My build thread (Gnar Gnar 2.0)

[venezbras2013]

Sweet ride man! Love the rims!
Can you give us a breakdown of what you have done to the engine bay?
I don't know where to start.... I see you have some headers, cold air intake, front strut bar.... what are the brands and where can I buy all this.
Thanks.

[mr_miles]

90% of everything I have has came from microimageonline.com, garm and jeff are fantastic about getting your build going in the right direction. whem I get home ill post an in depth list of what i've done :)

[mr_miles]

Alright, I'll see if I can drum up most of my build from memory :D

Engine side, I have.....
micro image intake manifold
1zz throttle body
lightweight pulleys
AFE short ram intake
Megan racing exhaust header
OBX midpipe (yet to install)
Megan racing axle back

I think that's all for anything that would increase / free up power. I also have the full short shift kit, the micro image underpanel, and a Ultra racing front strut tower bar :D

[mr_miles]

Cruise control: some people are lazy. Like me. Some people also have aftermarket steering wheels so cruise control doesn't work. Like me. But we all know I don't take "Doesn't work" for an answer. lol.

Plastic steering column shroud? DON'T NEED THAT. I screwed the CC into where the shroud screws in for now. I'll modify the column shroud later so that both it and the cc can be used, there seems to be enough space on the bottom right hand side of it for it to fit. I then zip tied the lower portion to hold it still. <3 zip ties.





Onto the wiring! There's two plugs that go into the Clockspring from the column: a yellow plug for the airbag, and a black plug, which has the CC, the horn, and the audio controls. Unfortunately it differs from the second gen (according to the walkthrough I found for DIY cruise control, since none of it was the same for me) so I ended up just cutting the entire black plug because I don't have the audio controls, never will. And I can rewire a horn any day, being that it's one wire. so CHOP it goes..I accidentally ripped the horn wire instead of cutting it.



so, since i had no idea at first which wire was what, I started just putting wires into the CC. I removed the plug from the end of the CC wiring harness to get the metal plugs to be exposed, as my first plan was to just plug them into the clockspring harness. that idea failed. Oh well. I started with a blue wire that had a single piece of wire inside. seemed to make sense to me. tried all the other ones, then all of a sudden.....HONK HONNNNK. turns out the thickest wire in there is the horn! I made the cruise control power button a horn. I laughed. I'll just move that wire up out of the way for now. (before all this I found a plug with three wires, and tried that, by pushing the metal ends into it. I found the wiper washer harness. CC sprayed my window. lol. It's not pictured)



So, I kept playing around with the wires. dark bown, and light brown / tan are the correct wires. Dark brown goes to red on CC, tan to Black.



Yay! CC light came on! time to test! slap the steering wheel back on and off I go! It works. after that all I did was clean up the wiring mess and tuck it up all nice and neat. it's not in the exact spot it would be if it was factory, but it's still reachable by your right hand without removing it from the wheel. turned out to be a mini DIY instead of just pics of what I did :p


Edit: this is why the CC is all I got done. was spraying my old car with my friend. looks much better this color.

[mr_miles]

Update.

http://www.microimageonline.com/foru...4256#post84256

[b20vteg]

yikes, sorry to hear. :(

[mr_miles]

copy pasta from MI :p

so lets say I put the car on jack stands. I dislike how I was not able to do that, as they're at a friends house.....but that's neither here nor there now :p

Step one: Drain oil. I'll pull the filter off later.

Step two: start removing oil pan bolts. Easy enough, except for one stud (there are two studs with nuts on them, I'm assuming for "make this job easier" when you put a new pan on. that stud had hit the center divider and bent. pulled the whole stud out, replaced with bolt.



start moving around to the other bolts, easy easy easy....until these two.



Doesn't look so bad...right? How about this angle.



Hmm......Cant get a wrench on it. cant get a socket on it. it's steel, so I cant force the socket on to bend it. My best decided course of action is to try and bend the lip of the pan and then get a wrench on the end. about two hours of that and I gave up on that idea - working upside down on the ground slows me down, okay?!

Hammer mode = engaged. if i cant get a wrench on it the only way to do it is to bend the pan back. All I had was a regular nail hammer, way to light. Luckily I was given a gift card to NAPA, so I ran down there and picked up a 2.5 pound sledge, and some gasket maker while I was there in case I couldn't find my tube I already had.

THOR MODE ENGAGED. Even the almighty hammer of THOR is no match for this dreadful oil pan. I ponder what to do momentarily. tried using a drift to no avail as well. Ponder more.

Drill time. went out on a limb and drilled a few holes around the area that was folded over the bolts to weaken it, still wasnt working to well, tried pliers, more drifts and more Thor, but wasn't working. ended up damaging the bolts so I backed off.

Last ditch effort - bend the entire pan around the bolts. slowly I start pulling on the pan after draining the remaining oil. lucky me, it started bending exactly where I had hoped! In case anyone is wondering why I would do that, if you bend metal back and forth enough it'll crack and tear.

few minutes of that and I heard a scary *POP*. one of the bolt holes an the pan ripped! YAY. then it was easy from there. just spun it to get the last one off. Everything up in the engine looks great. the oil pickup tube didn't get touched. Dry it all off, and put some RTV on the new pan. slapped that beauty back on and tomorrow after it's dry i'll fill it up with oil!




Here's my favorite picture.



Next step, alignment.

[mr_miles]

Oh look, I didn't die. I just took a nap.





225 50 15. Somehow, this will fit. Somehow. Couldn't do the valve stems on the inside. no matter where I put them they hit something. Sad day lol. These would have been done a while ago but I was trying to paint them when I painted the Z. But the Z is still just primer haha.

I've also been working on both of my friends S2000's, did a complete bushing install on one, and the other one suddenly got a bad knock from a connecting rod bearing and had copper in the oil pan. so unfortunately both of my projects are on hold. which is upsetting as I'm trying to get the Z's bushings done so I can garage Gnar for winter. lol. Poor Z needs her bushings bad.

[Thirty-Nine]

I SO want to see these on. I've been contemplating widened steelies for years.

[b20vteg]

mr miles, what happened with your car???

[mr_miles]

I went on a 4 month long working spree. So much overtime. Haven't really done too much to the car as of late, which makes me sad. Rolling the rotiforms for now. Gotta get back in the game soon!

[b20vteg]

Originally Posted by mr_miles

I went on a 4 month long working spree. So much overtime. Haven't really done too much to the car as of late, which makes me sad. Rolling the rotiforms for now. Gotta get back in the game soon!

sweet, glad to know you're still around!

[mr_miles]

Yeah.....worked my entire summer away. It's great for the wallet and the car, bad for me lol. Maybe here soon I'll have more time off and I can start working on her again. I did manage a wax the other day, so the car looks happy :p

[mr_miles]

figured I'd work on the exhaust a little before work, as I got the OBX setup. turns out the flange on the end of the midpipe is rotated 45 degrees so you HAVE to use the OBX muffler with it. Well I refuse. lol. I like my megan. So I put the stock midpipe back in, and I will go to a exhaust shop and have them rotate that flange, and do any more required work to make it fit right. I want stainless steel all the way, but I want it my way :p I also screwed up my donut gasket on the header (also megan) trying to get it to fit, lol. this is gunna' be a pain.

[mr_miles]

So slow season at work never started. It's finally now just "slowing" down....I've been working overtime since well...since I stopped updating this. Yaris work has been....slow. Haven't put the exhaust on yet because the mid pipe doesn't fit. It's not bent right. and OBX wouldn't respond to calls or emails regarding the issue. >:( So I have a useless exhaust sitting in my garage. Going to have to bring it to a shop and have them hack it up to make it fit, but finding a shop that will mess with catalytic converter free exhaust is not easy, because they can lose their jobs, etc. List of things to do:
Put rotiforms back on for summer
get exhaust done
finish re-installing interior
get window tint fixed
have fun and take pictures

So hopefully I'll update more frequently. I miss playing with that car.

[mr_miles]

Rotiforms are back on! hopefully the weather stays fair, lol.

[yarisugi]

Was looking forward to post #188...

[mr_miles]

I was too...I had to sell those a while ago, dental bills slapped me in the face (pun intended) and I needed some quick cash lol.

I also sold the 280z a few months back, I got offered more money than I paid for it so I had a hard time saying no. So I bought my 300zx tt because apparently I have to have a z at all times.