I shot the team’s application in tonight in lieu of studying. The car met both technical feasibility points we were looking for (Working Brakes, Working Clutch) by the entry deadline date, so we’ve thrown our hat in the ring, and are hoping for good news when the grid comes out!
Stay tuned (but don’t hold your breath)…
Car worked on in the tune of: Absolution; Muse (I’ve gotta get a new CD…)
So I thought a little status update was in order as Justin and I got together to work on our Brakes last Friday. Friday we had stupid blizzardy weather in Colorado, and I had figured that Justin was going to cancel. I figured wrong. Hats off to you Justin.
We attacked the brakes straight off by seeing if a good bleed would bring them back. We suspected this would be all it would take as the car had sat for awhile. We were a bit disappointed however when we began bleeding all of the calipers, noting no air in the lines
When we got to our fronts, we pulled the wheels off to find some rusty drilled slotted rotors and ancient looking Brembo calipers. Not sure if these were stock or not, but hey, they look like racing parts, which means we’re going to take a tumble in the BS Process.
We got the car down off the jacks and took it for a drive after the bleed and still werent too happy. We started looking at the vacuum lines noticing one had frayed pretty bad and wasn’t really doing anything other than taking up space in the engine (and coincidentally it went to the brake master cylinder).
A quick trip to the local Checker store and we were back with some new vacuum hose. This must be mentioned. The clerk at Checker was awesome. When we brought our example vacuum tubing in, he was unsure if he had any. He came back from the back of the store with about a 3 foot length, gave us a wink, and sent us on our way with no monetary exchange. He either knew we were working on some sort of project car or thought Justin had pretty hair something, But in either event, You rock Checker Guy at an Unnamed Store in Colorado Springs. We won’t mention which store in case the guy’s manager stumbles onto this, but that guy was awesome enough to deserve mention.
After the quick install on the new hose, we took another drive. The difference was noticeable. Our brakes are much better than they were when we started. I’d say this Friday was a good successful day.
Thats all for now, stay tuned for interior stripping fun.
We went to the Denver Auto Show this weekend, and we took a few pics. These are included below.
The highlight of the show for me was getting to see the DeLoreans that DMC had ferried out there. Yeah sure they’re the most obnoxious pile of crap for stereotypical nerds quirky, but I have always irrationally loved that car since BTTF as a 2 year old kid.
Also in attendance was a pretty gorgeous SL Black, a Ferrari California, a Maserati Gran Turismo, some other relatively expensive marques. I got up close and personal with an Aston Martin V8 Vantage, which is a simply perversely good looking car. The people at Sil-Terhar Volvo in Broomfield were pretty nice to let people come look at their nice stock up close, which is more than could be said for Lamborghini of Denver, who had one guy wearing a Lamborghini polo and scowling, as well as a memo that asked the public not to devalue the cars by touching them. Understandable I suppose, but still, why even show up if you don’t want people to have a close look at what you have?
We had a good time taking pictures of my roommate in terrible cars (I think we racked up the Prius, the PT Cruiser, the xB, VW Beetle Cabrio in Baby Blue, and Kia Seoul Soul) but he’s too bashful to let me post them.
I also saw My Car on the Audi floor, which I proceeded to try and scare any ‘passengers’ (with my own terrible behavior) by putting my own Fob in the dash when they sat in the passenger seat. We took the customary lounge in the backseats of the A8, and the BMW 7 Series, and again I was impressed as hell with the new Z4, which is pretty less ugly, and might actually be in the realm of future consideration for me.
We also had a great time with all of the other exhibits, feigning getaway driving in the enormous delivery vans, trying to keep a straight face at the scion booth, playing “Find the Engine” in Acuraland, and wondering why Lexus decided to sandblast an IS Cabriolet.
I still vote for the DeLoreans as the highest point of the day, but we all had a good time. We topped the visit off with a trip to Casa Bonita and a game of Greed Inc at my apartment, for an all in all great day.
Stay tuned for more relevant posts about the car.
Car worked on in the tune of: Massive confusion cut with success
So we started out the day by putting our slave cylinder back together, and pumping up the clutch line with Justin’s power bleeder. Scott made it to my place for a little while, where we somehow managed to fenagle the rear subframe back on to the car. That was a bit of a fiasco, as none of us knew really how we got it apart in the first place, where this screw went, and most importantly, how to put the mess back together.
Stunningly, Scott and I got the subframe bolted back on the car, and then Scott had to bail out to get to bed for work in the morning. But as Scott was leaving, Justin got to the house and we went to town on reinstalling the driveshafts, and finally we were ready for a triumphant rollout test of our car. We checked all of the subframe bolts once more, took the jackstands down, and gave the car a shove down off the ramps. Since we were approaching the evening, we rolled the car down the driveway and out into the street. We started the car with a roar (hearing it for the first time without having the second and third bank of mufflers installed) and pushed in the clutch pedal to be met with a loud “POP”.
On inspection behind the car, we were greeted with a jet-streak of brake fluid on the pavement pluming from under our slave cylinder. The car was immobile on an incline and pretty close to impossible to get under.
What did we do? We got skinny. We found out that in our efforts to gingerly put the new drain plug in, we forgot to tighten it and when we actuated the slave cylinder, it vomitted its guts. We plugged the cylinder (and actually tightened it) and bled the car where it was dead in the water in my driveway.
Buoyed by our cowboy fix in the driveway we started the car again, and…
IT WORKED!!!!!!!!!
We took a quick victory lap around my neighborhood in our car, revelling in the fact that three car inepts like us could change a clutch semi-successfully.
Heres the car when we parked it today, triumphantly waiting for its brakejob.
Car worked on in the Tune of: Absolution; Muse
So things were good today, mostly. I woke up in the morning noting that I was sick as hell, but we needed to keep going. I got out in the morning and busted out our old friend, the reciprocating sander;
After a quick cleaning out with Brakleen and a good once over with the reciprocating sander, the flywheel was much much better looking than when it came out, and so was our pressure plate.
With the assurance that ‘it looks ok enough’ from Justin, we bolted the clutch back together and into the car. Not without casualties however, as one of the six bolts that holds the disc in didn’t really like being torqued to spec, as the bolt head came off with a snap. So we’ve got a slightly unbalanced clutch. Pfffffffff.
After putting the clutch back together, we encountered another small problem however, we broke the bleeder valve on our clutch slave cylinder after trying simply to open it. It hasnt been a good day for us in keeping our fasteners in correctly.
Justin had to head home but he’s bringing a new bleeder valve from his parts bin, and we’ll drill the old one out tomorrow.
Stay tuned…
Written in the tune of: The red dawn soundtrack
Well, today is Wednesdayand things have finally improved. Let me preface this post with a few pictures;
Scott and I got together and with some help, we wedged the transmission up with a railroad tie so we could get a little more leverage against the pin. With an absolutely crazy amount of effort, we finally got the pin off of the linkage around 10:30 at night. With the piece detached from the linkage, we slid the clutch housing right off. A few bolts and we had the thing all the way apart.
The old clutch disk was like glass, so no question that that was our culprit. Since it was getting late, we shut it down around 11. Tomorrow, we’ll resurface the flywheel and the outside ring of the pressure plate, and get this piece of crap our car back together.
Stay Tuned
Written in the Tune of: The Red Dawn Soundtrack
So, I finished yesterday wishing us luck with today. Friends, let me tell you, I am an idiot.
We had a short time with Scott and I to work on the car this evening, and we decided to go ahead and crack open our clutch housing.
Things went well for starters, the housing had 4 large bolts holding it together…
Except for the bolts mounting the shift linkage to the housing. When we tried to take this apart, our linkage disintegrated into a pile of rods, nuts and bolts. We don’t know how it works, and that is a bit of a problem.
And then we encountered an even sillier problem. With the shift linkage in pieces on the floor out of the way, we noted the only thing keeping the front of the clutch housing on was a pin holding a bracket for the shift linkage to the gear selector (which goes on into the gearbox. Hard to visualize without seeing it, I’m sorry I confused you in advance).
Anyways, we didn’t immediately identify this, and spent 2 hours trying to take some huge 32mm locking nuts off the front of the clutch housing where the driveshaft attaches to. This simply resulted in us wasting a ton of time pulling nuts off which were torqued at a billion poundfeet each.
When this didn’t get the clutch apart, we did happily go to our new best friends at Craigs Place Alfa 75 Manuals and FAQs. This guy has gotten ahold of Manuals for the Alfa 75 (Same as the Milano) and posted them online for everyone to shamelessly steal learn important facts from a legitimate source about their vehicle. So when we decided to actually read the goddamn manual research the issue, we found we needed to get that pin and the bracket.
The pin, long story short, has proven invincible. We have hammered it with small, large and baby sledge hammers. We have broken a drift-pin on it. We cannot drill the pin as it is made of unobtainium. We flooded the pin with penetrating oil to no effect. This pin is a damned survivor.
So coming down to it, we’ve been fully defeated by a crappy steel pin. Sad Day.
Tune in tomorrow to find out how we get the taste slapped from our mouths.
Written in the tune of: Progress.
Justin Came over, and today we made pretty decent progress.
The exhaust was the first obstacle, and it did not put up much of a fight. We simply unbolted our old rear exhaust from the car (noting it was actually a decent old ANSA exhaust! Score!). We pulled this off and set it aside as we’ll get some decent recovery cash here. A few old rubber hangers (which were amazingly still in good shape) and the midsection of the exhaust was free… sort of. We noted that the midsection of the exhaust with the middle muffler bank had rusted to the outlet of the first muffler. Solved in true crapcan style, we made a lever from a 2×4 and our floor jack, and pried the rusty mid-section from the first muffler. Physics won, and our worthless stock mid-muffler is on its way to the scrapyard.
We also conquered the driveshaft today. Very Easy if you do it right. We did substantially more than we should’ve. Six bolts can remove the driveshaft, but we took off somewhere around 12-15, including the heatshield over the first muffler. They say extra work builds resentment character.
Now the cool thing about the car is that the gearbox is a rear transaxle gearbox (Mounted on the rear axle for better weight distribution). After you unbolt the subframe holding the front of the rear axle to the car, you can jack the rear axle of the car up, tilting the transmission down, out of the car, and into easy access.
We stopped at this point today, more tomorrow. Work Cation Day 2, may you be as awesome as day 1!
Stay Tuned
Written in the Tune of: Whatever is on Kilo Today…
So, after a day of sleeping my ass off to recover, we’re finallyt down to working on the car. I spent the morning pulling some of the easier parts to pull like the grille, parts of the interior, etc. The Car’s up on Jackstands, Justin should be here soon, and more updates are to come.
Enjoy a couple work pics below;
Stay Tuned
Written in the Tune of: Phonecalls while En-Route to find a space for the car…
Heres a BRIEF photo update; The WorkCation Begins! The car got loaded up and sent down this afternoon. More to come after a solid 2 days of airsoft…
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Stay Tuned…
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