred and the brakes were very consistent. Next weekend I'll probably be switching back to the stock pads and chasing down all the other problems.

Offline murz

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Re: The rest of the fleet...
« Reply #43 on: April 23, 2018, 01:58:51 PM »
I've been wanting to get into HPDE events, Waterford hills seems like a really good place to start off at. That's not bad for a car with that many miles!
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Offline toplessFC3Sman

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Re: The rest of the fleet...
« Reply #44 on: April 24, 2018, 08:39:15 AM »
Yea, Waterford is less intimidating than many larger places, and the speeds in general are a bit lower because of how tight it is. However, its still fun with a bit of surface and elevation change. I'd definitely recommend it!

The Saab held up pretty well - I think she surprised a number of people, including one guy with an E90 M3 that I was sticking tightly to for most of a session. The poor tires were begging for relief, but I'm constantly impressed by how capable she's been.