"mycarneverruns87" (mycarneverruns87)
03/22/2016 at 17:09 • Filed to: roadkill, project car, npocp, sawblades
5
0|
"mycarneverruns87" (mycarneverruns87)
03/22/2016 at 17:09 • Filed to: roadkill, project car, npocp, sawblades | 5
| 0 |
Update numero 3 for the now coined “Adventurevette” that I bought in New Orleans and quickly broke after 30 minutes. If you haven’t been following along on the chaos the first 2 posts are below.
Ok, so after the head gaskets letting go and getting trailered back to Missouri I soon had the car torn down to replace the head gaskets and took the heads to the machine shop to have them checked for any damage. My goal was to have the car running again in time to make it to the first local autocross event of the year which was this past Sunday on the 20th. A call to the machine shop the next day confirmed my fears, they were bad. Both warped, one cracked badly, and the other started to crack. CRAP!
I didn’t want to put a ton of money into repairing the heads so I began a frantic search for good replacements which was a long shot since I live in the middle of nowhere. To my surprise I found a nice used set on a Facebook swap shop that were super close so I nabbed them up! They had been rebuilt, had fresh valve seals, and good springs all for a fair price of $200...shibby!
The first order of business was to remove the threaded plugs from the heads in order to put in my coolant temp sensor on the passenger side. This did not go as planned as the plug had a square drive that was bigger than 1/4" drive and smaller than 3/8" drive which caused issues trying to get it out. First I bought a new torx socket and cut it down into a square which failed as it stripped the plug first try. I then broke out the welder and tried welding a bolt into the plug to extract using a wrench.
It didn’t work either.
I decided to cut my losses and simply put the sensor in the open hole on the driver side head and extend the harness which was a single plug. That process went fine and after the heads were on my buddy Matt and I thrashed that night until 1:30 AM to hear the car start. After adjusting the valve preload and swapping two plug wires the car was good to go!
The car has been fantastic so far and I don’t want to get out of it! The car is very planted and absolutely dominates the backroads with minimal effort. While we did have the car running in time for autocross we weren’t able to attend unfortunately due to FRIGGIN’ SNOW!! WTF MOTHER NATURE!?!? Oh well, we will try for another event asap.
As of now I have $7,038 into the car including all trip expenses from buying it. Not where i wanted to be but hopefully I can get out from under it soon and be onto other things. Until then I plan to drive it and enjoy the heck out of it which a guy can’t be mad about.
Keep your eye out for future fun with this thing! Thanks!