It's that time again...spring cleaning! (on the motor)

[VSP]

Thanks, guys!!! Thank you for reading.

I go to the Central Florida Racing Complex (CFRC) in south Orlando: http://cfracingcomplex.com/

I've been going ever since they opened up last year. Nice place and not too strict; as long as you're acting safe and smart the staff is really cool.

**UPDATE**

So I'm actually glad I did not make it to the track the other night.[/b[

My remote bottle opener wouldn't open yesterday, and after testing it with my multimeter, I discovered there was no voltage being applied to it. Not sure why yet; I'll have to track the wires down and see what has come loose.

I'm glad this didn't happen to me at the track: could you imagine, one second I'm tearing down the track [well, as fast as an mostly-stock EJ8 can go] and a split second later my nitrous supply is cut off? Fuel flood city.

On the plus side, now I have the perfect excuse to go over the wiring I put in last year. There were a few things I wanted to tweak, anyway.

Also, a quick note about my EVAP charcoal canister.

For months now I have been throwing a MIL #90 light on my dash. In case you didn't know, that means that there's something malfunctioning with the fuel or vacuum system. I suspected it had something to do with my EVAP canister because I had removed and re-installed it last summer while I was racing.

So yesterday I finally got around to reading the entire troubleshooting procedure in the Helms manual. It appears the shut valve on the canister wasn't opening; testing it with my multimeter showed that there was no continuity between the wires in the plug and the terminals. I re-seated the plug pins and verified continuity. I've reset the ECU and am waiting to see if that fixes the problem.

If it does, than I'll know it was simply a bad wiring connection. In that case I'll get some new pins and a brand new connector, and re-assemble the connector myself.

Next up: I need to go ahead and order the Energy Suspension bushings for my front/rear sway bars. Stock EX up front, and 14mm GSR transplant in the rear. I also need to order some custom rear swaybar endlink connection bushings for the rear bar. Energy Suspension doesn't make a kit for the GSR sway bar, but they do offer a number of generic sizes and metal through-tubes available. Next time I'm home I'll grab my caliper, measure the clearances, and see if there's a quick fit solution among the generic parts:

Then I've got to order it all. I recently discovered a cool little speed shop called Murray's in the south Orlando area. The guy there is cool, because when he filled up my nitrous bottle he handed me a company logo bumper sticker afterward and said, "now don't forget, here's the real power adder." To which I replied, "an extra 20 WHP, right? Must be true...that's what all the forums say!" They will definitely get my business next time. So, to order:

• ES EX front suspension bushings and endlinks
• ES GSR rear suspension endlinks
• ES custom-sized rear suspension endlink bushings
• ES motor mounts (yeah, it's time to put them back on again)
• NOS .022mm fuel jet
• NOS .036mm nitrous jet (goal = 60hp 60-shot)

That should be it for now. Until then I have plenty of other stuff to do, like get those @#$! axles installed. This week. I mean it.

That's all for now. And as always, thanks for reading! Nothing like watching me smack my car around like a $50 hooker, or your mom on a bad day. Or wait--a good day. I need another hit. Or maybe she does.

 

[jerk334]

in for updates, looks good and good to see you learnign alot. if you ever have some questions lmk. GLWB

 

[VSP]

Thanks bro, will do.

 

[VSP]

**UPDATE**


Well. Hell and back this weekend. Axle trouble.

A few weeks ago I bought some replacement axles from Autozone. When I went to replace them, the passenger side axle was frozen solid to the wheel hub. Great.

So after hitting it a few times with a hammer and having no luck breaking it free, I went back to Autozone to rent a special axle-popping tool:

I sprayed the area with Liquid Wrench, let it sit for a while, and Installed the puller onto the wheel hub:

It didn't do any good. It just made an annoying dent in the axle:

I got stopped by this problem before, and I don't ever like having to come back to make third attempts at removing parts from my car. Screw it, I said, this part is coming out. So I unbolted the brake lines, removed the caliper, unbolted the power steering, and lifted the whole stinking assembly out:

I don't like getting held up by removing parts. Neither does my sledgehammer friend, The Persuader:

The Persuader and I talked gently to the axle for about ten minutes [read: beat the living crap out of it] before we convinced it to come out. And even when the axle finally began to budge, it still got stuck about halfway out. In order to avoid damaging the wheel hub, I switched to a smaller, ordinary hammer for the rest of the way. But sure enough, after enough pounding, it came free. Safety glasses, when working with flying metal, is always a must (god, I look awful in this picture, BUT THE AXLE LOOKS WORSE):

So I put the [first] new axle in after that. Sorry, no pictures; I was really tired and dirty by this point and didn't want to handle my phone/camera.

I took it out that night and didn't get a mile from my home when I heard a CHUNK CHUNK CHUNK--

--the axle had popped out.

Had to call a tow truck to get it back to my house. This is NOT what I had wanted to see on a Friday night, or any night for that matter:

So after getting my car home I snapped the axle back in place. I noticed that it deformed the transmission-side boot a bit, but I thought "hey, maybe it's because it's just a new part", and chalked up the malfunction to install error on my part (perhaps I hadn't put the axle all the way in, or so I thought.).

The next day, Saturday, I drove the car to work. Then I ran some errands. That's when the axle popped out a second time. Same story as the day before; had to get the car towed home again:

Me, thrilled:

So once my car was home again I pulled the axle out and this time did a much better, more thorough side-by-side comparison with the old OEM axle. Like I should have done the first time. (Sorry OCcivic, I should have listened more closely to your advice. I paid the price.)

Anyway, the two axles were clearly different sizes. Here they are; the OEM one is the bottom one. Can't believe I missed this the first time I looked at them together:

The difference is pretty obvious, huh?

So, simply put, the [first] new axle was too short. The forces that driving around imparted on the drivetrain was enough to eventually pop the shaft out of the differential. Here's what my tranny did to the new axle:

See how the snap ring was completely deformed? This is because it was the only thing holding--and stretching--the axle in place. Normally the snap ring is just there as a safety precaution to ensure the axle is seated properly, not to actually hold it up in there:

So what next? I took both replacement axles I had bought along with the old OEM one back to the Autozone and raised hell. It turns out that the Duralast axles they sold me are the recommended part listed in their computer inventory system. It was the wrong size part, and the computer said it would fit.

After yelling at them for a bit just because I was angry, I got my money back and left. I then went to the Advance Auto Parts store directly across the street and got the correct-sized axle from there. This time I was damn sure to compare the axle sizes before I even bought the part.

Here they are, side-by-side. Notice the lack of rotational balancer on the new one? (top) Apparently they are designed with inertai-correcting countermeasures on the inside of the axle now. Pretty cool, from a physics standpoint.

Same shaft size, same boot size:

All back together and ready to go:

So I've had the new replacement axle on for a day now without any problems. This time during the install there were no fitting or boot-stretching issues, and I haven't experienced any trouble since.

The next step is going to be the driver side axle, but because it looks to be pretty frozen in there just like the passenger side, I'll make a separate project date out of this.

Rule of thumb? Always check your replacement parts for *exact* fitting. You're the only person who will.

More to come soon. And of course, as always, thanks for reading! I'll bet you learned something here today. Or didn't, but either way, your'e not getting your money back now.

 

[VSP]

**UPDATE**

Grounding wire upgrades!!

I decided a while ago to upgrade my vehicle's grounds. Unfortunately I used the wrong wires.

Now, finally a year later (and after doing my research correctly this time) I put in new wires the right way.

Here's a shopping list:

• 4-gauge (AWG) speaker wire
• 4-gauge ring crimps
• new negative battery cable screw-end connector
• rubber end connectors
• sandpaper
• big-ass wire crimper
• heavy-duty cable cutter
• multimeter to verify continuity

The results were pleasing. I'll show off each connection step-by-step here, with before and after pics.

First, I started with the correct-sized wire. 4-gauge (AWG).

And the proper cable crimper. Luckily I didn't have to buy one; my dad happened to have an aircraft-grade cable crimper lying around. No idea what he was using it for, but I know what I did:

Starting here with the A/C to chassis ground. Notice the horribly inefficient wire I used; a throwback to the bad old days of pre-research:

Old and new cables, side-by-side:

Here's the new one in place; much better:

Moving on, here's the transmission ground next to the new one (sorry, no pics of the original on the car):

And the new transmission ground in place:

Finally, here's the old battery-chassis ground cable next to the new one:

The new one installed:

BONUS! As a little extra, I decided to re-fit the existing ignition coil and main fusebox wires. Now, these are already 4-gauge wire, but I decided to upgrade for consistency, plus I had plenty of wire left over (always overestimate when doing an install job).

The first mod I EVER did on my car was to replace a bad positive terminal connector (4 years ago). I went down to the local auto parts store and bought a replacement terminal, stripped back the ignition and fusebox wires, and bolted them on there. The result is that four years later, I'm not too sure of their efficiency any more. So, just to be safe, I'm simply redoing them in order to ensure integrity.

Here's the old main fusebox wire, still connected:

Old cable and new:

The ignition wire was a little trickier, however. My 4-gauge ring crimp's ring hole was too small for the ignition screw (the bright-colored brass terminal):

So I used a drill to hollow it out just a bit, with a vice grip to hold it to prevent the crimp from deforming. It came out very nicely:

Here's the old ignition crimp compared to the new one:

And of course, the old and new ignition wires side-by-side:

Here's a finished shot of the engine bay, with all the upgraded ground wires and re-ran ignition/main fusebox wires in place:

Driving impressions: there was no noticeable gains in power or acceleration. I just wanted to make this clear. There was, however, an improvement in my stock OEM radio's ability to handle transient peaks; I noticed much less distortion at high volumes while pushing 4-5k RPMs on the highway for extended periods of time.

Bottom line: this upgrade was worth it because of better audio and peace of mind that my grounding system hand handle higher currents if needed.

----

So, I'm studying for final exams and don't have much time for my car this week. Finals are on Monday (August 3rd), so I'll be doing a lot more on my car the following week.

The two main things that need to happen next are:

1) replace driver's side axle

2) complete nitrous kit rewire

I've already drawn out the wiring for the nitrous, I just need to buy a few more cable crimps. I already have most everything though, including the wiring.

More to come soon!

And as always, thank you for reading. One day you'll really thank me for this. Or possibly kill me. Whichever.

 

[VSP]

**UPDATE**

I've been hard at work studying for finals, but I've been doodling nitrous wiring diagrams in my spare time. Here's just a quick preview of what I'm putting in my car next week (unlabeled, followed by labeled version):

More to come soon. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned!

 

[Black Magic]

progress is looking good!

 

[trophyyride]

Hello civicSIcoupe. That's cool channel lock men. Looks interested.

 

[VSP]

**UPDATE**

Nitrous explosion today!


Today I found out what happens when your safety pressure blowout valve does its job.

You see, I was undressing my son in my garage after washing the car together, when I accidentally bumped my nitrous tank's blow-off tube.

It twisted the age-loosened valve just enough to cause a fast leak. Nitrous is hissing out of this tank, so I throw my son inside the house and, grabbing the tank, whisk it outside to the front yard.

Knocking the ice off of my iced over hand, I rush back into the garage to retrieve an allen wrench. Tool in hand I stem the free flow of nitrous by re-tightening the loose blow-off valve. Problem fixed.

Or so I thought. I grabbed another allen wrench to help tighten the valve up really good. Big mistake.

As I'm working away on the valve, all of the sudden I hear a huge BANG. Next thing I know the bottle has been blown back onto its side and the blow-off tube is venting a five-foot jet of nitrous freely upwards into the atmosphere.

I scrambled back about 20 feet and watched in awe. Everywhere, neighbors were poking their heads out of the front doors trying to find out what was happening.

After watching the erupting nitrous jet for about half a minute, I ran inside to grab my camera and take some pictures. Here's what it looked like about two minutes out of the pressure rupture (by then the jet had died down quite a bit):

A closer shot:

Once the flow had died down, I carefully approached the bottle. Using a towel to protect my hand from the freezing cold bottle surface, I gently twisted the main valve open to allow the remaining nitrous to quickly escape. At last, the pressure gauge read a dead zero:

The bottle was empty. And freezing cold, too. Just look at these winter-y pictures of my nitrous bottle all covered in snow: (By the way: it took over an hour for the frozen condensation to melt as the internal bottle temperature equalized with the outside air, which was, by the way, around 95 degrees fahrenheit.)

See the little silver ring at the top of the blue connector? It is--or was--the emergency pressure blow-off gasket. It's a little metal diaphragm that is designed to withstand a certain amount of pressure before it breaks. As it turns out, I suspect that simply tightening the valve pushed this little guy like a piston against the tank's internal pressure, causing it to exceed critical value and blow out:

Top view of the blowout diaphragm:

Diaphragm by itself:

Here's where the diaphragm sat, right before my blow-off tube. When the intense bottle pressure broke this seal the nitrous flowed freely out of the bottle, exactly like it was designed to:

So, why now? I have my theories. The main one:

Blow-off diaphragm was compromised due to

• weakened screw seals due to sitting in storage for almost a year under 400-600psi
• high Florida outdoor summer temperatures causing (full) bottle to regularly sit between 1200-1400psi (well into the red zone)

I actually should have seen this coming and performed a test/refit/retightening of all my bottle parts due to an incident that happened earlier this week. In order to connect my bottle to my remote opener solenoid, I used a copper female-to-female coupler that I picked up at a local hardware store last year. While removing the solenoid from the coupler, the trapped nitrous pressure burst the line and blew the solenoid away from the bottle. This should have served as an early warning to check all my plumbing:

So, no more off-the-shelf copper plumbing for supercold nitrous oxide. I'm taking this bottle down to the local speed shop in a few days to get it professionally checked out and if possible, re-fitted with NOS-brand fittings.

Lesson to be learned? Compressed gas is no joke. Don't leave nitrous bottles under pressure for long periods of time. Protect yourself in the event of a leak by keeping your hands and face away from the gas leak. Get as far away as reasonable; I was very fortunate that each time this blew up on me (three separate times) I was not injured, and that the bottle did not become a gas-propelled projectile. Look up C02 bottle explosions on youtube if you don't believe me.

I'll keep you all posted on this over the next few days. As of now I'm still going ahead with my major nitrous re-wiring project tomorrow, if I have time I'll drop off the bottle at the shop, too.

And of course, as always, thanks for reading!! The thought of each new page view keeps my nitrous-frozen fingers still warm and moving.

 

[Deezy]

Yikes!!....You sir, deserve a beer....

 

[VSP]

^^ Thank you, sir.

 

[jmanlake]

you gona hit up the car show with us?

http://www.clubcivic.com/board/showthread.php?t=192159

 

[VSP]

Woah! That looks fun, and it's on my day off, too. Sounds tempting; I may even bring my PDM (peruvian domestic market) girlfriend, too.

 

[jmanlake]

ya man it should be great!

 

[VSP]

**UPDATE**

Had my nitrous tank checked out today, and it's fine. Ordered a replacement pressure diaphragm and some .22 and .36 jets that will let me put down and estimated 50 HP to the wheels. Also picked up a new bottle-to-opener solenoid AN pipe coupler today. It's all shiny and race-y. Can't wait to throw it on.

Also! Finished my wiring job today; it looks sick. There's a few things I have left to do to make it officially done, but I'll get to that as I get to it. I've got a ton of pics, so I'll post them all up and write about it after I finish that ground wire/ignition wire/fusebox wire DIY I have planned.

I also used a tap and die set to re-thread the lug nuts and threads I messed up while I was pounding my last axle free from its wheel bearing:

First, I thread-chased the messed up lugnut with the tap [the threads were damaged due to my attempting to force the nut back onto the already damaged wheel stud]:

Next I used a die to chase the stud's threads:

This proved to be slightly less straightforward however, due to not being able to use the standard die wrench due to clearance issues with the other studs. I know it's normally not recommended practice to do it this way, but I made do this time by using a locking wrench to thread the die:

When I was finished, both the stud and the lugnut threads worked perfectly!

And last but not least, I picked up some spray paint for my GSR rear sway bar (metal primer and gloss black finish), and finished sourcing the parts for the custom-made endlinks I'm working on. I'm going to hold off on the polyurethane bushings until I'm sure the bar fits correctly on my car, but that remains in the long term goals.

Many, many pics to follow soon; but tomorrow I've got a drivers' side axle to swap out. Wish me luck...more pictures will follow.

And of course, as always, thanks for reading! You really ought to get that cancerous mole checked out soon, and by that, I mean you should hang around for my next post.

 

[VSP]

**UPDATE**

Had my nitrous tank checked out today, and it's fine. Ordered a replacement pressure diaphragm and some .22 and .36 jets that will let me put down and estimated 50 HP to the wheels. Also picked up a new bottle-to-opener solenoid AN pipe coupler today. It's all shiny and race-y. Can't wait to throw it on.

Also! Finished my wiring job today; it looks sick. There's a few things I have left to do to make it officially done, but I'll get to that as I get to it. I've got a ton of pics, so I'll post them all up and write about it after I finish that ground wire/ignition wire/fusebox wire DIY I have planned.

I also used a tap and die set to re-thread the lug nuts and threads I messed up while I was pounding my last axle free from its wheel bearing:

First, I thread-chased the messed up lugnut with the tap [the threads were damaged due to my attempting to force the nut back onto the already damaged wheel stud]:

Next I used a die to chase the stud's threads:

This proved to be slightly less straightforward however, due to not being able to use the standard die wrench due to clearance issues with the other studs. I know it's normally not recommended practice to do it this way, but I made do this time by using a locking wrench to thread the die:

When I was finished, both the stud and the lugnut threads worked perfectly!

And last but not least, I picked up some spray paint for my GSR rear sway bar (metal primer and gloss black finish), and finished sourcing the parts for the custom-made endlinks I'm working on. I'm going to hold off on the polyurethane bushings until I'm sure the bar fits correctly on my car, but that remains in the long term goals.

Many, many pics to follow soon; but tomorrow I've got a drivers' side axle to swap out. Wish me luck...more pictures will follow.

And of course, as always, thanks for reading! You really ought to get that cancerous mole checked out soon, and by that, I mean you should hang around for my next post.

 

[Black Magic]

Daaaaaamn. That is intense! Glad nobody was hurt or anything.

 

[VSP]

**UPDATE**

Axle swap went surprisingly well yesterday. Kind of nice, for a change!

Here's the old axle next to the new one. THIS time I made damn sure to carefully compare the two sizes. As you can see, they matched:

The wheel side, all prepped for installation with anti-seize:

I'd like to take a second and point out a useful trick I've discovered to re-seat an axle inside a transmission. If you're like me, then you don't have a fancy lift to do your work under and are left to squeeze under a lowered car with roughly a foot or so of clearance to perform your work. This makes it near impossible to find the leverage to do much of anything down there, let alone re-seat a stubborn axle. Fortunately there's a better way, at least in the case of the axle.

Place the end of the axle in the transmission. Twist it a bit so that it seats correctly; you might notice the opposite driveshaft turning if you did it right. Next take a long, thin plank of wood, press it gently against the outer circumference of the axle boot. (Blurry pic, sorry):

Finally grab a dead-blow hammer or rubber mallet and tap the wood to seat to drive the axle into the transmission:

Check periodically that the axle is, in fact, going into the transmission by getting under the car and visually inspecting it. When the axle has been seated, rotate the wheel 180 degrees and tap at the wood to ensure the axle is uniformly seated. Then rotate 270 degrees, tap, and 180 degrees and tap again. This is to ensure that the axle is evenly pushed in.

I went immediately from installing the axle to driving across down over 30 miles of highway in order to meet with my future father-in-law and ask him about marrying his daughter. The axle held up beautifully, the ride was much smoother, the guy was very happy about having me as a future son-in-law, and I also introduced him to Newcastle beer which he liked, so all-in-all the install was a success.


Later on I picked up the new safety rupture disk for my nitrous bottle and two additional jet sizes: .022" and .036". The goal is between 50-60 horsepower to the wheels.

Preparing to install the rupture disk:

Installing the disk:

Torquing the bolt to 33 ft-lbs:

Now, this is not an exact replacement for my Cold Fusion blow-down kit rupture disk; I need to ask at the speed shop today if it's possible to order a direct replacement for the one I had before.

Today I need to:

• fill my nitrous bottle
• buy a couple of replacement switches for my nitrous control panel (autozone)
• do a quick swap on my oil pan drain plug gasket. I think it's been slowly leaking.
• do a quick de-grease of my oil pan area
• buy a cheap heat gun and finish with the heat shrink on my new nitrous wiring
• hook up all my nitrous plumbing; everything's in place it just needs to be connected
• torque down the tie rod bolts, castle nuts, and axle bolts to manual numbers; score the axle nuts with a punch
• talk to my future mother-in-law about marrying her daughter today

No worries, should be a snap. The goal...? Track tonight. I'll keep you posted.

And of course, as always, thanks for reading! I do it for the kids.

 

[Black Magic]

Keep up the good work!

 

[VSP]

^^ Thanks!!