Frame pulling the 86! Part II

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Part II of my frame pulling! My goal for the day was to lay all the mud and get the engine bay painted so I can start putting everything back in and prep it for replacing the upper radiator support and the driver side headlight panel.

 

Started off by grinding all the rust and bare metal, then laid some body filler.

I forgot to take pictures after I finished mudding, I laid 2 layers of mud.

Then decided to do something about the rust on my door hinge! I know the only way to fix it is to cut and weld, my goal here was just to slow it down until I can frame I can use.

Adding some more mud!

The floor was a bit wrinkled cause of the crash. So I hammered some of it down, I primed it but forgot to take pictures. I will take some next time.

Almost forgot to the prep work to the lower rad support.

Primed the engine bay with an etching primer, its hard to see here, but we laid fresh seam sealer around engine bay, we waited for it get tacky before primed and painted it.

With etching primer you have the etch it after you lay it it. So we sanded it with 400 grit.

Also in the engine bay.

Time to lay some paint! Just used some rattle can.

Heres the paint around the door.

Finished painting around the engine bay

Rad support is painted too.

Will clean the overspray and radiator support early next week, late next week I pull apart the 4age and resealing everything and put it all back in.

Thanks Ai, Dad, Jordan and Corey for the help!

Frame Pulling the 86!

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When I purchased my 86 there was a good bit of front end damage. So today I took my car to my job and we pulled the frame straight.

First step is to bolt the car to the frame machine.

The amount of pressure put on the frame of the car is ridiculous. We were pulling and we actually pulled one of the claps off the pinch welds!

First pull was on the drivers side!

Needed to add some heat to help the frame get back to where it was!

After some heat and hammering we got it straight.

The passenger side need to be pulled over.  So we put some tension pulling it foward.

And after pulling it somewhat forward we started pulling it to the right.

“Pose for a picture”

After we pulled it over, we measured and it wasn’t squared. so we pulled it down, and got it just right!

Nice and straight!

Looks much better then when it started! Later I will be Replacing the upper rad support. and then start busting all the rust and painting the bare metal. Car should be back together in the next 2 weeks!

Driving Roads of RVA: Old Gun

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Welcome to part 2 of my Driving Roads of RVA series. Last time we took a drive down Riverside Drive, a great road for cruising and seeing some beautiful sights. Today we’re going to have a look at my personal favorite road in Richmond: Old Gun.

This fantastic road starts on Huguenot Rd and ends on Robious Rd, winding it’s way near the River. Looking at the map above, points A and B are both a higher elevation , while the white dot near the river is the lowest point.

Photo by Jordan Robinson

My personal preference is to start at A (Huguenot end) because then the really tight twisty parts are going down hill. The real twisties end near Reed Pond on the map, but the rest is still a fun drive.

Photo by Jordan Robinson

Old Gun is still residential with some seriously huge houses, as well as a few sub-divisions connecting to it, so it’s important to be careful of traffic and never cross over the double yellow. This road is also very popular with cyclists, so that is another thing to watch out for.

Photo by Jordan Robinson

This is the really twisty complex between the pond and the mid-point of the road. Going B-to-A direction as this picture is, be careful on this crest, as it is very easy to end up in the ditch if you lift off the throttle mid-corner. Also, deer are a real issue on this road, so make sure you keep a watchful eye out for Bambi.

Photo by Mitchell Ju

Old Gun also has some history to it. This cannon and cannon-mold were pulled from the River not far from here, and is how the road got its name. They are located right at the base of the S-curve I discussed earlier, as is a really cool Civil-War-era house that you can see in the gallery at the end of this post.

Overall, Old Gun is (in my opinion) the best-rounded driving road in the Richmond area. Keep a look out for part 3 of this series in the future, and have a look at the complete photo gallery below.

Driving Roads of RVA: Riverside Drive

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Last weekend we had a very unusual heat wave in Richmond, with temperatures in the high 60′s even in the middle of January. I took this opportunity to go out and drive on some of my favorite roads and I thought I’d make it a project to take my photographically-inclined friends along and have them take some glamor shots of these roads. So, over the next few days or weeks, I’ll be posting up some photos and “road bio’s”. I hope you enjoy.

First up is probably the best low-speed cruising roads in the River City: Riverside Drive.

Riverside offers breathtaking views of the James River, the Richmond skyline, an old railroad bridge, and some gorgeous, expensive houses.

The road itself twists and turns between a residential area on one side, and the river on the other.

Photo by Mitchell Ju

There are some great places to pull off and admire the view.

You will definitely want to be careful not to speed too much though, as there is a lot of pedestrian and bicycle traffic, and at night there are lots of deer.

Photo by Mitchell Ju

While it may not be a high speed rollercoaster of a road, it is very fun and is probably the best place to go for a cruise in the Richmond area.

That’s it for this first installment of  “Driving Roads of RVA”. I hope you enjoyed it. See the full gallery of photos below.

How to: Fit a 20-valve 4A-G Exhaust Manifold on a 16-valve Engine

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I recently got my hands on a used stock exhaust manifold from a JDM black-top 20 valve 4A-GE, with the intentions of putting it on my 4A-GZE as an upgrade. While it’s not yet on the car, I have gotten the manifold ready to bolt up to a 16valve head. Here’s how to do it.

Materials needed:

  • mounted vice
  • angle grinder (with a cutting disc and a grinding disc)
  • 29/64″ drill bit
  • drill press
  • power drill (and wire wheel)
  • acetone
  • VHT Flameproof paint
  • DEI header wrap kit
  • stainless steel hose clamps
  • gloves
  • eye and ear protection

The standard exhaust manifold on 16valve 4A-G engines is a large, heavy lump of cast iron.

Stock 16-valve 4A-GE manifolds (FWD/MR2). Early style left, later style right. NOT my picture, taken from “aw11mr2″s pbase gallery.

It flows decently well for a stock engine and isn’t the first place you should look for power gains. However, since the GE and the supercharged GZE share the same cylinder head, they share the same manifold. This is where I feel there is room for improvement. Given that a stock GZE makes 40% more power than the standard engine, the fact that they both use the same part seems ridiculous. Adding boost would make it even more noticeable.

Here is the 20v manifold. Unless you decide to somehow modify your stock heat shielding, you will want to wrap these headers. Otherwise you will end up melting important stuff like your alternator, distributor, or starter (depending on the car).

In addition to better flow with the 20v part, it is also tubular steel – allowing for header wrap instead of the clumsy stock metal heat shield, and it weighs a bit less as well. The stock manifold + heat shield weighs 16.7lbs according to the internet, whereas the 20v manifold + header wrap is 9.9lbs according to my bathroom scale.

Assuming you want to wrap the header, the first thing you will want to do is cut off the three mounting tabs for the OEM heat shield. These just get in the way of the wrap. I used an angle grinder with a cutting wheel to get them off, and then a grinding wheel to smooth the welds back down. BE CAREFUL with the cutting wheel, as it cuts through metal very easily, and through skin even easier.

Once the tabs are off, use a power drill and a wire-wheel to remove any surface rust from the metal, and wipe it down with some acetone. This allows the VHT Flameproof paint to stick.

Ready for paint.

The idea behind spraying on the VHT Flameproof is rust prevention. Exhaust wrap CAN hold in moisture, accelerating corrosion. Painting the manifold with high-temperature paint should help prevent rust. Spray it on, then cure it by following the directions on the can. Since I didn’t want to stink up the house, I just threw it on the grill. I let it get up to around 300*F and cool back down several times. Hopefully this will be good enough.

Hit it with a couple coats of VHT to make sure you get a nice even finish.

Now, I did things in a weird order and relocated the flange holes BEFORE I wrapped it, and took pictures a little out of order. I’ll finish up the wrap part of this post and then go on to the flange modification for the sake of flow. Ok, so now you have a cured coating of paint on the header and now it’s time to wrap. I more or less just followed tutorials I found online, like this one:

I started closest to the top, folding the end under to prevent fraying. Wrap around the pipe with around 1/4″-1/2″ overlap. When you get to the end of the pipe, fold the end under and put a tie around it. I really hate the metal ties that came with the kit because the don’t hold very well, and will be getting some stainless steel hose clamps to replace them before I install the manifold. NOTE: make sure you wear gloves while you do this, as fiberglass gets everywhere.

Now this manifold is a 2 – into – 1 design. To wrap this, for each “pair” I wrapped one pipe up to the union, then did the other pipe all the way down and over the union.

When you are finished, spray the wrap all over with the spray included in the kit. This will help seal out moisture. Here is what it will look like when you’re finished.

Now stick that on the grill for a little while to cure and you’re done with the wrap.

Now to make it bolt up. All you have to do is modify the outer holes on the flange. For the right-most hole near cylinder 4, all you have to do is slot the hole vertically a little bit like so:

All you need is that cutting disc on the angle grinder you used earlier.

The left hole is a little trickier. This one requires a new hole to be drilled. You can probably do this with a hand held power drill, but let me tell you, a drill press makes it much, much easier. The way I measured where to put it was by putting some red grease on the hole in the head and briefly mounting up the manifold. The grease will transfer and show you where to drill. We drilled one small hole just so we could see where to drill with the press from the other side of the flange. 29/64″ is the bit you want, just make sure it is a bit designed for drilling metal.

Got it right on the first try!

And that’s it. You now have an insulated tubular manifold that will bolt right up to a 16v head. This manifold will further benefit from proper porting of the cylinder head, as the tubes are actually bigger than the ports on the head, paving the way for even more power in the future.

Note: If you are running a 4A-GZE, you will need to trim the flange near the two holes, removing most of the original material to the left of the new hole you drilled in order to clear the GZE’s alternator bracket.

Look for another post in the future when I mate this up to a new downpipe and install it all on my MR2. Thanks for reading!

Therapy For the Soul

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Some days it calls to us. Its’ voice beckons softly on the breeze. We hear it clearly and its’ draw is undeniable and like the most primordial of human desires it cannot be ignored. It is the one-ness of man and machine that can only be achieved by being on the open road.

Finally you heed the beckon call and ease yourself into the seat. You slide the key into the ignition, turn, and feel the rumble of the engine as it comes to life. Your hand caresses the smooth leather of the steering wheel as the other wraps around the cold metal of the shifter knob. You ease off the clutch and tip into the gas as that familiar feeling begins to course through your veins.

As you accelerate, you feel the power of the engine as you climb to high gear. The exhaust notes sing of freedom, and every white line says goodbye. As the wind whips through your hair, your cares and worries disappear in the rear view. You and your machine have become a single conscious being. You downshift and round the corners at the limit of adhesion and your pupils dilate. The squeal of the tires makes your heart race. Your pounding heart matches every pump of the pistons and sets forth a feeling of euphoria that even the most powerful drug could never replicate. The tachometer needle swings higher as if to accentuate your euphoria and as you shift, it drops gently down leaving you with a sense of complete control and a smile that would require surgery to remove.

You go through this cycle again and again, and the satisfaction you gain never disappoints. Every infinitesimal facet of it is perfection.  It is something that can not be replicated, synthesized, or repackaged. It is in our blood, our hearts, our minds. It is therapy for the soul.

Some days it is a physical or moral compulsion. Some days it is a quality – a state of being without restriction. Some days it calls to us.