I have a lot more to post about then I originally anticipated. A few weeks ago a good friend of mine Chris Licup as you may know as Frederic Asbo's biggest fan or you may just actually know Chris let me pull some much needed replacement parts off of his S14 he's building for the track. I originally was going to take his heater core too, but I didn't feel like taking his engine apart to loop his coolant hoses for the box I wanted to remove so I left it be.
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| Chris Licup's Zenki S14 at Garage Life getting caged up |
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| Won't need the stuff to the right of the box anymore. |
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| And I came up on a replacement door panel with mis matching fabric. Legit! |
There are a few reasons why I grabbed the hvac equipment.
1. I had plans on doing something similar with my a/c install that
Toby Broadfield did with his s13, weather it's going to be as expensive or extensive as his setup remains to be seen. I still have a lot of other loose ends I need to resolve. And one of them is getting a heater core from a 98 s14 that has an internal coolant valve rather than that messy array you normally find in s14 engine bays with the stupid valve.
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| not my picture, but a cable runs over to the valve on the red to modulate coolant getting in the heater core on 95-96 models |
The S13 didn't even have this jig rig bullshit. The other alternative is to find a 98 core and coolant mode motor separately and I may be able to retrofit it to my heater core. But that would be an expensive project to undertake, especially if it netted 0 reward.
Previously -
http://om1kron.blogspot.com/2013/04/some-forward-progress.html
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| I like to clean the insides of my wheels, makes them look deeper. Plus that's tacky as fuck having dirty inner barrels. |
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| I thought this picture minus my dumb ass was cool, granted the cars not working. This picture looks cool. |
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| This mess of wires and control box has been removed from the car, apparently the relay fried itself and drained my battery out of nowhere. w/o activating the fan mind you. LAME! I still have the taurus fan. But I'm going to trusty clutch due to no electrical messes to deal with. |
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| I also pulled this guy off to fix... Car was open to the public, literally most paranoid 2 nights of my life. |
So basically here is a run down of how your door latch functions. Right now you could be watching this and saying to yourself, I want this 3-5 minutes of my you tube life back. But the 3 of you out there who are freaking out because your door stopped working and found yourself here. WTF why does my door latch not work. ETC, ETC!
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| One of the most annoying parts of the car to work on, wear a long sleeve if you got it unless you like 14 year old hydraulic grease on your forearms and fingernails. |
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| A close up of your work area. |
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You want to slide the latch into this rod before screwing it back onto the door.
Trust me |
Well now you know, as mentioned previously the plastic guard on the door striker started to wear and it got caught in the latch mechanism. How the door lock itself broke or came apart is a different story. That one I cannot explain. I basically had to take the latch out and re-seat the rod that connects to the lock cylinder in the door.
Which also needs to be replaced on both sides of the car. And at a whopping 60 bucks a pop and rare as fine china, I'm not too sure how much of a life issue that is for me to replace that stuff vs finally getting my alarm installed by Desmon of Performance Mobile Soundworks.
Then I'll have a clicky remote for all cars and never manually open my doors again. (lies)
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| I went upstairs to grab my camera to take pictures of the engine bay and was like, damn this car looks good. |
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| The OEM Shroud now blocks air escaping from the hood, making the vent non functional. |
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| Luckily with some markings and a little weekend work I can cut the shroud and possibly fiberglass a little lip to route the air upwards and out. |
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| Engine Bay looking real stock, and yes I have a bag and rubber band over my coolant res, I took it off one night troubleshooting and it disappeared forever. It's such a random part too, it's not like I can order a new one. Next on my list of things to buy will be a carbon fiber air diverter panel that will cover the ugly area between the headlights and core support. And there will be no cut outs for a hood latch. Finally! |
Yesterday I finally decided to take the s14 out for a spin. Joey posted something about hitting up yogurtland and I wanted to surprise everyone by actually driving my s14 that everyone things I have sold or given up on. Turns out she was having tummy troubles too and blew her water pump out yesterday.
I let the car idle for about a half hour and randomly I would get in and give it gas, I found it extremely weird that out of nowhere it would get huge parasitic loss, I know a clutch fan isn't like the taurus fan where the parasitic loss is instant and electrical.
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| Well that's nice... My car hates coolant apparently |
I figured it was an injector or something passing a fuel stone haha. So I rev'd it out to 8000rpm a few times and heard a nice loud pop and then the engine was purring like a kitten like all resistance had been removed but the battery light came on.
Whats this mean? So I step outside to see a puddle of coolant raining down into the street and I'm like "how the fuck did the radiator pop" Or the drain plug flew off, but water wasn't coming from the radiator this time.
I pop the hood and see the belt was loose for the clutch fan, and searching around for coolant it seems it was behind the water pump pulley itself?
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| Ok, belt flew off, wtf lol! |
There was a huge noticeable jiggle where the water pump pulley would normally spin. At this time it was painstakingly obvious that the water pump just kicked the bucket.
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| I knew I should've replaced this thing when I had the radiator out... |
So I drove my sad ass car right back into it's parking spot and called it a night.
Oh well.
New water pump is on the way as we speak, along with lower fan shroud, radiator brackets, grommets, GK Clutch Fan... I'm pretty much short of buying a new oem fan clutch as well just for peace of mind, we'll see how the free one from my buddy Luis fairs, seemed to have been working until the pump seized and blew up.
- Wayne
