Sunday, June 24, 2012

A week of work

    On the cars that is.  I was on vacation from work this past week (my yearly week off for my birthday), so I was able to accomplish a decent list of things.  I wanted to prep the winter car (05 Legacy GT, since I hadn't gone over the car since I bought it back in March, and had some much needed work to do on the Evo.

     Legacy got an oil change, AVO dry panel filter, bottle of techron, tint, tinted tail light overlays and a plasti dipped (blacked out) grill.

     The evo got even more love...
      - Racing Brake slotted/firectional vane front rotors
      - Racing Brake stainless brake lines
      - Fresh brake fluid (ATE type 200...the non blue ATE)
      - Torque solutions Prop shaft bushings
      - Heat wrapped downpipe
      - Rolled rear fenders

     Rotors, lines and fluid went quick ans easy as can be expected, especially with my motive power bleeder.  All necessary nuts and bolts loosened with no trouble, which is always a nice thing.  I was lazy and only did the front SS lines since I actually wanted to not spend all day everyday working in the garage.  On some quick break in stops it became obvious that braking has changed a lot even with the same pads.  I was able to trigger ABS on hard stops with a very definite modulation point on the pedal...could make re learning the braking interesting...  The RC5+ pads have close to 3k miles on them plus 2 track days and have TONS of life left which is pretty cool.
      The prop shaft bushings have been sitting in my parts bin for almost a year.  I had expected stuck bolts and needing to drop the whole exhaust.  I was able to accomplish this easily while the downpipe was off.  No stuck bolts again...sweet.  I actually only did 3 out of 4 bushings, since one was in a pain in the ass location, and I thought maybe it would dampen any increase in NVH.  The car has always given me trouble going in to second gear at low speeds around town, almost requiring a double clutch or 3 count before attempting to put it in second.  That is now gone, along with a decent amount of the "whiplash" feeling when letting off the gas under load.  Very nice improvement.
     The heat wrap is one of those mods that I feel is essential at this point.  A 15 foot roll made it from turbo outlet to just beyond the oil pan.  I probably could have overlapped a little less, but it came out pretty well I feel.



     Rolling the rear fenders...a job I've been afraid of doing on multiple cars for many years.  With the 17x9.5's and 255's, there was question as to if I even needed to roll, and through 1000 street miles and a day at Lime Rock I didn't rub once...but i have a feeling I'm going to want bigger than 255's at some point so I may as well prepare now.  First fender went great.  Kept it hot, and got it nice and flat without any issue.  No body line distortion or paint cracking whatsoever.  Then i got bit in the ass on the other side thinking I knew what I was doing.  Using even more heat, I got a nice paint crack basically the entire length of the roll.  I think i had a bad starting angle on the roller or something.  No body distortion or anything, so I'm not that mad.  I can replace paint.



     Now, just imagine if I/you had payed $200+ to have a shop roll your fenders and they told you they cracked your paint.  How ape shit pissed would you be?  This basically proved my principal of do all the work you physically can so you only have yourself to be pissed at.

     Interesting find of the week...A cracked spacer.  While bolting everything back on after the rotor swap, I randomly looked at the spacer and found a nice large crack.  Now, there are all these arguments against spacers, but I do not feel this is a standard failure, and Ichiba feels the same.  A quick email to Touge Factory, who then forwarded my pictures to Ichiba, and I will be getting a free replacement.  I really have no idea what caused this...
spacer 3

    
      Evo is now resting in the garage for about a month to save some miles, since I'm quickly approaching the 60k mark (60k service).  That and I though it would be a good idea to do some real world testing on the legacy, since it's been sitting in the garage since I bought it.  So far, I really like the car, seems like a solid beast.




     Back to work tomorrow...I am SOOOOO excited.  (can you feel the sarcasm through your monitor?)

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