Shelby made a pickup truck. Who knew?

What was the first rear-wheel drive thing that Carroll Shelby put his name to after the Mustangs in the '60s? It was none other than Dodge's compact truck offering, the 1989 Dakota. For most of the '80s, Shelby had been busy with turbocharging the living shit out of Dodge's little Omni penalty boxes. Those cars were dubbed GLH (its successor, GLH-S), which stood for "Goes Like Hell" ("-Som'more"). They really should've been called TSIATADAHFD (Torque Steer Into A Tree And Die A Horrible Fiery Death). After those crazy monsters, he tried his hand at useless and slow.

 

 

Seems like Dodge wanted to drum up sales of its relatively new small truck with a couple limited edition versions, including a convertible, and this here high-po Shelby Dakota with V8 power.

 

 
The regular Dakota's3.9L V6 is essentially a 318-cube (5.2L) V8 sans two cylinders; all Shelby's factory had to do was remove the V6 and massage the V8 a bit before bolting it in. The only special provision involved lopping off the crank-driven radiator fan and fitting an electric fan instead... which is apparently missing here. Good luck in traffic with this one.

 

This swap was so simple, in fact, that Dodge offered its workhorse 318 as the top-spec engine in regular Dakotas starting in 1991.

The truck received no handling upgrades to speak of, though the press release circa 1989 brags about its nitrogen gas shocks and 70-series radial tires. Oooooo, I'm all tingly. It did get the obligatory limited-slip differential and some newfangled fancy transmission, but that trans was an automatic. Boo. I guess a 4-speed overdrive slushbox was a big deal in '89.

What's especially disappointing is the fact that this truck pulls the same 0-60 time as a 1995 Neon, or a 1989 Miata. A blistering 8 seconds.

They only made 1500 of these, each with a numbered plaque affixed to the dashboard to remind you of your econo-with-a-six-foot-box exclusivity. This one's number 1202, and the current body-shop-operating owner has a big trophy in his office that it won at a car show a couple years ago. 

 

 

The trophy is in front of the window in this picture. He's selling this example, which has seen 62k miles, for a measly seven grand. I'll admit the graphics look nice, as does that styling thing over the bed. But a slow, unknown, 20-year-old truck with no street cred and a bunch of big-name badges is not worth that much money in my eyes. Maybe to the right guy wearing Mopar-tinted glasses.

 

 

The guy who was drooling all over this truck (when I stopped by this body shop for a quote on rust repair) also talked in very excited tones about the Chrysler Sebring parked next to it. Ouch. If you're interested in either one, there is no hope for y-- uh, I mean: They're for sale at Bob Schmidt Body Shop in DeKalb, Illinois.

 

 

Raceland header rusts and breaks

 

Update at bottom.
On my commute home tonight, my car backfired badly twice on consecutive upshifts. Immediately after the second blast, my car was ear-bleedingly loud. I knew something bad had happened to my header; it had been looking and sounding iffy for a couple weeks. When I got home, I jacked the car up and saw this.

After a trip to Farm & Fleet for a patch kit and a set of jack stands that I would later return, I came home and applied the patch. It worked for about 5 minutes, and quickly became nearly as loud as it was before. I blame my poor patch job and not buying enough patch material. But it's quiet enough to get me to my parents' garage without making me deaf.

I'm going to send the picture above to Raceland and ask for a replacement. T-304 stainless steel shouldn't rust, especially not like this, and not after barely more than a year. For now, I'm driving Amanda's car to work the rest of the week (the university is closed, so she's off work) and I'll apply a more permanent repair.

My original post about the install is here:
http://sentimentalmechanic.blogspot.com/2009/11/var-gajshost-https-document.html

Update: The 2-year warranty was honored, and I'm impressed with their customer service.

http://sentimentalmechanic.blogspot.com/2010/12/warranty-honored-on-raceland-header.html

Righting past wrongs.

This car is finally gone. I had it for almost exactly 3 months, and oh holy crap am I glad it's gone. That's the Mazda 323 GTX that I picked up in July, without a transmission or turbo, and with a blown engine and hacked-to-fuck wiring harness. The car itself was free, but it did cost me a vacation day and about $100 worth of gas -- and a LOT of sweat because I wisely picked it up on the hottest day of the year.

I did manage to scavenge a few things from it. Most notably, several aftermarket gauges, a battery terminal and some battery cables, and an old 5-point safety harness.

I sold it to a local man for $300. He owns another 323 (non-GTX) and will use this as a parts car. I hope he can put it to good use. Pictured is my dad hooking up the winch on the guy's trailer.

As for that spot in my parents' driveway? I hope to fill it with my brother-in-law's been-sitting-in-his-parents'-garage-for-several-years 1988 or '89 Toyota Supra Turbo (with hot start issues!) while he's away for a year or more. And I still need to rebuild the Miata's engine.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

I took a day off work this week to drive down to Bloomington in a borrowed Chevy 3500 van loaded with garage door repair supplies and tools. I'm thinking the thing got 12 mpg.

It was also about a bazillion degrees outside. I drank about a gallon of Gatorade and was still dehydrated.

I went there to pick up this car. It was free. I was also offered a shitload of extra parts and stuff that I couldn't take because the van was full of the aforementioned garage door parts.

It's a 1988 Mazda 323 GTX. Turbo 1.6L B6 4-cylinder engine making 130-some horsepower. Yeah, the Miata got a version of the B6 that made 120 hp without a turbo. That may be what I put in it if I ever get it running. Oh yeah, and this engine is blowed up. 

This thing also has 4-wheel drive with a lockable center differential. The transaxle is not in the car. It's not even currently in my possession. I've been told it's "rebuildable." So who knows.

The owner was getting rid of it for the magical price of zero dollars for all these reasons, combined with the fact that the city told him to GTFO OR BAN. Well, get rid of the car or pay $100+ every day it's not gone. So now I wait for my parents to get the same ultimatum, as it sits in their driveway with a hacked up wiring harness, Vice-Grip pliers for a steering wheel, an engine hanging on by one motor mount, and... whatever. I have no idea.

And as it turns out, it's a BF chassis, not a BG. So who knows if anything will actually bolt up to it. I had planned to swap the drivetrain bits to make an AWD Escort, but now compatibility is suspect. Hopefully I can still use the rear hubs for my eventual mid-engine Escort.

This is a project for later. Picking this up made me realize I already have more projects than I can handle. It was a healthy reality check. I've gotta focus on LeMons.

Dudes putting it in the butt

Amanda insists that my repeated references to PB Blaster are actually veiled references to bhutte secks. They are not.

This is how we fail

This is how Eric fails. Wondering why he can't get the taillight to fit back on properly, he realized that the wires and sockets weren't quite in their proper locations.

To soften the blow, since I have failed in similar ways many times myself, here's a wonderful photo of how, exactly, I fail.

That's the pushbroom I gave my dad for Father's Day.

(This is why "brokkake" is one of my new tags.)

Ah, consequences

It's usually a good idea to make sure the boots are on and the clamps are properly tightened after you replace certain parts. This in particular is an inner tie rod I replaced sometime last year. The grime and salt and shit that got into the boot caused some surface corrosion on the steering rack as well. I cleaned it up, put a new one on, and put new clamps on the boot. Here's hoping I don't fuck that up again.

Unfinished

I don't exactly have the energy for a full update at this time. I will say a few things though.

Pertaining to my previous post: We managed to luck upon an old machine shop/fabricator man, clearly a guy who had been doing this kind of shit all his life, to bend our shift rod straight for us. Eric guesses this guy to be in his 70s. He set this thing on his 50-ton H-frame manual-pump hydraulic press and fucking eyeballed this thing, pressing it until it was straight. When another guy met up with us and measured how straight it was, he clocked us a total indicated runout (TIR) of .006". Which means this thing was three thousandths of an inch away from being perfectly straight.

And this guy fucking eyeballed this. Really amazing. He was quite the character too, and seeing/listening to him made me feel kind of like I was plopped into a Coen brothers movie.

No, we did not finish the full engine-and-wiring-harness swap. We pulled the drivetrain from the ZX2 and set it up in the garage to get fixed up. Fixed a couple of oil pan punctures, replaced a valve cover and a few other miscellaneous bits. 

We got hung up on rebuilding the transmission. Well, not so much the rebuilding as the reassembly. It won't shift correctly without getting locked into gear. So that blows donkey balls. We'll have to figure all that shit out soon.

I'll post more details hen (if) I get the energy for a more complete update. In the mean time, keep an eye over at assonancerood for his breakdown of the project. If you want to see a few more pictures from the weekend, hit up my web album. Some of those pictures were taken by Eric. 

Fuck

Our transmission does not work, and this is why. That shaft? It's supposed to be straight. The tire iron is there for reference.*

We've been working on this heap for about 9 hours. We had just about finished rebuilding the transmission when we discovered that it wouldn't shift into any gear.

So yeah. Goddamn it.

*Please pardon my shitty delivery, and my pointing out the glaringly obvious. We were all very tired at that point in the night.

24 Hours of LeMons: American Irony

First, let me say that Eric already covered a lot of our trip to this race. Read his recaps. I'll wait.

Done? Let's continue.

The trip was great fun, and the race was excellent to watch. It's gotten me even more excited (and probably unbearable to live with) about competing in this race for crapcans.

This is one of the penalties that are handed out. I can't remember what the chicken is for, but there are a number of different things that the Arc Angel (for that is her name, and yes, she's a she) will weld to your car. This particular sample is a BMW E30 with a roof that is almost completely Bondo. You could smell that shit burning as the Angel welded this chicken on.

Another penalty is the humping bunnies (as seen on one of my favorite cars, the Woodstock Monte Carlo Grand Prix.). I don't know what it's for, but I'd much rather have that than the chicken.

Still another penalty, as seen on this Rabbit/GTI (with the Lebowski Neon in the background) is writing your folly over and over on your car, a la grade school. (finding that link resulted in some porn, FYI)

You get these penalties from doing this kind of thing:

Note the ridiculous lean on that Audi in the first shot.

If your car breaks down, things can get even more exciting. You can turn your Fiero from a raging 4-cylinder into a parts-spewing hunk of iron. Case in point, the Heroic Fix winners who, after a spun connecting rod bearing, pulled two pistons out.

They later pulled out another, turning it into a smoke-belching 625cc one-cylinder before it finally stopped altogether. For these kinds of accomplishments, you can win one of many awesome trophies.

Hand made with love. Welcome to America.

One hundred and four blaglock

Not a time or measurement of time.

Sometime last summer, a box of cheap watches showed up at work. It wasn't addressed to anyone in particular. We spread the word trying to find the intended recipient. No one claimed them, so after two months we divvied up the collection among the engineering department. I took this guy.

Let me be clear: These are not expensive watches to begin with. These are what you'd see in the open display case sitting 6 feet away from the jewelry counter, or on the impulse buy rack at the auto store, marked at $3.99, next to the pinky-length tire pressure gauges and fist-sized Zippo-knockoff novelty lighters.

That said, I'd at least expect the watches to do one thing right. Not necessarily be the most accurate timepiece, but at least have an understanding of how telling time is done. And it's not like these are printed on, either, and somebody can just toss a few reams of sticky-backed vinyl prints. Somebody made this cast and popped out a bunch of them before (hopefully eventually) realizing there was a problem.

Haven't figured it out yet? Here's a hint: look at the ring with numbers at 10 minute intervals.

There you have it, folks. A perfect example of how details come back to bite you in the ass.

Running rich, part 972

My Miata has been running rich. I think it has, anyway. It'll backfire if you poke the throttle after letting it coast at middle-high RPM for a second or two. I can do this on command, anytime after it's warmed up. Often on upshifts, too.  Also, the plugs looked pretty sooty last time I checked (and replaced) them. And this soot ends up on the back bumper, too. This all leads me to believe it's running rich.

So I've been trying to figure out why. I've done a lot of things (plugs, plug wires, coolant temp sensor, O2 sensor, tested the coil, cleaned up electrical ground wires, dumped magic cleaner juice in the gas tank many times). This is the latest, and probably the last thing I'll do before sending my injectors out to get rebuilt.

I replaced the air filter installed by the previous owner. It's very obviously an eBay affair, you can find them all over there for around $10 (with another $30 to ship or something stupid). Anyway, it's a chintzy model, and I thought maybe this piece of shit was clogged up. The service manual says a clogged filter is the first thing to check, so I'm glad I did it right away. And by "right away" I mean... well, read the last line in the previous paragraph, my attention-span-challenged readers.

Anyway, I never liked that filter because I could do this:

Also, I could spin that rubber piece in the filter. This is hardly confidence-inspiring in terms of providing a seal against shit. Thankfully, area parts stores sell this kind of chintzy shit. And since a 3" flange is common, I found a direct fit without having to use adapters. It's the Spectre brand they sell at Autozone, in the same place you'll find the DIY intake kits.

It looks a bit better than the dirty blue thing, though very ricey. It also did nothing to help my running rich condition.

GoMiata Stubby Antenna - And Another Thing...

As though I didn't have enough bad to say about the GoMiata Stubby Antenna the first time I reviewed it, the thing goes and gets even worse on me.

At least then it passed the 30-foot test. But after just one winter of handling road salt, the thing is getting corroded and looks like garbage.

If I get excited later on, I'll clean this thing up and spray on some clearcoat. But it pisses me off, because that's not something I should have to do with an accessory that's only a few months old.

Behold, failure!

Last Saturday, my friend Brad came over to help finish the brakes on El Shitbox. Since the caliper mounting bolt was seized in place, I asked him to bust out the Sawzall and cut the fucker in half.

Then, when the caliper still wouldn't come off, I realized the caliper mounts to a bracket, which is removable. Two 14-mm bolts later, and the caliper-and-bracket assembly is off.

But then the caliper wouldn't come off the bracket, which is necessary to mount the new caliper. So I asked Brad to bust out his MAPP gas torch. He's a plumber.

We proceeded to heat, wiggle, and hammer that thing to separate the caliper from the slide/guide bolt on the bracket. At which point, this happened:

Which is about when I realized I had a complete new bracket sitting upstairs. So I grabbed that, grabbed the new caliper, and put that shit together.

Steps necessary to complete job:
1. Remove caliper and bracket assembly.
2. Install new caliper bracket.
3. Install new caliper.

Actual steps taken:
1. Cut caliper.
2. Remove caliper and bracket assembly.
3. Lubricate, wiggle, torch, and hammer caliper guide bolt until something breaks.
4. Install new caliper bracket.
5. Install new caliper.

I am a genius.

Brake bleeder screws are my nightmare

This was supposed to be an easy, therapeutic round of car repairs. Little to no rust to contend with; I'm working on my once-a-Texas-car Miata.

I finished an oil change, installed the front subframe brace from 949Racing, and went on to the brakes. Bled the front right caliper properly, with the help of my sister Cindy. Figured I'd do the front left, as long as I had the car up in the air already. 

So I grab my 8mm wrench, start to turn the bleed screw, and I get an all-too-familiar feeling. It's not moving. I push it a little harder. I can feel it starting to give, but in that way you know isn't the threads breaking loose -- it's either the bleeder itself twisting, or the hex flats giving way. I put down the 12-point box-end wrench and look for a 6-point socket. After some hunting, I find a shallow well 6-pointer that'll give me the clearance I need, and I go at it again. It feels no better. "Fuck it. If it breaks, I bleed nothing. At least it won't leak, and I'll get another caliper."

Sure enough, the bleed screw snaps off. So I'm leaving it, and moving on to the rears.

The count is now up to four calipers with busted bleeders (across two cars) in two weekends. Goddamn it.

Weekend racecar prep Number 1

These are my 10-year-old Caterpillar boots. They've seen a lot of abuse, including a weekend photographing an NIU ROTC trip for the Northern Star (which, since its redesign, is one "Under Construction" GIF away from 1997), among other less taxing camping trips, junkyard treks and work excursions. This pair finally bit the dust on Saturday the 13th, and I promptly replaced them with another pair. Hopefully these will last another 10 years.

The job that did it was swapping suspensions on the new Ford Escort diarrhea bucket of an automobile. That's right, I officially have an unofficial LeMons/ChumpCar racer! It'll be a 2nd-gen Escort LX/3rd gen ZX2 Franken'Scort. (Theme and actual car/team name TBD.)

Eric, my only willing co-conspirator and co-money pit feeder at this time wrote up a good bit of detail on it. It's worth every second of your time to read, because he is a hilarious and insane man. This most recent Saturday, we (almost) completed that job by doing the rear suspension. Details on that are coming, as soon as I get my photos back from my dad's camera.

The scariest thing I've ever seen on a road-going vehicle

(click to enlarge)

This was on a Cavalier, in the parking lot at Ben's apartment complex. I don't know if the owner was still driving it, but that single remaining lug nut wasn't held on by more than a couple threads. If he drove it anywhere, it wouldn't be far.

Note how the vibrating wheel actually slotted out the lug holes. This was driven on for far too long.

I was afraid to get near the car. It's absolutely unbelievable to me that someone out there is oblivious enough to let this happen for this long. I just can't fathom it.

Various things I've seen on the road

All of these are my photos, not pulled off the Internet. They were all taken with my cell phone, hence the crappy quality.

Sarah Palin 2012 bumper sticker. Funny, since 1. she never announced that she was running, and 2. she just resigned from her governorship, presumably because of all the investigations against her.

You have to look closely, but you'll notice the license plate reads: LARDINE. I don't know if that's her actual name, but it's certainly not a flattering one.

I never thought about it, but of course a limo won't fit on flatbed. How else would you tow one though? It would be way too long to pull behind.

Since the car color is clearly not what they're referring to, "RED DEUCE" can only mean they have bloody shit. TMI, people.
Hello Kitty + Jeep Wrangler = Failure.

I've seen several of these before, but these MAXI DUMP trucks and trailers always make me laugh. I love poop jokes.

Simply the best license plate ever.

Spelling fail

Ah, the wonders of wanting your car to be awesome, while making it clear that you're completely hopeless.

The car didn't have rims, though it did have sweet Altezzas.