metaruss

The original fuel pump croaked a couple of weeks ago.  Since this is my only running car, I had to fix it ASAP.  I ordered a new Walbro 190lbs/hr fuel pump from FWD Performance, but couldn’t afford to wait for it to show up.  So, I dropped the tank and yanked the pump from the Daytona (same 190 unit, only 1 year old) and put it in the CSX.  Seems to be working fine.  I replaced the shifter cable bushings with the polyurethane “Booger Bushings”, since the originals under the hood were long gone.  I also changed the oil, which was way overdue, swapped out the air filter, and gave everything a good looking over.  There are coolant leaks from just about everywhere one can have a coolant leak.  They are all slow, but add up to a quart or two of coolant every couple of weeks.  The freeze plug next to the one that blew before is starting to seep.  I REALLY need to swap this motor out soon.  It is on borrowed time.  The new cal is rocking along and gets better mileage than the ND unit did.  It’s still lower than my Shadow was, but the CSX has smaller series tires and the short gears on the tranny.

Well, all the pans are in, the holes are patched, and the surfaces prepped for final paint.  The surface is rusty from the acidic etching solution used for POR-15 (“Metal Ready”).  If the weather holds, I will finally paint the thing this weekend.  I will be very happy when this is done so that I can start putting the car back together.  There is a fair amount of mechanical stuff to do along the way, but I don’t have to worry so much about the temperature with that.  I just want to have it back on the road before the first serious snowfall so that the CSX can be put back into the garage.

On that note, I have collected a nice array of parts for it.  I have the rear axle assembly, front springs, knuckles and calipers, master cylinder, and proportioning valve from a 1989 Daytona Shelby.  The should handle awesome once everything is aboard, though I doubt I will have time for that this year.  I have stainless steel braided brake lines, Koni struts and shocks, and polyurethane control arm bushings as well.  I hope to have the struts, shocks, and bushings in this year yet, since I have it all apart anyway.  I’d be a shame not to upgrade the brakes too, but I am missing various bolts and bits and I don’t want to get stalled.  I guess we’ll just see how it goes.

I have taken John Maushammer’s gphoto changes and have rebuilt the gphoto2-2.3.1 and libgphoto2-2.3.1 Debian packages.  They are available here:

• gphoto2_2.1.3-1_i386.deb
• libgphoto2-2_2.1.3-2_i386.deb
• libgphoto2-port0_2.1.3-2_i386.deb
• libgphoto2-2-dev_2.1.3-2_i386.deb

Got the driver’s side welded in.  I didn’t do quite as nice a job forming this sheet.  I sort of got it close, tacked it in and beat the crap out of it with a large sledge hammer to form the front of it to the weird shape of the floor pan around there.  I also did not try to reproduce the channels like I did on the passenger side.  I did kink a couple of diagonal dents with a cold chisel and hammer on the right portion to keep the panel from wobbling.

Progress has been slow but steady on the floorpans.  The passenger side is welded back in.  I ended up getting a MIG welder, as it is the only way to do sheet metal (short of TIG).  It definately makes the job much easier and better-looking than trying to do it with a stick welder (less cleanup).  I did get one of those stitch welders off of eBay for $20.  For stick welding small stuff, it really does help.  The rod doesn’t stick to the piece and you don’t have to worry so much about burn-though.  Before welding the plates in, I painted the frame rail and the bottom of the plates with POR-15 Chassiscote Semigloss Black.  I have had good luck with POR-15 in the past, but this will be the real test.  Obviously, I had to take a wire wheel to the places that I welded the plates to the frame because the paint was burned away.  I will go back and touch those up.  Also, I won’t be using the semigloss stuff again.  The finish is very random with using a brush to apply it.  Spraying it probably works better.

The driver’s side is out and the paint stripped.  I was disappointed to find the rear K-frame mount on that side is bent as well.  This one is bent down instead of up.  Even so, I was unable to straighten it.  I may give it one more shot with brute force (dropping the car on a jack stand) before welding, though.  That’s the only way I’ve ever been able to straighten heavy gauge frame rail steel in the past.  Also, the driver’s side fender is rusted out pretty bad at the top where it meets the firewall.  This area is prone to rust on these cars if it has ever been in an accident.  The body caulk cracks and then water, salt and debris gets packed into the seam by the wheels.  The passenger side is rusty too, but still solid.  If you see any cracks in the body caulk from the fenders, make sure the inside doesn’t look like this:

11/07/03: Version 1.0 – this calibration is based off of v0.6, but now contains the first of the spark curve adjustments.  For starters, I simply used the curves from the 1987 Mopar Performance Turbo II and CSX Stage II calibrations (they are the same).  From this point forward, I will be adding advance to eek out more performance from my CSX motor.  Since I have reduced compression with a head shim, I don’t recommend using any calibrations beyond this point with a stock motor.

11/07/03: Version 0.6 – made a slight adjustment to the partial throttle curve to try to address what seemed like a lean spot.  It seemed to take care of it.  This calibration seems now to get similar gas mileage to the stock calibration.