It took a month of sitting half in my garage, but the car is together and ready to roll! This "make it run" project spiralled out of control pretty quickly. What started as fix the charging system and find the cause of the engine code (assuming wiring issues) turned into most of the accessory drive, half the top end, tune up, charging system, and some hop-ups. But it looks pretty now!
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| If only it was that easy! |
I started out changing the alternator and getting a cheap battery. The old alternator had a bearing that sounded like it was made of gravel, and it was noted when we were unloading it that it was sparking internally. While I was removing it, I also noticed that it wasn't even plugged in, so the thing was only running off a $35 junkyard battery. I suddenly understood why we had to jump start it so many times. It ran really decent in park after I swapped these, but it was still unhappy when I tried driving it around. I decided I'd try a tune up, to see if that helped, but when I started pulling spark plugs (some with a breaker bar), I noticed that the coils were all green and some filled with corrosion. That pretty much pointed straight at the classic cracked plastic intake. That's when things got interesting.
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| Gooey Green |
My one mechanic friend said to me that this is the easiest intake I'd ever change, which I don't find any comfort in because it took way, way, way, way longer than it was supposed to. I'm blaming it being my first time doing an intake and also lack of time as my cop-out for why my car has been sitting for a month to do an afternoon's project. It was also really rusty and stick together. I took everything off the intake, but I didn't want to mess with unhooking all the junk off the throttle body (like the EGR pipe) because of the rust, so I instead devised this clever way of suspending it from the hood with zip ties while I snaked the intake out from under it. Once the intake was off, I went at the spark plugs because it's way easier to get at them then. Three of them I needed to wash, vacuum, and blow corrosion out of the holes enough to get the socket to just barely grab a corner of the plug to know it was lined up. A few taps with the dead blow, and we were ready to break them loose... with the breaker bar. Worst plug job so far, but just wait til I get back to dragging cars out of groves!
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| Corroded down in the hole |
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| All the corrosion in the socket keeping it from going onto the plug |
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| The throttle body hanging from the hood, but the intake is hanging from the throttle body because I missed a bolt. |
At this point, I held the manifolds up to each other, and realized they didn't match. After about three days and a few e-mails back and forth and around the office at Dorman, I finally got a guy more knowledgeable who basically said you're not looking at it right; it'll be fine. It was, but it killed some vacation days I was taking in the hopes of fixing my cars. Once I got the "ok," I began putting on the intake, and found my torque wrench was not working correctly. Pretty sure I over-torqued the intake, but so far it hasn't been an issue, and I'm kind of afraid to back it back down. There were a few less than cheap sensors under the intake that I decided to change while I was there, and I also figured I should replace the coils because the old ones were bathed in coolant. Luckily, my friend took his '04 Mustang GT to the dyno, while my car was down, because he added a Procharger kit. He donated cast off injectors, coils, and mass air flow sensor which was awesome right up to the point where I installed them all and found that the wiring connectors were different for the injectors. One of my injectors had an end that kind of crumbled apart when I pulled it out, so I went online to find a set of injectors that had the upgraded flow rate of the ones I got off the Mustang but would plug into the Vic harness, and way at the bottom of the page, I found adapters to make them work for $28!. I was so excited. They were a struggle to install because they were stiff, but they worked great.
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| You'd think that would make a difference, right? |
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| That did make a difference, though. |
When I replaced the alternator, I noticed that the belt was meh and the tensioner was dead. I honestly reapplied tension with my giant prybar and a dead blow. Then I figured that the coolant system was half replaced, I might as well do a water pump while I was at it because I'm right there. A water pump, belt, tensioner, idler pulley, and alternator later, the accessory drive is almost completely replaced. Now I just need underdrive pulleys.
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| Yeah, this is the only way it returned to applying tension. |
It's been two weeks since I wrote the previous section of this blog, and I finally found funding (or stopped buying parts long enough) to license it! I don't have everything done from the intake swap, but a couple sensors and an exhaust leak aren't keeping this thing off the road. I took it to work and did a few things to it, most notably swapping the tires and wheels for 17" steelies with oversized Blizzaks. I'm excited to see how the Blizzaks work because I've heard so much about them, all praise and rave reviews. She's on the road, but jot out of the shop yet. The initial drive found the power steering barely works, some lights don't work, the brakes are sketchy at best, a caliper hangs up, the torque converter shudders, there's a howl coming from the rear end, and it's still an open dif. I've got a 3.73 ring and pinion and a limited slip differential for it that I scored off Craigslist, and I'm going to see if we can flush a few systems into submission. I plan on attending the Detroit Gambler 500 with this car at the end of April, so we'll see if I can get it all together by then. I'm pretty optimistic. Either way, I'm excited for my new wheels, having actual coil springs in the rear suspension, and having heat in winter. If this keeps up, the black Vic may not be long for my driveway.
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| Old wheels and tires |
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| New wheels and tires |
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| Beauty shot |
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