sailaholic NA8

plohl · Postby **plohl** » Mon Nov 17, 2014 11:32 pm

Yeah, it only fell off when you fell off... the track. Pretty much gets the whole lap. Might cut it down and post it up.

sailaholic · Postby **sailaholic** » Sat Jan 17, 2015 6:59 pm

Small update. I think i've solved my slow water leak problem. Turned out to be the coolant hose from the back of the head to the oil cooler was missing a a hose clamp.

I was thinking it must have been a fitting on the reroute not tightened enough but after removing all the reroute assembly off the back of the head all looked good so i looked further around and noticed the missing hose clamp! Took the oportunity while the thermostat was out to do a full cooling system flush.

I haven't really been driving the car that much lately due to annoying niggling issues and a lack of time to do any instersting driving. I find i just can't be bothered to drive it for commuting work alot of the time particuarly in summer due to so-so air conditioning and and the lack of torque that's made worse by running the air conditioing. I'm thinking that maybe the head and cams are too big for the stock bottom end. Ideally i'd love to do a kswap bit i have niether the money to pay someone else to do it, nor the time to do it myself.

Some of the other annoying issues are some bad transient throttle tune issues that results in quite lean mixtures when initally accelerating which dosent help the torque problem. Some of the niggles are i've got are a high pitch squeek from the passenger footwell and some groany seat mounts, and dragging brakes due to some missing return springs, and stinking like exhuast if i drive the car too long.

All fairly minor issues, but with no time fix them they get to you. Between that and the lack of use i've been wondering if the time has come to move the car on just drive something normal & boring. Or going from something less modified (Been thinking of an 86). 86 has the disadvatnage that i couldn't face taking it to the dirt track and requiring a big chunk of cash.

So i saw the "Plans and Goals for 2015" thread and thought i would make some of my own and concentrate on the things that have been annoying

Plans
- Get the brake springs in
- look for the squeek in the passenger footwell
- adjust the packing washes between the sprint v and the rails and see if i can get it to sit flat and hopefully that gets rid of the groans.
- get some of the tune issues sorted
- look at eacher a 4.3 diff or doing the conversion to a 4.77 from the kia 4wd.
- Get the 1/2 radiator conversion done to allow for a airbox to be completed.
- Get the harness installed
- maybe quieten down the exhuast again and look at the exhuast smell. I assume the cat conver isn't dooing the job

Goals!
Get atleast 1/2 of the plans for the car done.
Go to atleast 4 track days, with atleast one on bitumen
Make a call on which car is going to get replaced (mine or the missus)

Will see how things go.

Magpie · Postby **Magpie** » Sat Jan 17, 2015 7:04 pm

You should post those in the goals for 2015 thread so at the end of the year you can repost

Anyway good luck with them and I hope you nail them all.

sailaholic · Postby **sailaholic** » Fri Jan 30, 2015 10:25 am

Yeah probably should but I also wanted them here so I didn't loose them.

Swapped diffs last night from a 4.1t1 to. 4.3T2. Big thanks to Plohl as usual.

Started at 5 and by 7 it looked like me might have the new diff in before dinner.

By 7.15 we were driving to bunnings

and first test drive was about 10.30. Most stuff came apart pretty easily however we didn't have a 300mm long m14 bolt to put the sleeve in the diff out of the ppf. So we went to Bunnings and bought some m8 rod and a few nuts.
Job done easily just lots of time burnt getting the stuff, but probably less time then continuing to frig around with it.

Also lost a bit of time trying to get the half shafts off the stubs. In the end we stopped trying to short cut and just pulled the top bolts on the rear uprights and pulled outwards to give the extra length.

Having a strong 18v cordless impact gun was very helpful.

As always you can't cross something off the list with out more coming on. Found that one of the hangers has torn off the muffler leaving a nice hole and my butterfly brace has been supporting the exhaust.

Also took the time to inspect the tailshaft and the uni joint is a bit rough in its movement so I guess I'll have to look at that at some stage as well.

All in all though I'm happy with the change, makes the car a bit nicer to drive around.

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slug_dub · Postby **slug_dub** » Sun Mar 01, 2015 12:34 pm

Nick I feels ya on the annoying noises getting in the way of the enjoyment. My car makes many stupid noises which annoy the hell out of me. Some of them are noticeably loud. Some are more easily fixed than others. I feel instantly heaps better when something is resolved though :lol:

I think you've got more you need to do living with your car though, otherwise this story will seem incomplete!

(translation: lose the missus car first!)

How are you finding the stock away bar setup? I need to stick with them on mine til at least after a trackday, but I already miss the pointiness of the big front bar.

sailaholic · Postby **sailaholic** » Mon Mar 02, 2015 8:18 am

i'm loving the stock sway bars and don't notice any lack of pointyness on turn in.
Having said that, the setup is will understeer into a corner when pushed and promotes a being on the power to tuck the nose in. I'm happy with that at the moment based on dirt sprints.

slug_dub · Postby **slug_dub** » Mon Mar 02, 2015 9:22 am

Yes I think that's similar to what I get... Perhaps I just need more right foot!

sailaholic · Postby **sailaholic** » Mon Mar 02, 2015 9:46 am

Yeah, remember I'm down on torque so I tend to try and keep mid corner speed up and get on the power early.

There is plenty of oversteer to be had through either on throttle or weight transfer. I spend too much time sideways at the dirt sprints as it is :

Maybe I am just trying to enter corners too fast...

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sailaholic · Postby **sailaholic** » Mon Mar 23, 2015 10:00 am

Been busy over the last few weekends just tending to some maintenance.

Weekend 1. Job 1 - Engine Fan, I had acquaired a late na8 (and maybe all NA8 Autos i forget now) engine fan with the 4.3 Diff. These fans run a bigger motor and pull more air. My cooling had always been good on road, but the car could get hot sitting ideling such as waiting at the track, i suspect because i have the thicker auto radiator and still have AC. Most others have no AC if they've done the auto radiator.
This was a job that had been on my to-do list for a while and was supposed to be a straight swap apart from having a different wiring plug. Famous last words "straight swap"

As it turns out the later fan has locating pins on the bottom of the shroud and bolts on the top, the early fan uses bolts all around.
The later fan also dosn't run a pigtail off the motor to a connector like the early cars. The plug/connectior is direct onto the motor. While it looks like probably a fairly standard connector it wasn't a problem we expected. The plan had been just to cut the pig tails on each and swap them.

There were some similaries though, the fan blades themselves look very similar, and despite the shroud being different the flange, bolt holes and shaft of the new fan motor and old were the same. Se we ended up just swapping the shrouds between the two fans but left the fans and motors as a match pair.

Fan now physically fits in the car! Yay so onto the wiring. With no plug to fit, and no way of getting a plug on a sunday, Plohl went scrounging through his electrical bits and bobs and found some crimp connectors connectors left over from the COP looms that fitted the pins inside the plug perfectly. To secure the pins during use we decided just to epoxy cast them. Anyone else looking to do it we jsut used 5 minute araldite branded stuff from supercheap.

Using some spare cable, we removed the plug from the old fan and mated it to the new cable to the complete solution was plug in.
Job one - complete

Job two - change diff oil. While this was fairly new oil it was only mineral as that's what i could get at repco at the time when i did the diff swap. I would have left it for longer but i needed to do gearbox oil and the diff had sat for quite a while before i installed it, so i was happy to use the first lot of oil as a flush. This all went as planned and easy which could only mean...

Job 3 - Gearbox oil change - Right simple job, shouldn't take long. Having read all the warning (luckyly) we attempted to remove the filler plug first. Yes that crapy 4 sides filler plug.... No deal. Big shifter didn't work just rounded the edges...as did a 16mm spanner. Oh Cock. Leave this one for another day with more tools.
JOb 3 -

not done.

sailaholic · Postby **sailaholic** » Mon Mar 23, 2015 10:34 am

Weekend 2 -
JOb list - Gearbox oil swap, turret oil and some tuning and fit some missing brake springs
Job 1 . Brake springs - easy as
Job 2 - Turret oil. This turned out to be looking very very gungy. I ended up flushing it about 3 times by filling it up stiring it around and pulling it back out with a syringe until the oil coming out looks reasoanbly clean. Upon inspection though both the uppper and lower shift boots are in need of repalcement. So i will check the oil again when they get ordered and come in

Job 2b - while we had the center console apart plohl says "oh i've got an auto window box in the back shed from when i parted out "Red". did you want to fit that. Yes please! Before fitting i pulled it all apart and cleaned up all the contacts. This was great as the factory Na switch had been getting very sticky on the drivers side, particarly when the car has been in the sun.

Job 2 b done :d

Job 3 - Gearbox oil..... attacked this again but with a set of clamp pliers and a long handle. No go. No mater how hard i got the lock pliers on it was just chewer the bolt out. Tried hammering sockets and spanners on same result. Trip to bunnings to get a set of small stilsons and also a set of Irwin "bolt grips" that lokiel swears by. Stilsons ok, bolt grips NO STOCK! ended up ringing everywhere open on a sunday on the north side of brisbane and same story - 'know what your talking about haven't had any stock for months'

Gerr. Gave the best attempt at getting the bolts out with stilsons, but despite leaving big 3mm deep groves in the soft bolt, there was no budging it even with an extension handle on the stilsons! Not wanting to destroy what was left any more again we again put this in the not done, needs more tools pile. The irwin bolt removers were going to be our last hope short of welding a plate on or dropping the box.

Job four - tuning
Reasonably sucessful, i had been driving around with autotune on and it had been giving some dodgy results for cruise / light throttle so we turned this off, retuneed the map for that area (Which was a bit all over the pace) and fiddled with the prediticve throttle / acel pump settings. More to tell there, but that will have to wait.

hks_kansei · Postby **hks_kansei** » Mon Mar 23, 2015 10:43 am

Probably a bit late now if the fill plug is rounded.

But you can buy square spanners for the job, I think they are often sold as sump plug spanners (I guess some cars use square plugs?)

Granted, I've never had a problem using the shifter on it, was your shifter a bit worn? (ie the movable jaw widens as you put torque on the handle?) if so maybe look at buying a new one (go to a tool show, or an antique/seconhand shop, the old ones tend to be much better made than modern ones, and a damn lot cheaper)

sailaholic · Postby **sailaholic** » Mon Mar 23, 2015 11:55 am

The problem really was it was in STUPID TIGHT. We got it out this weekend but I haven't written it up yet.

Here is some photos of the plug after it came out. Took lots of heat and the bolt grips. We were worried it was going to shear off rather then Undo.

Just getting the socket back off the plug took a meter long breaker bar going one way and the stilsons with the handle extended 400mm with a bit of tube going the other.

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