It's right about a year now since my Z finally arrived. There's about 8.5K more on the clock and y'all are pretty familiar with the fact that I've sunk a small fortune into it. It still needs paint (It's a 20 footer)...any closer and it's obvious it's been used as a driver the past 23 years. Mechanically it's rock solid, except for the low coolant sensor I need to replace but haven't gotten around to yet. Everything has been replaced with stock parts except for the Bilsteins I had put on, which were stock on the SS model, so it's still pretty much stock. Well...Bilsteins and the stereo...the stock AM/FM cassette that only worked on the front speakers was replaced with a new head and full Polk Audio speakers. The last 5 or 6 months I've been putting 50+ miles a day on it driving to work on city streets and she's performed flawlessly. Whatever the hell the dollar amount is I've got invested, it's been money well spent. If I drove a brand new Altima as much I drive everyday, I'd hate life. Getting to drive my Z with it's 6 speed to keep me interested, I can deal with the drive.
Low coolant sensor is replaced, so that damn idiot light won't be annoying me off and on all the time. The shop hired a new mechanic and he kind of went nuts over my car, which is always fun....it's always nice when someone who knows about cars digs your ride. Speaking of which....I saw a new Camaro rolling on what had to be 32's today. It looked completely and utterly retarded. I can appreciate someone who takes care and pride in their vehicle, seriously I can even appreciate a well done donk to a certain degree, even if it's not quite my thing. But that Camaro...dear God no. To make the whole package complete, it was a 6 banger with a loud mouth exhaust. GM ought to buy it back from him just to crush it and ban the guy from ever owning another one of their products.
Well, I finally caved. After years of doing virtually nothing on the Nova, I cracked and I'm going to take it to a shop for them to finish the little odds and ends. Their To Do list: Fab brake lines Run transmission cooler lines. Address leaky AN fitting on gas tank. Maybe clean up some wiring. And that's it.
Hey, at least you'll finally get to drive it. Speaking of projects, Jungle Julia's LS swap has kind of stalled due to a bunch of life duties here recently. Li'l Bandit's truck lost third and fourth geears, so I've been in the process of rebuilding a spare transmission that I had at my shop, only to find out that some of the parts are incompatible. It's a Ford 4R70W, but the spare tranny has the earlier model internal components, and that's been causing me all kinds of hell. I didn't want his truck to be out of commission for too long, but I'm just going to rebuild the one that's in his truck ('02 F150). Then I can FINALLY get back to Jungle Julia's car.
So this happened last night: Nettdata Edit: Embedded video for you My friend who helps me with cars and is the one that really got me into hot rods instead of sports car freaked out about me taking the Nova to a shop. Pretty much demanded I bring it to his shop and let him work on it and that I can head over when I have time to help out. So I went over there last night, we did half the brake lines, ran the trans cooler lines and wired the radiator fans. There is still a decent chunk of work to do before it's road ready but hearing it run definitely brought a smile to my face. The Holley Dominator EFI is insanely easy to use. Just follow the set up prompts, hit the key and music happens.
Congrats! That's one of life's greatest feelings....hearing your baby rumble to life for the first time and then settle into a nice lopey idle. With FI I imagine you get the added bonus of not getting unburned fuel spitting out the exhaust and all over your garage floor too. In other news....manual transmissions are magical things. With the 6 speed my car is rated at 17 mpg in the city using that abomination skip shift. I don't care how much low end grunt an engine has, being in a 1:1 ratio at 15 mph is going to make the engine lug and is just a horrible idea all around. With premium fuel pushing the $4 mark here and the weather cooling enough that I don't have to run my A/C to regulate the cooling system to keep maximum air flowing over the radiator, I decided to see just what kind of fuel mileage I could coax out of the car while telling the skip shift to fuck off. So lightened my right foot for a few days.... To defeat the skip shift I had to hold first gear to 20-21 mph and then shift into second. I short shifted from second to third at 25. At 35 I skipped fourth and went straight to fifth (Honestly, I rarely use fourth gear even driving normally....I just go 3-5) Around 47-48 I'd drop it into sixth. Other then sixth gear, the only time the car was out of it's power band where it couldn't easily sprint with a slight twitch of my ankle was 35-41 in fifth....it didn't lug at those speeds, it just wasn't quick. I easily kept up with the quickest of the pack of drivers away from the lights (In a town where every moron treats every light as a fucking race.) I drove using these shift points religiously for four days. I never once went on the freeway, this was all city stoplight to stoplight driving (Granted I did have to speed a bit over the limit to drop it in sixth, and on some of the roads getting into fifth involved ignoring the posted limit by 5 mph.) Four days racked up 218 miles. When I fueled it up this morning it took 9.8 gallons...or just over 22 mpg. (Full disclosure: There is one stretch on the drive home that if I hit all the lights, I can run about 5 straight miles in sixth. That doesn't happen often.) Anyways...22 mpg. In the city. You're not going to do that with an automatic.
JUST UNPLUG THE SKIP-SHIFT SOLENOID. Problem solved, and you can use your transmission as the powertrain engineers intended.
2004 Chevrolet Silverado; 434,000 miles When I low idle for an extended period (not in park higher idle, but like a long traffic light, or I'm waiting in a drive-thru line, I will get a CEL with P0430. I know this is downstream O2 sensor. Since it only comes on in this specific condition, and I can repeat it after clearing the code, I am not sure what the most likely problem is. If it's a bad O2 sensor, I would think it would come on a just random times, but maybe not. (same with if it was the sensor wiring) Also, I have had both catalytic converters replaced, but that was about 100k miles ago, so it could be that. So, my other options are timing (I am not getting misfires), exhaust leak or engine temp sensor being bad. How would I know if I have an exhaust leak? I have put all the miles on this truck, so I know when it sounds or drives or smells different, and I don't have any of that, that I notice. Any suggestions of what to check first and how? ETA: I forgot, that I saw one suggestion was to add a spark plug non-fouler as a spacer on the downstream sensor. But, I am not sure what that is fixing.
Should I buy a 2019 Toyota Tacoma 4 cyl 4x4 for 26.5k? Black trim, nice looking truck. Just wondering about the price
You've got to give us more information about the options, or lack thereof. But based on a quick internet search, that doesn't sound like a bad price. Is this new, or used? You want to check for an exhaust leak? Put a hose on the end of your exhaust pipe, route it OUTSIDE of your garage, shut the door, then get in the truck and start it up. If you pass out, or don't check back in with us in a couple of days, then you might have a leak... Seriously, though, look at all of your exhaust manifold bolts. Chevy, Ford, Dodge, they all break sometimes. If one is missing/ the head is missing, you've probably got an exhaust leak. The bolts on the very last cylinders are the ones that usually break (most heat), but I've seen them everywhere. I've been thinking about this since you posted it. If that is the original, 400K mile O2 sensor, I'd probably replace it. If the problem comes back, then there's a real problem. Before you go replacing the cat on that bank, check all of the spark plugs for that bank. If you see any signs of abnormal combustion, then address those issues first. I have seen people replace one catalytic converter after another, never addressing the real issue. Catalyst efficiency codes can be a real bitch to track down, and most people/ shops don't want to take the time. Let me put it this way: If the air/ fuel mixture and combustion in the cylinder are good, then (theoretically) the cat should be good for the life of the vehicle. When a cat goes bad, look for the cause. You will not have a timing problem on an LS engine unless something is seriously fucked up, and if that were the case, you would have much bigger problems (ie: engine won't run at all, or runs like total shit.). The PCM controls all timing functions for that engine. I don't see what a no-fouler would do for this code, other than mask the problem.
Bolts on the manifold are in good shape. All the O2 sensors are original. The no-fouler solution was simply to act as a spacer, so indeed, probably would just mask the problem. I will replace the sensor, check the wiring, and inspect the spark plugs. Thanks Dixie.
Question, semi-automotive related... I'm buying a cap for my truck, and want to replace the 12v dome light with 3-4 homebuilt 12v LED light strips, housed in lightweight aluminum diffuser channels. Each strip will be 5-6' long, and I want to attach them to the roof of the cap (on the inside, obviously). I'm not wanting to drill into the fiberglass, so am looking for some sort of cold and damp weather adhesive that I could use to attach the metal strips to the fiberglass. I'm also looking for advice on how to actually hold/clamp the light strips in place while any adhesive cures. The only thing I can think of is to jam some 2x4's between the bed and the cap roof to hold it in place, but am wondering if anyone has any other suggestions. Anyone have any thoughts?
Yeah, way too much work, especially when living alone. I'm currently looking into some industrial strength double sided tape... I've ordered some to see how strong it actually is, so we'll see.
Y'all might remember that a while back I was feeling quite smug that my Z has manual windows since the power window motors for the 4th gen suck ass and need replaced pretty much annually. Well, the regulator for my driver's side is taking a shit. It pretty much locks up at the 9 o'clock position when rolling up. Want to take a wild guess that out of all the models of Camaro ever made which is the only window regulator that's just simply not available anywhere? Yep. 4th gen, driver's side manual. No NOS, no repops, nothing. (Passenger side still has NOS available.) Son. Of. A. Bitch. Someone, somewhere must rebuild regulators (Say someone's restoring a '37 Studebaker, it's not popular enough to make repops profitable, so I would guess the regulators would need to be rebuilt.) Thus far I followed several leads for rebuilders and they've all been a dead end. I really hate to just stuff a wrecking yard piece in there (If I can find one), because chances are if it hasn't already failed, it will soon. I'm open to any suggestions, this is maddening.
Already checked there. They have the power window regulators and the passenger side manual, like everyone else.
Just spent another 4 hours searching the internet for the regulator. New ones are just simply not available anywhere. Fuck me. Used ones are expensive and quite honestly, sketchy. I'm starting to think that converting the car to power windows may not be a bad idea.