Hi-Car

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This is the Build Thread for Hi-Car. Reply below.

 

[Moost]

Hi-Car made it home, through the craziest rain storm I've ever driven in. With a trailer! Stopped to eat and got this wild photo of the car under a rainbow. Good sign from the gods after a bit of a trial, for sure!

 

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Hi-Car is now in driveway. Starter will not crank but engine turns over by hand. This car sits pretty low, so I had to get a low profile jack. From Harbor Freight, I got the Pittsburgh low-pro jack (red) for $100. It's good enough for now.

Engine has no compression. Assuming stuck rings, so I poured some oil and SeaFoam into the cylinders. Letting it sit while I work on other projects.

 

[Moost]

Compression not helped by oiling piston rings. Suspect upper end.
Pulled out the dusty old 230V air compressor that I got by trading some landscaping rocks. I don’t have 230V in the garage so I hooked it up to our portable generator after building an adapter to go from L14-30P to 5-20P. Replaced a broken drain valve then she works!
Dialed the regulator down to 40 psi. Used 1/4 NPT I/M air hose couplings and a harbor freight compression gauge hose that almost locks to the female hose end. Works well enough.
Checking cylinder #1 at TDC I have leak out the exhaust. OK, go to the next TDC, I have leak out the intake. Now I’m looking at the cam shafts, nothing makes sense, so where do I have both valves closed? At BDC! Clearly, timing is off. But why? Next step is to get this in bay 2 and pull apart the timing cover.

 

[Dusty Landrum]

Maybe jumped timing and bent valves... crossing my fingers for you man.

 

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This is the Build Thread for Hi-Car. Reply below.

The red low-profile jack from Harbor Freight is not thin enough to reach sound structure to lift the car, so I returned it and got the extended reach super-low-profile Daytona jack from HF.

Pulled timing apart, nothing has failed mechanically. The only explanation is a jumped timing belt or it was incorrectly installed and then she sat after a lot of cranking (more on that in a sec). I carefully retimed and installed the belt. Grabbed this tensioner tool: Tool , tried with snap ring plier, no dice, not in chassis. I also noticed the balance shaft was eliminated. It has some slick HKS cam gears and the markings aren't quite the same as factory, but I think I figured it out. They're adjustable so I just set them in the middle. Turned over by hand a few times with no problems. Using starter, compression on each cylinder was an immediate 150-155 psi. A joyous occasion.

Reassembled a bit more, ready to try starting and the battery was at 0.0V, dafuq? Something is drawing it down, no biggie, I'll work on that later. I did end up getting this nice battery charger on sale: Charger . My old-school charger won't charge from 0V without some sketchy tricks and it will overcharge with no chill. So, charged battery, crank it up - it tried to start but I got some hella noise from the starter/ring gear (now that plugs are in and there is more load on the starter). Now it just turns a little bit then stops and grinds. Bad starter, broken torque converter ring gear, loose starter? I can see the TC down low and the gear is not healthy, but I'm not sure that it is cause or a victim. So, we tried this, had RMG (wife) crank and stop when the grinding started, I then immediately checked if I could turn by hand. All but one time I could turn by hand, not sure what was with that one time, note taken. Suspected bad starter, took it apart and didn't find anything except a cracked magnet and a little wear on the pinion.

Now I have decisions to make and I foresee replacing the TC and/or finding something binding up. I checked all over the forum for DSM specific issues and I noticed there are essentially two starters, one for 1G and manual, one for 2G auto. The Bosch starter I have, SR4166N, seems to the appropriate part and there is not much variance in the TC. My steel sandwich plate looks OK and aligned. I'm back to looking closer at the TC, radial issue (engine or trans) and I'm likely on to ordering a new TC and starter. A reman stock TC is cheaper than the core charge at IPT, so first things first, get it running.

 

[Moost]

New torque converter installed, after getting the wrong one albeit. Turns out there is variance on the torque converter. This car came from factory with the smaller one but at some point, the larger torque converter was put in. Inspection did not prove any cause attributed to the section of worn ring gear teeth. The flexplate looked OK and no radial movement was found in the crankshaft.
Found a 3 inch turbo back exhaust system on FB market place, just browsing. Put that on as I finished the torque converter swap. Down pipe fits nicer than the 3 inch pipe that was on it. Now the engine cranks.
It starts! But it stalls. Now I am at the driveability (tuning?) phase. After a few cranking sessions, I heard the beautiful sound of all four cylinders pumping for about 30 sec. Put in new spark plugs, but it will not stay running. I think it is not getting the fuel it needs, either by pump volume or injector control. I swear, some tapping on the MAF sensor made a difference for the better, but that is just fooling around. I'll be dusting off my engine performance hat and digging into this ECM link. Or maybe I should swap the ECM with one I found on market place. Oh yeah! Last year, I found a same-configuration ECM and powertrain wire harness from some dude in KY.

 

[Moost]

Hi-Car is running and went for its first drive. I've done a lot of cool things over the years, but not much compared to that first rip down the street. It was incredible.

 

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[Moost]

Coffin creaks open. Hello. More of an emotional post than car nerd stuff. Also strange how AI has taken over the world since I was last DSM-focused. I’m still loyal to this website. Hi-Car has been sitting for a while. So much other life stuff going on and it’s about to hit 7th and 8th gear with an adopted baby coming, assuming God has one picked for us.
Also, I kinda got tired of crawling on my back for everything this car needed. That’s not how I wrenched for 10 years and not how I want to wrench for the next 10. Starting this spring, it took 3 months to get concrete redone, and this MaxJax lift installed. Learned quite a bit during that process. Fortunate to have a badass SDS Max hammer drill at work to borrow. Blessed to be able and motivated to continue the work that 16 yr old me would be excited about. Also added a bunch of lighting in the shop. It was a dungeon. Had to work on other machines before bringing Hi-Car in. Timing just happened to be the same day wife and I went to see TFATF in theatre. It was magnificent.
We had an interesting car talk conversation afterwards. Can someone’s love for cars be limited by money? Why do people say they are building cars when they’re just modifying something that someone else built? If working on cars is difficult, why make it harder by working on old cars? DM me for answers.
Anyhoo, the irony of getting the car on a lift and deciding to work on the old nasty window tint. Trying to drive it this week!