Another lump update.

Since I haven’t done an update for … over a year, I figured it was time. Again, not because I haven’t been doing anything. Well, nothing too exciting anyway, but here goes.

Wagon:
The day before moving into a new house, I decided it was a good idea to paint the wagon while I still had a garage. Which of course actually made life more difficult for moving and wasn’t the greatest idea, but it came out pretty good and is now flat baby blue. It gives that nice daily-econo-rat look I’m going for.

I have also spliced in an adapter pigtail to hook up the megasquirt, but still haven’t gotten so far as to try it out … it’s hard when you’re daily driving it mostly (except when it is being a nuisance, more on that below.)

A bunch of random items; I put in an Optima battery which was well worth it. Also after installing a new radio in a Hyundai Tucson, I got to keep the old CD player which worked fine, so I machined an adapter and soldered up a wiring harness and put that in, which is much nicer than the factory radio which didn’t work very often. I replaced my loud resonator with a quieter one. Did a new heater core. Machined up a pair of minimal aluminum roof racks with small slots for strapping things to the roof, which I haven’t done yet.

Then it proceeded to have all sorts of irritating driveability issues that I spent all summer chasing around. So it now has all new sensors, all hoses are silicone, put in a high flow (Camaro) E3210 fuel pump, new fuel injector, adjustable fuel pressure regulator and gauge, distributor, and probably more than I’m forgetting. The bottom line is I think it was a combination of a lot of things, but seems to be doing better now.

Last week the junk 400 series stainless flex pipe finally cracked and broke after being crusty and ugly for several years, so I geared up to be able to do stainless welding and ordered some 304 stainless parts. It should be up and running for the weekend…

Sunbird:
I had replaced a cracked head once in Feb. ’15, but back in July ’16, that head cracked too. Not sure why it only lasted a year, but it did. My theory is warming up the car by idling for a minute helps keep the thin webs between the valve seats from expanding and contracting too quickly and stressing. But who knows really.

Driving home on a cool day last spring, the windshield suddenly fogged up and it started to smell like coolant in the car, which of course means the heater core let go. Luckily this is one of the few cars that a heater core is really easy to replace, so naturally I bypassed it and put off doing it. I still haven’t finished it actually, but will be soon.

When the front brakes became glazed and started vibrating, I picked up the upgraded drilled and slotted rotors with carbon ceramic pad PowerStops from Rockauto, which I highly recommend – it stops amazing now.

In the works:
1. All new suspension including lowering springs. Assembled and ready to install.
2. All stainless exhaust, this time diy and using the factory manifold, no header like the other car. Parts on the way.

I am hoping to finish all this stuff up before winter and then I have plans for winter projects. But more on that another time.