palmystar

Did a thing yesterday. Decided to replace rear bearing to tick a job off. Car is out of storage so may aswell do something with it. Axle back out. About a third of the bearings have already fallen out. New Bearing on. Didn't forget the plate but then looked again. MF Realised plate was on Backwards. LOL What a stitch up. Luckily all pressed off ok and didn't cost too much time. Axle back in. I would say i plan to do more in coming weeks but i have said that many times and then taken over a year to do something more. I do want to do a track day in the near future but i have a few things to sort out to make that happen... We will see.

More dismantling has been done. I have pulled the dash out and the carpet back. These cars are prone to rusting under the windscreen inside where the wiper assembly is housed. This car is no exception however the rust is not as bad as i was expecting and allot of it is probably treatable with a sand or wire brush and some rust treatment paint. The left air vent is probably one of the few places i will have to add some metal. right hand vent just needs a clean up. in general its pretty mint behind the dash. I have pulled allot more off the car than i originally planned but have to make sure its a proper jigsaw to put back together. Now i have started degreasing the engine bay. Then will be cleaning up all the rust patches and getting the front ready for some paint.

Sill tinkering away. I have removed the brakes for disassembling and cleaning. I also removed the front subframe assembly. i was considering a brake upgrade but to be honest the 5 stud starions have always braked pretty well and with a good set of pads they should be fine. this isn't going to be a track car. Once they were out it was time to tackle the front guards. I have been a little concerned about this part and also knowing i have to cut the guard off the side skirt, but unable to decide where to cut i ended up cutting straight down from the front of the front doors. the passenger side was the first side i did. it wasn't too pretty but could be allot worse. The body isn't too bad. The guard has the majority of the rust but it is hidden behind the fiberglass so the repairs don't have to be to pretty. Drivers side next and for the first time ever for myself the second side was better. i was actually able to unbolt this one and the guard itself was in pretty good knick as well. That's the majority of removing parts for the time being. Now i can get onto cleaning, rust treating and repairing surfaces.

I have been spending a little time her and there chipping away. I won't say making progress because i have to go backwards first before i can achieve anything. Started this weekend by pulling the rest of the engine out. Had to get some help in for this. Then tonight i spent and hour pulling it down to see what sort of state it is in. Got the pants off it and had a feel around. No.4 big end bearing as usual was the worst offender. No suprises there. so much so that that was the first one i tried. Others felt good. Proceeded to pull each piston out. As you can see it has been a little hot. Crank doesn't look to flash aswell. No.1 looked good. 2 and 3 had started heading toward failure. Main bearings show progressive wear with no.1 at the oil pump end looking pretty good and no.5 not looking well at all. Sparkle oil present at no.5 main journal. Now i know what is going on with the motor my focus will be on the body for now. I am starting with the front and will be dropping the front sub-frame, removing anything unnecessary, cleaning and rust repairs plus painting engine bay.

Tell me I'm doing it wrong in here

I am actually pretty motivated atm to make progress on this now its in the shed. Currently stripping the front and engine bay to clean up any rust and straighten the bent bits. No nasty surprises as yet but plenty of time for that. Old school abs unit will be going in the bin i think. I don't know if this front lip was standard or added. I always thought they were only on the earlier pre intercooled model. It won't be going back on regardless. I have options. but definately keen to have the twin cam head on it. Will be preserving the door sticker for sure.

Wow I have had this car for a long time. To stubborn to sell it so better do something with it. Mitsis are re-united again. I was a bit of an effort to get the car in the garage. Four of us were unable to push it so I had to shunt it in with the daily. Plans for it are still pretty similar to the original ones. I have a twin cam head off a vr4 that will go on the engine. Engine will be coming out in a week or so and will be pulling down and measuring bits. If the crank is stuffed i have a couple of spares so no dramas there. Basically i will be focusing on allot of the smaller jobs for now and getting it all cleaned and set up for when i can bring myself to part with some cash to build an engine. Hopefully the next update will be sooner than 14 years away. lol At least i have had 14 years to learn allot more and have a much better idea of what i am doing.

Decided in the end to not bother getting a wof. I don't think i would drive it much, if at all anyway. It is going to become a competition car. I am going to build it for gravel sprints i think and will prob have the odd track outing aswell. So have begun by stripping the interior. Still have to pull dash out and center console. I will be looking at putting a cage in it in the near future. As far as i am aware this is the only rust in the car. Passengers footwell. I will need to start removing the sound deadening. Looking forward to that. Also have space for the starion in this shed so need to get that moved in aswell and then i can slowly chip away at them both.

Had the boss look over the car to see what it needs for a WOF. Not allot required really. A tiny bit of rust repaired, a light fixed and rear axle seal and bearing replaced. Pulled axle out today to have a look. Bearing has seen better days i think. Will get stuff done to get a wof over the next few weeks. im not really to fussed about having this road legal. Don't even know when i will drive it. Also have dragged my Starion out from storage and will be starting some work on that very soon. Just have to organise my garage a little.

Progress has been made. well a little anyway. I completed the loom and taped it all up. looks heaps better now. mess before. and after also blanked off the egr port Plan was to weld something there. but after getting all set up found that the argon bottle was empty. so a temporary fix for now. Also cut the heater return line that runs under the turbo right down as the heater leaks anyway so it inst needed and took up to much space. Both that and the EGR delete has opened up allot of space at the back of the intake manifold. Then came time to start the car. Was trying for a while with no luck. laptop showed good trigger signals and ignition and injector test proved everything was working but the car refused to fire. A spray of MAF sensor cleaner into the manifold yielded some sign of life but not enough to get the car running. Add in the timing sitting at an unknown angle and you have a good recipe to set the car on fire. Luckily it wasn't a major and i managed to pat the flames out with a rag, but with images of another video i have seen of an mx5 owner unable to extinguish a fire in similar circumstances i decided this was not the way to go. I then remembered the car has not had any fuel put into it since around the july 2017 update so maybe time to drain the fuel tank and put some fresh fuel in. so i drained the tank. Quite easy to do when i can just switch the pump on with the laptop connected. so the tank drained and i switched the pump off as soon as i heard the tone change, put in some fresh 98 and turned the key to prime the pump. The pump didn't sound right. Tried a couple more times and no joy. Bugger fuel pump had crapped itself. It is the factory starion pump so it was due for replacement. So i replaced it with a high volume fuel miser pump. I was going to run a bosch 044 but the price was right for this pump and it was rated for a turbo application. So new pump fitted and it primed up nicely so it was again time to start the car. I turned it over and it was trying but pretty reluctant. it finally fired and proceeded the run like a hairy arse. A few more goes at running the engine i noticed the fuel table was only moving along the horizontal axis. No MAP. Checked settings and no internal MAP turned on. WTF i thought and turned map on in analog input 5. Straight to an error reading. Shit maybe it was meant to be on 4. Nope no reading. Double checked book and yep. meant to be on 5. Back on and attempt to calibrate. Link says NO. Shit had me thinking and frustrated a little. Then remembered i had encountered this before. After a firmware update the fault settings for the analog inputs changes to weird values. I should have picked this up straight away as i had just previously had to change the ECT values for the same reason. Now with values set correctly it let me calibrate the MAP sensor. Success! Now to run this car. it started less reluctantly and ran long enough for me to adjust the dizzy to get the timing somewhere near where it needs to be. Set timing by ear and let car run. then after around 20 seconds rev limiter initiates and car dies. WTF again. it was just idling. Repeat about for times. Start getting mad. Check trigger settings. Trigger 2 set for 4x cam. cool. trigger 1 set for 1x crank. O.. it is running off the cam so kinda suprised it ran at all. May also explain mixture leanness possibly? wasn't sure. At this stage i thought fuck it. I had a file for the car saved from when i knew it actually ran. so instead of mucking around i just loaded the old settings in and went from there. and what do you know the car ran. and kept running. YAY!! So today i had to get the car to my work which is around 15km. And had to do it by driving it. Loaded the bike in the back. filled the water and let it run for a bit and set the timing with a light. was only 4 degrees out. Only started and ran on 3 cylinders. O well prob a fouled plug. Though i better take the laptop so plugged it in and off i went. A few minutes up the road i noticed the car was cruising very lean, like 16.5:1 lean. Still on 3 cylinders i made it to a BP. topped up with some fuel and then Highlighted the bottom half of the fuel map and page upped until i was satisfied i would be a safer mixture. fired it back up and set off again. still on 3 cylinders and realizing i had forgotten to inflate the tires at the BP which were at 10psi. haha O well. at least the air fuel looked allot better. As i was entering a 100k zone the last cylinder joined us. Better late than never aye. car felt pretty smooth now. wanted to give it some but balloon tires and low psi felt kinda dodgy. Made it out to work. Put air in the tires. unloaded shit and decided to go up the road. With eyes on the o2 reading and kinda watching the road i lent on it a bit. air/fuel ratios looked acceptable so i lent on it some more. Wow. this is the first time boosting it since the bigger throttle body was put on. it has made a big difference to turbo response from what i can remember. And car actually goes really well. Still only running 9-10psi. with the speedo climbing faster than i think it ever has i decided that was enough fun for the day and put the car away in the workshop. I still need to take it out for a good tuning run anyway. So Basically the car drives but in a way i haven't made much progress. Just went backwards and now back to where i was before, with a little improvement. haha and the concludes today's long winded story. Thanks for reading.

made a little progress. cut all the plugs off the loom and ran it directly through the firewall instead of around. as the picture shows i can trim allot of fat off it now. measured it up, pulled it back out and added the plugs for everything in the engine bay. it has been simplified allot and will hopefully be more reliable. and also have much less of a presence in the engine bay. So i can put the loom back in, do a final check and tape it up nice and neatly. I also have to finalize the coil position and wiring. I will also add some fuses as i found i had a few unfused feeds for coil, injectors and so on. Then a few other little things to tidy up and hopefully it will be a runner.

wow 2 updates in the same year. that's a record. Am rather time poor atm so progress is slow. Loom has been pulled out. for some reason i had been adding plugs here, there and everywhere. the pic is a small percentage of the messiness. Loom after about 5 unnecessary plugs cut off. Will be bringing it straight through the firewall so will be shedding allot of length. Aiming to make the wiring as simple as possible. i was having random issues that were because of the over complicated wiring i think. Hoping to have engine running again in the next few weeks.

Well going backwards as usual. Wiring is such a mess I am starting again. Too many plugs and crap. Will also shorten the loom instead of running it around through the guard. Also need to fix the radiator mounts, put a fan on the radiator and fit a thermo switch.

Nope that is long gone.

Been another good break from this car. Moved to Napier from Palmy July last year and left the car at the olds for "a couple of weeks". Over a year later finally managed to get the car to Napier after the missus sold a car to free up the space. Before i moved i managed to get the car running. Still a little work required to get it road legal but shouldn't need anything crazy. In the mean time here's proof it runs.