I finally have a large enough update worth reading about lol.
I finally got around to starting to install all the preventative maintenance stuff that I've been telling you guys that I planned to do.
Picture of the box of stuff. I was too lazy to take everything out to show you what I actually bought. It's missing some stuff in the picture because I only remembered to take a picture of the box after I already started
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I started like last week. First up, I finally got my custom Autosolutions SSK from Ronald finally. The thing has some heft to it, and looks well made. I like the fact that he etched my name into the side of it lol
My buddy, John, came over to help. So up it went. Taking the exhaust off and stuff is so much easier with the lift. I also have a transmission jack, so no one has to like hold the exhaust. But I mean the Magnaflow catback I have is pretty light for two people anyways. We had to lower the transmission to get to the shifter coupling. Man that **** is such a :censor: to get off. I never want to take it off again lol I only remembered to take pictures after the exhaust and everything was off and we already started putting everything in
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The picture shows the new custom carrier, selector rod, and lever.
We did run into a little problem though
So when I got everything in, and I went up into the car to test it out, I noticed that the shifter was no longer centered. It's like .5" off to the passenger side. It's like basically shifted a whole gate over so neutral is like where 5/6 would be. But since the SSK throws are shorter than what I had before, I could still shift through all the gears fine lol I phoned Ronald, and after some troubleshooting, we think it's the selector rod. From my preliminary findings, it looks like the offset is slightly off.
So there goes that, I just sent him both my factory and his custom selector rod and am now awaiting the new one to be made and sent back. He confirmed that the offset is off like 2mm and that would cause it to be off by up to 10mm at the top.
So when I pull it all the way to the left, it looks like it's centered
Let go, and it's off
So since I couldn't do anything, I left the car up on the lift for like 3 days to wait for the part since I didn't want to put the car down and lift it back up again. But that was all pointless because over the weekend, it was going to rain :ben: So that meant I had to clean up everything and put the car down so that I could cover my lift and stuff from the rain (since my lift is mounted outside). it rained until like Monday? I think?
On Tuesday, since the car was down I decided that I would just go ahead and start tackling the VCG, DISA and all that stuff. The things that I planned to do that day were:
- Clean ICV
- Clean TB
- Replace intake hoses with Mishimoto silicone intake hoses
- Upgrade the DISA with the German Auto Solutions DISA upgrade kit
I didn't take much pictures of what I did then lol All I have are a couple pictures of the G.A.S. DISA stuff.
Scraping off the molded silicone o-ring part is super time consuming. Here's a picture with the unit fully assembled without the new o-ring installed yet.
The Mishimoto silicone hoses have their branding on it everywhere. But as most people who know me, I don't like to have too much of that stuff. I just ended up taking some black electrical tape and putting it on where the logos were to keep it more low key.
Then decided to end the day here and cleaned up :P
Then Wednesday, John came over again to help me tackle the rest of the stuff. Since we were short on time this was what we got done:
- Replace VCG
- Replace spark plugs
- Remove washer bottle
- Cleaned the valve covers and surrounding areas a little.
My engine was pretty clean. In fact, the VCG was still somewhat malleable. It actually made it more difficult to take off the valve cover than when it's all old and brittle. The seals around the spark plugs though were old and basically broke off like chips.
I forgot to take pictures of the plugs, but they did not look good
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Put everything back and basically cleaned up with time to spare. I don't think you could tell a difference between how it looked dirty and sort of clean here lol
So we actually started to do the next part of my long to do list. Took the electric fan off, and the belts to get ready to do the cooling system refresh tomorrow. And that's pretty much where we're at. It's so much easier to take off the fan on my car lol There's like a ton of room in front of the pulleys now, I'm not used to that.
Snapped a picture of the way the serpentine belt goes for reference later. Look at how cracked the belts were :yikes:
Thursday, I planned to tackle the rest of the cooling system refresh. Things to do:
- Replace belts
- Replace expansion tank
- Replace water pump with Stewart water pump.
- Replace thermostat
- Replace coolant hoses with Mishimoto silicone coolant hoses.
- Coolant flush
I decided against doing the radiator because it was still in very good condition. I'll probably replace that on the next refresh. I also didn't do the pulleys yet because I haven't figured out whether I want to do a power pulley set, or just go with OEM again. Or maybe put on a supercharger
: which would replace the pulleys too.
Taking off the belts was easy. But man, taking off the expansion tank was ridiculously hard for some reason. I spent like a good 2 hours pulling on that POS to finally get it out. And then the coolant hoses. God dammit, also very hard and also took me 2 hours to take those off. That's pretty much all I was able to do that day lol
Reused my transmission tank to drain the coolant
Expansion tank removed
When I took off the expansion tank, I saw this metal cylindrical thing come out. I was like WTF is this?! I've never seen it before. Then I check the new one, I guess it's meant to stay inside the tank. Good to know, I wasn't driving around with random metal parts in my system :lmao:
My radiator hoses are in super good condition. I could totally sell this. Same thing with my expansion tank lol But I probably won't, iono.
Hoses removed, picture taken from the bottom.
Comparison of the OEM vs. Mishimoto ones (with the black electrical tape mod)
I need to go buy distilled water for the coolant too. That's pretty much where I'm at. I was busy yesterday, and it's windy as hell so I haven't touched the car. Ronald@autosolutions sent me a text that he shipped out the selector rod, so I'm looking forward to that. Hopefully, it won't be too windy later today and I could try get some more of the stuff out of the way.