LONG ass day of working on the car!
First off I would just like to say Shawn (aka simulatedwood) is the man. Could not have done any of this by myself really. Thanks for the tools, lift, time and teachings! I owe ya.
So I got to his place around 9:30am and left just about 6pm. Seems like wrenching always takes a bit longer than you think. But we got work done for sure.
First thing we tackled was the serpentine belt issue. Had to take off the undertray and another splash shield and the overflow tank and then it wasn't too terrible. It came off much easier than going back on. We spent quite a bit of time eyeballing everything and measuring the stock pulley's vs. the Hyndai ones. We ended up spacing one of the idler pulley's that tracked the belt right near the block (like 1mm) with a washer (1/2mm extra spacing). We also compared Shawns stock setup on this X for reference and made the call to space it vs. putting the stock one back on. I think we are alright on this but only time will tell. We pushed the clutch in and out to see if the crank pulley was moving the belt and it didn't seem like it was. The gates belt that DB put on really took a hit vs my old OEM one that more so frayed. The new one is OEM. I drove 60 miles home from Shawns and it still looks good but this will be watched.
Next up was brakes. I got the Ferodo 2500's and ATE superblue. We looked at my rotors and shawn said they looked pretty damn even/good. So he showed me how to take apart the brembo's and push the pistons out then I swapped out all the pads. Then we used Lomker's old Power bleeder (RIP Lomker, still helping out). Man that thing was awesome. My old pads were just below half way down it looked like. The new ones feel awesome, like a million times better. I didn't think i would notice. I needed a brake bleed for sure as now my peddle is firm again and the thing stops fast. So far no noise as we lubbed up the back of the pads/shims. I know how to swap pads now, yay!
While I did that Shawn worked on fixing my drooping exhaust. Found out one of the buschur slip fittings was installed wrong. FIxed that and now its all good.
We tried to throw on the rear sway bar but my endlinks were rusted pretty good and basically we have to destroy them to get them off. So I am going to buy some OEM replacements that Shawn recommended and we will do that in the coming weeks.
We both worked on the driveshaft bushings after all that. They were a real pain the ass with the exhaust in the way. Ugh. Took forever, but we got it done.
Then I did the rear diff bushings. All was going well until I went to screw in the last big bolt on one side with the new bushing. He has impact tools so I was using one and kind of cross threaded the bolt. We backed it out and Shawn cleaned it up on the die grinder a bit and buffed it. Then we heman'ed it in essentially. It's not going anywhere but it will need to be drilled and tapped next time it comes out...first bad news
Second bad news. Found a small oil leak. Not sure where it is coming from. It looks like the oil filter actually as the pane bolts have minimal oil on them but noticeable. I am putting this on my todo list, annoying but could be worse.
Despite those things, overall a very successful day! Got a lot done. Oh also installed the center caps for RPF1's!
But with all the good comes some bad. The worst part of the day is shown below!
When we pulled off my front tires, one looked like this and the other front was a slick on the inside but no cords showing...FUCK ME SIDEWAYS! My $1200 star specs lasted 6-7k miles, mostly driving for break ins on two motors
Shawn believes the alignment was whack to begin with. I don't want to blame that for sure, but i haven't really been beating on my car much lately so who knows. All I know is I don't want tires that cost this much and last 10k and under on street driving again.
Any suggestions for something in 275's that are solid? I think 275's will give me enough traction for street driving with my power as long as they are pretty good. I just don't think i need star spec quality tires anymore as I almost never turn crazy like ya know? I go fast straight. Plus they were heavy as shit, wouldn't mind having normal weighing tires.
Thanks again Shawn! Ya da man.
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