Dave WM

there are some places that are very high crime I just remember seeing lots of those lights around liberty city, well known for drugs and high crime. its a pretty good drive, 3 plus hours easy.

I 95 in rush hour makes 66 in DC look tame.

yea 2 of the 3 I thought I could do it with the cheapo torch, fail.. I am going to try another shop tomorrow before I give up on letting them give it a go. If that fails I for sure will be coming over for the torch. I actually got it to turn some with heat and wax, could tell it was broken loose, but my mistake was assuming that once it was broke loose it could just be turned out. Seems like you have to work for every tiny bit (heat wax,heat wax, heat wax)for at least a lot more than what I did.

love the 9. item, so true.

nice ritzy area, not much to do. You could make the drive down to south beach lots to see there. Also there is a mansion right on Biscayne bay Villa Vizcaya, that is pretty cool to tour, check out the grotto. Lot of old money spent on artwork etc. Watch out for mercury vapor street lights while down near Miami, if you see them don't stop.

think I am going to need the torch, I bought a POC little thing, while it got hot and I managed to get about 1/8 of a turn then snap. So next up on the remaining ONE stud will be to use JSM big torch and try one more time. After that I am hoping I can weld a nut on the two broken ones. I took it to a shop, 500$ to R&R the manifold for drilling and tapping. 45$ if I just bring them the manifold. I like that idea but am afraid of breaking more bolts as I get into the studs that attach to the alum, head. I assume torching the bolts to get them hot is NOT a good idea here due to the alum head (heat transfer to head). The shop did not want to drill the manifold down pipe due to location (hard to get a drill up by the oil pan). Hence the need to pull the manifold off. So options Pay the man to RR the manifolds figure with parts etc I can easy get to 750$ just to fix the 3 studs. Try the cherry red heat on the remaining one, if I can get it out, then assess the two brokens for possible welding on of a nut and then re heat to cherry red and try those. remove manifolds, take to the man for the drilling and tapping. do nothing, add oil every 200 miles (leaking main), wait for a slipping clutch to force the issue. I am leaning towards opt 2 since I would have to disconnect the down pipe anyway if I wanted to remove the exhaust. If I did not think the manifold bolt were going to break I would just do that and know I have a good new gasket. Oh and there is that broken bolt on the back of the head where the engine hoist mount goes, Maybe I could fix that as well IF I go with opt 3. Taking a break from it for a while. Funny thing is one place quoted me 60$ per broken bolt if I let them do the clutch/rear main/trans swap. That I guess is opt 5 and is looking pretty good. I just don't know how they can only charge 60$ unless they drill it in place, and if that is the case why the one shop would not do that? I guess the 60$ broken bolt shop figure they can do the drilling regardless of location?

You know this is a real issue, used to be if you were off the streets by the time happy hour started up, you could avoid the drunks (pretty much) but I swear its worse than ever with the darn cell phones, I mean I see people literally driving without looking where they are going, relying on peripheral vision I suppose. I end up driving early on Sunday, seems the least amount of distracted drivers are on the road.

What the heck is wrong with these folks, I would think you would have to pay 750 to have that one hauled away.

GL-4 in the transmission.

New problem pops up on me today. I was out in traffic an noticed the brakes starting to lock up, almost no travel, I barely get it off the road in time as it was clearly getting worse. Stuck in a parking lot with no tools, and forgot my phone. I after some head scratching (my head on the break pedal laying on the floorboard looking up at it) I noticed the lock nut on the pedal stop did not look right. Must have been when I installed a new MC and was messing with the pedal height. Anyway what was happening was every time I depressed the pedal, the stop screw must have backed out just a bit, reducing the free travel. It prob was over a long period of time and I just did not notice the diminishing travel. Finally it got to the point where there was no travel and when I applied the brake and it backed out a tiny bit more, the brake never fully released. Since the lock nut was so loose I just spun the adj bolt back in to regain the free travel and all was well, at least until I got a chance to tighten up the lock nut (thanks Jeff).

finished up today, second one went much faster due to learning curve. Maybe an hour from start to finish this time. One thing I forgot was to torque the control rod bushing bolts after letting the suspension settle. Will do that tomorrow. The sway bar is much tighter now I took it for a test drive no big improvement that I can notice, maybe a little less body roll on a tight turn. It did seem to have less bump steer but that is really hard to gauge. Best part is I don't have to look at that greasy mess under the ball joints. I did save the old ones as they look OE. did not any play infact were very stiff. the boot was gone. I will prob clean them up flush with solvent and examine. If not bad will get some new boots and stash them away.

yikes!!

Easier than I figured it would be. car on jacks, tires off 17mm strut bolts off, lift the strut of the steering knuckle, did not disconnect any brake calipers or lines, just moved it back, Caste nut, BFH with the knuckle supported on a 2*6, a light tap and the knuckle pops off, leave the tie rod attached just move away. next up the 2 14mm and pull the TC rod off. Now I went a bit more than prob had to, loosen the control arm bushing and remove the nut, pull the entire control arn off. I did this mainly to clean it up, and I wanted to see how the bushing looked. It was fine, so the new ones I was waiting on can just be spare parts. It seemed nice firm with no signs of break down of the rubber. I was not looking forward to pressing out that bushing anyway. back the ball joint, remove the tow remaining nuts pull the old ball joint out, clean the control arm in some hot soapy water, blow dry, install the new ball joint, reinstall the control arm nut (bolt not torqued, that when its on the ground), put on the steering knuckle, torque the castle nut to speck, cotter pin, clean up the steering knuckle, reinstall the O ring that seals the strut to the knuckle, reinstall the 17mm bolts, torque them, re install the TC rod with the 14mm and done. forgot I started by pulling the sway bar, nuts on the control arms and the mounting clamps. the rubbers were shot, I bought a moog kit, but it looked kinda cheesy so I reused the links and just use the rubber parts. the rubber mounts looked fine so they can stay. Will reinstall the sway bar after I finish the other ball joint (getting late).

The one I modified did NOT have any extra hardware on the bottom (spring loaded pivot point). I think the spring loaded will work better but the bend it does not look right. I think the spring loaded pivot was the style use on the ZX.

On my ZX trans with the non ZX shifter, it did have issues fully engaging (on the bench anyway, I have yet to install it) I did some grinding on the shifter after marking with finger nail polish and shifting. On mine it was clear there was an issue before the grinding, as the shifter was not fully engaging, you could feel it not going into the detents completely. IIRC it was 5th and reverse that had the issue. The ZX shifter with its spring loading on the bottom was prob made to correct this.

As I dig into ball joints, I look at correcting a leaking strut. I prefer to keep things stock, and assuming its not already been replace with a gas charged cartridge, does anyone have exp with rebuilding the stock setup? the damping seems fine to me as is, so I presume its ok only needing a seal to stop the oil loss. If so from looking at the FSM there is reference to an "oil seal" and an "o ring". Both these seem to have something to do with keeping the oil in the strut.

well too loose is better than too tight, I am no where near 84inch pounds, prob closer to 1/2 that. So plan is to go over them all with the new inch pound 1/4" torque wrench (I checked the new wrench calibration against both the 1/2" drive and the 3/8 beam style, all checked about the same) when I have it up again, which should be soon for the ball joints.

Well the Sankei 555 ball joints just came in, so that will be the next project.

ok so old ones that I have which are not too beat up, you can clearly make out a radius on the inside bead. The radius is not centered in the bead but rather is centered on the outside edge of the bead (the relief cut on the bushing). The location of the radius would seem to provide for correct geometry for bending forces when installed with the radius centered high. note the pic posted by CO is of the replacements where the radius looks to be centered. I suspect all this is moot since the differences in actual performance are I am quite sure are negligible.

I just did mine the way they came out, not sure if they were original, but on them the rounded side was out, the flat side was in, AND the replacements flat was much thinner about 1/2 the thickness of what came out.

OE pumps had a check valve built in at the outlet. I recently replaced my airtex unit, do not know if the skinny after market pumps came with one, I assume so but cant say for sure. when I was chasing fuel pressure leak down I noticed it was all over the place. Sometime it would hold for days, other times it would leak in minutes. The thing is there is not a lot of fuel to start with, can't compress a liquid anyway, so pressure would have to be maintained in the rubber fuel lines I presume. That being said it would not take a lot of leakage for the pressure to drop. My guess is between the check valve and all the injectors and lets not forget heat (latent engine heat increasing pressure in the lines, regulator bleeds it off, then everything cools down and pressure it gone). So after chasing pressure holding for weeks I finally decided the best course of action is to simply go out and drive it. I thing regular driving putting lots of miles on the car is the best thing you can do to make it run right.

it is odd they left that off such a high end piece of test equipment.

I have an old heath kit VTVM as well, but nothing beat the HP. have several Simpsons. I remember using those in mech tech class back in the 70's

yes that is the way I did it, narrow flat side towards frame, rounded sides out. big washers dome in.