What did you do with your zx2 today?

forks came in but I took a look at silver1's starting issue instead. it started, running away again. sopped and restarted and wasnt.

since i already bought a few starters i decided to swap my pushbutton switch just because and will continue testing cuz it started about 20 times in a row without a hiccup so we'll see. probably should bench test that switch while i wait for the starters

so today silver1 started fine all day long till i got it home from work. then it started running away again. i jacked it up and noticed that theres oil leaking again so that rear main seal is NFG so thats nice. guess this trans needs to come back out sooner than expected....idk. also found a rear stud on the front/rear crossmember is backing out investigated and found its stripped, ran a die over it and reseated the nut as tight as i was comfortable.

anyhow i can deal with the above for now but todays bad news was going to get into silver2 and finding the driver floor board half full with water. how is beyond me, doors and windows closed completely. its sat outside through storms for a year without this happening but it did from yesterdays storms. so i wet/dry vacced that all out and just wondering where the F that water came in from

obviously ill have to do this to see whats going on with it now, but over a year without a drop inside and just now flooded so quickly like that? i just drove this thing two days prior and in the rain without a drop inside it

starters were delivered this afternoon, threw one in. put back together. started it up, made a horrible grinding sound so shut it down. retried starting it and now the starter just free spins lol

doing it again, but tomorrow

gettle is coming down and my buddy with silver3 is coming. we will grill and eat and play with cars

did a lot of things on the cars today

white car:

changed out the bad parts and got the ac working again





ran the ac for two hours after this fix. No leaks to report and very cold AC to show for it

turdbo:

fished around in the trans for that speedo gear with no luck. Im going to have to take the trans off for this fix

gold car:

started getting camshaft code. Im not dumb so i know the sensor is working and telling me there is a problem. Here is the problem



you can see the wire exposed in a couple spots. I cut this part off and soldered on a new end for this part. Problem solved in about 5 minutes so no more code

then had an issue with the car being shaky. The car is 5speed but still was shaky so i checked this part out



yes, this part is broken and why it was shaky. I have the es insert in the front mount and decided to put the es insert in the new replacement for this mount. This will transfer vibration into the car but the shaky is gone now

also changed out headliner. The gold car is my daughter's daily and she uses a sunshade on the front. That led to the headliner getting a tear at the visor and separation at the leading edge. I had one from my parts car so i took it out and swapped it with a good one i kept handy. Woot, car looks good inside again

while i was going over the car i noticed the shifter felt off. Went to look at the bushings at the trans and found this needed attention





the bushings in this part are gone. I had another one of these laying around so i just swapped it out. The shifter feels way better now. Did not notice any other issue while under the car so all was good after that. This little gold car shifts great again and the shakiness is gone. I'll go over it again in a couple weeks to make sure there are no other issues and maybe change out the driver door mirror.

Drove it to Eric's (EvilZX2)house and back yesterday... 224 miles round trip, and used less than 1/2 tank of fuel. I wish I could get my daily driver that efficient!
got to meet a new ZX2 owner, put the old rims from my 2000 on his car. we also did a cookout Bratwurst, Burgers & Tuna Steaks.

The wheely clean is crazy good, until it was used on my old rims I thought they would never look good again, I was WRONG!

35.39 MPG for that trip + 2 days of driving locally... 315.4 miles on 8.912 gal. of regular gas, running NGP0 tune -2 degrees on all non zero values for Variable Cam Angle, and learning mode off without pinging.

did not have the opportunity to change out or further inspect the 99 today. I did still have this issue. Without the ac on while getting gas the car felt like it was very hot and on the verge of overheat. After investigating the issue i noticed the overflow was at the same low level it was at the other day. I let the car cool off then drove home. No real issue other than the car feeling weak due to being hot. Still no change in the water bottle. I decided to wash out the bottle and check it out. Upon doing so i noticed the hose was not siphoning out the water i was using to flush out the bottle. This led me to believe the hose was clogged or had a hole in it. Turns out my assessment was correct, the hose was clogged near the fitting onto the bottle. I was not able to break the clog free but was able to pierce it. The fix for this was to use a hose from another bottle i have as a spare. Now i have to flush out the engine, redo the coolant, clean off the oil and further inspect the car because this heating up explains why there was oil on the belt in the first place. Also explains the failing of the compressor and/or ac clutch. Will change those out as well and start enjoying ac again

decided to fix the 99 today. Took one of the black 00 out to get parts and found i had a ded battery Car would not take a jump so changed battery. Car started and ran well. Battery light comes on now so either the alternator is going bad or critters have eaten something in there Probably going to have to go onto rockauto and order an alternator. While driving the black 00 the tach decided to go all the way to the 8k area and get stuck there Now I'm going to have to plan a time to take the cluster out to swap out the tach. Maybe i need to drive this car more often?

anyhow, got to work on the 99. Swapped out the return hose for the radiator but did not have coolant. Installed coolant, cleaned off more of the engine since it still had oil on it, then swapped out compressor. After inspection it appears the clutch is the culprit here as the compressor seems to move freely by hand and still had clean oil inside. Recharged ac system and got the ac working again. Left the car running for two hours to enjoy the ac, get some work done and ensure the problem was gone. Also let the car sit to see the coolant retract back into the radiator. Hopefully this is the fix the car needed

while i was doing these things, i reinstalled the passenger seat into the car as it has been out for about two weeks now since i used the 99 to transport an engine

cleaning up and doing random stuff today, tested them starters and confirmed they all do exactly as they did in the car so thats nice. cut off the trainling arms from some rear disc knuckles ive got, torched and tried turning the seized bolts (IYKYK) they didnt move so ill play more with that another day

pressure washed some front knuckles and played around a bit with some protege5 front hubs (5 lug conversion?) and rotors but didnt press anything in or test mount anything

silver3 was here, he found an X4 locally for a decent price. we swapped PCM and tuned it then test drove. feels great! also installed an aftermarket shift boot

took the trans off turdbo to finally remove this



bad news is that I can't seem to get the trans back onto turdbo now It's bad enough that turdbo has a sedan trans with epoxy on it as a fix and that the driver axle boot decided to shit itself now requiring a replacement but now this

there is a lot of smoke and ash in the air right now so i will try again tomorrow to see if i have better luck with this then

If I got the right flywheel at the house when I get home I've got one going back in today!

let the tranny gods be with you

if the dowels don't want to stay in, just wrap some electrical tape around it and that should do the trick. i had a hard time trying to keep the second spacer on and used some small vise-grips around the starter area to hold them together. dareall's idea about putting some studs in near the thermostat housing into the top of the block is also good, i just didn't have short enough ones that would let me manipulate the trans to get the input shaft to seat.