Farrar's car blog

[Farrar]

On another note, now that I've figured out a way to mount my aftermarket radiator fans (thanks to a car I saw a cruise-in last Saturday), I'm figuring out what to do while I'm there. My sway bar brackets are badly scratched and rusted from some incidents when the car was much lower in the front than it is now. NOS brackets from Houston are $10 each, but DPNW have a "combo kit" which has brackets, washers, and polyurethane bushings for $100. Are polyurethane bushings really worth that much money, or should I stick with the bushings that are on the car, which were probably replaced in 2004 when the radiator was?

Thanks,
Farrar

[stevedmc]

On another note, now that I've figured out a way to mount my aftermarket radiator fans (thanks to a car I saw a cruise-in last Saturday), I'm figuring out what to do while I'm there. My sway bar brackets are badly scratched and rusted from some incidents when the car was much lower in the front than it is now. NOS brackets from Houston are $10 each, but DPNW have a "combo kit" which has brackets, washers, and polyurethane bushings for $100. Are polyurethane bushings really worth that much money, or should I stick with the bushings that are on the car, which were probably replaced in 2004 when the radiator was?

Thanks,
Farrar

I believe I read a post saying you might hear more sounds or notice something you didn't before if you go with polyurethane sway bar bushings. Maybe I am wrong, but I think I read a post where Josh Bengston said its pretty much a gamble whether or not you will hear new sounds because of them.

Myself, I would just replace them with new rubber ones every 20 years or whenever the time comes to do it again.

[Nicholas R]

Keep us up to date how this whole light mod thing works.

I had to pull my tail lights out last weekend and one of my brake light bulbs had apparently heated up the surrounding plastic so much that it warped, and I couldn't get the bulb out of the hole. I ended up having to use a heat gun to open the hole back up.

I'm running stock incandescent brake lights (for for my cruise control), with LED's in the running lights and I still heated the shroud up to the point of warping and deforming. If now you're now running with all this extra light=extra heat back there, could end up with an issue.

That area doesn't necessarily breath or get airflow to cool down, just be careful.

[Farrar]

Nicholas:

I've had LED brake lights now for almost two years, so heat is not a problem.

Steve:

I'm inclined to agree with you; the gains from polyurethane seem minimal since I do not engage in what is called "performance driving," so I'll just replace the brackets with NOS ones and keep my scratched ones as spares.

In other news, in the mail I got my 20-amp circuit breakers for the cooling fans.

Farrar

[stevedmc]

I'm running stock incandescent brake lights (for for my cruise control), with LED's in the running lights and I still heated the shroud up to the point of warping and deforming. If now you're now running with all this extra light=extra heat back there, could end up with an issue.

That area doesn't necessarily breath or get airflow to cool down, just be careful.

Are you sure your exhaust didn't cause any warpage?

[Farrar]

The last time I took Sparky out for a spin, he'd been sitting for a few months, and for a couple of them I had forgotten to disconnect the battery... so I had to jump-start the car from a booster battery. On the drive, which was maybe about ten minutes long, I noticed the volt gauge hovering just below 13. I started to doubt the alternator's efficacy.

Tonight I tempted fate: I went for a longer drive, and although I still had to use the booster battery to start the first time, the alternator seemed to be working just fine -- by the end of the drive the volt gauge was reading just above 13, which is normal for my car. After a couple of hours, I turned the key again and it started on the first try, and the volt gauge again read normal, so evidently my alternator and battery are both fine -- it's just that the last time I drove the car, there wasn't enough time for the alternator to charge the battery to where it could sit for two weeks and start up again.

(I hedged my bet, though -- I kept the booster battery in the car with me!)

I intend to drive the car to and from work tomorrow (lack of air conditioning be damned!) and keep an eye on the volt gauge. Looks like I may get more than two years out of Houston's alternator after all.

Farrar

[Bitsyncmaster]

The draining battery problem will accumulate the discharged state if your occasional drive is not long enough to fully charge the battery. Think of it this way: If your battery is 50 amp/hours, your alternator puts out 100 amps, your car needs 60 amps to run, then you need about 1.25 hours of running to fully charge a dead battery.

So if you lost 25% of your charge by sitting for one month and you only drove 10 min. to charge it, then the next month is sits you now only have about 50 % charge....etc.

[Farrar]

That makes perfect sense, Dave.

So it looks like my habit of going on long drives to absolutely nowhere when I want to have a little think is actually good for my vehicles. I'll have to start obeying the impulse again.

Farrar

[Farrar]

After carefully looking at what would be required for removing all stock bulkhead-connected harnesses in the engine bay and running new wires only for what I need, I've decided against that route. Instead, I bought a pin extraction tool from Radio Shack (designed to push pins out of Molex connectors) and will use it to remove the unused wires without damaging anything. I'll have to unwrap the harnesses first, so I see a lot of isopropyl alcohol in my future as I remove 30-year-old electrical-tape adhesive.

After that, I will remove the Lambda box behind the driver's seat.

From there, I will move to the relay/fuse compartment and start removing unused relays.

Any suggestions?

Farrar

[Bitsyncmaster]

I'll have to unwrap the harnesses first, so I see a lot of isopropyl alcohol in my future as I remove 30-year-old electrical-tape adhesive.

Farrar

Only the ends of the wrap have sticky stuff. It's not hard at all to unwrap the harness.