thebeerbaron

So I've been hinting at a big upcoming announcement and it was supposed to be quite a happy one: I found my donor and for a great price.

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It's a 2002, 111k, tattered outside, worn inside, good mechanicals. Bought it off a friend who has owned it since new and taken care of it. Adult driven. A little bit of coolant weeping out of the lower radiator hose, but that only needed topping every few weeks.

Got it to my parents place outside the city, paid the taxes and registration, and took it to get inspected. They noticed the coolant leak, then failed me on brake pads and rotors. On the way home from the inspection, the car overheated.

This is where the story gets sad. I go to pour in water and it starts flowing out the bottom of the radiator. The lower radiator hose came off. No coolant in the engine. Fill it, replace the hose, drive home, no problems. Replace a faulty clamp, burp the system, all is well. Then driving it to the garage where I'm going to fix the brakes and replace what I think is a faulty thermostat, I check the hoses again and find the lower one popped off. Uh oh. Replace, refill, leave the radiator cap off this time. Make it to the garage without overheating, but only barely.

It was a big struggle to replace the thermostat (note for future reference - the 10mm bolts that hold the thermostat cover on round off VERY EASILY, even with 6-point sockets). I needed to call in reinforcements with an EZ-out to extract the upper bolt. Painful.

I changed the overheated oil, replaced the coolant, and replaced pads and rotors at all four corners. In doing this, I found that the front rotors were the wrong size! They were about 1/2" smaller in diameter than the ones NAPA sold me! At first I thought NAPA sold me a bad part, but then I looked at the pads that were very oddly worn. The pads had about 1/4" of untouched material at the outer edge. Exactly the difference between the new and old rotor. Either the factory or my friend put the wrong front rotor on and the pad wasn't touching in one area!

After warming up the car for 20 minutes, perfect temperature, I noticed a bit of white smoke from the tail. I thought it was from the temperature dropping precipitously as darkness fell, but after a few hundred feet of test drive the temperature gauge started climbing rapidly and "condensation" was very obviously coolant burning. I shut it down and rolled back to the garage, defeated. After cleaning up the garage, I couldn't even restart the car to pull it back in. ARGH.

So I've got a great donor with a motor that I've overheated. The head gaskets at least need to be replaced, who knows what else we'll find. I'm very, very frustrated.

Obviously I should have checked the coolant level after the long drive up from Maryland. Obviously I should have had the inspection garage check the coolant level when they reminded me of the leak. This one is my fault. I've done some stupid automotive things, but this is up there in what it's going to cost me. As much as I'd like to do the work myself, I may have to farm this one out since the garage is a 90 minute train ride (plus a 30 minute car ride) from Manhattan. I figure it would take at least one weekend of work to pull the engine, one weekend to tear down the motor, hire someone to deal with the machining, then another two weekends to reassemble and reinstall the motor. Not sure if I can swing that.

So, not design-related, but a pretty sad starting point for what I'm hoping is a fun build log.

I don't have the receipts in front of me, but this is the tally of my build costs so far:

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Purchase Price: $4500
Rotors, pads, thermostat, lower radiator hose: $244
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Total: $4744
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I'll make a pretty spreadsheet sometime soon. I haven't figured in consumables like coolant and oil. The new filter came with the car.


Also of note: the correct rotors for the front and rear of the WRX contain two threaded holes on the hub face that accept an 8mm bolt that you use to pop them off the hub, in lieu of hitting them with hammer. The bolt that holds down the spare tire is a perfect fit for this hole!