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I feel like the attex thread is getting kind of long and scattered. The attex thread started here. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3859331&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1 The biturbo appeared on page 11. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3859331&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=11 This thread will continue to be a scattered mess of all my junk, I just thought it needed a fresh start. 
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Apr 14, 2019 13:59
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Yea, it's an 87 so it has fuel injection, intercoolers, the (apparently stronger) LSD rear end, and whatever other upgraded stuff the 87 got. If it was carbureted or automatic (especially automatic), I likely wouldn't have gone there. I'm starting a new job on monday and tied up most of next weekend. Even though, I would like to order the clutch slave cylinder rebuild kit, tires, get some exhaust stuff, and start taking things apart this week. Now that I have a garage at my house I can tinker an hour here and there after work. I'll certainly get more pictures of stuff and whatnot. I still need to get all my tools to the new garage, I need to remove the door handles so the doors latch and get a new deadbolt with key for the mandoor. I need to get the mercedes out of storage and fix whatever caused a big puddle of oil under it this winter... That needs its injectors rebuilt. The toyota needs an oil change and some other work. My wife's car needs a swaybar mount welded back on and an exhaust leak fixed.... Oh and since I just moved my electronics lab is still in boxes on the floor of my office. I think I'm also getting a free 12.5kw generator I'll have to dick with. My life is in way worse maintenance debt than it was when I did the attex, so this might be a slow start. MrYenko posted:Already a goal the biturbo might never live up to. You laugh, but it actually starts right up and runs amazing. I'll try to get some videos of the car and stuff, maybe this afternoon when I get back home. Oh I also have to put some time into reading the 2CV thread. I love those cars so much, so I can live vicariously through that thread. chrisgt fucked around with this message at 14:23 on Apr 14, 2019 |
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Apr 14, 2019 14:21
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I filled the master cylinder until it was overflowing so I could get a couple actuations out of the clutch. I took it for a quick drive around the loop and down the old road. I think I pissed off some people at the funeral home for a funeral... Sorry. It won't be so loud when I weld a muffler back on. It's basically straight piped right now  Last night I had a bonfire and went attexing in the lake. Just so things make more sense, I should mention that the attex and the biturbo are about 170 miles apart. That's why it may seem like I can do a lot of one thing but not a lot of other on the weekends. This will change in good time.  I loaded some of my tools into the toyota and dragged them to their new home. I have a long way to go getting the shop setup, but it's getting there. I need a workbench STAT.  Mercedes out of storage today, fired right up and ran amazing as usual. Drove it about 85 miles without a single problem. Welcome to Chris' masochism garage...  The liquid that looks like it may have come out of the mercedes was me draining the tank on my air compressor. And the video everyone has been waiting for.... Bear in mind the gas gauge is pegged on E and the light is on (apparently that's one of the few gauges that works). What little gas is in there is over a year old. I'll get a can of premium to dump in there at some point. Not the highest priority at the moment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_WU9RjjsMM The keen observers will notice the airbox is falling apart, I'll have to fix that somehow. Also the hood struts don't work so it's held open with a stick. The replacements are a few hundred dollars, so I'll just order a pair by size from mcmaster carr or somewhere like that.
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Apr 15, 2019 00:24
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:clearly cannot be true as i see the biturbo in its entropic state in the background of this picture It's funny you say that, I was thinking that joke on my way home with the mercedes, then forgot about it. I ordered oil filter, tires, and a clutch slave cylinder for the thing. It should all be here by the end of the week. This weekend I'm helping slow_is_fast get his land cruiser rolling again, so I'll mount the tires while I'm out there. Sunday I'm helping someone clean out a garage and haul stuff around with a trailer. Hopefully this week after work I can get the old slave cylinder out, car up on stands, start to fix up the interior stuff and find all the rest of the broken poo poo I need to address before it goes on the road. Sadly I probably won't be able to get a day off until June to actually get tags for the thing. There's some sketchy online service that registers cars for you (similar to the Montana thing), so it might be worth going that route just to get tags. Then once I can drive the car around town I'll be able to find out how much other broken stuff I have to deal with 
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Apr 15, 2019 02:32
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KozmoNaut posted:Good old trusty stick will never let you down. kastein posted:I've got a workbench you can have for free if you come to West bumfuck Mass to get it. It's basically a 4x8 of 3/4 ply with a 2x4 frame under it with 2x4 legs that aren't currently attached but come with it free. I cut it down to about 3-3.5ft wide and cut a radius into it at one end because it was my computer desk a decade ago. Somewhat stained already. Definitely interested in the work bench! builds character posted:Please put in a cage and rally it. KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:make it clean as gently caress and take it to radwood Rhyno posted:Hahahahahahahaha holy fuckin poo poo Englishman alone posted:I love those old Mercs. My dad had a red estate one when I was young. Tank like is what I remember User Error posted:I'm loving the contrast between the worst 80's car and the best 80's car. Hermaphrodite posted:I found a Barn Finds article about this car: https://barnfinds.com/course-5-speed-1987-maserati-biturbo/ meatpimp posted:Looking at the pictures and video, looks like the PO did some things in the engine compartment. I can't find my good set of pictures, but here's a quick picture-of-picture of my '87 Biturbo Si that was bone-stock: KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:there is so much ductwork and i think i understand what ~30% of it does So I went into the garage after work to do some tinkering. The first week at any professional job sucks. read a bazillion pages of training material and company policy and try not to go to sleep, or daydream about driving a biturbo.... I got the car up on jackstands. It's a real pain, there's nothing to put a jack under on that car. wtf. Anyway, the story is kinda disjointed without my motivation to edit video, it'll make more sense tomorrow. This is the slave cylinder looking up from the bottom. My meathooks are way too big to fit up there. Also not the smaller bolt at the top of the pic is so close to the body of the slave cylinder it has to be done with an open end wrench. 1/8 turn at a time.  I tried to get a picture looking down from the top, but it's not really possible to see. I finally had to lay under the car with one arm around each side of the transmission to get that stupid thing out. VICTORY!  These can be rebuilt, but I don't think THIS one can be. It's a crappy picture, but trust me, the wall of this bore is beyond new seals. I mean, it might work for a little while, but it's not gonna last.  I really don't want to know what the story behind this is...  I also did some poking around under the car. Sometimes things tell their own story and it's beautiful.  Notice the drip of coolant on the hose toward the bottom of the picture. Above that there's a hose (that's presumably a coolant line for something), with a really rusty hose clamp and then a second hose clamp. There's no access to get up in there and I have no idea where any of those hoses go anyway. I think it's probably fine  Ok, why are there two lines going to the front brake calipers. And why is the bleeder not at the top? How the gently caress are you supposed to get the air out with the bleeder in the middle of the caliper like that? wtf.  Oh yea, I don't even have to say anything. This tells it's own story. This is going to be a pain in the rear end some day.  This section of pipe is hopefully the extent of the exhaust problems, something tells me it isn't, though.  I'll have to hit autozone to get some bends on the way home from work. I also have to find somewhere to get MIG gas. All the welding shops hold banker's hours around here. Also, I received the new garage door handles from iforge today. Unfortunately they aren't going to be a straight bolt-on affair, fortunately I'm crafty and I'll make something work. I'm gonna backlog that one for a day or two until I'm mad at cars and need something else to work on...
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Apr 16, 2019 02:35
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kastein posted:Is there any way you can make an adapter plate and put another slave cylinder in that's not NLA? Like say one from a 90s/00s Subaru? What bore, throw, and hydraulic fitting does it need? I work in Acton mass, so maybe an hour or so. Not bad. I know I can't do Friday or Tuesday. Maybe Wednesday, I'll have to see. I'm sure there's something that could be retrofit, the issue is there's absolutely no space to get in there. I could barely unbolt the stupid thing. A retrofit would probably require dropping the transmission to actually get a good look at what's going on. I just bought one for now. If it fails again hopefully it's either rebuildable or belongs to the next person...
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Apr 16, 2019 03:15
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:I'm pretty sure all biturbos have PO fuckery builds character posted:The PO is Maserati. builds character posted:Can you just hang the caliper down so the bleeder is on the top? Motronic posted:Then put a winch on it and run sweep with me. The oil pan is a serious dingleberry on this thing. And no, it's not going to be used for rally of any sort, sorry. Rate the thread one star, get it gassed, idc. I want to take it to a hillclimb or two, though. So while changing the oil I noticed I was incorrect about a lot of presumptions in the video I made. I'd rather not put really wrong information on the internet for a rare car tied to my name. I'll do a better job and post it. People already find my Wisconsin engine content because it's equally rare (if not more rare). So changing the oil was fun. First step was to buy oil. I got 15w40 rotella T4 diesel oil for the car. It's supposed to have 10w40 or 20w50 depending on climate I think, 15w40 falls in that range. It's also high in zinc which is needed for the flat tappets. I went with T4 since it's fully conventional, the car has been sitting a while, has had a lot of startups and 45 second runs, etc. The myth that synthetic is bad for engines is mostly bullshit, but I'm running that oil for a while to get the engine flushed out, then I'll probably move to a synthetic which will be better for the turbos. I got fully synthetic 15w40 rotella T6 for the mercedes, and fully synthetic 5w30 castrol for the toyota. All these things need oil changes... Should get the mercedes filter tomorrow and the toyota filter tomorrow or the next day. Gonna be a party. Oh, I also had to go to horror freight and get a set of allen sockets since the drain plug uses a 17mm internal hex. Anyway, on to the biturbo oil change. It needs a stupidass short little filter because something about the 425i means the swaybar is so close to the engine no other filter fits in its place. Nobody seems to have a solution for this. I have no idea. The mopar filter is the right everything besides height, so it should work, right?... Here's a side-by-side:  It has no chance in hell of fitting. It's hanging up on the swaybar. I tried to drop the swaybar but the mounts can't be removed all the way without dropping the entire front cradle (LOL). At first I thought it was hanging up on the world's shittiest AC condenser, but as can be seen in the next few pics, it won't go under or over the swaybar. Also, not only is that condenser hilariously small (i mean, italian cars have a reputation for horrible AC), it's beat to poo poo from being run into curbs and likely won't hold pressure. You may notice the front of the oil pan is somewhat battered, too.    Turns out the magic formula is dropping the AC condenser, which is easy. And then unbolting the radiator and raising it up an inch, which is also easy. Then the filter slides right in and amazingly doesn't occupy the same space as the swaybar. So yea, not a very exciting update. I changed oil, a task that should take about 15 on anything else. Tomorrow I'll change oil in the mercedes, again, not very exciting. I really wanna run a lubro moly diesel purge on the mercedes, change the primary filter, then get my injectors rebuilt, but everything in good time. Oh also, I had a really naughty thought today. The v6 ford ecoboost makes a lot of power, is reliable, and has a front sump... chrisgt fucked around with this message at 03:24 on Apr 17, 2019 |
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Apr 17, 2019 03:16
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Seat Safety Switch posted:Yeah, that filter is definitely chosen for clearance and not for filtration. How short is the factory change interval, do you know? Elmnt80 posted:Oh yay, the mopar filter (kinda) fit. Wix 51056 was also an option, but all I had to go off in slack was the specs of the "supposed to work" fram, the ufi number which I could get 0 specs on or pictures of and that it needed to be shorter than the fram. Gimmie a bit to dig and hopefully I can find you something easier to get in and out in the future. KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:The fun is the engine though, without the engine I feel like the car is just a lousy 1980s GT sedan meatpimp posted:Naw, part of the fun is the ridiculously posh interior, with suede headliner, snazzy quartz clock in the dash, dogleg 1st gear, silly italian things like the horn at the end of the turn signal stalk, there's a lot of oddball fun stuff. OP's car has the big pillowy leather chairs which are fun, I had the leather/suede sports seats which were actually very nice. builds character posted:Well, good thing you only have to do that onc... oh, every time you change the oil? oh... (something, something, you'll only have to change it once because it's going to break down is the joke there but I assume you'll have this thing doing donuts on the ice too in no time). Stage rally is really, really expensive. It's a serious motorsport, it's not like you just bolt in a roll cage and go drive on a track for a few grand, it's way bigger a commitment than that. Having a cage professionally installed can cost around $4000 depending on what the car is and what kind of deal you get. Probably a bit cheaper if you're caging a subaru, every cage builder has done that. Probably a bit more expensive if you're caging something weird. Safety equipment is in the thousands. Not only is safety equipment expensive, it all expires every few years. Race seats, helmets, fire suits, HANS, belts, etc. All of them expire. It's a reoccurring cost, and a big one. Going to events is expensive. It's not really possible to do it alone, you need a support team to be competitive. That means a condo, food, etc. for a crew of people. Entering an event is around $1000, lodging is expensive (everyone wants to be in the same place at the same time), insurance is expensive, tow vehicle, recce vehicle, tools, supplies, etc. Going to a race costs a few thousand dollars. So with all the expenses, it doesn't make sense to just do one event as a gag. I haven't even touched on other aspects of things... Suspension would be a completely custom affair. I don't think standard size gravels would fit on it, so more custom work. The driveline is hilariously unreliable with absolutely no spare parts. Nobody is going to have a spare.... anything just sitting in their truck. Since stage rally is such a gigantic monetary commitment a car with a lot of custom work or unusual parts is a bad place to start. The best way to get into stage rally is a subaru, a VW, a ford fiesta, something like that. They're common, lots of people race them, and there's a large knowledge base walking around every service park ready to help you at moments notice. Hell, I've pulled all nighters rebuilding other team's vehicles. Why? We're all in this together, nobody wants to see anyone DNF. That sucks, it cost so much money to be there. So yea, long answer to a short question. But it doesn't make sense for very many reasons to attempt stage rally in a biturbo. Oh also, I'm not sure how the classing rules with ARA would work with turbo engines, either. With RA beginners couldn't have turbos... Hill climbs are fun, don't require a cage or any advanced safety equipment, and you get a good deal of seat time for the money. They're an event you can go to, have fun, and not be broke on monday. mobby_6kl posted:Holy poo poo he did it the absolute madman! meatpimp posted:Pfft, at least link the review of the good one. The Linux Fairy posted:I was looking for that classic. "And thankfully, fuel delivery is as advanced as everything else here. [engine stalls]" Also, mine is a bit different. All the driver seat controls are electric and there's an electric release button for the trunk as well. There are still a few buttons and switches that seem to do nothing and/or I'm afraid to touch. Fire Storm posted:You should totally do it. And fully document how you got it working (like if you buy an aftermarket engine controller or somehow hack a junkyard engine controller). 3.5L D35! Ferremit posted:I've had a very hard to source set of master and slave cylinders bored out and fitted with a stainless steel sleeve before by a brake shop here in Adelaide. I have NFI if theres such a service where you are but it is a done thing. Ok things I got done today: Not much. I got the new clutch slave cylinder in. What a massive horrible loving pain in the god drat loving rear end, holy poo poo. I can't get two hands down in there at the same time (giggedy), and it didn't come with a little plastic retainer thingy to hold it in the retracted position. There's no room where the thing belongs to grip hard enough to retract the piston, there's no way to open the bleeder when it's installed (so only fighting the spring, not also hydraulics). My ultimate solution was one of my favourite things, stainless lock wire.  I ended up having to tighten it down a bit further than that, but it shows the gist of what I went through. I bled the cylinder by letting it hang under the car and having my live-in brake/clutch bleeding assistant (wife) mash the clutch pedal until I got the air out. The clutch feel is really good now, it doesn't have a dead spot at the top of the pedal like you get when there's air in the system. It doesn't seem to leak. I wanted to go for a drive, but without a muffler it's deep into noise ordnance violations after dark... also the tires are so bad I'm afraid to go over about 10mph, even up and down my little road... THAT bad... I should have a pile of tires on my deck tomorrow, I'll install them on the wheels this weekend. I can't find a welding gas supply shop that doesn't hold banker's hours. Maine Oxy is open on saturdays for a few hours, they're all across new england, so I'll probably end up having to go with them and pay out the rear end for gas. I also changed the oil in the mercedes and spilled about a quart of used nasty black diesel engine oil all over the floor. Then I got mad and went inside.
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Apr 18, 2019 02:59
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kastein posted:poo poo, I only got here at 9 and I'm about to leave. I can just ditch the thing outside the hangar and give you the address if you'd like, not sure if you can pick it up tomorrow or next week or something. I'll be back Friday and hopefully an evening or two next week so let me know what works for you. Next week will probably work better, this week was so stuffed full of stuff I barely had time to breathe. I'm actually working at our other facility in Billerica for the next year or two, but that isn't too much further. One thing that's really kinda got me annoyed is it appears the biturbo uses different keys (completely different shape etc) in the doors. I don't have the door keys... Which means I'll have to get blanks, remove a door cylinder, and cut my own keys. It just never ends. EDIT: oh also, I changed oil in the toyota. Put the new tires in toyota trunk, took the rims off the biturbo and put them in the toyota. And bam, that's it. chrisgt fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Apr 19, 2019 |
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Apr 19, 2019 01:24
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Yea, according to the manual there's yet another key for the glovebox... I couldn't care less about that one, though. The 51 plymouth has iirc a round key handle for the ignition and a diamond shaped handle for the trunk. I don't think I've ever tried to lock the doors on that car so I'm not sure which (if either) work in the doors. It's a 3 on the tree, nobody gonna steal it
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Apr 19, 2019 11:33
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sharkytm posted:But you're worried about someone stealing the Biturbo. They'd make it like half a block before something broke. The cops will find them 2 blocks farther at AutoZone, screaming at the red shirt about the price of whatever thing failed. The bigger issue is people steal the vagina clocks. They're actually hilariously valuable. Nobody would steal the car. Also, if autozone sold parts for this I'd be stoked. Also wow, I never wanted to know that much about GM keys. The chinesium tires have been sitting for a long time in a warehouse and the beads were really close together. I couldn't get the seated with ratchet straps, the bead blaster on the tire machine, swearing at them, etc. We don't have a cheetah so I drove to the hardware store and bought something... Anyway, all the tires are mounted. Maybe I'll get home early enough tomorrow to drive it without getting the cops called for noise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKyNevGWprI chrisgt fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Apr 21, 2019 |
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Apr 21, 2019 01:39
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Put the tires on and took a quick test ride up and down the road. It's a craptacular video, but it proves the car runs. Exhaust sounds kind of awesome, but it's too loud. I'll fix that up this week. It still probably won't be until mid next month until I get a day off to get tags. The antique tag BITURBO is available, though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM22a7DEOlg
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Apr 22, 2019 00:50
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Fermented Tinal posted:What about BITURDO? Yea, I considered that one, too. or just BITURD.
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Apr 22, 2019 01:03
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Midjack posted:The dmv will probably not issue that one. They’re not known for senses of humor. Maine will, they authorize basically anything as long as it isn't a racial slur. https://jalopnik.com/the-vanity-plates-of-maine-are-delightfully-awful-1831014831 Do more googling if you want, but there are some NASTY ones.
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Apr 22, 2019 02:12
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I cleaned up my fancy Swiss vagene, should be ready for a new battery.
chrisgt fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Apr 22, 2019 |
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Apr 22, 2019 02:30
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I had a friend get a plate recalled in Maine before they laxed up on the rules. I guess someone complained to the DMV and he got a pink slip in the mail.
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Apr 22, 2019 12:02
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Data Graham posted:Laugh my biturbo off  EDIT: Also, just as an excuse as to why it's taking me forever to get tags for this... Town Office Hours Tuesday and Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Wednesday from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 Noon Thursday from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Closed Mondays and Holidays I work 3 hours from where I live, I spend the weeks in one place and the weekends in another place. Since I have the biturbo where I spend the week, but not the weekend, nothing gets done on the weekend. I have 4pm meetings every thursday at work, once I'm there longer I'll be able to move one of those, but yea. This is my excuse. Also, the toyota registration is due in June and I don't like registering more than a month early, so if I do the biturbo registration in May I'll be able to rereg both those in one go every year. The mercedes is september and my town doesn't do online renewal... chrisgt fucked around with this message at 11:48 on Apr 24, 2019 |
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Apr 24, 2019 11:37
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It's not THAT bad. I have to do some repairs in the floors, but without having cut into it yet, I don't think it's the titanic. The suspension and stuff is in decent shape. The stock bits of the exhaust are pretty good, that end of the exhaust is the kind of cheap pipe that disappears in a couple years. It's rusted worst where someone welded a hanger onto it, which makes sense. Welds always rust out on exhaust. It seems like every state does registration stupidly. Having reg, inspection, and license renewals all in the same month would be nice. Just take a week off once a year and do all the stuff... Here cars are regged in the month you first got it tagged. Inspection is the month you last got it inspected. If you don't bother getting it inspected for 6 months after it expired, it's now that month. I usually average one sticker every 2 years... We actually have online driver's license renewal, unless you have a CDL. Do not pass go, spend half the day at the DMV gently caress you. Since I have a CDL I have to deal with that poo poo. What fun.
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Apr 25, 2019 02:07
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quote:[Important] Your Autoplicity Amazon order is a bit behind we are working on it! gently caress. I vowed never to buy from these loving crooks on amazon ever again. Autoplicity sent me the EXACT same email last year when I ordered the axle seals for the attex. Then they sent me the wrong part, then they told me I had to ship the wrong part back, wait until they could process the shipment, and they'd send me the correct part. I really hope that doesn't happen again, that company is a miserable shitpile, NEVER order from their amazon store. They were extremely rude and condescending to me on the phone last time, too. Look, if you don't like selling on amazon loving DON'T.
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Apr 25, 2019 11:19
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Darchangel posted:I was going to ask why you ordered from them again, but I see that the seller is "AP Exhaust Products", not explicitly Autoplicity (which is a stupid name, by the way, too much like "duplicity" which... well, yeah, fits.) There was only one left in stock when I bought it and it was a good $15 to $20 cheaper than any other listing for that part. So I'm guessing you won't find it listed by autoplicity right now. Anyway, I think the vag clock has to go to the Ob-Clk. Click for big  This is what the inside of the clock looks like. I know fuckall nothing about clocks. I do know what they aren't supposed to do, and this one is doing that. It will do a few rounds of 10 second minutes... Yes, it'll tick 60 times in about 10 seconds and just haul rear end around the clock. I wish my boss had one of these at about noon on a Friday. Then it'll just stop (much like about 4pm on a Friday). The needle will sit there and twitch back and forth for a while, then it'll go and run really fast again. It might actually average out to being correct. Does anyone know if that is a standard, off the shelf movement? Maybe I should just take it to a jewler/watch repair and have a new movement put in it. It's a Swiss made clock, I can't imagine the movement is anything special. It's probably the cheapest off the shelf pile of garbage they could stuff in the thing. They knew the clock would outlast the car anyway.
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Apr 26, 2019 02:41
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Yea, I just put a brand new battery in it. According to the package, its shelf life is good until 2022. It reads ~1.56 volts when it's in the clock and running. Not saying it isn't the battery, but the battery does seem fine.
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Apr 26, 2019 11:37
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It's a Swiss clock, nothing Italian about it. I tried twiddling the capacitor, I know you should never do that, but if it's hosed... Didn't make any difference. It's not an electrolytic capacitor (at least I've never seen an adjustable one, or one that small...). Adjustable caps usually have two parallel plates shaped like a D, spinning them can make them not cover each other, or fully cover each other changing the capacitance. If it's anything but that I'd be kinda surprised. I'm sure if I put a scope probe on there it'll load the circuit too much and stop it completely, I can try, though. I'd be better off with an inductive pickup measuring the magnetic field off the coil/inductor. Also nice stealth title edit. Thanks adiabatic 
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Apr 26, 2019 23:05
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The crystal is making fairly close to the correct frequency. My lab is still in boxes because I've been so busy doing everything else and I can't find my USB oscilloscope. But this stupid thing is hard to lose. The first picture shows what the waveform looks like, the second is scaled in a bit for better time scale resolution to determine frequency. In the first pic, I have the time scale set to 10uS and the voltage scale set to 10mV (with a 10x probe because I can't find any 1x probes around (also a 10x probe is better at not loving with a delicate circuit like a crystal)). I'm using AC coupling. I have no idea what the waveform is supposed to look like in a watch nor do I know what the voltage at the crystal should look like. If I put the scope in AC coupling and hook it across the battery I see a pulse of about 50mV several times a second. Again, I have nothing to go by, but that seems kind of excessive. It may after all be the new battery. I'm afraid to hook it to a power supply since I don't know if it relies on a high battery internal resistance to avoid letting the smoke out.  This second picture is kinda blurry and crappy, but it gives better resolution for finding a frequency. The time scale is set to 5uS. I'm going to say the period is 30.05uS, maybe a smidge less. That gives a running frequency of 32.787kHz which is really close to what I'm assuming the ideal frequency of 32.768kHz should be. I'm not a clock doctor, though, so I'm not entirely sure how to use any of these data...  EDIT: I forgot my fluke 87V is a true RMS meter and really accurately measures frequency.... It measured 32.77kHz, so I was really close with my pos old CRO. Oh also I realized I forgot to mention above... It runs correctly for about 30 seconds after connecting the battery, then it starts going haywire, eventually getting stuck twitching. If I disconnect the battery and wait a few minutes, this repeats. So either the battery is in fact hosed, or something builds up a charge after a while and decides it isn't happy. nfi. chrisgt fucked around with this message at 03:50 on Apr 27, 2019 |
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Apr 27, 2019 03:40
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sharkytm posted:I'll bet it's sticky oil/grease causing the motor to bog down, which causes the voltage to drop. It needs an Italian tuneup: fire up your time machine and run forward and back a couple hundred years quickly, that'll loosen up the gears. Oh that's a good idea. I did a quick search and didn't find anything, but I've been lazy at internetting. I have done a bunch of work but haven't done a good job with pictures and making posts, maybe tomorrow I'll take some pics and make a good post...
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Apr 30, 2019 02:48
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I've sucked at internetting lately, life gets in the way of cars sometimes. Last weekend I went couch shopping, hiking, slept in (which almost never happens), and put some time into slow_is_fast's land cruiser so we can hopefully do some offroading later this summer. I somehow managed to fit in enough time to get some biturbo work done over the weekend. I got the cherry bomb muffler from autoplicity in double time (maybe they saw it was me and didn't want a repeat amazon complaint. According to my wife who works as a sales assistant or something, if amazon gets multiple complains for the same thing, especially from the same customer, it's not good). Anyway, I got the muffler, bought some pipe, and did some welding. I didn't clean the stupid coating off the pipes and used flux core since I'm too lazy to go buy a tank of gas, my welds ran on worse than my sentences when I'm tired. The final result with hangers and everything. Fits like a glove and sounds just fantastic.  I also changed the transmission oil and rear diff oil. This is the lubricants page of the owner's manual, it's kinda crap.  In 86 or 87 (depending on what source you go by) they changed from the crappy differential that apparently only holds 1.4 pints of gear oil to a unit that holds well over a quart. I found this out when I bought a quart of gear oil and used the whole thing after the store closed. In reality it takes nearly two quarts. The manual also doesn't list manual transmissions. I think manual transmissions before 87 were somewhat rare, but they obviously did offer them since it lists Brakes and CLUTCH circuit. The manual transmission is a ZF S5-18/3 which seems to be an extremely common transmission used in dozens of different cars through the 80's and 90's. A good thing since 2nd gear synchro in mine is kinda sad. Probably from the PO driving around with a failing slave cylinder.... Anyway, I was able to find the manual from ZF and it said to just use SAE30 engine oil. Easy enough. I also found you can get dogbox versions of this transmission, just saying... Slow_is_fast gave me a work bench that fits perfectly in my little garage, so I need to spend some time getting organized here. I think I'm going to put a shelf under the bench so I can store things under it and then also under the shelf on the floor.  I think it would be better situated on the other side of the garage behind the mercedes. I'd have to put the mercedes in the other bay and relocate the lovely wire shelves.  The reason it may be better on this side is it's where the 240v outlets are. The electrical panel is back in that corner along with the 240v outlets, I might also just make a long extension cord for that. (or buy a 50 foot generator cord for $30 on craigslist...)  If I park the mercedes by the door I'm not sure I'll be able to open it... It's kind of a long car, the door is in a stupid place and has to open inwards...  Last week I spent a bunch of time measuring the gas shocks for the hood and for the trunk trying to find replacements. I found some gas shocks and end adapters on mcmaster carr that I thought would work for the trunk. It took some modification of the screw on end caps, but they did work. The trunk now stays open on its own, exciting.  I could not find anything suitable for the hood, so I just bought replacements from an ebay seller who I'm not going to name (yet...). I got a package that seemed way too light to contain a pair of gas shocks... Open the package and all I found inside was the protective sleeves the things SHOULD have been in, some business cards that (conveniently) had their phone number, and a packing slip. After some head scratching, I realized the person whose job it is to put poo poo in a package, seal the package, and put it in the mail didn't do their loving job.  I'm really hoping the fedex driver had a son with a riced out honda but he couldn't afford gas struts for the hood. It would be amazing if he managed in getting these to fit perfectly and then drove it to one of those car shows where everyone it flatbrims walks around and tells each other that their cars are so "clean" and "fresh." Then someone wrote down the part number for the gas shocks and realized they were for a maserati and everyone was like WHAT THE gently caress HOW IN THE WORLD DID YOU FIGURE OUT THAT MASERATI PARTS WORK PERFECT ON A HONDA. Anyway, I didn't get the poo poo I ordered so I called the company. They were super nice and said they'd ship me new parts ASAP and give me a new tracking number. That was on monday and I haven't received parts or a tracking number from them... Right now I'm kinda blocked by not having tags. I could go pull the whole car apart and spend the next couple months rebuilding everything. And it's not that I won't eventually do that, but I kinda wanna drive it for a bit, fix the things that are really pressing, and backlog the rest until winter. The nice thing about a fairly small insulated garage is it should be pretty easy to keep at a decent temperature through most of the winter. I've also been spending some time trying to get my electronics lab set up at home, when that's all organized I'll pull the gauge cluster out and see if I can figure out why half of it doesn't work. 
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May 3, 2019 02:36
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Darchangel posted:I know what you mean, but that right there is why it doesn’t work. That emblem. I feel bad starting it up, running it for a minute, then shutting it off. That's really bad for an engine. I'm gonna have to move it out of the garage to shuffle things around soon and do some maintenance on the toyota, so I'll get a video. Annoyingly the injector nozzles I need for the mercedes are backordered everywhere (I hope they're still available), but once I get those I'll send the injectors out for rebuild, then the mercedes is stuck where it's parked for a couple weeks. And yea, they plastered the emblem on every other square foot of the car just so you know it's going to be expensive to fix.
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May 4, 2019 18:55
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Yea, and if it's a ford from the 70's through 90's it's probably a random mix of sae and metric hardware, too. Like usual I was out all weekend and got little done, I did swing by slow_is_fast's shop on the way home, though. He has a plasma cutter that he doesn't use that doesn't cut great. So I'm borrowing that. Plasma cutters are one of my favourite tools, so I'm gonna figure out why it's not cutting well and have fun randomly cutting poo poo into smaller pieces. He also has a bench vise not being used, so that made its way to my shop, too. I'm getting there in terms of the tools I need and making things organized. I need to swing by HF and pick up the $40 welding cart. That's not only cheaper than I could make one for, I don't have the time. I need to take a long lunch break one of these days and get some 75/25 bottles.  I have never lived in Vermont, that was just on the wall when I moved in. I like license plates, so I'm just gonna leave it. Now that I think of it, I've only been in Vermont a couple of times, too bad really; Vermont is a beautiful state. OHHH I also thought I'd be smart and take the gauge cluster out of the maserati. Figured I could pull it apart and figure out why the speedometer is intermittent and change the light bulb in the right blinker indicator. Maybe even fix the volt meter and make the tachometer start at zero. I started taking it out and there are wire nuts behind the dash, wires soldered onto the back of the cluster, the connectors go over a bent flex PCB with lifting traces and broken clips and standoffs.... So yea, I noped out really hard and pretended I didn't see any of it.
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May 6, 2019 11:38
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Data Graham posted:Gauge clusters bespeak such unknown horrors. Especially on low-run / DIY cars. The biturbo gauges are all electronic (except for vacuum/boost), as proudly printed all over the gauge faces. Darchangel posted:You’re going to have to deal with it sooner or later. It’s probably not all that bad, but then, I like fixing stuff like that (while cursing the idiot engineer who did *that*, and the DIY twit who did *this* the whole time...) I have no interest in touching this poo poo. I put it back together and it seems to work about the same as before. I'm aware of the fact that I'll have to fix it some day, I'll have to fix a lot of other things some day, too. Today is not that day. I really want to drive it some, see what's most pressing, and target those things. This winter when everything else is in storage I can blow the biturbo apart and start fixing all the "some day" projects. I have some ideas on how I can fix the problems with the connectors and whatnot. Even though I work in a painfully heavily regulated industry (medical) that saps most creativity out of engineering, I can still find solutions to poo poo outside of that sphere...
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May 6, 2019 22:44
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Data Graham posted:Oil pressure, of course. gently caress. Mechanical coolant temp sensors do exist, but they don't have active coolant going to them. If you were to attach a tube from the engine to a sensor you would have no flow past the sensor, thus it would be a meaningless reading (it would just read ambient temp). If you've ever seen a mechanical temperature gauge they have a sensor that goes into active coolant flow with a thin copper tube going all the way to the gauge, you can't remove the tube from the gauge so they're kind of a pain, you have to feed the sensor end all the way from the gauge mounting location to the engine, coiling up excess tube. I've never taken one apart, but if I had to guess how mechanical temperature gauge works, this is what I'd guess. If anyone actually knows how they work, please tell. They have a tube going from the sensor in the coolant passage to what's essentially a pressure gauge. The tube is filled with some sort of alcohol or solvent much like an old thermometer. As the sensor warms up, the fluid in the tube expands creating pressure which then moving the gauge. Tonight I got a lot of nothing done. Kept trying to organize the shop, failed to get the plasma cutter to cut well, and yelled at some lady walking a dog who didn't clean up her dog poo poo. Basically run of the mill crotchety old guy stuff.
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May 7, 2019 02:42
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I've been doing a bunch of other stuff in the shop, mowing the lawn, working on other non-interesting projects, etc. I'm sorta blocked by not having registration, I'm blocked on the mercedes by having to order injector nozzles from Germany, I'm blocked on doing toyota maintenance because i wanna have the mercedes all fixed and running well before I take toyota apart... I am, however, wildly uninterested in oil pressure gauges. This post contains some really  wiring content. Proceed only if you have a strong stomach.First, let's look at some factory wiring fuckery.  Everything about this is wrong and makes me want to cry. Beyond that, the car uses glass festoon fuses, the ceramic german fuses, and two sizes of blade fuse. I should make a spare fuse kit... Let's move on to PO wiring fuckery. The radio, why is it mounted like this? Does the hole not support a full depth radio? It can't have been easy to shift into R, 2, or 4. It also had a CD stuck in the drive that refused to eject. My money was on lovely Italian music.  I pulled the radio out to find this. It's an itallian car so I'll use an itallian word to describe what I see. Spaghetti.  With the wires for the speaker re-routed to go under the mounting cradle and the bulk of the poo poo removed, the radio (more on that later) actualy fits all the way in the hole. The car immediately looks like homeless.  Ok so what actually is this piece of poo poo radio.  That's right, a pyle of poo poo plus. From 2006 no less, as stated by a tag on the other side. I had no idea car radios had to comply with DHHS. Don't neglect your radio or the government will take it from you.  I have seen car radios with string and knob setups like this... out of shitboxes in the 70's. Shitboxes before that actually had really clever mechanical systems that let you save presets. You could tune the dial to a frequency, pull the button out, and then push it back in, then if you pushed it the radio would go to that frequency. I digress, but it's a cool system. (i actually have one such radio in a box somewhere, maybe I'll showcase it).  It has the most hilarious brand capacitors I've ever seen.  I sorta wish I did a video tear down of this thing, it was so bad I just kept swearing at it. Anyway, pile of rubble all went in the trash.  Oh yea, I'm sorry if anyone likes these guys....  Ok, on to other bullshit. The inner headlights are actually 100 watt driving lights which is kinda awesome. One of them didn't work. I pulled the light bulb out (and broke it in the process), but it turned out that the bulb wasn't the issue. So now I have to buy a new one, anyway, this is (probably) the issue. I haven't actually tested that disaster with a voltmeter yet because it's sorta behind the battery with no access. I'll have to pull the battery out and probably replace several inches of wire.  We all know that wire nuts are bad in cars, however the headlights on the other side are wired like this and they still work just fine.  In conclusion: Wire nuts are better than stripping half an inch of casing off the a wire and then twisting another wire around it.
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May 10, 2019 01:49
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You gotta try pretty hard to outdo Maserati in being horrible at something. I have the pioneer deh-x4900bt in both my toyota and mercedes. I really like the radio, it's easy to use, it saves the memories even when you disconnect the battery, and you can change the backlight color to something not offensive (or have it do a rainbow lightshow). There is a new version of the radio out that I really want, so I might buy that, put it in the toyota which I drive every day, and hand-me-down toyota's older pioneer to the maserati. There's no such thing as a wiring harness adapter for this car, so I'm just gonna wire everything cleanly into the pioneer connector. Honestly wire nuts are probably better than soldering in a lot of instances in cars, solder creates a hard spot in the wire and tends to break over time. The wiring behind the gauges doesn't appear nearly as bad as the radio, but then I didn't get a very good look before noping the gently caress out. As I said, I'll deal with it, just not right now.
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May 10, 2019 22:55
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Motronic posted:Back to the F-series master cylinder pressure switch fluid migration burning down trucks..........the recall was an intermediate harness with a lovely old glass fuse in it (male/female ends on it so it was a 2 minute job to add it as a plug through). Stoped the fires, also breaks the fluid flow through the harness. Those were some of the crappiest fords of all time anyway, not really any big loss. Englishman alone posted:This is everything and more I could have hope for PO fuckery. Italian fuckery god speed mad goon. I got something from a long way away.   New Monark injector nozzles for my Mercedes!! I didn't know they stopped making these last year until all the US distributors were out of stock. I found this set on german ebay, I should probably order a few more sets and just sit on them... Here are the injectors after I pulled them out and halfassedly sprayed them with brake clean to get the oil off. I think what happens is oil leaks out of the valve cover, down the threads, and into the area just before they seal on the heat shields. Not really a problem, just took me a minute to figure out why there was oil down there.  Four of them looked like this. They really don't actually look that bad, they were just so rusty and I had no records of rebuild I figured they should be done. I do have a bit of nailing when cold and smoke at idle. The centers aren't that worn, but they are a bit concave.  This is (i think) the number 2 injector. It's way sadder looking than the others, the worn section also isn't centered. I'm not 100% sure what would cause but I do have some theories. There are a few things to note. There's the needle in the middle, around that there's the blackened area. That's the area that's exposed to the heat of combustion in the pre-chamber. Outside of that, you'll notice the other injectors are relatively clean. The injectors screw down into a bore onto a heat shield/crush washer. Looking at this injector, the exposed section is off centered. Furthermore, if you look at the right of the worn patch, it looks wind swept. It looks like there have been combustion gasses possibly escaping past the crush washer which has worn those scores into the face of the nozzle. Not sure if this is what happened, but it's all I can come up with. I didn't really come to this conclusion until looking at these pictures while writing this. All the injectors are boxed up and ready to go, so I can't look at it further. I can go look at the injector hole to if I can find anything else interesting. I haven't pulled the heatshields out of the holes yet, so maybe that'll tell part of the story. I got home today around 6, went out to yank the injectors, then went inside to eat dinner. I rarely get any car work done on the weekend...  I hope this injector doesn't tell a tale of sorrow for my engine, I'll see what the rebuilder says. It's not that I can't rebuild injectors myself, I just don't have any of the tools or testers. For $99 I can have them ultrasonically cleaned, professionally rebuilt, pressure tested, and pop tested. Kind of a no-brainer. Now I have a garage full of cars, cars scattered all over 2 states, and only one car on the road. 
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May 13, 2019 03:23
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Leaking around the injectors is an issue with newer mercedes (by newer i mean like 2006ish CDI engines (anything less than 30 years old is new to me)). It's not an issue on older, mechanical diesels. I pulled the old heat shields out of the holes and cleaned everything up, the corresponding heat shield was also blackened in a way that looked hot. Hope it's not foreshadowing for a bigger problem, we'll see soon enough I have had issues on boats (both sailboats and power boats) with cracked solder joints. Especially when there's too much solder and it wicks up the wire. I've had issues on cars with it, I've had issues on power equipment (especially single cylinder garbage). I used to do wiring professionally, though, so I've seen a large sample size of it. In more exciting news, my rain gutter roof racks fit on the biturbo. That means I can put kayaks on the roof and look pretentious as hell while 
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May 14, 2019 01:55
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I certainly have soldered things on cars because I was pissed off and it was easier than an other option for whatever reason. As long as the joint is well supported over the whole length of the solder connection it's usually safe. That way it can't really flex at the solder stress riser. I went out to tinker with poo poo in the garage after work. I really didn't have a plan of what to do. I put the new bulb in the light with the twisted wire. Of course it didn't fix the problem, but now I'm back to where I was before I broke the light bulb like an idiot... I didn't have the effort available to pull the battery and fix the wire. I did do a light check, though. I have a corner light out, but that's it. No big deal, I'll pick up a 194 or whatever next time I'm at the store. The reverse lights don't work at all. I really don't care. The brake lights didn't work. I really kinda care. I did some farting around trying to find the switch for those, finally found this disgusting looking thing on the master cylinder.  I jumpered the terminals and this happened... Ok.  Then it seems that the act of jiggling the spade connectors around on the terminals fixed the brake lights and now they work pressing the pedal. So I jiggled them around some more for good luck, put a bit of dielectric grease on them, and walked away from it. I'll let it be until I get pulled over for my brake lights being broken. Then I'll pretend I have no idea how that coulda happened, spend a few minutes poking around the hood and say to the cop "oh poo poo, I think I found the problem!" Because if I just go and poke the problem and it works it's obvious I'm too lazy to fix a critical safety item. I digress. I also found a solution for the airbox:  That might be the ratchet strap I borrowed from slow_is_fast. I have to go buy poo poo at harbor freight anyway, I'll pick up some more
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May 15, 2019 02:39
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STR posted:Soooo they took a Ford cruise control switch and used it for brake lights, and made it even more fire-prone? What? Many, many cars over the years have used a pressure switch on the master cylinder for brake lights, as far as I know, the biturbo solution is not fire prone at all (unlike everything else on the car). If biturbos catching on fire from the brake light switch was a thing, it would be on the long list of reasons to avoid them, so far nobody has warned me of this. Honestly I've never heard of cars catching on fire because they used a brake light switch on the MC BESIDES ford, so I dunno what you're getting at ... That generation ford was a general piece of poo poo so they were just putting themselves out of their misery. MrOnBicycle posted:You should watch B is for Build. He is meticulous in his work. I can't fix everything all at once.... All in good time. Everything in the engine bay is a massive bear to get at. I need to rebuild the turbos eventually, I should replace all the coolant lines under there, but it's literally impossible to even get to that stuff without removing the engine (or supporting the engine and dropping the front cradle, which makes little to no sense). The turbos are IHI with some (apparently) fairly easy to get cores, so when pull the trigger on that one it shouldn't be terrible... If you want to see me completely rebuild something from scratch, paint every part, and put it back together better than new, go look at the attex thread.
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May 16, 2019 11:40
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I saw this and it made me think of me. No other actual content tonight, sorry.
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May 17, 2019 01:48
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Holy loving poo poo, I know that fords suck, I'm not going to buy one, I don't care about brakes in them. I got plates and drove it around and stuff. There's a video at the end of this post, so at least look at the pictures and click the video. There was one terminally bad drivability issue, the heat was stuck on all the way hot. Here's your problem...  I had to take a bunch of stupid stuff apart to actually GET to that hold down. I put the cable back in it, pushed the heat lever, and it immediately popped back out. I didn't take a picture, but I ended up using a piece of 0.035" stainless wire. Bent it to follow the contour of the hold down, put one end through the screw hole and the other end of the wire through the hole at the other end. That way there's a nice piece of wire biting into the cable sheath, that worked a treat. Then I found the actual underlying problem with the HVAC...  This module was used in most chyco products in the mid 80's. That means you could put a maserati faceplate on a dodge omni or something. Just saying. I also found something interesting with the hood release.  The second loop is actually another hood release cable, it's another cable that goes to both of the hood release thingies under the hood. I'm kinda surprised they went through the effort, cool, though. I haven't called the number, but I bet they wouldn't expect a call for maserati assistance.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSAywFdyKOs
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May 18, 2019 23:12
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Anyone know anything about old ZF transmissions? I believe the transmission is an S 5-18/3. The shifter has a nasty rattle under some driving conditions, putting my hand on the shifter stops it. I'm used to subarus that rattle in 3rd gear after the first 5000 miles from the show room, but this is a much more annoying rattle. I took half the interior to get to the business end of the shifter, but it goes right into the tail extension thingy of the transmission, I'm too chicken to take this apart...  On the back side of that thingy where the shifter goes in it has these sumbers stamped on it.  It's interesting that the final part of the serial number is either hand stamped or machine stamped as it gets assembled, not cast. You don't really see things like that anymore. I'm hoping there's some easy solution something like: "yea, take that shift tower off and replace $20 worth of bushing thingies and put it back together again NBD."
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May 19, 2019 15:11
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Rectal Placenta posted:Haha, "Turbo" gages are the best. The under hood shots kinda give me anxiety, it looks like everything is just so buried in there under a Möbius strip nest of vacuum lines https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMhB6yz95LU angryrobots posted:These guys sell complete units and parts, and have very good exploded view PDFs for free on their page here. Holy poo poo that's awesome! Thanks! I'll have to get back into this again, that rattle is really bad. Maybe I can just add thin shims to the flat washer or something... Dunno, at some point I'll pull it apart and hope this isn't what happens... https://xkcd.com/1994/
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May 19, 2019 21:35
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No real update, but I spilled some oil in the garage and didn't want to upset my cat by stealing his litter, so I drove to the store, in the car you'd expect. It's not the best car by any metric (in fact it's probably the worst by many), but holy poo poo, if an angry little twin turbo v6 doesn't make you smile, please show yourself out.
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May 21, 2019 01:56
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