Archive for August, 2009
Rear springs are in!
August 25, 2009The front is done!!!
August 25, 2009
Control arms out!
August 25, 2009
Yay! One strut is in with the new springs!
Damn, this surely was the longest evening… I managed to get the control arms out, all 4 of them. The ball joints were especially difficult, until I read a very helpful post.
After removal, I discovered that the passenger side torque control arm had a busted grease seal, which I’m going to assume had caused the joint to wear out and generate the popping noise I was hearing. I did replace the wheel bearing assembly though, just in case… why not, it was only $300 worth of parts!
Passenger side ball joint with busted grease seal.
Here you can clearly see the busted seal. I’m sure all the grease came out and it’s unable to hold the torque from the car moving.
Where the control arms mount to the frame.
And the stearing knuckle where the ball joints mount...
So far I’ve managed to waste about $100 in tools that proved to be un-needed. Live and learn.
Mercedes – oh god what have I gotten myself into…
August 25, 2009Instead of enjoying friends and fireworks this 4th of July weekend, I thought, “hey, why not tear the shit out of my car?” Seemed pretty reasonable at the time… well, its turned into, like all car projects, more than I thought it would. Of course I’m having fun though, lots of it. For me, it’s a pleasure, my zen time, me time, and I get lost in the work. So I love it. Seriously, I love it.
My project: Install high performance breaks and new springs, and while I’m at, fix that popping noise in the front suspension (popping noises are never good). I started out by dismantling the front of the car – originally I suspected that the control arms had bad bushings, which would explain the noise. At least that’s what the forums said. Well, after destroying one of the bushings I realized that they were fine. But what the heck, I was down there and dirty anyway, so I decided to rip them all out. After 3 days of hot sweaty work (it was really warm last weekend!) I had managed to damage $200 worth of parts and now I need replace just everything that moved. Not an easy task!
This morning I dropped off the struts and new front springs at the auto shop (I don’t have a hydrolic press so I’ll let the pros handle this part) so they could install them for me. When I walked in the door, people where acting like I was carrying a loaded weapon – “those springs could fly off at any moment and rip a guys face off!” Turns out that’s what happened there not too long ago. Funny. I think. So, $110 later, the new springs are installed and waiting for pickup.
What follows is a photo journal of the work as it stands this evening…
This is what it looked like before I started:
Stance before the new springs
Note the spacing between the top of the tire and the fender. It’ll be lower with the new springs. Not ricer style and slammed, but hopefully stylishly low, like the AMGs.
The old springs and struts before removal
The car is up on the jack stands with the wheel hanging free exposing the strut and spring.
Wheels off and showing the old disk brakes
Drivers side disk brake and control arm. See the darker area at the bottom of the strut? That is grease from the wheel bearings. Like the popping noise, not good either.
Control arm with the suspect bushing
The shinny disk is where the suspension bolt goes. It holds the control arm bushing in place. I thought they were bad, so I ripped it out. Not good. Now I have to pull the whole control arm out, take it to a shop, and have new bushings installed. That $28 part is going to cost me $200 to replace. Me sad. But happy to be getting new parts in!
Strut removed with old spring in place
The passenger side strut and old spring. Can’t wait for the shiny greenies to be in! And my big feet.
The wheel well where all fancy new goodies are going
Passenger side tire well with caliper hanging by a piece of coat hanger. I knew those damned things would be useful someday!
New front springs - green and shiny - why?
I’m not sure why the springs are green, you’ll never see them again unless you get down with a flashlight, in which case I migh suspect that you are up too no good. The front will drop by about 1.6″ and the rear about 1″. Not too agressive, but definitely not stock either. Reminds me of my low rider in high school. Yeah that’s right, I had one, and you are jealous. Don’t be, it was a piece of crap!
Tomorrow I’ll install the struts, the new wheel bearing assemblies and rip the control arms out so the new bushings can be installed. I’ll need yet another tool for that last part, and fortunately I love buying tools. Seems I can never have too many tools.
In case you are thinking, “dude, wtf? take it into the shop!”, I’m actually saving gobs of cash. The $150 in tools, $1200 in parts and sweaty afternoons would cost about $3000 at a shop.
EEPROM Programmer
August 25, 2009
My first attempt at building an EEPROM programmer around the KM2865A/AH EEPROM chip. This circuit connects directly to the 40-pin card edge connector on the Color Computer, and is entirely powered by the machines bus. No 12 volt supply is needed for this EEPROM, which simplifies the circuit. 8K x 8bit should be enough for anybody.
EEPROM Proto board
I completed the proto type the other night and tested a few writes. Not sure what the eventual usage of this is, but I’ll probably use it as a capturing tool for the CoCo3 ROMs, or saving data while I try to bootstrap some programs between the assembler and BASIC (which don’t run at the same time).
Dear Red States…
August 25, 2009Dear Red States:
If you manage to steal this election too, we’ve decided we’re leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we’re taking the other Blue States with us.
In case you aren’t aware, that includes California , Hawaii , Oregon , Washington , Minnesota , Wisconsin , Michigan , Illinois and all the Northeast.
We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.
To sum up briefly:
You get Texas , Oklahoma and all the slave states.
We get stem cell research and the best beaches.
We get the Statue of Liberty.
You get Dollywood.
We get Intel and Microsoft.
You get WorldCom.
We get Harvard.
You get Ole’ Miss.
We get 85% of America ‘s venture capital and entrepreneurs.
You get Alabama .
We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share.
Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22% lower than the Christian Coalition’s, we get a bunch of happy families.
You get a bunch of single moms.
Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we’re going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once.
If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they’re apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don’t care if you don’t show pictures of their children’s caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq , and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we’re not willing to spend our resources in Bush’s Quagmire.
With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80% of the country’s fresh water, more than 90% of the pineapple and lettuce, 92% of the nation’s fresh fruit, 95% of America ‘s quality wines, 90% of all cheese, 90% of the high tech industry, 95% of the corn and soybeans (thanks Iowa !), most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus Stanford , Cal Tech and MIT.
With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88% of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92% of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100% of the tornadoes, 90% of the hurricanes, 99% of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100% of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University , Clemson and the University of Georgia .
We get Hollywood and Yosemite , thank you.
Additionally, 38% of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62% believe life is sacred unless we’re discussing the war, the death penalty or gun laws, 44% say that evolution is only a theory, 53% believe that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61% of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.
Finally, we’re taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico
Peace out,
Blue States
Bullwinkle Dead???
August 25, 2009The famous moose was on vacation in Alaska when things tooka sureal and sad turn. Details below…
Bullwinkle Assassinated!
Electrolytic Capacitor Failure
August 25, 2009There are two reasons I like to roll my sleeves up and try to fix something instead of just buying a replacement item: 1), it’s fun and 2), it’s a whole lot cheaper! Case in point… the audio amplifier I have in my car died not too long ago. Not a horrible death with smoke and fire like some electronic parts, but a slow gasping drowning death. When the car would hit a bump, the stereo would thump. Then, it started vibrating the speakers in sympathy with any vibration the car felt. Now, it won’t turn on without a sufficient whack to the heat sink and it won’t stay on if it’s vibrated. Most of the problems started after one of the super hot and humid days we had this year. After lots of checking the circuit board for breaks and bad solder joints, and carefully inspecting each part, I finally found the problem: The main power capacitors seem to have dried up or lost their electrolytic fluid. When you tap them very lightly the amp goes hay wire. Some of them are very sensitive, some are not. Seems that they’ve lost their electrolytic fluid. I’m guessing that most of the damage was done that July afternoon and the sealant on the capacitors just evaporated through fatigued seals. Here’s a great article describing the issue:
http://sci.tech-archive.net/Archive/sci.electronics.basics/2005-04/msg00118.html
It’ll cost around $20 to replace all the main capacitors (parts + shipping). Thanks to great online retailers like Jameco. Or I could have shelled out another $150 for a new amplifier and re-wired the speaker, remote turn on and possibly power wiring. Plus the amp has really good sound quality!
date /t quit working…
August 25, 2009At work, I use a simple batch file to build the latest version of the database. Well, I could never run said batch file on my Windows 2003 Server install – it would fail saying that “‘date /t’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.” This file worked great for everybody else, including one of the other developers who was also running Win2k3. Totally frustrated by this problem, I wrote a copy of the batch file (since it’s under source control) for my own usage that built up the parameters manually instead of using the date command. However, this copy requires constant hand holding and updating to work… so, I dug around a while on Google. I couldn’t find anything specific, so I remoted into another Win2k3 machine and started a stare-and-compare session. I noticed that my “ComSpec” environment variable was different.. hmm. Here’s what I had:
ComSpec=%SystemRoot%\system32\cmd.exe /k cd \ && title CMD
I updated it to:
ComSpec=%SystemRoot%\system32\cmd.exe
No more problems!
Temperature Sensor
August 25, 2009It’s the on-going saga of my MX-6. The other day I drilled and tapped a hole for the second temperature sensor. The J-Spec motor I put in the car only had a port for 1 sensor while the ’93 A-Spec motor requires two. The work was pretty straight forward, but since I’d never tapped a screw hole before I had to practice on the old J-Spec throttle body. Once confident, I proceeded to drill the hole in the radiator return block on the motor. All went smoothly except the pictures!
The radiator return block, prep’d for drilling:
The sensor hole is drilled out to the right size, ready for tapping:
Sensor hole is tapped (too bad you can’t see the threads due the blurry picture):
The finished product! No leaks and the engine runs great!
