95naSTA

I got the bay repainted Wednesday. It came out a lot better. There are no runs but there are a couple spots where condensation from the gun/hose connection sprayed water and made tiny bubbles. Those spots are going to get buffed out later. I got the booster, evaporator, ceramic coated HVAC box, blower motor, resistor in after work today. The bay is already dirty in the pics.. yay pollen.

Ahh I LOVE TTAs. Wish I had the $$ to pick yours up..

I can't wait either! If I'm lucky the engine will be in sometime in July. I'm on travel for about a month starting next weekend.. The terminals I got off of ebay. Just search remote battery terminals.

I made a little head way this weekend. The new engine came Friday. I took everything heads up off, wheeled it up into my garage and put it on the stand. I ran the (cunifer) brake lines from the ABS distro to all 4 corners with new proportioning valves in the rear. I didn't do one section that goes across the rear of the car from the proportioning valve to the passenger side rear wheel. It’s 3 years old and a huge PITA in a slanted driveway. I'll bang it out on a lift eventually. The Kent-Moore J-45405 flaring kit I picked up not too long ago and used to do the lines is beyond ballin. I'm real happy I got it. I still have to run the 1 soft and two hard lines from the distro up to the master cylinder. This will come after the paint redo so I can mount the new booster and after I repolish and seal the master. Those 3 lines are the only ones you'll see in the engine bay coming from behind the drivers strut tower to the master. I hid all the other ones. The ABS electrical is cushion clamped up out of the way and the connectors all reach without issue. I made the jumper cables form the battery to the terminals. I have the rubber covers for the battery side, they're just not on yet.

What I have is kind of weird. I'm not achy or fatigued, I just sound like crap. No worries though. If it progresses beyond that, I'll put the rest time in. I found a couple more runs this morning. Weather permitting, my buddy will come buy next week to fix the major offenders. Quick pics I snapped on my way out the door this morning:

This happened. lol. I ran a 10 miler here in Philly Sunday. (the Broad Street Run) I had been training for it, got injured, had to let my iliotibial band heal, didn't run for 3 weeks until race day and killed myself during the race. Ended up doing it in 77 mins.. Anyways.. couple that exhaustion with both parents being sick and hacking up a lung and I ended up sick too. I took today off to go to the Dr. and I probably should have rested but.. didn't. I'll get some pics tomorrow but the list is as follows: Dropped my steering knuckles off to get reamed Por-15'd my ABS brackets, the newly welded rear trans mounting plate, and under the rad support where I welded metal. Found my IAT wires and extended them to where the filter will be. Stripped the clear powdercoat off my polished master cylinder (so I can re-polish and seal with ShineSeal) And a twist of luck had my buddy available to paint the bay. So, the bay is painted! The drivers side does have a couple runs that need to be fixed though. In his defense, a cold car sucks for runs.. And there's a little bit of dirt from it being sprayed outside in my driveway. Either way though.. I'm siked on it. Oh and the new engine should be here tomorrow.

Doing an Ecotec swap would be pretty cool to add to the list. The closest thing I've done was wire up a 20v silver top 4age into a AE86. I just wish I had more time..

I got out of work a little early today and made some progress with the car. All the ABS and drivers side headlight wiring is extended and loomed. I'm running the ABS wiring outside the unibody with cushion clamps.. Mounted the drivers side horn. Lost the IAT sensor wires.. lol. I'll find them it just got too dark. Welded in and grinded down a couple too far cut marks on the inside of the upper rad support. Welded washers to my modified rear trans mount plate. I had the washers there before but just sandwiched in. Got a tie rod out of one of my spare front knuckles that wouldn't come out with an impact.. Put all my misc tie rod/ball joint/knuckle/reamer stuff in a box and in my DD so I can take it to the place that did my CAD stuff. They said they could ream out the ball joint hole no problem but want to have the parts in hand to be clear on the tie rod flip part of the job. Lots of stuff came in too. Almost everything for the brakes, etc. Paint might not happen this week.. The ultimate goal is to get it in before Friday next week.

The machine shop wanted 1200 to rebuild the short block.. so new engine it is. I found one with the same mileage (17k) on ebay and bought it.

Did the heater core, got further with the wiring, had painter buddy come over to talk about when he can paint the bay(hopefully this week), degreased and cleaned everything in the bay that will be sprayed, , picked up the anodized stuff, stripped down the spare engine on the stand only to find rust.. FML. Water obviously got in there sometime within the last 3 years.. I did technically get the engine for free.. When I sold engines for a bit I made a few hundred and got this engine for free. So, it's not a complete loss I guess. I'm going to give a good machine shop in the area a call and ballpark a couple options. I may just opt for a new engine. I probably could just get away with honing the crappy cylinders out but that just seems halfas to me.

AGXs are the best struts outside of using the Bilsteins that came on the GXPs. Spring choice is dependant on how far you want to lower the car.

haha. Once I get the glazed look, i just hit the eject button and get out of the convo asap. Last night I ordered all the rest of the stuff to redo all the brake lines in Cunifer and to do all the re-routing. There are 3 lines that have to get from the master cylinder to the ABS distro. I'm running them from the MC, through the unibody behind the strut tower, and through or outside the unibody rail that goes over the wheel well to where I relocated the ABS distro. I'm using grommets where the 3/16ths lines go through the unibody on the drivers side. And I got a -8 AN 90* bulkhead with 1/2" barb adapters to run the rubber, non pressurized, ABS reserve line through the unibody. I have cushion clamps to mount all this too. I was able to get a whole firewall grommet set for $20 on ebay and I'll be using those for the electrical going through the unibody as well. This weekend I would like to get futher with the wiring, do the heater core, prep the bay 100%, and get my new engine partially disassembled and on the stand.

Lol. I guess I'll list a major hit list anyway. Paint, wiring, brake lines, coilover top mounts, finish control arms, install subframe, repolish stuff, build engine, install engine/trans, more wiring, trans/oil cooler lines.. I've been hustling, so all I can continue to do is that.

So when is the drop date? The suspense is killing me. lol

Lol this is much better than what I get from most people. They ask why isn't the engine in yet, I try to explain, then just get.. wtffff? I'm going to go with the same black as the outside for the bay. (black onyx 202) Edit- I'm picking up the anodized stuff Saturday.

I took a comp day today to get some more stuff done. The short list: -Finished drivers side bay bodywork -Mounted battery terminals -Drilled hole and tucked passenger side body harness.. (the easy side) -Drilled hole and started to tuck drivers side body harness I'm going to get in touch with my painter buddy and figure out when he can come by and spray the bay. I still have some prep left but it's not much.

Dude. It's killing me I'm not driving it already. Unless something comes up I'm using some comp time and taking tomorrow off to work on it.

I had some time this week to do some thinking and research on what I'm going to do to finish up my front suspension. Now that I have the taller ball joints figured out, that leaves the tie rods and top mounts. Tie rods: The plan is to flip them so that they are on the bottom vs. top (stock). Since the knuckle is higher in relation to the p/s rack, the tie rods are pointed up at an angle. Flipping them will bring them closer to the stock angle and the new lower control arm angle. Some people just reverse ream the tie rod hole in the knuckle and effectively use half the surface area to seat the tie rod. I would maybe consider this with a cast iron knuckle but not a softer aluminum one. I found a few different sleeve kits and once I get home and check out a stock one, I'll be able to see if any one of those matches stock taper. Top mount: The issues I have currently.. -Spring meets at an angle, contacts strut body, and eggs the 2.5" pipe I welded to the bottom of the mount to position the spring. -If I go any lower, the top of the strut body contacts the bottom of the mount. -The passengers side top mount is nuked from the wheel ruining accident. I had the idea yesterday that I might be able to modify the stock top mount to raise where the strut bolts, use the stock bearing and rubber isolator, and possibly a 2nd flipped and modified upper mount as an adapter between the coilover spring and the isolator/bearing. I've been trying to figure out what to do about the top mount for a while now.. I do not want to go the common aftermarket route of putting all the vertical load on a spherical bearing. I know it can work for a while but spherical bearings are not meant to be loaded axially and I don't like doing things the wrong way.. This makes it a lot harder to figure out how I want to distribute the load of the spring, have it at the right angle as the strut turns, and mount the strut shaft but I may have that all figured out.. In other news.. I'm hoping to finish the engine bay work/prep with two more free days and I'm trying to make that as soon as possible.

You can figure out if it'll be flush on paper if you know your current width and offset and the new. Then just take a 2x4 or something put it vertically resting at the top of the wheel wells and measure how far to the rim. You would be suprised how far you can go with the right offset before you have to worry about hitting anything inboard. Just my opinion, but if it's not RWD, wider wheels look overkill unless they're almost tucking or tucking up in the wheel well. It's just better wide and low. There has to be a way to modify something to adjust the camber. I'm not saying that it's possible from the factory, a quick search shows that you're right in you can't, but there has to be a way to do it. Do you have pics of your rear suspension or a diagram? If you have a 4 bolt wheel bearing unit and your rear disks are attached via backing plate you can use a shim behind the wheel bearing/plate to add camber (add as in take out negative). They make these for other platforms without factory adjustment. There are upper and lower control arms correct?

I think the wheels might work but you would definitely need to go lower first. IMO 9.5s wouldn't look right at your height.

^^^ x2 Can't wait to see it.

I had a feeling it was going to rain today.. which was why I was hustling the past two days. That and as of tomorrow I won't be back in Philly till the 25th. I did get some more stuff done anyway though. I went up to the anodizing place to check out the progress. They asked if I wanted them to polish the fittings/rails after they anodized them and showed me the difference. I couldn't say no. I should have that stuff at the end of the month. My ball joint adapters I had waterjetted came in and I pressed the threaded sleeves into them. They fit a lot better than I thought they would and I only had to do a very minimal grinding on the control arm to clear the sleeve and ball joint housing. They still have to be welded and coated. I bolted up the power steering line to the subframe to remind myself why I had it powder coated, looks legit. And since Zoop Seal is no more (the order I placed for it was refunded), I bought Shine seal to coat all my polished aluminum stuff.

Looks real clean dude. Nice come up.

Thanks. Nothing exciting but some more progress nun the less. The bottom has to be knocked down and I still have to grind and fill in all the strut tower spot weld b.s.

Yeah I'm a sucker for purple.. Especially black and purple. Took a day off to work..