Brak's 98 EX

[Brak]

Well it's a crappy day, all rainy and cold, and not much i can do outside, so i guess perfect time to address the wiring in the car.

As you can see, a PO did a number on the wires, and the theives probably didn't help...

Step one, cut everything to a uniform length,

Working wire by wire, solder them back together, hopefully remembering to include the heatshrink beforehand

And Voila! good as new

 

[ctag]

Nice soldering work

 

[Brak]

Nice soldering work

Thanks

Well, now i'm at a stand still...
I had planned on, installing the missing O2 sensor, going to the yard to look for parts, and pulling the front clip off this other car i found, but the rain is relentless.
it's only noon, but i feel like my entire day has been wasted
Stupid weather

 

[Brak]

ok, well i have no power on +12v constant (yellow), and my rear defrost button has not been working since i recovered the vehicle.
I assume the two are linked, but i can't for the life of me figure out which fuse goes to what.

I mean seriously, this must be the worst fuse box i have ever dealt with.
I'm completely soaked from the waist down, since the rain won't stop, and you can't get to the fuses without crawling around on the ground.
and i've looked at ever diagram i can find, but nothing makes sense, every one seems to contradict the others.

by random pulling, i did find a blown 15a fuse (#28 i think?), but who knows what that was for. it didn't seem to resolve anything i was aware of.

GRRRR

 

[Brak]

Apparently there was a fuse under the hood i wasn't aware of

well, either way. radio works....
hopefully it will stop raining by tomorrow, so i can do speakers.

 

[Brak]

Since getting back on the road, I haven't been doing much to the car other than driving it...
picked up another RX8 last month, so that's getting the attention...

Still not sure what will happen in the long run, but i guess it'll be my daily for the forseeable future.

 

[Brak]

While at the yard today, i happened across an untouched '97 and i picked up a couple things

With the fenders off, i can see there is a lot of hidden rust.

and thanks to the horrible winters here, all 4 of the lower bolts looked exactly like this

I thought i had some good "before" pics from when i recovered it after the theft, but i guess not...
here's the "After"

Still looking for a good hood, but it went from looking like a Broke Ass POS, to just a POS

 

[Brak]

also grabbed the mirrors, because whoever stole my car, broke the $hit out of them...

before

aparently coupes and sedans use different shaped mirrors, so they don't fit quite right, but they're 100x better than the one in the picture...

Also took advantage of the fact that the fenders were off and replaced the turn signal bulbs and hood release cable.

Old

New

I think i'm more excited about the hood release than anything else...

 

[Brak]

Sorry for the Ginormous pictures, but Imgur changed their site, and you can't post using a resized link anymore.

 

[Brak]

Ok, time to revive this...
I thought i had posted when it happened, but a few months after my last post, the car got stolen AGAIN!!!
I was without a vehicle, so i ended up buying a 2016 veloster.

Took about a month before the police found my car, abandoned on the side of the road.
this time they left the wheels, but added a giant dent in the rear bumper, and smashed the passenger fender/headlight, that i had just replaced.

Also, they destroyed the ignition lock assembly, lock on the drivers door, and stole my valve cover?!

It didn't run, and I didn't have time or a place to work on it, so i just dragged it to my parents house, and parked it in the yard.

it has sat there for the last 5 years, until yesterday...

 

[Brak]

Surprisingly i don't have photos of it parked, or the damage, but i guess i had sort of written it off.
wasn't worth dragging 3 hours back down to where i'd been living, but i recently moved into the property next to my parents, so i just had do drag it across the yard.

This week, i'll finally be able to look into why it wouldn't run.

Rear drivers side brake is stuck, so i'll have to fix that first, before i can get it into my garage.

 

[nd4sped]

Awesome to see this coming back alive dude and glad to hear you recovered the car AGAIN. Recovering a car once is hard to do, but twice, damn miracle. Look forward to the updates dude!

 

[Brak]

Going through it today to see what's there...
I hastily threw it back together when i recovered it, but that was 5 years ago...

under the hood

They took my powdercoated valve cover, but left me this spray painted monstrosity...
didn't bother taking the expensive brand new NGK spark plug wires

Took my $hitty ebay air filter, but left the brand new stainless exhaust system

They cut the battery cables when they stole the battery, but whatever, i needed to replace them anyway...
So far, i can't find anything else missing here.

in the front

Picture doesn't show it well, but the fender is bent back pretty good, and the headlight mounting tabs are all broken.

I've driven worse

Inside

I thought i could get away with reattaching the ignition switch, but the ears are cracked, and the whole lock assembly is wonky.
think they knocked it out with a screwdriver.

The thing that really irritates me, is just before this happened, i had finally found a scratch free column cover.
which they proceeded to rip apart, into pieces.

 

[nd4sped]

Ya thieves will always ruin your day. I have had to spend a lot more money with my property project due to thieves. Forcing me to build a fence around my containers and install remote viewable cameras.

Luckily have not had a vehicle stolen from me and hopefully never do. Wild how folks will work so hard to steal something when they could easily put that energy into a legal business venture.

At any rate, hope you keep the car restore or build it. Being automatic it looks like a primetime candidate for a manual swap.

 

[Brak]

Depending on how things shake out, manual swap is def on the table.
I hate automatics with a passion. Every celica i've ever owned, has gotten swapped on day 1.

I had intended it initially, and i started collecting parts, but it got stolen the first time, and then relegated to winter beater afterward.
when it was stolen the second time, i sold everything off.

at this point i have 3x what i initially paid for the car, invested in recovery fees alone.
the next few days will determine the eventual fate of it.

if the motor is in fact bad, maybe i'll J swap it
i think my brother has my dads old VUE parked somewhere, if not, Odyssey's are easy to come by.

 

[nd4sped]

and just like that I learned that GM used Honda V6's in the Saturn VUE. Who knew lol

 

[Brak]

yup. like how my moms Pontiac Vibe is just a re-badged Toyota Matrix.
even has the obvious Toyota steering wheel

I believe the VUE has a J35

 

[Brak]

Dug into the car today, to determine what we're starting with.

about 4 years ago i tried starting it, and the starter was spinning, but i couldn't tell if the motor was rotating, since i didn't have a helper.

Yesterday I Pulled the crappy valve cover, to get a better view of operation, and everything looks intact, and clean (despide the paint flakes from the cover).

Pulled the spark plugs, and only the #1 cylinder put up a fight.
based on the buildup, it appears the valve seals were leaking a bit, but i'm not worried about that. It's to be expected on a 200k car.
I put around 5-10k on those plugs before the car was stolen.

Pictured, plugs 1-4 from left to right

before investing in a new battery that only fits this car, i hooked up jumper cables to my truck, and tried to crank it...
Nothing.

i see the cluster go through normal startup process.
turn to ignition, D4 lights and goes out, to indicate priming, when engaging the starter, nothing happens, no click, but the brake light on the cluster lights up, and if i hold it in start, the temp needle starts to raise???
not sure what that's all about.

the rest of the electrical circuits seem to be working well, lights, windows, etc, so that's good i guess.

At the moment, the hazard and defrost switches are missing. I have extras in a box someplace, but i'll need to find them.
IIRC, there's some weirdness, if you try to operate without the Hazard switch, but i don't remember the extent of it.

Next i'll start probing around to verify we're getting power at the distributor, starter, etc...

 

[Brak]

been traveling for work, so progress has been slow.
There was no power at the solenoid when key was in start position, so i had to work my way from the broken ignition switch all the way down the harness. found a blown fuse on that mystery car alarm, and now i have power at the solenoid, but it was for naught, because the starter is dead.

I don't want to pay $200 for one locally, and i'm out of town next week, so i guess i'll just order one from rockauto, and deal with it when i get back.
The thing that sucks is that i'm at a complete standstill, can't test anything if the motor won't spin. with my luck, i'll replace the starter, just to find there's no compression. lol

 

[Brak]

on another topic, has anyone used the Ghost Key setup?

i need to replace my ignition switch, but i can't find a complete set of matching locks,

i'm not a big fan of passive RFID, but swiping the fob is better than carrying 3 different keys (no set includes the trunk).