1988 Turbo 'Vert Project

[toplessFC3Sman]

I thought the drivers side front wheel bearing was on its way out since the steering was feeling pretty gravelly when turning right, i could hear a distinct grinding noise over about 60 mph, and there seemed to be some play in the front end.  I just received the bearings to do the job today, but after taking everything apart, the drivers side felt and looked fine.  I took apart the pass side to compare, and the outer race and bearing was all chewed up!  So, I ended up replacing both the outer bearing & race, including grinding down some of the inside bore of the hub so I could knock the race out, and then re-packing both sides this evening.  No pictures due to the rain, but overall it went smoothly enough, and everything sounds & feels right again.

Ready for camping!

[ITSWILL]

Figured you had it fixed as I saw the car in the R&D lot this morning.  See you tomorrow!

[fidelity101]

I thought the drivers side front wheel bearing was on its way out since the steering was feeling pretty gravelly when turning right, i could hear a distinct grinding noise over about 60 mph, and there seemed to be some play in the front end.  I just received the bearings to do the job today, but after taking everything apart, the drivers side felt and looked fine.  I took apart the pass side to compare, and the outer race and bearing was all chewed up!  So, I ended up replacing both the outer bearing & race, including grinding down some of the inside bore of the hub so I could knock the race out, and then re-packing both sides this evening.  No pictures due to the rain, but overall it went smoothly enough, and everything sounds & feels right again.

Ready for camping!

I have to do that on my spare hubs, the races look fine but I wan't to be able to service them easier next wheel bearing batch around. Also the off-road stuff really eats at wheel bearings.

[toplessFC3Sman]

Yea, I was worrying that it would be more difficult than it was, but it only took about 20 min with a cut-off wheel & a dremel to get in there & grind off enough material on both sides to knock out the bearing race.

On the way back from camping, I had a little bit of a scare - saw the oil pressure drop to 0 at about 11:30 Sunday night, still 25 miles from home.  I pulled over to check it out, and Helen didn't notice me flashing my high beams & turning on the hazard lights while coasting off the road with the engine off... Fortunately, it turned out it was just the wire coming unclipped from the sensor, so I was back on my way quickly.

She's running well now - I pulled pretty evenly with a somewhat modified C4 corvette on the way home from work today (unless he was toying with me & wasn't WOT - I couldn't tell), but she felt very strong anyway.

[toplessFC3Sman]

So at the end of last week, the driver's window decided to stop going down again, the driver's door lock jammed, and the feeling of looseness in the rear diff has gotten to the point where I don't want to drive the car too much.  The first two were sudden, but the rear end has slowly been getting worse since I put it back together with the Torsen.  Has anyone rebuild the rear end and set the pinion lash on these?  I thought I had everything to spec when reassembling, but apparently not.

The window & lock shouldn't be too difficult, I think one of the cable-ends that I crimped on the cable to hold it in the spool connected to the motor probably pulled off, and I've got a new lock ordered to swap the pins from my old lock into, but that's all waiting for a couple weekends.  This weekend, Helen's Celica is getting new springs & struts.

[fidelity101]

Ugh i hate setting differentials. Its always try and fail and repeat until i give up.

[toplessFC3Sman]

Yea, not looking forward to the differential, but its sounding like it's time to re-adjust.

Anyway, this weekend is doing a bit of refurb on the Celica.  I got the rear suspension just about done today.  The new rear springs seemed slightly taller than the old ones, and maybe a little bit stiffer as well, although I wouldn't put too much emphasis on the repeatability of my "measurements" on the rear springs.  The old rear shocks were completely done though - the driver's side had about 2" of free play in its travel before actually moving fluid and trying to damp the motion.  The pass side was a bit better, but still made sucking noises and seemed pretty low-effort vs the new ones.


Also, the rear struts were pretty easy to do without spring compressors, since there wasn't very much pre-load on the springs.  Basically, I unbolted the strut links, removed the nuts connecting the strut to the rear uprights, and disconnected the brake lines to get them out of the tab on the strut.  Then I put the jack under the rear suspension, compressed it slightly, and removed the top nut off of the shock's shaft.  Then I slowly lowered the jack to relieve spring tension and just removed the spring & strut, leaving the top mount attached to the car.  I replaced the top mounts on all corners about 2 yrs ago, and they were still in good shape.  Then, I just assembled the struts with springs, minus compressing the spring, arranged it in the car and pumped up the jack to push the top of the shock's shaft through the top mount, compressing the spring again.  At that point I just tightened down the nut on the top (holding the top of the shaft underneath where the bump-stop would sit with a piece of thick rubber and vice-grips), and re-assembled everything else.

Unfortunately, the sway bar end-links would not come off without resorting to destructive means, so I need to run down to an auto parts store to get new ones.  I just need to pick those up & install them, and then put the wheels back on and the back-end is done.

[toplessFC3Sman]

So, why did Toyota decide to fully capture the brake line in the tab on the strut?  Both my Saab & the RX-7 have a slot so that once you pry out that U-shaped plate, you can just push the brake line out and completely detach it from the strut without hydraulically disconnecting anything.  Unfortunately, this meant that after getting everything done today, I needed to bleed the brakes, and of course the bleed screw on the pass front caliper was frozen and just broke off.  So the suspension is done, but I still need to extract the brake bleed screw and finish that job.


Turns out the front springs were not correct - they felt like they were a similar spring rate, but they stood about an inch shorter than the stock springs.  Therefore, I kept the original springs in front but replaced all the rubber and the shocks.


She's back on all 4 wheels now, but we're waiting to drive her until I get around to finishing the brakes, so I'm back to DD'ing the 7

[fidelity101]

Broken bleeder? sounds like you need a new caliper.

[toplessFC3Sman]

Well, my first option is to drill out the hole in the center a bit bigger so I can fit a decent-sized easy-out in there and try to extract it.  If that doesn't work, maybe I can drill & tap it a little bit bigger and use a larger bleed screw (which I've done on the drivers side a couple years ago), and only if that doesn't work is it time for a new caliper.  That's happening this weekend tho, since I'm rarely home when its light out during the week

[fidelity101]

As much as that would work I don't mess around with brakes/safety stuff like that, a new caliper is probably just 40 dollars at the most anyways.

[toplessFC3Sman]

Yea, the new caliper was about $35, and I decided to just go that route since I didn't really want to be running back & forth to the parts store multiple times or running extension cords for the drill out through the rain to the apt parking lot.  Well, I pulled the caliper off, went down & exchanged it for the rebuilt one, got home and it wouldn't bolt up since the slide-pins' bore was too small to fit the bolts... So back down to the store to compare the old part with the new more closely, and its just the pins that are different; I grab those and put them in the new caliper and it all goes together easily, so the Celica is back on the road.

Just in time too, since the Saab developed a nasty misfire at anything over 1/3 throttle on the second run down to the store - it seems like one of the coils went bad.  New ones arrive on Weds, so I'm still DDing the 7.

If this house ever happens & I have a garage, I'll finally get the chance to tear apart the rear diff & re-set that, relocate the battery into the bin area, and chase down a couple small oil leaks.

[toplessFC3Sman]

No news on the 'vert - Most of my time & energy is going into either getting our DD's ready for winter or into all the stuff surrounding buying a foreclosed house... what a PITA, but it will hopefully be worth it soon.

Anyhow, I replaced the coil in the Saab which solved the misfire, but then began noticing that one of the speakers would randomly emit a burst of loud static, making the commute much less enjoyable.  The amplifier for this speaker (and a few others) lives right under the driver's seat, so right where any water will pool when snow & moisture gets tracked into the car.  When I first got the car, it had a big problem the sunroof leaking down the drivers-side pillars and pooling under the drivers seat too - I fixed this as soon as I could & the amp didn't seem to suffer any damage at the time, but 6 years later...


More digging turned up greater amounts of dirt (and dust, and dog hair, and of course corrosion) on the suspect


This leg where the heat-sink-support meets the PCB was especially nasty, and it looked like the rust had affected some nearby pins & thru-holes in the PCB


So off it comes for cleaning.  Two of the hooks attaching it to the PCB were soldered & put up a bit of a fight, and the third was glued.



And after some cleaning & re-soldering a few pins


Sanding most of the rust off the cases, and hitting them with some clear coat to prevent future rust


And now it's home again under the seat, and no more static!

[toplessFC3Sman]

No pictures for this one, as nothing changed visually very much.  The past couple weekends I've just been working on small stuff in the doors that's gone south.  The driver's side lock got jammed and would no longer fit the key, so I got a new lock, swapped the plates from the old one to the new one so that the same key would still work, and installed that.  I had to do a similar thing on the Celica with both the door lock earlier in the year & the ignition switch last year, so this is getting to be pretty routine.

The driver's side window motor broke a piece inside the winding mechanism and got stuck in the up position at the beginning of winter (at least it wasn't stuck down!).  Turns out the used replacement I bought was also broken, but in a different way, so I could combine them into a single working unit, so that's now installed & seems to be doing fine.

The door speakers had been replaced sometime before I got the car, and are still in decent shape themselves, but had been mounted in a very half-assed way (wood screws through the sheetmetal... real quality work...).  They caused the door panels to buzz away, and because of where one of the screws poked out, were bending the arm-rest in a way that was causing it to deform.  While the door panels were off for this other work, I re-did the mounting using some 5mm allen-head hardware to keep them from hitting the door panels. In addition, the door panels needed a little R&R to tighten them up & get rid of a few squeaks/re-glue bits, which all went pretty well.

All in all, a bunch of small jobs that finally came together, so the 'vert is back on the road.

[toplessFC3Sman]

Well... the window regulator broke AGAIN last week... It seems to work fine for a while, then just decides to bind up and not move.  I've got some ideas as to the cause, but I want to take it apart & assess what's wrong first.  Anyhow, I've been DDing the 'vert for the past 4 weeks since I've been waiting on suspension parts for the Saab, and a tear has started forming and spreading in the top.  The current top has been on the car for about 10 - 11 years; it was one of the first things I replaced when I bought her, and since then she's lived outside almost exclusively, either in my parents back yard or in various apartment complexes.

I forgot to take a before-repair picture, but with some rubber cement and a needle & thread, I tried my hand at sewing up this seam.  I bent the needle in a "U" shape to about 165 degrees, and used a pair of pliers to feed it through. The vinyl on the top was very thin and tore out easily, so I had to be very careful and try to secure it with the glue as well.



We'll see how it holds up after putting the top down a few times, but for the moment it's intact anyway