TSG's Unified Fleet Thread

[thesameguy]

It's interesting that this is, as near as I can tell, the only fitting of its kind...

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/pfs-10450/overview/

[thesameguy]

I was curious about whether Anne had incorporated the Lemons keyword into her ad, so I went looking for it. I can't find it, which leads me to believe it does not exist.

Prediction: In the same way my September of '16 comment "You need to start looking for another car" led to no action, I think my March of '17 comment "You should sell the Volvo now" will also lead to no action. In some amount of time - whatever amount is the least convenient amount - I will start dismantling Charlotte and virtually immediately get a call "The Volvo just died and won't restart" and my only reply will be "Well, I tried, sorry about your luck."

[thesameguy]

I actually walked myself into West Coast Fiero in sunny Tehachaphi, CA this morning to engage in some friendly conversation and find out where my manifolds were. Super nice guys, and while I could accurately describe the conversation as "lots of excuses" truth is these guys cater to a tiny market and it's not entirely fair or appropriate to frame their operation as a traditional business. As I explained to them, I'm not upset, but I need the manifolds or for them to tell me they can't fill the order and that I need to look elsewhere. After some conversation about engine swaps and shop dogs, I left with a promise for Wednesday... we'll see how that goes.

I also spoke to smog referee and we discussed Saab engine swaps. Took a little bit to explain what I was doing, but the conversation ended favorably so that project is a go! Now I have some chronological and financial decisions to make - I would like to get it painted and get the T5 swap done. If I can, EHPS will get wrapped up in there but that's a low priority. In seven years I haven't once missed power steering, so I feel no pressure there. If I was sure about the Fiero parts I would get going on the T5 right now, leaving maximum time for the referee... but I'm not, so I might send it off for paint, leave Charlotte with Anne for a bit or maybe source a different donor entirely, and then get going on the fuel injection in/around May. That's still two or three months for the referee before the Saab Owner's Convention in August.

[thesameguy]

My prediction was WRONG, she finally listed it on Saturday:

https://sacramento.craigslist.org/cto/6060161048.html

She did not incorporate the Lemons keyword or the fact it has a bunch of ipd parts on it - but I think she's going for the "I'm a girl" approach, so maybe KISS.

Spent some time with the '94 E320 on Saturday. Yet again found the tires about 7psi low. Irked that after buying an easy to read digital gauge and a portable compressor we can't keep them full, but as long as they only lose 7psi per year it's manageable. I pumped them back up, changed the oil, replaced the belly pan, changed the windshield wiper, repaired (I hope) the odometer gear... and then blasted down the 210 at 90 for a while. We're closing out Year 3 with the Benz and it's doing great. Definitely going to have it another year - it runs and drives great.

After diverting through Tehachapi on the way down, I decided to take the desert route back. Usually we take the 210 west out to the 5, cut over on 99 and then straight up to Sacramento. This time we hopped on the 15 north, took 138 to 14, 14 to 58, and 58 back to Bakersfield & highway 99. Rather than sitting in traffic through Pasadena and Valencia and dealing with the horrible I5/HWY99 split (that people just can't seem to figure out!), we took slower, but less traveled roads through Palmdale, Mojave, and Tehachapi. GREAT DRIVE. Any slight difference in time was easily made up for the total lack of traffic, nice desert scenery (especially after all the rain), and fun roads. I will definitely take this route again - I don't know how it never occurred to me before!

There was an awesome prewar car caravan passing through Mojave as we did - mostly A & T Fords but some other stuff as well. There is also some monstrous junkyard out there I really want to check out, and some sort of wacko used car dealer either in Pearblossom or Littlerock nestled amidst antique dealers. Maybe we'll be able to stop for a bit next time... now that we know they're there, we can plan to stop.

Edit: Can't find the junkyard, but check out "Vehicle Liquidation" in Littlerock:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Li...836793!6m1!1e1

[thesameguy]

WHAT THE ACTUAL *%(&*%(&*%^(*!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last night I came back to work for my weekly "I am a robot here to do your bidding" stuff, and a coworker said, "Dude, your car is, like, leaking a lot."

Went outside to find a gigantic puddle of coolant under the XR. My mind started racing, thinking about all the things that could have resulted in such a mess, but when I popped the hood the answer I couldn't even conceive of presented itself: The little asshole Dorman tee failed AGAIN. WHILE PARKED. I can't even.

I emailed Dorman and they helpfully offered to send me another free of charge. Maybe the third time is the charm, but I'm not putting my eggs in that basket. I need to find another way. This is the hose intersection:



I need a tee with two 5/8" legs and one 3/8" leg. I could make this up with NPT fittings, but that would be huge, ugly, weigh a ton, and end up flopping all over the place. I really liked the Dorman tee because it is plastic and sits really nicely in that spot. FWIW, being plastic isn't inherently the problem - at the other end of the motor I have a Gates brand tee that's 5/8" on all three legs and it's fine. This is just a poor quality part.

The best I've got so far is to use another one of those Gates tees, and then a separate 5/8" -> 3/8" reducer, assuming that exists (I'm pretty sure it does). I could also go full-surgery mode, remove the intake manifolds, and block off the water feed and that would mean not needing the 3/8" leg at all... it's just a lot of work, and I'm not *entirely* sure the EGR pipe would fit properly anymore.

Bah.

On the upside -

Got two more door lock motors for the Aero, so now the power locks and, more importantly, the remote all do what they should. I relearned the anti-pinch limits so the one-touch up now works. I reprogrammed the "comfort open" feature, so now you can open all the windows and the sunroof with the remote. I fixed the sunroof deflector clip so now the sunroof closes properly. And, I got the replacement vacuum hoses in from gmpartsdirect.com so I was able to replace my janky hose with the correct parts. Worth noting, my fix was still in perfect shape, so maybe not so janky after all.

Also, this weekend is half price weekend at the good ol' Pick & Pull, with today being a "preview" for their rewards members. Went by this morning and snagged a direct ignition cassette, a pair of MAP sensors, and a pair of Trionic 5 ECMs to play with. I sat around my $80 pile of T5 stuff and laughed and waved it into the air.

Unfortunately, I forgot to grab the boost control solenoids, and talked myself out of a set of injectors but am now wishing I'd grabbed some. I think I'm going to take a road trip down to Stockton this weekend as I might be able to source the magic throttle body I need... I can probably grab the BCS & injectors there.

Yes, it's stupid for me to go buy this stuff when I ostensibly have a parts car in the driveway. But, I did not expect a random early spring half-off day, and you definitely can't count on PnP having Saabs anyway. But, also, nice thing about having a running Trionic 5 car is that I have somewhere to actually test the junkyard parts... and that isn't all bad!

[thesameguy]

It appears my pass through Tehachapi wasn't without value... got a call that my manifolds have shipped and they offered to eat the shipping.

I have been enjoying simply not worrying about the Fiero, but I guess now I have to start worrying about it passing smog again. It might be worth it, because I am also excited about driving it with all the tuneup parts and hearing how it sounds with a properly functioning exhaust. I've kind of grown used to it sounding like a split-port 1800 from the inside.... might be nice to hear a pushrod V6 for a while.

But not, because pushrod V6s pretty much sound like crap no matter what you do.

I guess this weekend I'm resolved to go ahead and install a phenolic spacer on the XR's intake manifold, which will block coolant through there and eliminate the need for a tee in the first place - either a straight coupler or a really quirky single hose. I really, really don't want to take the intake manifold off again but I also really, really don't want to deal with this problem anymore. I'm probably blowing the difficulty of this operation way out of proportion - intellectually I feel like it's a dozen pretty accessible bolts and a couple electrical plugs - but I can escape that terrible year in the late aughts trying to find a boost leak and taking the thing apart over and over again. It makes me twitchy.

[thesameguy]

Took a road trip down to Stockton today to stockton up on more T5 parts. I convinced the little lady to drive - she's a little intimidated by the SPG - while I messed around with my VSS breakout and sort of learned how to use an oscilloscope. I was able to see that the 9000 VSS outputs a typical sine-wave -



and then the speedometer turns that into a square wave -



This exercise is a little redundant - there are discussions about this on the web - but I wanted to see it in action so I can test along the way and make sure I can make the Dakota digital box perform the same function. Armed with this information, I decided to hook up the Speedhut speedometer to my breakout and, whaddaya know, it worked! I am pretty confident at this point I have the knowledge and pieces to execute The Plan.

I am not sure about my time & dollar ability to fully execute my vision for gauges, but I can get a good start and that's something!

Full loadout of T5 parts, speedo signal and related gauge package sorted. Just need to put together some cash for the big parts I gotta buy.

[thesameguy]

Spent way too much time on Sunday futzing with speedometers. I have been burned by assumptions on projects in the past and I just don't have the interest in spinning my wheels this time around. I'm trying to be a little OCD and quantify everything, to be sure I understand all the pieces and that they're all behaving. Driving Charlotte around with junkyard coil packs to be sure they're good is one part of the equation, being sure my speed signal is correct is another. Yesterday I realized the workbench in the shop is way too small, so I worked outside on the ground. Not all bad, because I also learned that the AC power running through the shop really fucks up my software oscilloscope and my drill press doesn't work in reverse so I had to use a hand drill to run things. Unfortunately, while the drill press has a tachometer, the DeWalt does not. Boo.

First step was running a c900 speedometer via cable at a known speed, and calibrating the Speedhut speedometer accordingly.



Then, running a 9000 speed sensor at that same speed, plugging in the Dakota adapter, and making sure it ran the Speedhut speedo similarly.



You will notice my kick-ass "65mph bracket" operating the DeWalt.

Feeling good about this. I ordered some TE contacts from Newark.com last night so I can adapt the new electronics to the existing factory connectors - hopefully they make it soon. I would like to be able to get the replacement speedo installed and put some miles on it to get a sense of how it works before introducing more variables.

Next up I gotta order the modified flywheel and a wideband O2 sensor. And, hopefully, convince my welder guy to weld in bungs for the IAT and WBO2 sensors.

[novicius]

Yeah now this is what happens when you have to "make" your solutions -- I don't envy you! #goodluck

[thesameguy]

It's not so bad in 2017. When my friend Damien first tried to do this in 2000 or 2001 it was horrific, and none of the tuning tools existed so it had a very black-box feel to it. These days, the software has been fully taken apart and is extremely well understood - there isn't much adventure left. On the forums there is an unofficial "T5 in a day club" for people who have done the whole conversion in one day. That's how easy it is.

I am making things more complex because I want a custom gauge cluster and I need a working evap system. And, honestly, I like to understand what's happening rather than just take for granted it is. If it wasn't for those two items, I could write a check for $2000 and have it done next weekend. No joke! I say this authoritatively because I've had that $2000 kit open in a web browser for an hour just staring at it. I just can't quite convince myself the $1000 premium over what I *have* to spend is worth it. Is cheap still > performance?

This is the first time in 15 years I've considered going into credit card debt to solve a problem. I don't think my id is going to overrule my ego on this - no matter how short the term - but it's close.

I'd like to proclaim amazing self-discipline, but it's actually just reality. I should have the manifolds for the Fiero in the next couple days and the intake gaskets to install the phenolic spacer in the XR by the end of the week, so I have more than enough to keep me busy til I actually have the cash in hand. The only pressure I have is August, which intellectually is a long way away, but everyone knows how projects can drag out.