Silver95bird
Active Member
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2016
- Messages
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I'm starting a thread here to give some people the idea of what happens when you can't afford a ready built car. This is the tale of a million things done wrong. Let's start at the beginning.
A few years ago, a co worker offers me his gt for $1000. Rough shape body wise, but I work in a body shop doing paint, so no big deal. I fix the broken odometer gears, and the contacts on the dashboard that caused the gas guage to read untrustworthy. How untrustworthy? Enough that pulling out of my in-laws house and up the steep hill, it stalls out a dozen times on me. But it's got an eighth of a tank! Go a mile to a gas station - I put 15.04 gallons in a 15.4 gallon tank. Great, lol.
A few months later. It's -8 outside. I go out to go to work one Saturday morning, and the clutch cable snaps. Awesome. Get it in the garage, find out the $20 AutoZone throw out bearing blew into a hundred pieces, jammed sideways, and then the cable snapped.
Fine, throw a whole clutch setup at it, right out of the frpp catalog via summit. Fork, stud, bearing, disc, plate, TOB, everything. Let's take it apart. Hmm, missing bell housing bolts. That's a good sign. Don't worry, it gets better. Pull off the pressure plate, only to find that there are only 5 bolts in it. One side looks new, the other side was burned to shat. Where's the 6th bolt? You guessed it, broken off in the flywheel. Luckily the machine shop I use was able to cut and save the flywheel. ,
Get it put back together. Wow what a difference. Now on to the suspension. Rides like poop. Inspection reveals some "expert" lowered it by cutting a coil off all four corners, and threw all the insulators away. 4 stock springs, insulators, and orange konis all around, it's much better now. Having more than 1/2" of suspension travel is a necessity in the Poconos where I live.
Not jarring my fillings loose lets me start enjoying the ride a lot more. Fixed the trunk latch. Being a 248A car, it's got no power options, including fogs, windows, locks, seats, or trunk latch. Someone tried to rig one at some point, but it either failed in the attempt or failed thereafter. To open the trunk, I had to use a pull wire someone tied in a knot, and ran down through one of the bolt holes for the license plate lights. Ghetto fabulous. Junkyard run got me a whole latch and lock assembly, only downside was I now have 2 keys on my ring now. No biggie.
Next up, I notice the shifter moving under spirited driving. Crap. Passenger side engine mount is gone. The rubber isn't torn, it's absent totally. Get it fixed, and notice the driver's side is shot. Ugh. Should have known better.
Next up, the intake leak. I'm getting a leak from under the manifold, weeping into the #5 spark plug well. Pulled the manifold last night, and found seven stock fat 19lb injectors, and one 21lb Lucas injector. Wtf?
Got the manifold off, and other than extremely dirty surfaces, I don't see a problem. Are the felpro gaskets known to leak? The odd thing is the other side had a broken bolt at the crossover, and it didn't leak.
Time for upgrades! I'm not putting back a nonpi manifold on there. Got to do the other engine mount, so I'll probably have things half apart anyway. I'm hoping to add pi cams as well.
As an aside, here are the other things the car came with.
Bbk hot air intake tube
Gutted factory h pipe
3.73s
Broken lower driver's seat.
Cut up/bolts missing fold down seat area.
Bad body work on roof/driver's quarter, rocker under the cover, pass. Fender, hood, and a terrible repaint using osha orange paint.
I'm going to have to get some web hosting up since I apparently can't post attachments here. Photobucket really screwed people, so I'm a bit wary of finding a host. I'll have to look into my isp.
Thoughts? Accusations? Lol.
A few years ago, a co worker offers me his gt for $1000. Rough shape body wise, but I work in a body shop doing paint, so no big deal. I fix the broken odometer gears, and the contacts on the dashboard that caused the gas guage to read untrustworthy. How untrustworthy? Enough that pulling out of my in-laws house and up the steep hill, it stalls out a dozen times on me. But it's got an eighth of a tank! Go a mile to a gas station - I put 15.04 gallons in a 15.4 gallon tank. Great, lol.
A few months later. It's -8 outside. I go out to go to work one Saturday morning, and the clutch cable snaps. Awesome. Get it in the garage, find out the $20 AutoZone throw out bearing blew into a hundred pieces, jammed sideways, and then the cable snapped.
Fine, throw a whole clutch setup at it, right out of the frpp catalog via summit. Fork, stud, bearing, disc, plate, TOB, everything. Let's take it apart. Hmm, missing bell housing bolts. That's a good sign. Don't worry, it gets better. Pull off the pressure plate, only to find that there are only 5 bolts in it. One side looks new, the other side was burned to shat. Where's the 6th bolt? You guessed it, broken off in the flywheel. Luckily the machine shop I use was able to cut and save the flywheel. ,
Get it put back together. Wow what a difference. Now on to the suspension. Rides like poop. Inspection reveals some "expert" lowered it by cutting a coil off all four corners, and threw all the insulators away. 4 stock springs, insulators, and orange konis all around, it's much better now. Having more than 1/2" of suspension travel is a necessity in the Poconos where I live.
Not jarring my fillings loose lets me start enjoying the ride a lot more. Fixed the trunk latch. Being a 248A car, it's got no power options, including fogs, windows, locks, seats, or trunk latch. Someone tried to rig one at some point, but it either failed in the attempt or failed thereafter. To open the trunk, I had to use a pull wire someone tied in a knot, and ran down through one of the bolt holes for the license plate lights. Ghetto fabulous. Junkyard run got me a whole latch and lock assembly, only downside was I now have 2 keys on my ring now. No biggie.
Next up, I notice the shifter moving under spirited driving. Crap. Passenger side engine mount is gone. The rubber isn't torn, it's absent totally. Get it fixed, and notice the driver's side is shot. Ugh. Should have known better.
Next up, the intake leak. I'm getting a leak from under the manifold, weeping into the #5 spark plug well. Pulled the manifold last night, and found seven stock fat 19lb injectors, and one 21lb Lucas injector. Wtf?
Got the manifold off, and other than extremely dirty surfaces, I don't see a problem. Are the felpro gaskets known to leak? The odd thing is the other side had a broken bolt at the crossover, and it didn't leak.
Time for upgrades! I'm not putting back a nonpi manifold on there. Got to do the other engine mount, so I'll probably have things half apart anyway. I'm hoping to add pi cams as well.
As an aside, here are the other things the car came with.
Bbk hot air intake tube
Gutted factory h pipe
3.73s
Broken lower driver's seat.
Cut up/bolts missing fold down seat area.
Bad body work on roof/driver's quarter, rocker under the cover, pass. Fender, hood, and a terrible repaint using osha orange paint.
I'm going to have to get some web hosting up since I apparently can't post attachments here. Photobucket really screwed people, so I'm a bit wary of finding a host. I'll have to look into my isp.
Thoughts? Accusations? Lol.
