metaruss

Brought the MiniMopar domains and subdomains back from the dead.  What a pain.  I originally registered my domains with register.com.  They got sold-off somehow to an affiliate program and my domain management migrated to this random-sounding “northsky.com” site.  They have since gone away and I couldn’t figure out where to manage my domains.  I was getting charged for registration by a completely different company, United Online, which is some conglomerate company for lots of different post-dot-com companies.  They had no idea why they were charging me and register.com claimed no ownership of the domains in question either.  Anyway, I finally found that I could log into yet another completely different site and manage them.  What a pain.

A week or two after the convention, the car suddenly got a bad vibration when making right turns.  It seemed like the left axle tripod was bottoming-out.  I had recentered the engine when I had the old stock axle in there and never put it back, but I wasn’t sure what caused it to suddenly appear one day.  It turned out that the aftermarket trans mount I installed had partially collapsed, which was enough to take out the last bit of slack in the axle.  Anyway, I put the poly trans mount back in (the engine vibrations were no better with the rubber mount anyway), fixed the front mount bracket so I could slip washers in there to space the poly away from the bracket, and recentered the engine.  Everything is fine now and the washers did seem to help a bit with the vibs.

I also cleaned-up the crab rims from the CSX, hit the lips with a scotch-brite abrasive wheel, and polished them a bit before installing them on the Daytona.  The Dunlop SP8000s from JT are worn down to the markers now, so I’m running the Kuhmo 712s from the CSX.  They have flat spots from the freeway spin-out, but they do have plenty of tread.  The Dunlops were awesome tires, but you can’t get them in 225/50 R15 anymore.  I’m saving the last of them for the CSX when it is done.

Lastly, I made shims for the brake pads on all four calipers to try to shut them up.  They still squeak, but are better overall.  I think the notches that are worn into the brackets from the pad plates may be to blame.  Would have to weld them up somehow, but I have bigger fish to fry.

The first time I drove the car after coming home from the convention, the door handle broke on the drivers side.  Joe from the club was nice enough to pick one up from an 85 Daytona in the junkyard and ship it to me.  The rod had to be bent to match the old one, but it swapped over just fine otherwise.  While the door was apart, I installed the ’87 power mirrors.  Man, the ’91 wiring diagrams are horrible.  Not one single interesting circuit on the power mirror page was right and as such my splice job from way back when did not work.  I spent many hours trying to sort that out, but now I finally have working power mirrors!

Another awesome time at SDAC has come and gone.  The performance driving school was a blast as always.  The Daytona did great overall, but the stress did highlight some issues.  The intercooler definitely needs to be kicked-out at the bottom to allow some air to get around it.  The loss in cooling capacity was very obvious after a few laps, though it will happen on the street in traffic with the A/C on as well.  I’m thinking of buying a new fan as well.  The other issue was oil pressure.  I know the pump has issues and when the oil temps got high, I was seeing only about 30psi of pressure at 5000rpm.  Not good, so I think it’s time for a new pump.

I made 14 passes at the drag strip.  Times weren’t what I had hoped (was shooting for 13s), but I didn’t break the car.  I couldn’t get the car to hook nor could I get it to make more than 18-19psi of boost…even with the wastegate unplugged.  I also trashed 3rd gear by the end and it seems that it will need a new syncro.  Did a bit of tuning, but most of the effort was spent trying to learn how to launch the car.  Best time was 14.269sec @ 98.87mph.

So I’m going to SDAC-18 and have been doing a mad-dash to get the car ready.  The axle boot was the wrong one and tore itself up on the trans case.  I put an old stocker in there from the Shadow while I worked on other things.  Later I got the correct boots from JT and completely went though the axles.  Only the short axle has the tripod welded to it and it looks like they did it while the bearings were on.  They must have slipped and tagged one of them with the welder.  The tulip race is chewed-up pretty good there.  The outer joints have a lot of hammer blows on them and long axle’s has a lot of play and binds much beyond the center.  I put them back together anyway and they seem to be holding up so far.  I don’t expect to get a whole lot of miles out of them.

Trying to address the somewhat-weak oil pressure issues, I pulled the pan and removed the pickup.  My thought was that it may have been leaking at the o-ring since I had to bend the tube a bit when putting the motor together.  I took the pump apart as well to check the clearances.  It had a lot of scoring in it for some reason, but the clearances were all well within spec.  I also plastiguaged the rods bearings, which looked great and were nice and tight.

I’m going to be running the road course, so I put new pads and rotors in the front and bled the brakes.  Also replaced the front swaybar bushings with new ones from Johnny.  The radiator was throughly flushed, since I had some oil in there.

The ends on the CS Racer panhard bar were shot, so I modified a stocker to make it adjustable.  One end was cut off and a grade 10.9 M16 bolt welded to it.  Some of the bar was removed and an M16 coupler nut was welded to that end and the whole bar was boxed-in.  It warped a bit after all the welding, so I lowered on car on it to bend it straight again.  It was installed with new poly bushings from Johnny Spiva.

I DA’ed and rattle-canned the roof and mounted the side door mouldings.  Painted those as well as some missing paint on the nose.  Also painted the exposed bumper support since the grill is missing there.  Did lots of touch-ups and also tried to deal with the worst of the rust on the hood.  Didn’t have enough time to finish sanding and rubbing-out the patches, but it looks better than it did before.

Last night/this morning I finally fixed a few pressing issues.  One was the boot on the driver’s inner CV joint had chewed through itself a while ago and I’ve been meaning to put a new one one there for some time.  I discovered that the Driveshaft Shop Level 3 axles have the tripods welded to the shafts, so they have to be taken apart from the outer CV end.  Also, the inner joints have some kind of fiber reinforced plastic cap that seems to be there to keep the tripod in the tulip housing.  The problem is the boot seals to the cap and the cap seals to the tulip with a rubber seal.  On the other axle, grease is coming out between the cap and the tulip, so I am going to have to deal with that at some point..

The big project was replacing the shift fork pads on the 1-2 and 3-4 forks.  I’ve been limping 3rd gear along for over a year now, as I cheezed it pretty bad on a hard shift one day but it was still usable.  A week or so ago I did the same to 2nd gear, rendering it useless.  I hoped it was just the pads and so I bought some new ones.  Thankfully, that’s all it was.  The trans looked clean inside, though the sprags for 3rd and especially for 2nd gear are pretty chewed up.  It shifts great now, so I am not going to worry about it.

Finally, both of the outer tie rod ends are so sloppy that they have about 1/2″ of play now.  They are only a few years old, so no more Moog suspension parts for me.  I got the more expensive ones from NAPA (Spicer I think).  Same brand as the new ball joints that replaced the failed Moog joints and are holding up well.

Still my daily driver.  Been collecting some odds and ends that should hopefully help the spool department:  A Turbos Unleashed cast log header and Turbonetics T03/T04E hybrid single ball bearing turbo with a “Super 50″ compressor and a Stage II exhaust turbine in a .63 A/R housing attached to a Turbos Unleashed 3” swing valve (whew).  The header, housing, and swing valve are all ceramic thermal coated to keep temps down and gas velocities high.  The turbo flange on the header is larger than it should be, so I will likely need to port the housing flange somewhat.

The Super 70 and ported exhaust manifold that is in there now will end up in the CSX once I get a new cylinder head for it.  Trouble is the CSX needs to be running before I put this setup in there….

Well it’s been about a year and a half since I drove the car.  This weekend I finally got a chance to tear into it.  I pulled the head and tore it completely down.  This crappy reman head is pretty screwed-up.  The three rear coolant jackets have been ground out and rewelded at some point.  There is a small crack between one of the forward jackets and the chamber.  The cam journals are pretty chewed-up too, so I think this head is done.  Too bad too because it has tight guides and fairly new valves.  The plan is to use the original head that came off this car when I got it back in 1998, which appears to have been junkyard TBI roller cam head as the exhaust valves are pretty burnt up.  It also has some small cracks starting in the rear jackets, but they are not threatening yet and can be relieved.  The guides are worn as well and so it needs a complete rebuild….

I also pulled the trans in preparation for the new TU ceramic/organic clutch that’s been sitting on a shelf waiting for a chance to be installed.  I also checked the input shaft and diff carrier play and they seem to be holding up well.  I had a little trouble removing the passenger side axle due to the OBX’s tendency to collapse slightly when the bearings are installed.  A bit of tapping persuaded it out.

Back to the head…a month or so ago I decided to use this head as my first attempt at head porting.  I figured it was no big loss if I ruined it and was still usable if I didn’t.  It turned out much better than I thought it would.  I made a few mistakes, but it should still flow much better than stock so I figure why not try to run it and see how it does.

Intake, before and after (click for higher resolution):

Exhaust, before and after (click for higher resolution):

The bowls were cleaned up and the ports straightened and blended.  The roof of the intake was raised considerably (too much over near the bowls) and the roof of the exhaust was also raised slightly (there is a coolant passage that needs to be watched out for).  I also filled the area on one side of the intake ports where core drift always leaves a pocket the undercuts the seat with JB Weld.  This is probably where Steve Menegon does it, but I didn’t look that closely at his head on the Daytona before installing it.  The floors were smoothed and blended, but otherwise left alone.  I did lay back the floor at the exhaust bowl more on the advice from Tyler.  I’m now coming up with a way to de-shroud the valves so that it is done equally.

The old Oil Filter Study page has been replaced by a new article: Oil Filters Revealed. It has received a major update to bring it inline with the current market, lots of new pictures, and some completely different filters as well. Many weeks of research went into this one.

I literally have not touched this car, short of starting it up once this spring.  I really need to tackle the mechanical issues first, just so that it can be driven in the event of an issue with the Daytona.  With the birth of our son this past December, there just hasn’t been any time.  What little spare time I do have gets devoted to fixing small issues on the Daytona.  I suspect that I will not be able to do anything with this car this year.

Disclaimer: The projects described in these web pages may use dangerous materials, and components.  This material is intended for advanced electronics experimenters only and may cause your vehicle to be suitable for off-road use only.  The author assumes no liability for damages incurred through the use or misuse of the information provided herein.  This information is provided "as is" and without warranties as to performance of or any other warranties whether expressed or implied.  No warranty of fitness for a particular purpose is offered.