Spy Hunter

After all of Saturdays running around getting car stuff done, turns out only the AE86 got all legal. So I decided to go ahead and drive it to Wayland’s for dinner tonight. The transmission was making it’s whining sounds, but everything else seemed alright. Some burning oil smell that seemed to go away, I attributed that to left over brake fluid & power steering fluid that dripped on exhaust manifold burning off. This engine was really made for right hand drive. On the LHD we have here, the brake cylinder & P/S lines all end up on the same side as the hot exhaust. Anyway, things seemed to be going alright, although the burning oil smell would come and go. I got to Kalihi area on the H-1 when I saw that I was trailing big clouds of smoke out the back! Holy chrome, I pulled off the freeway onto Waikamilo and pulled into gas station. Popped the hood & took a look around. Either the fitting for the replacement p/s hose I installed wasn’t tight enough, was leaking, or was leaking somewhere else. It looks like it was spraying p/s fluid all over the place, which would collect and drip onto the manifold, producing the Spy Hunter (come on, you don’t remember that old arcade video game?) smoke screen. People sure stop following behind you in a hurry! So I turned around and nursed it back home. I laid down quite a few more screens, but made it home ok.

So what happened earlier in the day? Well, I took the FX for safety and the guy took a look & told me it wouldn’t pass. Tint and the suspension drop. Tint was easy enough to cure. Luckily the tint was pretty new so it peeled easily off in a single sheet. The suspension drop was going to be an issue. I planned to put my old springs anyway, but there was a problem with the wheels. The wheels, nice Rays Engineering, had a lock nut on each, which the key dissappeared somewhere. I tried a variety of Channel locks, Vice-Grips, pounding on a socket. None of which worked. Derek came by to share in the fun, with no better results. So the decision was made to weld the socket onto the nut. Alright, manly steelworker stuff to do! Time to bust out the welder! Yup, nothing quite so macho as working metal with welders and grinders. Bust out some scrap iron to practice on, and lay down a really ugly sounding and ugly looking bead, if you could even call it that! Damn, that’s bad.

So after messing around some more & trying to figure out what the heck was wrong. Finally figure out that the corroded sections of the wire was causing difficulties in the feed, along with the main cable not seated correctly.

Sheesh. So after disposing of the rusted wire section and readjusting the welder correctly, things go much better. That actually looks more like a weld.

–

Derek being the uber man, has a go at it in shorts, T-shirt, and slippahs. Hardcore! So it looks like we got things working ok. We aren’t going to be making art, so we decide to go for it.

–

Unplugging the main electricals of the car, go ahead and weld on the socket with a couple tacks.

–

And damn if it doesn’t work! Grind off the welds, ready for next nut!

–

And here’s the happy nut family.

–

Oh yeah, and after taking this off, made this wonderful discovery, the rear wheels were being held on by two threads. Yikes! I guess in order to run the bling rims on the rear, he had to put a spacer. But without putting extended studs on….