jaylew

So I used raptor liner to undercoat my car...I have my regrets. Because it is not a rubberized undercoat, I am not super worried. Also my car was pretty mint underneath plus my car doesn't get driven in the winter anymore. I did also seal seams with 3m window weld to prevent moisture working its way in. 

My recommendation is this.

If your car is already rusty: fluid film or alike

if your car is not rusty: CRC Marine heavy duty corrosion inhibitor on exterior parts + seams. Fluid film all cavities

It is tuned to reduce certain resonant frequencies to eliminate drone 

Glad to hear that it was a simple fix! Gotta love a win like that

On 9/5/2022 at 9:58 AM, BoozeRS05 said:

So my new side mirrors are installed and I love them, but the driver side blinker doesn't work.  The bulbs must be toast bc it's getting power, all other functions are good to go.

As others have said, check the polarity. I believe when I went to the facelift side view mirrors, I had to change polarity (repin) one of the connectors in the housing or you can repin at the main connector possibly. As stated, they are LED's and low likelihood of 'burning' out. They are polarity sensitive 

Yeah i swapped over the lock cylinder since it is key'd for your key. It is easier if you remove the handle (i think...again I did this like 3 years ago so its a little fuzzy). None of it is easy, especially given the plastic handle retaining tabs like to break.

Like Max said, if you need to move the window, which you do, just hot wire it. Strait from the battery or if you have a 12volt power source (wall adapter, power drill battery etc) Use the vacation pics to find the correct 2 wires that go to the window motor. switch polarity to change direction.

Door work, you're almost guaranteed to cut your hand and get the black butyl rubber on your arms from vapor barrier. All part of the fun!

No need to remove the fender. Remove the hinge from the door (i think) and leave the hinges on the body. I believe that is how i did it, but there is no need to remove the fender. Also a friend the hold the door while you fish the wire harness and thread in the bolts by hand is ideal.

Can say that the power folding mirrors are a nice touch! Also I have the convex mirrors on both passenger (stock USDM / LHD) and on the driver (stock JDM / RHD). I can see into last week now, almost no blind spot. Plus, as stated already, for an 18 year old car the folding is a fun flex! Also I just could not handle the fact that I had blank buttons

I did a thing today with the wagon as I left work!

I did a thing today

mmm yeah only issue with the lowered car life, but it just looks too good at this height!

Took it out to some local MTN bike trails. Driving it is a nice reward following some riding! Just doing typical wagon stuff

Fixed a fuel tank leak here. I've driven the car for 4k miles so far this summer and it's been awesome! This winter will see some continued maintenance but in the mean time it will continue as my DD so long as there is no salt on the road!

be aware that is a face lift model. The harness might be compatible without some modifying/re-pinning. So if you swap the whole door then you MIGHT get away with it but I honestly haven't looked into the wire harness differences. I know the 08-09 use CAN for controlling more items but IDK for certain if that applies to the door items

Oh don't you worry, the list never ends!

Still dry. Calling it done. Oy Vey that was way too much effort to really not need nearly as much work done

BoozeRS05, you're in PA right? If you're on the more eastern side I know if a handful fantastic u-pull it yards. When I used to live near philly I would decide on which yard to go to depending on what item I was after haha

South main auto is amazing! Golden advise in those videos

Yeah the trick with any penetrating fluid is heat the part (not the knuckle, just the pinch bolt) then spray the gap in the knuckle and head of the bolt with your penetrating fluid of choice. The rapid cooling of the bolt creates a vacuum that sucks in the fluid. This then has 2 things going for you. 1) the expansion and contraction breaks up the rust, and then the fluid actually gets sucked in to do its job. Just penetrating fluid does almost nothing.

Use a breaker bar to get a feel for if the bolt is going to snap or if the heat is needed

haha understood! and yeah if you have a pick n pull near you a door should be like $20-$50 with everything still on it

yeah and if you have the inevitable rust at the folded seam at the bottom, its an opportunity to be picky and find a mint door

depends on rust and if the prior mechanic had any forethought to anti-seize the crap out of it.

Ball joint out of control arm - easy

ball joint out of knuckle...depends

the cheapest route is to keep control arms, knuckles etc and just replace the expendables that need replacing (ball joint, bushings, bearings)

if you bought the special ball joint removal tool to get it out of the knuckle, then your should be relatively set

check the preload of the pedal on the master. Use the vacation pics to verify the play in the pedal before hydraulic actuation at the master. I found that loosening the 2 nuts on the fire wall (engine bay side) to bleed the system helps, though this is if you have a power bleeder or something since it gets rid of the ability to actuate the pedal.

Prior owner of mine (over 7 years ago) must have broken the handle too cause mine was not paint matching when I bought the car. I got a paint matching replacement from the junk yard. It's a matter of time on the 05 handles. There is a revision change that makes (def 07-09, idk about 06) newer MY handles better but they are not compatible with MY05 due to different actuation movement.

Just use the passenger side and crawl through the car to even out wear and tear haha!

I have never done the carfax and I bought the car off an auction flipper back in 2015. I believe I am the 2nd owner since I have a lot of the original paper work (window sticker, all keys and their security tags, the dealership delivery checklist etc). My current thought is the pump was removed for some reason by prior owner but the sound deadening I pealed off was keeping it sealed. Now that the sound deadening was degrading, the fuel had somewhere to leak. IDK just a theory but it would have had to be this way for at least the past 7 years. I could be crazy (all the fuel fumes and what not, thankfully its not leaded still)

If it no longer is leaking, I am still motivated to replace the evap lines and fix my evap codes this winter. Cheap project (unless the pressure sensor is bad)

Thank you for the help and input everyone!

I might be posting too soon, again. But just filled up this morning after correcting the stack up last night. Dry on fill up, dry on drive in, and just checked after sitting for 4 hours and still dry. I'll check again after work but so far it's looking good. I am still baffled how it might have been originally installed incorrectly.

Sorry to hear about the rack leaking. When I am moved and settled in my new house I plan to do a post op on my rack to figure out where I went wrong and the re-rebuild it to try again. It seams so simple in parts and construction that there must be something tiny I am missing in technique