TobyB

For a car I was selling, if the joints were in good shape, I'd not bother with them. Yep, I'm the PO this board warned you about. t because, if it was my car, I wouldn't care much if they were backwards, as long as the joints were good.

2002s are made out of a very high tensile steel- and damn, does that shit love to warp. Don't be too proud to grind off a weld or 3 when it does, and retrim, and restitch. It takes a LONG time to butt weld a seam without warping it, and then it's going to need to be sealed behind it, because getting 100% welds with a MIG is... an advanced art. With a TIG, it's time consuming. That wet towel? Use it to cool the weld often, and then the dry towel to get all the water out of it. As you get better, you'll be tempted to draw longer beads- be careful. I've warped hell out of things because I was in a hurry, and I had it all dialled in very nicely, and the bead was flowing out perfectly.... and boingy boingy, oil cans for days. Also, don't be afraid to weld a little, grind a little, anneal, and then do some metalwork to get things into shape. Weld some more, grind some more, repeat. Lots of water for cooling, acetylene for annealing, and patience. I had a friend long ago who could gas weld such that, in the time it took me to MIG it, he could gas it- but his welds were continuous, and he did his bodywork after. And there wasn't much of that. He didn't think he was all that good... I like thin grinding wheels, and use both the angle grinder and the cutoff saw as a grinder- the cutoff saw is especially useful when things pucker from too much metal, and you just need to relieve a bit of the weld. It's been a while, now, since I did much of that. Oh- the thin gloves for MIG are really nice, these days. Don't use the thin TIG gloves for MIG, though, as the spatter can get through them. Also, keep your pant legs over your shoes, and don't wear sneakers with nylon tongues. Because when the whole mess blows through and lands on the tongue, you WILL dance... t

www.realoem.com www.wallothnesch.com also will be useful. But don't be too hasty... t

So you mean, when you go play, use full throttle, then come to a stop, the thing won't idle? That suggests you ought to make sure the second barrel's closing fully after opening, and that's not too hard to do with a light. Because it sounds like the 36 flap's getting stuck open a bit, and the car doesn't like idling on it. first guess, t

Like Jim, I think this is a sign that something is not quite right in the parts selection. Because I've run quite a few clutch combinations, and if anything was hitting the bolts, then something was backwards, incorrect, or broken. 5 speed and 228 clutch ought to be running the 323 throwout, but that's not always absolutely required. But first things first: if you raise the rear wheels and run the engine, the rear wheels should stop when the clutch pedal's pressed, transmission in first or reverse. If they are moving, it's a clutch problem. If they stop, then it's (probably) not. t

Oh, our builder had a thing for smooth, that's for sure. I love the spacers to keep the rockers in place... It's a bummer the feed for the nitrous and fuel didn't survive- to go to that extent to hide distribution, the inlets must have been true works of art... Thanks for all the pictures! that's kind of amazing... t

From memory, the E12 head's right around 60cc. Subtracting 16 from that takes you down to 44 cc, which on a 500 cc cylinder gives a pretty high compression ratio, even allowing for squish, quench, valve recession and crown recession... The E21 chamber is a bit bigger- but not that much. There are numbers in an old thread... somewhere. t would run those. bkuz racekar

there is something about this combination of words that kind of cracks me up... t

...wow... that's some tricky... stuff in there. And someone with a serious need for.... smoothness. Neat! Make sure you can fuel for the extra oxygen! Do you have any more pictures of how fuel and N2O gets INTO those blocks in the head? t

I never found fuel in the diaphragm- while technically it's a possibility, it's never been a practical concern. There are several vacuum pods out there. The 6 degree one's quite common, and if I recall, has 2 different springs. There is one with more travel (10 degrees?) and it has an intermediate spring with pressure between the 2 6 degree springs. I never had a fully functioning push- pull pod to test. I think I like running less advance at idle than others do... t never was all that much bothered about most of it.

+1 for burping- the stock thermostat can get an air bubble around the wax pellet canister, and that keeps it from opening in a timely manner. Also +1 for not trusting the IR gun until you've gotten familiar with them. t

Those numbers identify the raw casting that was used to make the part on your gearbox. Nothing more, nothing less. That '240' means that the casting was probably originally designed to be a part of the 240 series gearbox, but subsequent machining processes can make it fit other transmissions. You will also find a 240 casting (or sometimes a 232) on the back of a 245, for example. t

fixed that for ya. 2011 Leaf, practically speaking. t

That was probably rust- which will bond the shoe to the drum if you give it half a chance. t

Now THAT sounds like a lot of fun! With carbs, it's all 'bell crank this' and 'offset pivot that' and 'it's better than it was' is usually good enough, by the time you've got hours into making a linkage. Apparently, it's pretty easy to tune in MS43, but my daily came to me with a DInan map, so I just cheat and paste that in when I'm in another car. Not unlike the carb linkage, huh? t

Me too, Tom. I made my cars work that way because that was the emissions way, and I then jacked around the used distributors I had to make it work best. So- unported vacuum it is, in most cases. See, Rob? Good question! t if you can't admit you make mistakes, then maybe it's time to crawl under a rock and hide.

Well, the ENGINE had an aircon compressor on it. Are there 2 holes in the firewall that don't have hoses going through them? That would be the giveaway for the chassis... Nope, no problem at all in getting rid of the bracket and the pulley. There are several sizes of pulley, though, so your belt selection may take a few tries. t

Sadly, those old flooded lead- acid batteries that have such a miserable energy density also 'reuse and recycle' at a very high percentage. So when you take your golf cart batteries to Dyno and exchange them for 'rebuilt' batteries, you're contributing very little pollution to the planet, despite hauling around #400 of lead and acid on the green, two pretty unpleasant substances. The cases are unsealed and reused, the acid reprocessed (mostly just filtered) and the lead plates are resmelted IF needed. Net waste, a few pounds, energy cost quite low. The lithium 18650's in a Tesla, not so much. We cut one (an 18650, not a Tesla) apart in the shop years ago, and to get such a high density, the thing is packed full. Mechanically, it's not designed to come apart, and once you get it apart, it doesn't lend itself to easy mechanical separation at all. They can't be 'smelted' as they'll just burn- once they catch fire, you may as well use the heat, because there's no stopping that. A fireman said recently- "about the only thing that could burn this place down is 4 Teslas parked nose to tail." Used lithium batteries are very expensive to re-purpose safely- each cell has to be monitored, since each used cell has a different capacity. Overcharging or over- depleting one cell can make it go Sony, and then the whole pack joins in from the intense heat. I've been working on this- it's fun, but not trivial. Tesla's larger 2170 is pretty much the same as a 18650, but no idea if scale will help at all with disassembly, or if maybe (yeah, I'm not optimistic) they're built to be dismantled, as Dyno's lead- acids are. Last I heard they are trying an even- larger 4680, but as diameter increases, cooling problems exponentiate*, so given that an S would overheat its pack after 3 laps, I skeptic from my couch. I suspect in a few more years, it's going to become a real solid waste issue. I also suspect some manufacturers are going to prove to be really messy (Tesla) and others, not so bad, as the larger Toyota, Mercedes and Nissan prismatic cells may be better, from a reuse and recycling standpoint. They are certainly easier to re- purpose and reshuffle, as the larger, square cell size makes monitoring and re- packing very much easier, and the square shape helps with liquid cooling, as well. I'm a huge electric car fan- but sugar- coating them isn't doing anyone any favors. They're a big step forward, but that doesn't mean that there aren't real problems with them. We're a bit more experienced now than we were with petrol engined cars, so mitigating the problems early makes so much more sense than blindly dashing in with moustaches waxed and 6- shooters blazing. They're never going to work for everything and everyone, and with significant luck and hard work, eventually they'll be a stepping stone to something even better (Mr. Fusion(tm)?) I'm not holding my breath, because trains were far better in almost all regards, and yet, who wants to ride a train? Oh, wait- if there was one, I would... But they didn't make rich people richer easy enough, so they were 'depreciated'. Thank you for listening to my Tedex Talkex. t *I just affixed that up. It made me happy.

make sure the new bullet is made out of billet. those hypereutectic bullets tend not to expand enough to really seal up good.... t would rebuild a spare engine. For multiple reasons.

only in the E30, and then with MS43... so yes, but no, not what you mean. I really like DBC myself, just because I'm old, kurmudgeonly, and am used to being able to make 'driver's demand' rather than 'driver's wish' (the German version of 'pedal position' as soon as the direct connection between airflow and pedal was broken) t DriveByCable

Did the leaking brake cylinders soak the shoes? That will tend to make the shoes sticky. t

Awfully quiet, methinks... ;)= t

+1: as long as you monitor it, it should be OK. A long time ago on that same system (on a different car) I remember that altering the coolant temperature sensor's input to the DME was also a way to 'trim' fuel delivery. As well as fuel pressure, of course. t

It's been a while since I messed with this, but what I recall with a healthy stock vacuum advance distributor is that the all- in advance at idle with manifold vacuum is awfully high. Ported vacuum lets you set idle in the 8-12 degree range, which is a little soft, but quite smooth. You then do hard pulls from off- idle with appropriate (15 rising to 3oish) advance, but the vacuum pod then lets you cruise at 2500+ with 35- 40+ degrees of advance, which gives a nice, early spark for popping off a really lean light cruise mixture. There are a million ways to do it, but that's what I recall. Timing and mixture interact, so running richer means you probably don't want that much advance anyway, for maximum power. t

Seriously needs more downforts. sheesh. With that much drag, I suspect my EP car is faster at the end of most straights... t