The repeat visitor (Hi Mom!) will notice the site has a new section.  Yes, I bought a Lotus Elan.  I’m not sure quite when that car entered my consciousness or when it turned to lust, but it’s been a long, long time.  It went from my dream car in high school, to a purchase waylaid when the Westfield fell into my lap in 2001, to finally sharing space with that car in my garage.

I almost bought a ’67 pre-airflow FHC this summer on Bring a Trailer.  I had been watching the auction since the car appeared and with a couple of minutes left, decided to throw in a bid.  Then another.  Then I came to my senses.  The buyer later revealed that his last bid was his limit, so if I had increased my last bid by $500, it was mine, but fortunately I held back.  Although a very nice and honest car with the added benefit of Webers, it had some issues.  It previously had a roll cage so the interior had some associated installation issues that would bother me.  It was also a pre-airflow.  Although I prefer the looks of that version, I figured that Lotus added the vents to the rear pillar for a reason. Air flow through a cabin is a good thing.  And most importantly, it was red.  Granted the Elan looks great in that color, but the Westfield is red, and the 951 (which will be going up for sale soon) is also red.  In fact, the 993 I almost bought instead of my car was red.  I like red, but not to the degree that I want most of my cars that color.  

The car I eventually bought is in better shape than the BaT car, has a ton of extras that I wanted, a significant amount of maintenance/repairs, and after adding buyer’s fees to the BaT car was about $1600 cheaper.  Despite the $14,500 the previous owner invested over the 6 months before I bought it, there is still some work to do.  It arrived with a broken driver’s side window and horn, play in the steering, some rattles, and in need of a few upgrades.  Fortunately I have a garage and a bunch of tools I’m not afraid to use.  Stay tuned

Looks like it’s time for my annual blog post.  From a car perspective, it’s been a very boring year.  We began looking for a new house last fall, and didn't move in until March, which put a bit of a hold on all car-related projects.  The upside to that is the garage at the new place is enormous, with incredible potential as a car and wood shop.  Unfortunately the word "potential" in the previous sentence is used as a foreshadowing device to portend some less than good news: Moisture issues.  Serious moisture issues.  Smelly, rust inducing, wood warping, moisture issues.  <sigh>

The building itself is two connected garages that were built 10 years apart.  The original garage is 30x25, and they later added a 30x15 second story office above it, and a 28x45 shop sharing one of the original outside walls.  The original garage is a bit moist, but nothing serious.  The shop, however, is a different story.  After 6 months of contractors, a perimeter drain, and a new slab with vapor barrier, the moisture in that section is now in check.  However, after airing it out for a few weeks while the slab dried, and painting the walls, some odor issues remain which may require some work in the attic.  The good news though is that it's finally at a point where I can safely move in the contents from the smaller garage section and get back to work.  As of this writing the main cabinets are in place, and I'm starting to unpack my boxes.  Hopefully that work will be done and the lift in place over the next week.  Some pictures and a little more detail are located here.  

Made a weird discovery today.  The front and rear friction washers that bookend the crank sprocket assembly on the Duratec are missing.  As a modern "dispose when done" engine, Ford/Mazda optimized for assembly line speed rather than rebuild ease, and opted to use clamping force to hold the crank pulley and sprockets in proper alignment, rather than a woodruff key.  These missing washers are paper thin, Porsche priced items ($20/ea) and apparenlty form a critical component of the clamping design.  

I don't recall replacing them when I did the cams in 2007.  I'm not sure if I
simply didn't know about them back then, or if I was told that they didn't  require replacement.  Now I suppose I could have simply screwed up and failed to  put the front washer on 5 years ago when attaching the crank pulley, but in order to get to the rear washer, you have to remove the oil pump sprocket and then slide it and the crank sprocket off the nose of the crank as a unit (there is virtually no slack on that chain even when the tensioner is removed).  I am absolutely positive I didn't touch the oil pump 5 years ago, and given there is no reason to remove the crank sprocket unless you're removing the crank  or replacing the rear washer, I can't imagine I would have taken it off, removed  the old washer, and then put it back together wihout a new one.  This tells me  that these washers were never on my engine.

As to why they were never there, I suppose it's down to the engine's
history.  It was purchased from Kansas Racing Products who manufactured  alloy racing blocks for Ford who in turn gave them sweetheart deals on excess engines. I was told these engines become available for a variety of  reasons: over production, pulled from the line for Quality Assurance testing, or  simply for the engineers to look at and measure. Because none of these engines  are considered “new” Ford can’t resell them as crate engines, so they are stuck with two options: destroy them or allow their “friends”  such as KRP to resell them at deep discounts to their own customer base.  When the engine arrived, the  coil pack mount was missing a corner, but other than that it looked brand new  and had never been fired.  Perhaps there was an issue with the washers on the  assembly line that was dioscovered after the engine was assembled, and it was  deemed cheaper to sell it (and possibly others) as an excess engine, rather than  repair it.

Between this and the cam bolt issue described below, I really dodged a
bullet.

I upgraded the cams in the Westfield in summer of 2007.  The resulting power increase was pretty profound, but over time it seemed less so. Yes, the car was still very quick, but it just didn’t seem to have quite the same level of urgency I remembered those first several months.  It also failed smog twice (2009 & 2011) after passing within a few months of cam installation, so I suspected that the power loss might be real, rather than a simple recalibration of my butt dyno.  Compression and leak down tests revealed no issues, so valve timing was the next logical culprit.  Given a check of valve clearances showed some were out of spec, and I had an oil leak that required a closer look, I decided to pull the engine to address.  

Now setting valve clearances on a Duratec is a complex affair thanks to their mechanical, non-adjustable design.  A small inverted bucket (i.e. tappet) sits over the valve spring and its base forms the fixed, mechanical interface between the top of the valve stem and the cam lobe. The buckets come in different thicknesses and are selected to achieve optimal valve clearance.  To adjust the clearance, you first need to measure it, then remove the bucket to get the base thickness measurement that is stamped to the inside (3.xxx mm), and then calculate the new thickness required to get the clearance within spec.  The buckets are available with base thicknesses that come in increments of ~.02 mm, so the final setting is never exact, but should be within the accepted range (0.09"-0.011"/0.09"-0.012" intake/exhaust).  Given that measuring and changing out these buckets requires cam removal, and by extension, resetting cam timing, this was also an opportunity to correct any discrepancies in this area.
 
After removing the crank pulley and front timing cover, I noticed that the adjustable cam gears weren’t where I left them in ‘07 – i.e. they had moved and with that movement, had altered the cam timing.  A quick check revealed that the specs were significantly out of whack.  Kent recommends exhaust timing is set to 110 deg before TDC, and the intake to 105 deg after TDC, yet measurements showed these were at 116 and 95 respectively.  Now to be fair, the timing was most likley altered when the front pulley was removed (it’s not keyed and instead relies on a friction fit), but the delta between the two settings cannot inadvertently change during that process, and it too showed a big discrepancy, so cam timing is indeed out.  

The good news is that I appear to have found the source of missing horsepower and increased emissions.  The bad news is that it reveals the torque wrench I originally used to torque the clamping bolts isn’t very accurate at the required 12 ft-lbs setting.  Suffice it to say I am buying a new torque wrench to handle all fastening duty under 20 ft-lbs, and investing in Loctite.

The roads were dry today, so I finally had an opportunity to test the recent de-squeaking measures.  What an improvement!  Although there is still a minor squeak from the rear silencer mount to tackle, the car is transformed.  It's not just that it's quieter, but psychologically, the lack of squeaks and creaks adds a significant sense of rigidity to the chassis.  What I previously perceived as flex on bumpy roads was simply my gut response to the squeaking.

The Westfield has been a squeaking nightmare for a number of years, with two items accounting for the cacophony: worn out silicone bond between the scuttle and tub, and dry polyurethane bushings in the front suspension.  Although annoying, the noise is something I've learned to live with out of nothing more than sheer laziness.  The suspension job is a PITA due to my engine installation which blocks access to one suspension bolt, and the scuttle, although easy to remove, requires a lot of juggling with wires to get in position to clean the underside.  I hate wire juggling.

However, over the last couple of weekends, I've finally tackled the issues.  To ensure a long term fix for the scuttle-to-tub squeaking, rather than applying more silicone, the old stuff was completely removed and closed cell foam padding tape went in it's place.  Silicone was applied around the bolt holes on the side of the scuttle to ensure no moisture makes it's way in the frame rails, and a bead of silicone was applied to the front where the fit isn't as tight.  It took a while, but wasn't that difficult.  The poly bushings, however, were a different story. 

My engine installation conspires to make this a big job.  The alternator -- which is buried at the bottom of the drivers side and difficult to access -- gets in the way of removing a key suspension bolt, and adds a couple of hours of work and a few hundred expletives to the job.  That is annoying enough, but given that the bushing grease has a short life, it means this isn't so much a repair, as it is a regular maintenance item.  Fortunately I stumbled upon some grease designed for this application that people claim lasts for years, so I decided to give it a shot.  

As expected, the job was a pain, and like an idiot I made
things worse.  First, I damaged the rubber boot for one of the lower balljoints, and next I bunged the threads of the other when the tierod remover slipped.  The lower balljoints are from an Austin Maxi which was never imported, so they had to come from the UK.   But it's done.  Lots of rain means I've yet to give the car a proper road test, but pushing down firmly on the frame rail is now met with silence, which is a great sign.

Microsoft is deprecating Office Live Small Business (OLSB), the free web publishing service that has hosted this site since 2008.  The replacement, Office 365 for small business, is a big step forward for those who are actually running a small business, but I'm just a car enthusiast with a vanity site, so it's time for me to move on.  After a little research, I settled on Weebly.com.  It took quite a few hours to transfer everything over and correct all the formatting issues (although I'm sure I've missed a few), but it seems like it will do the job.  I'll give it a few weeks before I transfer over the domain name and make it the official home of Throttle Steer.

This placement meant that a slightly longer 12V+cable was needed, so I decided to roll custom battery cables equipped with
terminals appropriately sized for the small M6 terminal used on the EVO2.  The good folks at Pegasus Auto Racing Supplies provided flexible 4 gauge cable, 1/4” ring terminals, and insulating boot, while an Amazon vendor sent a crimping tool capable of dealing with such heavy duty terminals.

The battery is definitely up to the task of starting the car in cold weather,  so the big question now is how long will it last. My fingers and other appendages remain firmly crossed.

Yikes!This blog was last updated over 2 years ago!!  Okay, so I’ve been a
bit delinquent, but given my website statistics, I think I’m the only person
who’s noticed.  The past two years have been pretty uneventful car-wise, so I’ll just touch the highlights here in reverse chronological order.

Adding Even More Lightness
The Odyssey PC680 in the Westfield was beginning to die, and since Lithium batteries are coming down in price...I picked up a 16 cell Ballistic EVO2 battery through Amazon.  Before going through the installation hassles though (I plan to relocate it, so will need to mess with the cables and build a new battery tray/hold down setup) I wanted to test it in cold weather to make sure it is up to the task of how I use the car.  The other afternoon, with the temps in the mid 30's and falling, I rolled the Westfield out of the garage and let it sit on the driveway to acclimate to the colder outside temps. When checking back over 2-1/2 hours later, an infrared thermometer showed the battery had equalized with the current air temp at 31F and the block was a warmer, but still chilly, 37F.  Next it was time for the big test, so I inserted the key and turned...the engine fired right up! I immediately switched it off and then repeated that process two more times, and the result was three back-to-back startups around the freezing mark with zero issues.  Not too shabby for something that tipped my postal scale at
3lb 4.5oz! For comparison, the PC680 on the same scale came in at 14lb 10oz.

Stereo
I've been toying with putting a decent stereo in the 993 since buying it 5 years ago.  The cheap aftermarket head unit matched the interior, but wasn't a sonic masterpiece, while the factory speakers suffered from age related rot, so they...well, sucked.  Since Christmas is always a good time to spend wastefully, I picked up a new head unit locally (Kenwood Excelon KDC-x995), and then went to Rod Birch of Rennlist fame for speakers (Focal 165 V30) and amp (Arc Audio KS125.2 Mini).  The tweeters on these particular Focal's are small enough to fit in the factory tweeter housings with just a little persuasion from a Dremel, so other than the head unit, the system looks stock.  The amp is a class-H item which is really, really small and  light, and fits perfectly under the passenger seat.  It was a pretty big project
that took almost an entire weekend, but the results are impressive.

The Miata came with a poorly installed, tacky-looking silver head unit that was *really* out of place in the otherwise nice interior.  Given there’s now an innocuous-looking, black Clarion from the 993 sitting on the shelf, I made the swap.  It’s not a sonic improvement over the outgoing Sony XPLOD (no really, that’s the name Sony’s branding brain trust came up with after countless focus groups and hundreds of hours of market analysis), at least it looks a lot better.

It's very well made, has full extension, ball bearing drawer slides, and features 73% more drawer area than my outgoing cabinet, so I now have space for everything.

Speaking of  everything, the garage is also a little short on space for those
things, so I installed new, adjustable shelves over the tool cabinet.  (that’s the new shop dog, an 11 month old Great Pyrenees who doesn't like
to pose for photographs).

Ever since I drove behind the Westfield on a very bright summer’s day, I’ve been unhappy with the effectiveness of the brake lights.  When the back of the car is lit up by strong sunlight, the body panels glow bright red, nearly matching the intensity of the lit brake lights.  I investigated LED replacements, but according to reviews most of them are pretty useless.  Sure, they react far more quickly than incandescent bulbs, but they are not as bright as the stock 1157 bulb and their illumination falls sharply off axis.  One of the exceptions is the Genesis 48 LED 1157 replacement from Custom Dynamics (also available as the creatively spelled Radiantz 1.85” Replacement Clusterz). The reviews indicate that they are much brighter than 1157 bulbs and their 120 degree LEDs maintain an advantage at pretty severe viewing angles.  Unfortunately they are a bit bulky and won’t fit behind the my Land Rover brake light lens without extensive and irreversible modifications.  Bummer.

Recently I became aware of two new version of the Genesis/Radiantz replacement light: hard wired and a pigtail terminated with an 1157 base.  It appeared that the latter provided enough flexibility that they would work with my light housings, so I ordered a pair of red LEDs from Custom Dynamics.  Before committing to the change, I decided to do a side-by-side comparison with the new LED cluster in the passenger side light and the 2357 bulb (a marginally brighter substitute for the 1157) in the driver’s side light.  I walked back about 20’ and then signaled SWMBO to hit the middle pedal.  Wow!  The LEDs were much brighter than the incandescent bulb.  I then moved up about 15’ and over to the right by several feet until I could just see both lights.  Even that far off axis the LED still held an edge.

Because I am using the version with the remote base, I had to find a way to affix the LED cluster to the bottom section of the light housing.  I decided to use double-sided foam tape to make replacement easy should I ever have an issue with a cluster.  The LEDs don’t produce any appreciable heat, so the tape should last a while and also provide a little cushioning to the LEDs which are sensitive to vibration.  Although not cheap at $25/cluster, the LEDs are well worth the money.