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My baby turned 300 at last (pic heavy)


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  • Manual mode ________________________ All day, erryday
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  • Member For: 16y 4m 3d
  • Gender: Male
  • Location: Probably above atmospheric pressure

PS

Gunna, the long drive was no problem engine mount wise. I had the better half take videos of me holding the wheel but the phone was moving around too much to show the serenity, you'll have to take my word for it. Sounds too different on camera to give an accurate indication of the noise levels. All you hear in the footage is the deep hum of the exhaust, not worth posting. One of those "had to be there" things.

It's entirely possible I'm so used to the old vibrations that I just don't notice it now with the new mounts.

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  • Member For: 10y 2m
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  • Location: near brisbane

PS

Gunna, the long drive was no problem engine mount wise. I had the better half take videos of me holding the wheel but the phone was moving around too much to show the serenity, you'll have to take my word for it. Sounds too different on camera to give an accurate indication of the noise levels. All you hear in the footage is the deep hum of the exhaust, not worth posting. One of those "had to be there" things.

It's entirely possible I'm so used to the old vibrations that I just don't notice it now with the new mounts.

I am starting to feel that some of the vibration ,might be my gearbox .third gear I believe may give of some vibration ?. and the tail shaft may have to be checked out as well ,it may need to be re balanced ? but definitely the gearbox .when I hold it in 3th it starts to vibrate and when I flick it into drive it goes away ?

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  • Manual mode ________________________ All day, erryday
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  • Member For: 16y 4m 3d
  • Gender: Male
  • Location: Probably above atmospheric pressure

I've only noticed harsh vibration under very high revs, like 5 grand plus, which is rare so doesn't bother me. Hopefully it's not something else coincidentally coming out of balance though!

Quick updates to be had from the last weekend! Idle hands are the devil's tools, and the devil runs eBay. Bought some new speakers to finally replace the rears which have been holding back the lovely Polk Audio MM571 fronts! Cost like $99 delivered.

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Poked around and started taking out the push plugs for the top of the parcel shelf when I realised that the speaker covers just pop up - got a bit lucky with a screwdriver in there and found/popped one clip out, took a bit of effort but got the tops off. This then exposed the screws going in from above

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So I had a finger in the boot (heh) and popped out the three white clips holding the boot lining up

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Unplugged the clips from the factory leads and out they came :)

I had previously hit up Jaycar for some of those blade and flat socket style wire connector plugs and some speaker wire. My plan was to reuse factory wiring and make little plugs to solder on the speakers while I had them out of the car. No cutting car wires or soldering in situ this way. Cleanly reversible...but just after I'd started to strip the wires I thought to myself "I'm not going to be reusing the old speakers anywhere" so I had a look at the socket on them. Out came the soldering iron and I got the cone wires out of the platforms on the sides, see here:

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A bit of force and sawing through glue and off they came! Now I have the factory speaker side plug to attach to the new speakers! Sick. Wasted $5 at Jaycar though. At least the chick was cute and cuddly looking. Really soft hands too. Aaanyway I need to know which side is negative/positive so I can solder it on with short wires.

I had a poke around and found the info I needed... no thanks to the wiring diagram I have as I can't see how to tell negative from positive on it:

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...but the factory wiring is black trace on negative wires. I learned this last time but had long since forgotten. So this told me that the orientation of the factory plug platforms to the speaker terminals iiiiiiissss this (note polarity symbols and wire colours on speaker):

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Having a look at the plugs I had my second brain storm. A bit of bending of speaker terminals and I managed to get them to fit through the holes in the platforms of the plug. Here are pics before I soldered them in place.

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I actually plugged in the speakers with them just wedged on to check polarity was correct by starting at very low volume and checking if it sounded normal. Probably a better way to do it (multimeter) but "meh"

Sounded ace so I soldered it all up and plugged it in! I actually had to get nasty with the drill on the mounting holes, they each needed to be extended about 5mm to reach each hole. Annoying but all done now.

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I sat in it for about 10 minutes cranking it just with key in ACC position, testing my optima red top battery out that I installed a few months back. Worked a treat. Took any chance I could get to drive the car, and the song that really first showed the improvement was Tainted Love by Soft Cell, waaaaaaaaaaaay more detail in the higher frequencies, so good!! And more bass now as well. The speaker ranges are 52Hz-22kHz, I still need a sub for real bass punch but they are a vast improvement over the factory povo pack ones as I'm sure everybody already knows.

I was slightly concerned about fitting the grilles back on as the tweeter pokes up a bit in the middle. I eyeballed it a bit and it looked ok, so I pushed the grilles back in to position and then pushed gently on the middle of them...they travelled about 5mm before hitting the tweeter.

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I first thought they would get hit at high volumes as the speaker moved but a few seconds later realised the tweeter is fixed separately to the mid/woofer cone. Quick playback test of some bassy Prodigy tracks confirmed this. Good to go!

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  • Manual mode ________________________ All day, erryday
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  • Member For: 16y 4m 3d
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  • Location: Probably above atmospheric pressure

Yeah I saw the sub hole...keen to fill it!!!

So that was Saturday, great success!

Sunday rolled around and the car and I were put to task picking up a trailer load of horse sh!t. Missus loves it for the garden and it's free...whatever! I just try not to breathe. Not because of smell, it's not bad at all, but I bet there's fancy spores in there.

Bad news is one of the spores got into my brain and made me decide that instead of just fitting the new DBA T3 rotors to the car ( a quick and clean job), I'd also add in braided lines (refer previous evil ebay comment).

Big rule is never do serious work on a car on a Sunday if you have no spare car for Monday to drive to work.

Spore guy said "*beep* it let's GO TO TOWN BROTHER YEEHAWWW *bang*bang*bang* " so I had a gander at the packet and got the car up on 4 axle stands. Probably 3pm at this point. I spent a lot of time checking hoses against the car and rereading things, I already had fluid waiting after the last DIY day here when I decided not to do anything to the car after all (was going to fit brake parts, new bonnet release cable, check spoiler for water etc)

Drilled out the rear brake line brackets in the late arvo light, PITA not being sure of the sizes, swapped drill bits about eight times across the two. Swarf isn't magnetic either so cleanup was annoying. I did at least manage to remember to spray degreaser/rub down the fitting areas first this time!

Rears went on OK, the "Safebrakes" kit I bought for 10% off from an AFF sponsor doesn't have quite the right angle on the caliper fitting, bit too much of a bend produced in the line which I wasn't thrilled about but got them on OK.

Fronts I removed the entire caliper in order to fit the lines and new rotors as well. Lines were again a bit hard to line up on the caliper fitting but I'd done up the chassis end first which was silly of me. Put the rotors on and installed calipers again (using the blue Loctite 243 instead of red 246 this time....boy the 246 was hard to undo taking them off). By this time it was probably 8:30pm as I work at a snail's pace...need a bigger garage and some tool trays so I'm not losing things.

Knowing I need help to bleed the brakes my lovely girl points out she's going to bed soon and to HTFU. Get things tightened up and off we go with the "down!" turn, turn back, "up!" rigmarole. Working on the rears I thought I heard sucking so jumped up to check the reservoir which I was sure was full. I walk over to the front and fcuking flip out (silently so as not to alert the better half). I have about 100mL of brake fluid spreading on the floor of the garage under the driver's Brembo. Fittings were fine...no leaks there. Bleed nipples still tight.

Pop quiz: How does one lose fluid at the brakes if the fittings and nipples are tight?

Answer: I hadn't put the god damned brake pads back in :/

Passenger side was fine - it had a new rotor on it (thicker), driver's did not. The driver's side had extended the pistons so far one was (I assume) basically out of the sleeve and the fluid had been forced out past the rubber seals. Nightmare moment.

Had a go with flat blade screwdrivers with no success. Fiancé started complaining about the time and I gave her the bad news. I then made the hard move to tell the boss I would probably need the Monday off at late notice as I'd possibly broken my brakes. He wasn't impressed.

I had a look on the web and other people in similar situations were able to press the pistons back in with c clamps and whatnot, I wasn't too keen on forcing it as one post said the rubber could be caught under the piston and I knew that would root things nicely if forced. Brake fluid was going everywhere, latex gloves lost finger tips along the way and I took them off, fluid all over hands/garage jeans/rags/unsealed concrete floor. Brake fluid all over the nice painted calipers, I wiped it off the main areas as best I could while panicking a little imagining the paint coming off...

Now alone in the garage I removed the caliper from the car and got it on a bench top (cardboard on top of dryer hahaha). The one leaking piston actually went back in very easily, smooth movement. Proceeded to push all the others back as well on the one caliper. It squirted brake fluid all over my chin from the "in" hole like a pearlescent orange baby spewing up at one point which just added to my night. Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.

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  • Dropping a turd
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  • Member For: 16y 5m 1d
  • Gender: Male
  • Location: Perth

Man that sucks.

I changed 3 sets of discs and 2 sets of pads on the weekend and touch wood no issues. 4 oil changes , coolant , new exhaust and lots more.

The moral for you Steve, dont work on a car late at night especially if you are sick..

I did have a 4 day weekend though

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  • less WHY; more WOT
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  • Member For: 15y 11m 18d
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Just an FYI with the brake fluid - water basically dissolves it and makes it no longer destructive. thoroughly cover any spills with a rinsing of water.

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