Well, at least its not terminal
TL;DR - elbow radiator hose from POS donor sprang a pinhole leak.
Finally got a chance to get the car up on stands (yesterday's nice weather and my strong desire to get back to driving/tracking the car helped). Pulled the belly pan and added water to the upper coolant tank but didn't immediately see the leak. Started the car, threw a CEL and about barfed... but pulled the code and it was just MAF under voltage - low battery will do that.
Finally opened my front bleed valve to start flushing the system and heard the relieving trickle of fluid on the floor (not from me). Peeked under and saw the culprit - a pinhole leak in the rubber elbow from the crossover outlet to the corrugated tube. That's an easy enough fix. $15 from Amazon and a Gates replacement is on the way (those crazy Mishimoto players... charging $100 for a replacement silicon hose kit -- sure it will make the car faster, but don't have that kind of coin burning a hole in my wallet these days :rolleyes:).
The moral of the story: if you donor was a million mile pile, change out the rubber hoses.
(and hoping that was the only problem)
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Longest delayed update EVER
sooooo, I'm about to install a brand spanking new part on the car (which has laid dormant for over a year):
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Light weight lugnuts, YEA!
Doesn't really tell the full saga of the past year... but seriously, Light Weight LUGNUTS!
More details? They're from Amazon (of course) and I bought them to replace the stripped out seven sided lugnuts that got stripped out because my lug nut tool split and was spinning on the old ones and rounded off the points...
Wait, what? Oh, more details on the 1 year hiatus. Sure:
Fuel tank was leaking because of my crap weld job from; so I was replacing that, which required pulling out the interior of the car. Replaced it with a 2nd hand Boyd's welding tank (not from Amazon). After I finished that installation I went to pressure test the lines and found no power from the battery to the kill switch, I had uncrimped the ring terminal during all the maneuvering to get the center tunnel out.
I put a new ring-terminal on the hot lead and started trying to verify everything, but was getting really weird issues of the ECU and relays not powering up, but the cluster sort of did. After a few hours of tracing things with a multimeter I got really frustrated and in a fit of spite pulled every wire out of the car, boxed it up and sent it off to iWire (well, that's almost the story).
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So that took a few months to turn around, but the harness is super awesome and I'm totally glad I did it...
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...until I installed it and flipped the main power... and nothing - well almost nothing, same symptoms as before with inconsistent relays, cluster sort of lighting up and no ECU readings. So I tested the battery... 11.8 v and no current... borked. Could have saved myself a few bucks replacing that first.
So after that little adventure I then managed to arc the coolant line when installing the battery (you know, the fantastic corrugated hose) which pin-holed it - so that needed to be replaced. In hindsight, total boneheaded move to rely on as much of the corrugated tube as I did, that stuff is really low-rent. Now I've put in as much new radiator hose as possible in that area:
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Then I added some spacers to the front control arm rear mounts to add more caster to the alignment, fabbed up a new center console switch plate and re-mounted the seats in a more upright orientation so the car is easier to get in and out of. I'm sure I'm forgetting some other details, but finally... ready to rock -again, 3rd time's the charm?
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Doors Done Definitely, Dammit part 1
Happy Furloughmass to me… but since I’ve almost caught up on the neglected years of home projects (almost), I’ve finally got a bit of time to return to the garage and revisit the 818.
The doors have always bothered me, there’s always been a little rub and misalignment… and don’t get me started on the windows. So, the first task is getting the coupe door livable. A lot of the fixes I’ve done are common sense and probably things that the good builders have already thought of and done… (I am by no means one of the good builders!), but just maybe there’s a trick or two in here that could be helpful to someone else who’s spent hours and hours open and closing and mounting and remounting, and with that:
Allez Cuisine!
After stripping the inner door card and outer skin and pulling off the felt door trim gasket (for sealing the window), I decided the first most important thing to check and fix was the alignment of the door frame. I realize now that the travel path of the door frame has to be as close to level as possible to have the door skin not rub on the side sail (all together now: duhhhhha). As a derp-test I taped an indicator (Allen wrench) to the top of the door frame and made sure the path it described as the door opened/closed was flat.
https://youtu.be/fgv9WPMUSjg
Also, of note I observed a lot of wear marks on the side sail at the door hinge. I know that’s from not having enough clearance between the door skin and the side sail, so I re-mounted the door frame with the maximum clearance from the side sail. On the passenger door of my build that is 5 thicknesses of an Amazon A-3 sized box cardboard or about 3/8”. That puts the door frame/door hinge at the bottom of the possible adjustment. In hindsight it that might be 1 or 2mm too much – the final panel gap between the mounted door skin is slightly too big.
Because this is a fix of an existing build, I didn’t adjust the door striker at all; that’s pretty much fixed in place from earlier efforts. The other guidance on this forum for locating and mounting the striker plate is pretty good. I will note there are 2 clicks as the latch enters the striker; the first one seems to be a light engagement, but I assumed the second one was the correct point of the door being properly closed. The second click is what I based my measurements and alignments off of.
Once the door frame alignment was fixed, I needed to deal with another shortcoming (IMHO) of the way the doors are constructed. I’ve always had the feeling that the doors sagged after they were completely assembled. Additionally, since you are almost required to remove the doors at some stage of the build, I don’t think I ever got them to align the same way repeatably. I think the issue is the amount of adjustability that is built into the door hinge mounting tab. I’d spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to perfect the alignment and minimize rub -using cardboard or stir sticks or wedges or whatever, but after fully assembling the door and going for a final test the rub would always return. I’d tried tightening down the frame to hinge bolts to a ridiculous amount (like 150 ft/lbs.), but in hindsight that’s just the wrong approach.
After perfecting the alignment and tightening down the hinge hardware, I drilled and tapped some locator holes. Now I had both a reference point for the perfect alignment and a bit of extra insurance that after assembly the frame wouldn’t sag because of slop in the hinges/adjustments. As (an inadvertent) confirmation during one of the test fittings, I forgot to tighten down the hinge bolts past finger tight, but I had installed the alignment bolts - and the door both aligned and swung perfectly. I think of anything this is my strongest recommendation to other builders having issues with the alignment, but it can be a real PITA to get the holes located and the alignment bolts installed, so it makes the job of hanging/removing the doors even more time consuming.
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While I was drilling and tapping holes, I added one to limit the hinge travel - as other builders have done to replace the FFR supplied part that does the same but is not adjustable.
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The final task of this stage was to clean up the wear marks on the side sail. Just a quick sand/wetsand to remove the worst of it and then a few coats of spray paint and it looks not awful.
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https://youtu.be/ILy34_bJnhI
Next up: I’m still waiting for a few items in the mail, but I am planning on dealing with the hard top window trim and window glass alignment/travel.
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Doors Done Definitely, Dammit part 2
Somewhere during assembly of my passenger door I trimmed the bottom edge of the door skin, probably because it wasn’t aligned properly and was having interference when closing. Fiberglass guy to the rescue – 1 layer of fabric, 2 layers of chopped mat and a whole bunch of filler fixed the worst of the missing door skin. Actually, it fixed it too much… needed to trim back a bit to give clearance to the inner door card.
The next part of DDDD is replacing the not really great hard top window trim. Yes, the felted trim would be nice – if it would actually stay on. I measured the thickness of the hard top shell edge and it’s not even close to the thickness of the felt trim. I had mangled it pretty bad the first time it was installed, and it wouldn’t stay on reliably. I had considered gluing it on, but taking a second look and then doing a quick ebay search I found some 3/8” side bulb weather strip that looked like it might work.
The new trim goes on easier. The radius at the sharp corner of the window opening is close (I didn’t want to crease the bulb). But the real test is in the raising/lowering of the window. I am happy to report that after backing off the top adjuster of the window track and the roller wheels I have a window that raises and lowers smoothly and properly aligns/engages the sealing bulb along the entire length. I think I actually had it adjusted to a nearly perfect fit/seal along the entire edge.
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But then I needed to mess it up again. I know some other builds (Lance & Art?) have looked at fixing the slop by fabricating additional/replacement bushings on the track. I am going to take a different track (excuse the pun). Using 5/8” C channel and some felted window channel yields some functional guide tracks to keep the sides of the window better aligned. But the curve of the window track prevents using straight guide tracks and I don’t have a practical way to bend the C channel, so I’m going for alignment tracks for the full-up position of the window. Experimenting here, but if I keep the tracks shorter (4 to 6”) and position them just so - the window glass feeds into the track and rides it up when fully closed. I’m working a mounting solution right now, but my cheap welding helmet decided to stop working… so I had to abort that attempt. Here is what I have so far:
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Doors Done Definitely, Dammit part 3
For some reason I decided to re-do 2 bathrooms over the past few weeks instead of working full time on the 818 (hellooo -wife, +2 spousal points). So, it’s taken me a lot longer to work through this idea that it should.
The leading edge of the door/window/hard top transition has always bothered me, the gap and unfinished look seems odd, so I had the bright idea to try to mold up a part to fill in that transition and blend in the front window track. That started a crash course in fiberglass molding… (actually, I’ve been looking at it for a while now for other ideas… that are more ambitious). After a few aborted attempts I think I understand enough about the materials now.
Pink Panther foam board seems to be the preferred plug making material, it’s definitely easy to work with for shaping. However, it reacts badly with Evercoat fillers and spray paint primers, but it does play nice with West System epoxy. Knowing that now, I will be doing a rough shape in foam and then a sealer coat of just epoxy (with glass if needed), then filler and sanding and sealing.
The next trick was figuring out how to make a tooling gelcoat mold from that shape. Since this is a bit of a 3d sketch in foam, I didn’t have a clear idea of exactly what I was trying to make. For a while I was thinking a complete part with both sides finished, so it would require either a split mold or 2 molds where the part would be joined. Ultimately, I set my ambitions a bit lower and have just concentrated on creating the outer shell that will be bonded to the door skin to fill in the relief at the A-pillar.
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It took me 2 tries to get the flanges figured out, cardboard is not your friend in this case… but attempt 2 was with some cheap particle board and an angled cut of 2x4 that was detachable so I could disassemble it post mold making, and that worked out pretty well. A bit of cleanup on the mold and it was time to try my first layup…
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And out pops my first ever part… looks kind of rough. I need to get some cutting compound and polish the mold, 1000 grit isn’t good enough. But still, my first part 😊. Trimmed it and put it in place… let’s see how it looks.
before:
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after:
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A little filler and some blending and it should match up with the door skin and the new window rail.
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Doors Done Definitely, Dammit part 4
Bonded the part and two rounds of filler, primer and a quick Plastidip spray later:
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...not too bad. There is always a line when I cut in a patched section of Plastidip... but the body lines don't look too bad. The 'dip exposed one rough spot near the front... but overall the blend worked out pretty well.
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Doors Done Definitely, Dammit part 5
Final assembly time. Used the new (old) door skins from the S, so non-padded… weight savings or something.
Didn’t like inner door release options… the donor ones didn’t fit right and the new ones from the C refit were… well really low rent. So I saw that some of the RS Porsches use a release strap… I can do that.
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Put everything together and re-aligned the door. The grab handle was causing interference with the side sail/upper trim piece… sigh. But a little grinding and hammering mostly fixed that.
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(action shot)
https://youtu.be/UdntEvSdhwk
so all done... except there's a 2nd door (glad it's only 2 and not a 4 door)...
