KZJonny

It won't account for *that* level of fuel consumption, but I had luck with the broadly recommended Berrymans B-12 Chemtool or BG 44K fuel system cleaners. I saw better idle and slight improvements in fuel economy in my 2.5i and GT after a treatment and some italian tune up driving. Might be a place to start and see where you land after cleaning up the fuel injectors a little?

Maybe I'm not thoroughly attuned to my car and finding the perfect shift, but I refilled with whatever the new formula Mobil 75w90 full synthetic was that I could find, and my trans shifts well and never complains... I still have the DMFW, so I get a little of the shudder on some low speed/rpm gear shifts, but aside from that, very well behaved. Dunno if fluids are better than they used to be when the cocktails were the hot ticket, or I just don't flog my car hard enough to notice.... My original plan had been to use the Mobil as just something to get me by until I had the time/cash to swap out to a Motul or Redline product, but it's just doing it's job really well, so why spend the money? For whatever reason, I do not use Mobil1 motor oil. It's probably fine now too, just too many stories about it not working out in our turbo EJ's.

Oh, I like the roller bearing and double sided tape fix... Looks fast and cheap. Hell. I'd have a flashier lift than car. I own a GT and it is spendy and still not fast.

Front wall framed and almost ready to go up. The big picture. I’m hoping it’s not quite as much work left as it looks like, hah! Definitely be some cold workdays, but I’m in one of the ‘warmer’ parts of Canada, so hopefully it mainly stays above 0C for another couple few weeks.

Yes, that makes the most sense to me. I would've assume that there would be way too much flex in the bottom frame of the jacks to survive being suspended at the four corners. Just checking, since as you say it looked basically like some angle iron and a set of casters bolted to it. It was the price tag that made me think I was missing something about it... $400CAD is a third of what I paid for the jacks, delivered. So I wondered if there was perhaps some devilry going on there I couldn't see. (Certainly being able to push the car around on the jacks could be useful, but when I think of how many casters are on a set of car dollies, I don't see how just 4/jack would work out. Big thanks for the additional photos. I am pretty sure I can fabricate something like that easily enough. Since they are only holding up the weight of the jacks themselves, perhaps a bracket that goes "over" the upper frame member, putting the casters on the 'inside' of the jacks while lowered might be possible, the bracketing wouldn't have to support a whole lot of weight (1/4 the weight of a single jack/corner).... Or just attach the casters to the inside of the frames? I will play around with some ideas and see what I might come up with. It's much less of a priority with the 2-post on the way, but still fun to make the things you have more effective at doing what they do....

Third wall is up, tho not sheathed yet, and front wall is assembled and waiting for help to be raised. My neighbour the framer went ghost on me this weekend when he said he'd come by to help put the front wall up and the roof on, so.... that didn't happen. I've now got a case of Coke and a big bottle of rye to find a home for as well. Hah! This happens when you're relying on other for help tho, and not paying professionals for everything. I'm hope to at least get the wall up, and the building squared this Friday/Saturday, which would mean I have the weekend to start getting trusses up onto the wall in preparation for installation. It's all rather a lot of work for one person with occassional help, but I am flat outta cash for the project, so it looks like it'll be some cold dark work in the evening from now on, and hoping that we don't see too much snow before I can get some ply and membrane on the roof! I'll grab some photos as soon as I am home some day before it gets dark.

How did I not come across this before? That said, those rollers would have been completely useless on my broken ashphalt driveway as it stands. However, when the Quickjacks get cleaned up and moved into the garage, that's a different story. Just so I understand what I'm looking at, are those casters supporting the weight of the car when in use? If so, I can see why they might command a $329 USD price tag. If this is the case, does that mean you can move the car around when up on the jacks? For my own purposes, I would love to be able to not have to carry the stupid things around as much (the rollers that came on the end of mine are nearly useless on all but the smoothest surfaces.) So, making any kind of little bracket with a caster on it would be great, and I don't even need it to be strong enough to support a car, just making them easier to roll into and out of place would be sufficient. Maybe something that flips down into place when the jacks are empty and need to be moved, but can be flipped up out of the way when in use, so they do not need to be able to support 5k lbs, or whatever my quickjacks are rated for, I forget at the moment.

Best of luck on the buildout Holla. I hope your experience with the city goes a little better than mine, tho I have to say nobody there was a real jerk, just trying to understand the way the gov't does/sees things is an interesting experience. I like to think of myself as a no-nonsense/common sense kind of person, and for whatever reason I had just expected the government to work in much the same way, for reasons that seemed pretty obvious to me as the time.... Not so! Hah. Being able to get the second story will be sweet! I suppose I could have gone that way, but it is not permitted to build more than one story on a floating pad like I have... I would have had to have a fully excavated foundation, which would have doubled the cost and I somehow don't think would have been easy to engineer to support a 10k lb lift!?! Not to mention, I think I'd be breaking a pile more bylaws with a second story that started at 13' above grade. (I suspect the neighbours might have had a thing to say about that at the hearing!)

Thanks, hoping it might help others going down the same road. I'd include pricing, but since that is a thing that doesn't maintain much significance, I figured I wouldn't bother for now. Anyone who wants to know can ask. I briefly considered a single larger door, but decided against it for a number of reasons: - 2 x as heavy as a single door, and I am not installing an electric opener to keep maximum ceiling clearance available, so 2 x as hard to lift open and close gently. - Since there will pretty much always be a car in storage in the garage, I don't see a big advantage in the single, you're still backing into a 'single' bay one way or the other, and I'd rather back into the divider wall than my other project car by accident? (Easier and cheaper to fix than a car....) - Winter is frikking cold, and summer is hot. Why open an 18' door, and let heat in/out twice as fast, when you can open an 8' door? - Ease/cost of framing the front wall. Going to a single door meant I would have to use a (Probably a double or triple ply) LVL/SVL beam as a lintel, (@19' or so) over the door opening to meet code, which is $$$$ and also quite hard to get into place solo. With an 8' or 9' single door, I can build a 2 ply lintel from 2x10x10, which is light enough to manage and fairly inexpensive. I could probably get away with 2x8x10 and just meet code, by my reading of it, but for it's only a couple extra dollars for the 2 x 10', so why not? - Final consideration, which is really coming back to help me out right now is that in the event the budget got blown out (which it absolutely has), I can reasonably easily build myself 2 x sets of nice barn doors and hang them off the 2x6 double jack studs supporting the lintels. @ ~4' per door, they shouldn't sag in the middle at all, and I can even get fancy and insulate the back, and put some nice weather stripping all around them, so they will seal every bit as well as an overhead door ever would. This is actually happening, to be clear... They are a luxury I wanted but don't need for any good reason, and I don't have $3.5K for garage doors anymore. Not easy to build doors which are 9' long each! This also means if things look a little better economically over time, I can buy one door then another, if I want/need, splitting up the cost a little. Sorry if that is a little wordy, but I really did give it some thought both ways.... I feel like the main reason people do a single door is more about appearances, and this is in my back yard, where only I will ever see it, and I don't really give a rat's ass what it looks like. If I could get half price siding, but only in hot pink, and chartreuse, I would do it in a heartbeat.

That caught my interest, so I looked up their microcontroller. Neat looking unit. Seems a little spendy to me for what you’re getting, but I would appreciate a tap to signal feature and being able to get a little brighter LED light for turns would be nice as well. (Already tried before, and got hyperflash, should have known better.) Not trying to modernize the car much, but I’ll add safety equipment all day. Thanks for mentioning that piece.

Thanks for the well wishes. On the plus side, I had a full course of vaccines, and an update booster before I caught it. This had two knock on benefits: the first being that the case was incredibly mild, one night of coughing, and a couple nights with a fever. Aside from that, and being pretty tired recovering from it, I've had far worse colds over the years. Second advantage to finally catching it so late in the pandemic is that there was a vaccine, and I had a full course of that. At least statistically, my chances of having long-covid problems are in a very low percentile. That said, yeah. I'm going to do the minimums right now to get the walls up, squared, and ready for trusses, which arrive Monday now, I believe. I won't kill myself doing it, but it has been like 20C this past little while in November (!?) so, I'm trying to do as much as I can. The option is doing the same work more slowly, and ending up doing it in 5C weather, which can't possibly be better for my health....

Making some progress. Had amazing weather, which has been great, and some friends drop in to lend a hand, and have a beer. Just getting over a case of covid from last week tho, so having to stop to prevent my head from spinning more often than I expected. Going to dive into starting another wall today, and maybe get it up tomorrow with some help. We’ll see this one is a little more work. Has the 2 windows openings in it.

I don't know of way aside from the very basic: cycle the key and listen for the motor to prime the system. If you had a loggable FP meter somewhere, that would maybe be able to give you a better idea of what was going on, and if the pump was say, falling down when the head pressure got too high, or some such. But I would think that's pretty hard to do with an analogue gauge, just because without being under load and high throttle % open I doubt you're going to put enough demand on the pump to see it working that hard. Only other ways I know to test a motor involve dissasembling them, and I don't think you'd have a fun time taking apart one of the AEM pumps and getting it back together and liquid proof.....

+1 for the mevotechs. I get the feeling they changed something/improved the ball joints from what they were originally using. Seems like the complaints I was seeing before about premature failures kinda dropped off over time. Now, I've 'improved' all the suspension in my GT, and just refreshed my OB, but the mevotechs are quieter and have better ride compliance than the control arms in the OB, which are OE style ball joint/front bush and an energy suspension push in rear bush. Next time, I'll either go back to OE style rear bushes, or just pony up for a set of mevotechs for the daily. Not worth the time and effort to go poly, in my opinions and really noisy as a result a well.

Yikes. Can't be of much help to you on the electronics end of things, but I do know a guy who's parting an '05 GT wagon (AT). If you don't find something local for a decent price, I'm sure I could ask him, if you have an automatic. Cheers.

Yes. Plug and play. If your engine is all good, you’ll end up with a driveable car for a few hours work + a parts car + potentially a rebuildable engine, depending on what went wrong with the ‘bad’ engine.

I didn’t find that job especially bad, and I am in the rust belt… I hit everything with penetrant a couple days in advance, and let it do it’s thing. When it came to actually knocking them out, after removing all the parking brake garbage, I backed out the hub retainer bolts about halfway, got more penetrant in where the hub seats in the knuckle, and hammered on the bolts from the backside. Usual process, going around in a circle. Did the trick for me. Cleaned everything up with some emery cloth, and used the bolts to pull the new hub into it’s seat. Now, if the CV axle doesn’t want to come free of the hub, that’s a different kind if fight.

Valid concern, to be sure. The excavation for the pad was 12” deep everywhere, and close to 15” at the edges where the thickened footing was poured. So, the main roots that would have been under the pad were dug up and removed. There will be some left down there, but getting them all would have meant digging a huge hole. I’ll have to hope I was thorough enough, but think it’ll be good. Going to spend much of the weekend cleaning up the yard to make space for a lumber delivery early next week. If things go well, I should be able to do most, if not all of the framing next weekend.

My friend is a crazy person. But he likes doing this kind of thing, so more power to him, and the job got done. Took another day to get the rest down, and an evening or two for me to buck it all up and chop up all the small stuff into bits for the city compost program to take, but it’s mainly done. The truss build order is in progress, and I’ll place an order for much of the rest of the lumber this afternoon. Lots got done, but it’s trying to beat the weather now and there is a lot to do!

I have a hard time nailing down which things I did contributed most to cabin noise, but I’ve definitely got some now. Hah. +1 on how much nicer the 5MT is with the group N mount tho. I would definitely do it again. Also have the (Energy Suspension) poly trans mount bushes, tho I don’t feel they are the worst culprit. I also have the sedan Borla exhaust and while the note is nice, I agree that the tips being recessed can’t help. Considering welding in some short extensions to see if it helps. Cheaper to start there then replace the whole (new) system.

+1 on this. Tho I did write and ask a while ago, and at the time he didn’t make one. Tired of looking at the aux port and wishing I could use it!

Spec B will be a 6 speed manual, have some fancy suspension bits and 18” inch factory wheels. Should have badging that says ‘Spec B’ as well, tho that theoretically could have been lost over the years. So, maybe you’re lucky there, but probably not. People selling a Spec B would usually know it, and be asking a premium because of it.

I now have three different types of anti-sieze and use them all regularly. This may be more of a rust belt thing, but it also feels a little like a Subaru owner thing as well...

That was a long morning.

All good dude. Don't mean to jump down your throat, but you've already been given links to "the recipes" Coles notes: - if you live where there is E85 readily available; get an HTA86 turbo, full fuel system, suspension, exhaust system (brakes?) and tune. Hold on tight. - if not, plenty of options, but within the realm of reason? JMP VF52, BNR 18-20g, Blouch 380 XT etc...93 octane tune, fuel system, exhaust, suspension, (brakes?). Hold on tight. Fahr Side's turbo wiki has this and a tonne more, goes into all the details of required vs. maybe optional mods at each point. You can use that to make a skeleton budget @ todays price's, and see where it puts you. Open wallet is great, but just for context, I probably spent 7-8K USD to get a safish 260-270 awhp, with awesome response and suspension to keep the wheels on the ground, and fix some of the normal LGT stuff. Just as a reference. I would guess past that your looking at like another $1500 for each 20hp or so? That's a very informal guess tho, probably more than that.