I
almost went to my first autocross of the year. Almost, because as I was getting onto the highway, my shifter linkage became loose, and I lost all but gears 3 & 4. I've had this happen before, but thought I had put a better locknut on the offending bolt. So I turned around to fix it in my driveway, and after doing so, could not get the car to start again. No click from the starter or anything! Even smacking it with a tire iron and jumping the terminals did nothing, even with a starting charger. At least I was already in my driveway.
What really sucks, apart from missing a $30 autocross with potentially unlimited runs, is that I had put 50+ hours into the car in the last couple of weeks, basically working on it daily as long as feasible. Friday night I even pulled an all-nighter to make sure the car would be ready for Sunday. So that was disappointing.
I spent so much time working on it because late last season/year, I started having very mild overheating, and an intermittent misfire at mid-high rpms. When I had discovered a coolant leak down the side of the block, I figured that I had finally blown a head gasket after 5 years of driving the car since it had aspirated a throttle screw in TN. As I tore down the top end of the engine and intake/exhaust manifolds, I found that at least some of the leak was caused by the gasket failing between the cylinder 1 & 2 intake ports, allowing coolant to be sucked into these two cylinders. However, I did not want to assume that this was all of my leak or problem, and decided to pull the head anyway. When I pulled the head, I was surprised with how little damage there was to the head and pistons affected by the screw, even as I had used a borescope previously. It does appear that the throttle screw spent some time in both cylinders 1 and 2, but much more time in cylinder 1. The valves showed no signs of contact with a screw, and I was surprised the screw wasn't buried in the head. I smoothed out the dents in the pistons with emory cloth, and similarly did this to the affected portions on the head, to prevent hot spots. As a note, the head gasket itself was still perfectly intact despite the 50+ dents between cylinders 1 & 2.
In addition to this, I performed the following jobs over the past few weeks:
- Gasket port-matched Intake manifold, Runners, Exhaust manifold, and head using HF die grinder.
- Drilled out and re-tapped broken cold start injector bolt/hole
- Chased head stud and bolt holes, cleaned M12 studs, bolts, nuts.
- cleaned rust off exhaust manifold, heat shield, and injector air duct, painted with ceramic exhaust paint, grille-cured
- Replaced my muffler (which I could only describe as "broken") with a resonator I had bought for a Volvo 240, temporarily until I can find something suitable
- Tapped intake manifold coolant ports in cylinder head, installed set screws with thread sealant
- Adjusted valve lash, replaced shims (all needed tightened)
- Painted fuel rails and installed new gates FI hose with FI clamps
- Externally cleaned injectors, installed all new o-rings
- Installed new CV axle bolts, as one was backing out
- Used a hand siphon pump to pull old coolant from block jackets, refilling and pumping until clean (don't use water wetter...)
- Flushed heater core, radiator pipes/hoses, etc.
- Installed ball valve in heater core feed hose
- Installed stainless coolant bottle
- painted radiator support beam
- undercoated radiator bay
- Installed Aluminum radiator with modern fan
- cleaned thermostat housing, installed new stat, seals
- cleaned and adjusted auxiliary air valve
- replaced rusty fuel feed pipe with 5/16" CuNiFer, barbed one end and double flare with Fiat fitting installed
- Installed new head gasket, head
- Installed new timing belt
- Ran fuel pump w/o engine on or plenum installed, watched for leaks
- Changed oil
- Filled coolant- Peak Global Lifetime- appears to not contain silicates or phosphates
- Finished reassembly, started (Loud with only resonator and not a muffler)
- Adjusted idle and base timing to ~12*BTDC @~1000rpm
- Installed tie rod ends- these were shockingly bad and I made a couple videos, see below
- Epoxied cracked front air dam and reinstalled, will have to fix/replace grille too
- Made a wire mesh grille to mount to front of radiator to protect fins somewhat (no pictures right now)
I still have about a dozen more jobs to tackle soon, but that's what I wanted to do while the car was "not running." I have a gear reduction starter coming from MWB, hoping I can get it installed before this weekend so I'll make the autox "fun event" Sunday.
Also, I've been making some videos and posting on Youtube when I think to. Pretty impromptu, but I'm uploading some Fiat stuff right now since that's what I'm working on. Here are the tie rod ends I just replaced:
Longer video with couple tips/tricks that worked for me:
Shorter video of the tie rod ends being super loose: