Bemused and Confused

As you can see from the description to the right, this is basically my blog about me, my cars, and my adventures at the track. Well, to me they are adventures. To you, it might seem a bit tame… or obsessive, maybe even boring. But, I am having fun with it and through this blog, I hope that I can inspire others to get out there and have fun.

The Archives listed to the right show all my previous posts. They are in reverse order with the newest listed on top. If you want to start from the beginning, simply click on the More… link in the Archive sidebar and you will get a list of all my posts… not that anybody would want to read from the beginning.

Most of the pictures are clickable. Click on them, and you will be taken to my Flickr photo sharing site where you can get higher resolution images.

Enjoy,
Eric

After the the first track day with the Rat, we all found out that the engine was losing oil somewhere. The engine wasn’t burning the oil because it was not smoking. It was something I needed to figure out. I have not had a chance to work on the car lately because of a lot of real life events. I did order some parts, the oil pan gasket, oil level sensor gasket and a new throttle cable. The parts came in this week so I figured I could use a break from real life and went out to work on the car this weekend.

I first did a bit of an inspection under the car. There was a light sheen of oil down the right front of the engine. This might have been caused when I refilled the oil and missed a bit. It is possible the oil cap is leaking a bit, but I don’t think so. It holds pressure, so I think it is OK.

There was oil pooling on the bottom of the power steering mount, just a drip though with no puddle on the floor. There was oil dripping from the bottom of the transmission bell housing and a coating of oil all over the transmission. This is not really surprising considering the oil leaks when the car is moving. The airflow will push the oil back under the car. I didn’t see anything really obvious so I grabbed my tools and climbed under the car.

 

I drained the oil to start off seeing as I was removing the bucket that holds all the oil. The oil pan is very long and has about 20 bolts holding it in. The goofy thing is there is a support that bolts over the oil pan at the rear and to the front of the transmission bell housing. Once I figured out that it was there, it was no big deal to get out. I also took out the bolts for the steering rack so I could lower it down to get the pan out.

I removed the bolts and the pan dropped down. I bit of oil came sloshing out because the car was up on the ramps and not level so the oil pooled at the rear of the pan. But, that is as far as I could get the pan to go. It was hung up on the steering rack and the oil pickup tube was not allowing the pan to slide out. I found a way to lower the steering rack a bit more… mostly by yanking on it. I also reread the manual and it said to remove the oil pump. I thought that was because they figure if you are dropping the oil pan, you are going to remove the pump. It turns out that in order to get the clearance you need, the pump has to come out. No problem; it was just three bolts.

A view of the bottom end of the engine, the steering rack and the oil pickup tube

 

With the rack down and the oil pump out, I was able to wiggle the oil pan out from under the engine. There were no surprises in the oil pan… no parts or metal shavings or anything nasty. I peeled off the old gasket. It was a rubber like material. The new gasket that I just bought is more of a traditional cork gasket. I wonder if somebody used the wrong gasket type or possibly made their own gasket. I certainly looks like that may have been the case.

I started work on cleaning up all the parts. The oil pan cleaned up pretty well. I removed the oil level sensor with the pan out and cleaned it up too. It had a lot of caramelized oil on it.

 

I went to clean up the odd transmission support that I mentioned earlier and when done, I was surprised to find cracks.

Inside of the mount shown above

Outside of the mount. You can see the spider web of cracks

 

It looks like compression stress to me. This is a bit disturbing. It could be that it is just from the age. It is also possible that the broken engine mounts and the worn transmission mounts could have allowed enough flexing that it could have caused the damage. It is not cracked all the way through and I don’t think it is any danger of coming apart any time soon. I will probably reuse it for now and get one on order to install later on. It is a $100 special order part so it will take a while to get here.

Tomorrow I will try to get out there and get all of this put back together. Getting the pan back into place without damaging the gasket is going to be a bit of a challenge because of the lack of room. But, I am sure I can find a way.

I also have the two gaskets for the exhaust where it connects to the headers. Looking from the side, it doesn’t look like there are gaskets installed there now. They might be there, but all I can see is red RTV oozing out the sides. I figured that if the gaskets are not there, it would definitely add to the noise generated in the cabin. It is worth a shot.

I will also try to get the throttle cable installed. The current one is very stiff making it hard to move the gas pedal. Normally, I like the gas pedal to be a bit stiff, but this is too much and it indicates a worn throttle cable. Seeing as I don’t want the cable to break leaving me stranded somewhere, I figured that I could try and replace it.

I have been working on lots of little things, clean up, putting small stuff back together and trying to wrap things up. It never goes quite as well as I would like, but I am making progress.

I finished putting the new gear shifter in. After my failed attempt before that ended in me breaking the shifter, I was a bit more careful this time. But, it went fairly easily and I wrapped it up on Friday night. I ran it through the gears, and I still thought it felt sloppy, especially when in gear. But, when I compared it to the shifter on my E46, wow, what a difference. The Delphin Rat’s shifter is a lot more tight than the one in my E46.

The shift handle came with the car, but it will work for now.

The throw is very short and notchy. It will take some getting used to. I am concerned about dropping the car into the wrong gear so I will have to practice some before my first track day. If that means “garage racing", that is what I will do.

I still have the car up on the jack stands. I had ordered new tires and they have been sitting at the dealer for a week. I threw the 4 wheels into the back of the truck and went and got the new tires put on. The wheels all balanced out very well. There is one wheel that is a bit bent though. It balanced out nicely so I am not too worried about it. I guess we will see what happens there.

Before I put the wheels on and drop the car down, I wanted to drain the transmission and refill it with fresh oil. But, (isn’t there always a “but” with my stories?) the refill plug would not budge. I could get the drain plug out, but that would be counter productive if I can’t refill it. The plugs are a huge hex head bolt. I think they are something like a 14mm. I don’t have a handy socket type hex head in that size, but I did have one in the traditional Allen wrench configuration.

It just barely fit up beside the transmission although the exhaust was getting in the way. I could get the wrench in but the hole is not very deep and I couldn’t get a good bite. Needless to say I struggled with it for about an hour before I gave up. I may have to take it to a mechanic to get it up on a rack to do this.

It seems to be a trend on this car… pretty much everything that has ever been worked on before has been over torqued. It is something I keep running into.

The power steering system had been leaking fluid all over the place for a long time. Everything on the left side of the engine and all down the belly of the car are coated with it. Dirt likes to stick to oil, so it is a very messy car underneath. It makes working on it more of a pain too.

I decided to just pull the hole power steering system out of the car. It was a bit challenging getting to a couple of the fittings, but it wasn’t too bad. I now have to find a couple of bolts or plugs that I can put into the steering rack to plug the power steering line holes.

You can see all the crud on the bottom of the reservoir. It’s like that all over the car.

I turned my attention to putting the rest of the engine stuff together. First, I installed a wire tunnel thing to the timing belt cover. There are a couple of wires that route behind the fan and fan pulley for some odd reason. I didn’t like the way they just hung there just begging to get tangled up in the fan. One of the wires is for the cam position sensor so if that breaks, the car just dies.

It turns out that there is a little plastic cover part that was supposed to be there. I noticed the holes on the timing belt cover which made me think. A quick check of the online parts catalogue confirmed it. I ordered it from the dealer. It fit nicely and should keep the wires out of the way. I am not surprised that the car didn’t have this part on it when I got it. Plastic parts like this have a tendency to get very brittle from the heat. It probably crumbled to dust when whoever did the last timing belt change pulled it off. It doesn’t excuse not replacing it though.

I then hooked the alternator back up on its new bracket and put the fan belt on.

I then flushed out the radiator and cleaned it up as much as I could. I went to reinstall it after putting the fan on and found out that I didn’t have the necessary hardware. Somebody had used the totally wrong bolts before. They were pretty much stripped so it does not make sense to use them again. I will have to order them along with some of the other knickknacks that I need. I did finish installing all the water hoses though.

I had mentioned in a previous post about the cracked seat. I have been researching what to do about that for the last week. It turns out to not be a simple thing. There are rules, go figure, about what you can and cannot use on the street and on the track. There are also some confusing unwritten “rules” about certain configurations and their safety. I had pretty much decided to use fixed back race seats, but all these rules seem to be ruling that idea out.

Fixed back seats in a car with no roll over protection is said to be a bad idea and not safe. I am not sure exactly why that is, but I have heard it from multiple sources. I wonder if this isn’t like the old days when people dreamed up all kinds of reasons why wearing your seat belt was unsafe. But, since I am not sure about this and since the people who have told me this are more experienced at this stuff than I am, I guess I will believe them for now. The upshot of all this means that I would need to buy a roll bar kit for my car and bolt it in or have somebody weld it in. That is pretty darned expensive.

I could go out and find another stock sport seat for my car. Then I could just use my existing seat belt and everything will be fine. To that end, I decided it would be a good idea to test fit a seat and see if I fit with my helmet on.

The seat did not want to fit in properly, maybe because I was using the passenger seat on the drivers side. Part of the problem was one of the threaded hardened mount points was partially stripped because the PO had used the wrong bolt. I chased the threads with a new bolt very carefully and it seemed to clean up OK. I never quite got the seat fully bolted down, but it was good enough to test with.

Yes folks, I am vertically challenged. I am 6′ 2″ tall. Yes, that is pretty tall, not really tall, but tall enough were it is difficult to fit in some cars. And it turns out, I am way to tall to fit in this car with my helmet on.

I can scrunch down so that my neck is not compressed by the roof, but then my knee would be activating the cruise control all the time and every time I went to brake I wouldn’t be able to steer since my thigh is jammed up against the steering wheel. The good news was that when I scrunch down like that I can actually see the entire speedometer and tachometer through the smaller after market wheel that is in the car.

So now I am facing the idea that I either have to get fixed back race seats and a roll bar and a 6 point harness or I buy reclining back “race” type seats and use my existing seat belts. Neither are inexpensive. I will most likely go with the reclined back seats. They will offer a lot more support than my current seats and I can mount them lower to the floor.

I went back to work at the front of the car. The PO had installed an after market “cold air intake” system. This consisted of a cone filter bolted onto the end of the intake ducts. I am not sure how sucking air from inside the engine bay is considered cold air though. This type of system is supposed to allow the air to flow with less restriction, and who knows, maybe they do a bit, but I want to put the original system back into place.

The PO did leave me the original air box so I went to install it. Of course there are pieces missing like the duct that is supposed to go on the front side of the air box. I had to figure out how to mount it up since I had never seen it installed before. I think I am on the right track now, but I also think I will need a few more parts.

It’s getting there…

While doing this work, I noticed a couple of other things that need replacing.

The vent line running from the coolant reservoir to the radiator shattered when I went to put it on. It was that dried out and brittle.

I also noticed the high pressure fuel line running from the fuel pressure regulator to the injection fuel rail was checked. In other words, it was getting brittle too. I really don’t want that line springing a leak on me. That is how engine fires happen. I just need to find the right sized hose to replace it with.

You can see the cracking better if you click on the picture and look at the large size.

The last thing I did today was put the new gaskets in for the rear tail lights. This is something I started a long time ago but hadn’t gotten back to. I really wanted to actually finish something today. The gaskets went in with now problems. I did have to spend about an hour sanding off some rust that had formed. The gaskets must have been leaking for a long time. I repainted the sanded areas and let it dry before putting it all back together. There, I finished something!

I guess it is one of the very frustrating things about working on an older car. There has been more stripped hardware on this car than anything else I have ever worked on. There are a ton of places where the wrong hardware was used to install something. There has been a lot of stuff that has been way over torqued. It is like the person who did this stuff was used to working on semi trucks or Ford pickups or something. “Tighten it until it squeals, then it is good to go!” (Hmmm, that is something my Dad used to say about lug nuts, but that is another story involving me holding a flashlight, apparently at the wrong thing, for long periods of time.)