What have you done to your car today?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Perfect Balance
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Perfect Balance
On mine, I just had to pull out the manual headlight switch and snip a brown wire. Basically, it cuts the power to the relay for the lights, so they only move as long as the button is pressed in. This lets me put them wherever I want.

I can't have the lights on though when it's like that, because it resets itself and they come up the whole way.

EDIT: Should be doing my manual swap here in a few weeks. Can't wait.
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Well, there was a extra button that I did, it was a nice little tweak though. When did you get a 240?
There was this also:
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Slick Rick
Looking a lot better already, Maybe its just the photography but the car almost looks likr its a nice metallic maroon. Are you planning on a full respray or just the front bumper?
Wheels look cool too.
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The color is more like turd brown with some red in it. Full respray eventually, but WAY down the line. A few years at least,

nk4e
Well, there was a extra button that I did, it was a nice little tweak though. When did you get a 240?
There was this also:
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Got it to replace the Civic after I wrecked it back in May.
 
SRV2LOW4ME
Went out and sucked out the leaves from my quarter panels (don't ask me how they get there)
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Lol, mine were packed with dirt and leaves, behind the front mud flaps.

I believe I got everything back together tonight, so tomorrow I'll dump in the coolant and see how she runs.
 
CyborgGT
Lol, mine were packed with dirt and leaves, behind the front mud flaps.

I believe I got everything back together tonight, so tomorrow I'll dump in the coolant and see how she runs.
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Thats why I'm scared to put my mud flaps on the car, something tells me its just going to become a hot bed for rust makers (salt, dirt, wet leaves) but seeing my rear panels turn white from the salt each year scares me more, so I dunno...
 
My Accord's running!!! Ah, it feels good when something you did yourself works the first time :). Finished some minor re-constructing, put new coolant in, and she purred like a walrus. Bought some ATF that I didn't really need. Nice to have the extra, I suppose.

Now I just have to hit the junkyard for the hood + latch, a headlight, grille, secondary cooling fan, and a bunch of small things (mainly bolts/clips and the like). Sometime next week; no idea what my days off are.
 
I brought the car into the shop on Tuesday.

First did some disassembly.

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Wednesday saw some bodywork - Pulling and filling of various dings.

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Took the evening off on Thursday and went for a ride, and stripped the bumper on Friday after the main compressor was turned off (I otherwise would have stripped the hood and fenders).

Saturday I stripped the hood and fenders, blocked, prepped, and masked the panels to be painted.
A coworker mixed and sprayed primer.
The bumper and various other parts to be worked on in the foreground - Bumper needs some blocking and fairing, and the mirrors need to be stripped.

Door claddings will be prepped during the week.
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I'll hopefully get the misc. parts prepped out on Monday, block everything on Tuesday, and mask Wednesday for final prep and spray either Wednesday after work or Thursday.


Black can be a pain in the ass but it'll look so much better when it's done.
 
Went to a junkyard and bought a hood, hood latch, and grille. The hood doesn't lock into the latch quite right, so it's tied down with a wire shirt hanger for the night. The hood's black though, I think it looks pretty good against the dark blue body. The paint's pretty sun-faded and peeling (looks kinda like I've got custom-faded racing stripes :lol:), and the word "ACCORD" is faded into the front of the hood from a previous owner's bra. The metal's in better shape than my old hood, at least.

Unfortunately none of the Accords that we saw there had a good driver's side headlight, if one at all. Lots of passenger lights though :odd:. Going to have to order a new one.

Got in some real good driving today. I lost power steering fluid during the fix, so I'll be without it until Friday. The engine sounds louder now too. At first I thought it was just the lack of a hood as I drove to the junkyard, but even after putting on the new one it's loud. Sounds nice though. A bit throatier than before. And for some reason my stereo's not detecting my iPod anymore. Definitely need that fixed.
 
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Every now and then my transmission bogs down pretty bad and won't shift out of second gear (feels like it won't shift down into 2nd sometimes), so I opened the TCU and found the cause: a burned resistor and leaking capacitor. These exact two parts are apparently prone to go bad, as someone on CB7Tuner had the same problem, and there was already a guide written up for fixing it. Got the replacements at Radio Shack (cost less than $3, vs going to a junkyard and getting a replacement or having the thing rebuilt), I should be able to solder them in on my next day off. But the unplugging and re-connecting of the computer fixed the issue for now.
 
Hmmm - I'm not sure if this counts - but I had to have a new windscreen on Tuesday - after being attacked by a flying exhaust...

Still have a dented bonnet and scratched A-pillar.

Either the car in front dropped it - or drove over it - and bounced it onto my bonnet - and it then smashed into my windscreen.

Proceeding to cover me in glass and carbon...

Fortunately the windscreen held... I drove about 6 miles "Ace Ventura" style to work!!

Body shop guy says I need a new windscreen... and if I claim on my insurance a new dashboard - which got shot blasted with glass!!

C.
 
I tried to take my muffler off (I have two mufflers and a cat, why?) to see what it sounds like, but the clamp basically squished the two pipes together so I would need to propane torch it to try and get it off. Then I loosened a clamp but I didn't see it needed another wrench on the other side so now it rattles because I only have one socket set. Pretty much a fail all around.

After school I decided I wanted to do a bit of dirt road driving, BAD IDEA. I knew the start of the road had some big dips but I thought in the middle it flattened out. No, not at all. Huge dip after huge dip, it was like driving over waves made of sand, and I'm not talking about little dips, I'm talking you could literally float a decent size boat if you filled it with water. Semi high speed dirt drifting turned into 10mph tactical driving trying to get the hell out of there. A few times my front lip turned into a plow because I didn't go in at an angle. Terrible idea.
 
Central locking system is now in. I didn't take photos of the process unfortunately and the back of my hand was slightly mutilated by a soldering iron that dad was wielding at the time, but it actually works a treat. Noooow I just need to stop trying to buy games that I can't afford (*cough* Forza 3 *cough*) so I can save up for a new exhaust system.
 
Got it painted last wednesday, reassembled to a driveable state Thursday, and then on Saturday my roommate drove into it :dunce:

About $1300 in damage, hit the rear quarter. Luckily it wan't part of the car I painted...
While it's back apart for repair (he's going through insurance) I'll prep the rear bumper and toss it in the booth with the car.
 
Removed the airboxes/resonators from my intake. I now have much better airflow and a bit more low-end torque.
 
Another update.

I just got done doing some work on the intake manifold and removing the egr valve.
So it was removed and the GM plate took it's place with another 5 pounds lost off of the car.
It also opens things up a bit with it's removal too.

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I also removed the throttlebody in anticipation of the intake manifold being removed.
In doing so, I thought I'd remove the throttle plate, and do some modifications to it that may help in the airflow.
Here's the throttlebody with the plate removed.

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Upon inspection of the throttle plate, noticed it was pretty square to the airflow coming into the engine.
So some old school trickery was at hand and got started.
Here's a picture of the standard throttleplate.

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So with me wanting to extract every bit of power from the littlest places thought I'd do a sort of knife edge on the plate to allow better airflow along the smoother edges of the plate.
I went with a radiused theme and it worked out very nicely leaving the original edge in tack while smoothing up the metal to allow much better airflow around the plate for velocity of air and some volume.
Here's the modified plate. :D

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You can see how smooth it came out and how it would be more receptive for more airflow because of the radiused edge.
Here's what it looks like back in the throttle body.

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Upon doing all that, I noticed that the screw that hold the plate onto the shaft have a leading edge that needed to be removed.
Here's what I'm talking about.
The one on the left has already been modified..

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You can see how much it sticks out so in my endeavor to get more power, I took them out to achieve this. :D

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Very nice to have such a clear opening for more air.

And finally, with the egr being removed from the system, I had to find a way to block the pipe that went from the egr vavle to the intake manifold so that I can continue to use the intake manifold.

So here's what I did in pictures.
It came out pretty good with nice tight sealing of the connection.
And yes, I used a big red cap to do that. :lol:
Nothing like a red cap and some silicone to close off the opening.
And looking at it from the airflows point of view, have removed alot of the intruding piping from the original egr setup.


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I plan on taking the air/ oil separater off of the car, clean it up, and reinstall it back with some new hosing.
I also plan on converting the alternator to starter wire to 4 gauge and 4 gauge going from the starter to the positive post.

I'll probably be doing all that this coming weekend as I've got to go back to work tomorrow for a couple of days and I'll have another 3 day weekend to finish all this off.

And I'm sending off the Wilwood caliper to Wilwood so they can make a decision as to whether it's under warranty or not.
I'm sure it will be so hopefully that won't take too long.
I'm hoping that in about a month, I'll be ready to do the brakes again and have the exhaust on by then for possibly getting it ready for the road.
I hope so.
 
Finally got around to soldering in a new resistor and one of two bad capacitors in my tranny computer. I can't find a capacitor of the right rating, so there's still a leaking one in there. I'll keep hunting.

A couple weeks ago I received a new driver headlight assembly, but there was a foot-long crack running all along the glass. I called customer service and they never gave me a return number to write on the box to send it back, and instead just sent me another new light assembly. Got it installed, but it's not sitting quite far enough in. When it warms back up again I'll look into it, but until then screw working in the freezing cold.

In a couple weeks I plan on getting some new tires for the stock wheels, then I'll continue research to make final decisions on what suspension pieces, wheels, and tires I want to upgrade to. Roughly I've decided on a 1.75 to 2" drop, 17" rims, 215(maybe slightly less)/40R17 tires, all new bushings, and a larger rear anti-roll bar. Suspension first, then wheels.
 
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CyborgGT
Finally got around to soldering in a new resistor and one of two bad capacitors in my tranny computer. I can't find a capacitor of the right rating, so there's still a leaking one in there. I'll keep hunting.
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You can use a capacitor with the same capacitance but more voltage and it won't hurt a thing. It doesn't have to be an exact match on the voltage as long as the voltage is higher but the capacitance has to be the same.
If it's a mylar cap, the same applies along with electrolytic caps and bipolar caps.
Hopefully that'll help you get it going and good luck with it 👍
 
That's the thing, I can't find the correct microfarad rating. The 35v is easy enough to come by, but RadioShack, the only shop I can think of in town that sells these kinds of parts, doesn't carry a 33 of any voltage. I'll look around for some computer shops, then start looking online.
 
CyborgGT
That's the thing, I can't find the correct microfarad rating. The 35v is easy enough to come by, but RadioShack, the only shop I can think of in town that sells these kinds of parts, doesn't carry a 33 of any voltage. I'll look around for some computer shops, then start looking online.
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So you're looking for a 33mfd cap with a 35 volt rating?
What type of cap btw?
Ceramic, mylar, electrolytic?
Let me know. I've got a source to get what you need and used to work at an electronic shop that carries everything electronics.
You can also call 228-762-9383 which is Hoopers Electronics. They're local to me and I worked there for 19 years.
They'll have what you want and can ship it to you and if not, I can purchase it directly on Friday and ship it out the same day to you.
Let me know if this may help you out.
 
I think I broke some bushings...

What goes thunk, then squeak, then spontaneously improves steering feedback?
 

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