Operation Happy Bacon pt 1

Well it seems that the electrical issues have paid their dues and are finally on their way :)  Rego is due, and I hit a bit of a fork regarding what to do with her, and where I want to take her in the future.  I toyed with the idea of taking her off the road and setting her up as a track car, but a) I would need to buy towball/trailer, and I have nowhere to store the trailer, and b) I would still like a streeter I can go for a cruise in from time to time.

I decided to go with keeping her registered, giving me a car that I could go for a cruise in, and still be able to drive to the track to have fun with.  It wouldn't be the quickest or most competitive car, but to me thats not the point.  It's about having fun doing what I love, and past experience has shown me that thats definitely possible :)

Pursueing this path, I decided that it would be prudent to try and legalise her as much as possible - hence Operation Happy Bacon!  We all know how many defect squads are getting around these days, and given the unnecessary attention we already get thanks to the stereotype portrayed by the media, it's only a matter of time before a piggy tries to give me a second a-hole.

If I wanted to sit down and list everything that I could possibly be picked up on, I'd run out of fingers and toes.  That said, the amount of rape-age also depends on the mood that the cop is in, so the priority is the obvious ones - the ones that could get me pulled over in the first place, and the ones that people are most commonly defected for.  The list I have so far:

• Enclose pod filter (now has to be enclosed in QLD, not just secured)
• Plumb back catch can (is currently venting to atmo)
• Remove window tinting (yes officer, I know 5% is illegal)
• Relocate battery/tidy up hole cut for intercooler piping
• Tuck exhaust, and possibly raise ride height
• Replace wheels to something that still looks good and doesn't require spacers
• Remove drift button on handbrake
• Replace steering wheel with something padded (apparently you need padding on the middle of your steering wheel)

On top of this, the list of other things I want to sort out:

• Replace/upgrade brakes
• Air diversion plate
• Respray car
• Resolve rust in the roof
• Get a proper alignment

I've obviously got my work cut out for me, but everyone has to start somewhere...  In this case, I'm starting with a box.  But not just any old box...

The idea here is that I wanted to construct a box that would both enclose my pod filter, keep the catch can atmo (wanted to keep the turbo/intercooler free from excess oil) and also tidy up the engine bay a little.

The first thing that needs to be done is relocate the power steering reservoir, as it would foul on the enclosure.  The only thing I had to keep in mind was that the reservoir has to be higher than the pump itself.  Simple enough, just some custom brackets so I could mount it elsewhere, and then an extension of the hoses.



Here's the top section of the perspex that I rough-cut to size.  The idea here is that I wanted to enclose the whole section from the rad support to the strut tower, so it looked both tidy and would also give me room to work with. 

As I mentioned before, I wanted to keep the catch can (the black box on the left) venting to atmosphere, so that the turbo and intercooler didn't gobble up the excess oil.  The previous configuration had the oil dripping onto the exhaust manifold, which would just burn off without leaving oil everywhere.  All I did was add some piping and a filter, with enough length to allow me to add it to the enclosure, and out of prying eyes.

I also got a new intake pipe fabricated up.  Unfortunately the factory one didn't put the air filter in a workable position.  The pipe itself is a bit of a hack job (had to bung a hole, and there's a random flange coming off) but can't complain, it was free!

The intake installed, with the filter for the catch can.  You can see on the right a screw hole where the power steering reservoir was sitting, this is why it had to be moved.  Cutting this perspex to size was a hell of a lot more tedious - it's hard to mark sizes and locations that you can't directly measure.

The two pieces of perspex cut, drilled and cleaned up.

I wanted to use some cable sheathing to edge the perspex.  It's a lot quicker and easier than sitting there sanding and buffing each edge, and also provides protection from anything that could start rubbing against the perspex.

Thanks to Tobs (once again) for the sheets of stickers used to finish off the perspex :)  Quite happy with how they've come up, and you can see the idea behind the sheath as well.  We ran out of stickers in the end, and quite a few were transparent, so I just painted the back of the perspex black to compensate.

My girlfriend helping out with the sticker-bombing... First time either of us have done it, it's not overly hard but its not exactly easy either!

I went with some right-angle to join the two sheets of perspex together.  Combined with some pop-rivets, I think it was quite a sturdy solution, and has definitely ensured that it won't be coming apart anytime soon.

The finished result!! It's secured by pop-rivets into the chassis, and is designed so that I can still remove the fender if need be.  All in all I'm very happy with the final result :)

A different angle... you can see how it lines up quite well with everything else in there to give a more flush result.

The sheathing doing its job...  You can also see the pop rivets down the spine of it.

It took about a week for me to finish it, but that's because I had other commitments that were a tad more important than finishing this.  Had I have sat down in one go, I could've easily knocked it off in a day, but as we all know, life tends to get in the way.  That said, for the total cost of $0, I'm incredibly chuffed with the result!!!  Plus it's 2 things off of my to-do list :)

Stay tooned - got another trackday coming up at the end of July, so hopefully you'll see more updates as I get ready for that. 

Until next time!!

On the mend

After finally replacing all the wiring and getting her back to a point where she was ready to put back together, I decided to put her back together... but, first things first - had to take her for a drive.  Albeit, around the block, but that's not the point!! 

As far as the interior went, it was nowhere near driveable.  The dash was just sitting on top of the steering column, there were loose components and screws all over the shop, and the fuse box hadn't been secured, so it was basically sitting on top of the accelerator pedal.  Fun times trying to drive, while listening to everything roll around, trying to stop the dash from flying at me, and keeping my foot between the fuse box and the pedal.  But... totally worth it :)

I'll save you the details - long story short, I put her back together.

Finally got the chance to give her a clean too.  After a full day at the track, and then 3 months sitting still, she was pretty damn filthy.  Mind you, not that it made that much of a difference, that paint needs a lot of work =P  Touched up the bonnet though, because when I painted it previously the polish stripped a fair bit of paint off.

However while I was at it, replaced all the sikoflex that was previously plugging the antenna hole with a rubber grommet I found in the boot - much cleaner!!

 

Also got some black pop rivets to fill the holes that existed from when the bolt-on fenders were on.  Amazing how much of a difference the little things make!

Took her for a drive on Wednesday... soooooooooo good to be behind that wheel again!!

Stay tuned for Operation Happy Bacon :)

Well that thar be yar problem!!!

This weekend saw me finally continuing on with these bloody shenanigans that seem to be the bane of my existance... Last weekend, I was driving from Melbourne to the Gold Coast, helping my beautiful girlfriend move.  The weekend before was down in Melbourne for a going away party and social visits... While I would've loved to have just relaxed this weekend, Stacey wasn't going to fix herself.  Alas, onwards!!!

If you remember from my last post, I'd spent a lot of time separating and identifying all the different wires.  And so began the repairs...

To say it was an absolute nightmare is an understatement.  Tracing each one, looking for damaged areas, cutting and stripping both the original and the new cables, soldering them in, taping them up... rinse and repeat many many many times!!!  I only had the one colour cable to replace the damaged sections with too, so to make sure I didn't get them mixed up, I methodically but tediously went one at a time.

You can see just how much was damaged... but at the same time, it wasn't really enough to justify re-looming the whole car, especially given that I still didn't know what caused it.

As I was checking each cable, I came to a section that kind of kept going (again)...

... and went through the firewall to the front end of the car.  DOES THIS DAMAGE KNOW NO END???

A quick inspection showed that it had indeed gone that far, once again melting through the insulation.  I had to wonder if this is what caused the damage initially, perhaps some rubbing through had shorted something out.

After stripping off all the insulation however, I couldn't find anything to support that theory.  Luckily, the damage in this section was limited to the troubled wire, it claimed no collateral damage.  What makes it even more amazing is that given how many circuits it claimed inside the car, I'm amazed that it didn't affect any of these wires - we're now talking engine control territory, and had that been affected, I could've been in a world of hurt (well, a lot more than I'm already in =P)

After some rooting around in the front end of the car and not finding anything, I went back to looking around in the footwell as I kind of skipped this section while checking the front end.

Not a comfortable working position... at least I had the seats out so I could stretch out to some extent, but I was still sticking my head in a very cramped space, fighting a fuse box, junction box, air con vents, pedals, relays and a tonne of wiring for room to work.  By this stage lighting was very poor, and had a fluorescent light and not a lot else to help me out.  Needed a flash to take this photo - without the flash you can't see anything, and my experiences were very similar without that light!!

After some tracing, I found that the problem child wiring (i.e. the parkers circuit) wound up in this loom... could not for the life of me figure out what the purpose of this plug was!  Factory-looking wires, in line fuse holders, but hacked to all hell at the other end where someone had spliced it into the factory wiring...

Just for something different, pulled off some more panelling...

... and found out that it had aftermarket central locking still installed, although it wasn't plugged in.  This confirmed that the plug was related to an aftermarket immobiliser/central locking system, as it tapped into the ignition barrel.  For the sake of redundancy? DELETED!!

So I got the wiring to a point where I thought it was ready to test.  I'd traced wiring over the whole car, checking every piece I could find and replacing the damaged sections, including any other wires it damaged on the way.  I'd verified that the front and rear parker circuits worked (i.e. after re-wiring those circuits) so I began the task of plugging things back in and connecting enough so that I could turn the car on.

As I was plugging the dash in, I found this random wire connected to the main plug.  It was spliced into the same parker circuit thats been problematic over the whole car.  After some investigation, I found out that all imported Silvia's have this wiring added for compliance reasons.  The idea is that it then connects to a dimmer switch so you've got control over the brightness of your dash lights.  Fair enough... except for one thing:

This is the other end.  I'm not kidding, this is how I found it.  No insulation, no electrical tape, no solder, it's just been twisted together to complete the circuit, and there was no dimmer switch to be found.  This wasn't connected to anything - it was just floating around in the dash, so it's my guess that this is what's been the cause of the issue, and could very well explain why the fault has been intermittent. 

Time to test it all then hey?  Plugged in the battery, turned the key, and...

Voila!!!  The promising thing was that the fuel gauge returned to a level that it was a bit more realistic (instead of waaaaaaay past full), and the clock was showing the time too - albeit, the wrong time, but who cares =P

Visual check of all the lights to make sure they were all happy!!  I then left the car running for 20 odd minutes to make sure that nothing was heating up, which it didn't.


Decided to make the most of the daylight while I still had it, and began with taping up small sections of wiring, doing enough to be able to get the car back on all four wheels, and also started tidying up the interior ready for the panels to go back on.

Here's my beautiful girlfriend getting her hands dirty giving me a helping hand :)

-------------------------

After 3 months, it seems she's finally on the mend... a lot of panels out, a hell of a lot of tracing/troubleshooting, a massive amount of cursing and swearing and my fair share of headaches, but she's finally on the mend.  The good news is that the fuel gauge, the clock and the radio all work again.  I've only had to rewire the whole car to get to that point, but the positive thing to take away from this is I now know what she's like at her guts, and I have a really good idea of how the wiring sits - I can be reassured that I shouldn't need to check this stuff again.

From here, it's still going to be a fair bit of effort getting her all back together again... Hopefully I have more luck than all the king's horses and men with humpty dumpty ;)  That said, there's a lot of wires and looms that have to be taped back together, a lot of brackets that need to be re-fitted, and I have a million screws that need homes - I can honestly say I don't remember all of their respective locations, and I'll probably end up with a few left over, but that always happens.  Hopefully I can find enough to make the interior at least stay together =P

The only thing I'm still not sure of is the exact cause of the issue.  While chances are better than good that it was that random wiring coming out of the dash, I can't say 100% for sure that it was the problem.  With the amount of damage to the wiring, I don't know if there was any rubbing thats attributed to the issue, or if there were wires that were crushed somewhere.  Fingers crossed though, that I never see this issue again, and that I'll be able to drive her again soon :)