I'm having hot patches.

Taken in front of a mirror, then flipped back in Photoshop. Did I just blow your mind?

Thanks to recessbilly for the sweet TeamZX2 patch. I ironed on the LeMons Chicago and the TeamZX2 patch to my racing suit this afternoon. It took a couple tries. I'm excited to show it off at the track this year!

A eulogy.

And so it goes. I tapped the rocker panel with my foot as I left work last Thursday. Really, it was a light tap. And the tip of my shoe busted it in, because it was nothing but paint. I suppose it's just as well. When it happened Thursday, I snapped this photo with the expectation of making a humorous post about it here. Instead, it has become bittersweet.

I'll spare you the details; Eric will be posting soon on the Team Resignation blog about how it all went down. Suffice it to say that the race car's engine blew up, and swapping in the one from my ZX2 was the only viable option to keep us on the track.

So that's what we did.

Which makes it pretty official. After roughly a hundred thousand miles across six and a half years of service in my hands, my daily driver is dead. Its 210-thousand-mile engine lives on in the race car, and soon too will its wiring harness and perhaps front control arms. Which gives it a status not unlike an organ donor (except, you know, less important).

Little car, you have served me well. I'm sad you're gone, but your final days weren't exactly your best.

• You had an evap system leak I refused to fix. I had pulled those vacuum hoses and plugged the intake manifold with electrical tape. This also meant the HVAC fan would only blow at the windshield.
• You had a loud clunk from the front suspension which I'm pretty sure was broken sway bar links, but never put in the effort to check.
• You had been backed into a faucet and your rear bumper was screwed back into place. A week later, the mirror got busted off on the corner of the same house and was reattached with the same screws as the bumper.
• Your exhaust was beginning to leak, making you noisier by the week.
• Your third gear hadn't been working for several years.
• Your shifter bushings were completely shot, and the shifter buzzed loudly at nearly all times.
• Your rear defroster never worked.
• You had bald tires on ugly Escort GT fan-blade wheels.
• Your rear speakers would crackle at the mere suggestion of bass.
• I planned to never wash you again.

But despite all this, you unfailingly, albeit noisily, carried me to work. Took Amanda and I on a camping trip to Michigan. Were flung over a set of railroad tracks daily at 70 mph so I could get sweet air. And so on, and so on.

Goodbye, dependable commuter car. I have no choice now but to keep what I need and part out what I don't. It's not an elegant death, true. But I hope your heart lasts long enough to propel us into the top ten next year. You can do it. You've survived worse.

Another Two Hundred Thousand

After nearly 30 thousand miles in her possession, the Escort ZX2 is mine again. I got it back about 150 miles short of 200k. My second drive to work in it gave me the final rollover, the third car I've owned that's hit that ludicrous number -- and the second Escort to do so.

The first was my 1991 Ford Escort Pony, many years ago. Then the Miata. Now this.

I gave Amanda the ZX2 a couple years ago as a xmas gift. I have it back now because she has bought her first car. Quaint, that, since I got my first car about 10 years ago. Expect a guest post soon by her, about her new wheels.

So it's official: the Miata is my pleasure and race car; the ZX2, my daily driver. It's nice to commute in a reasonably quiet car with a compliant ride. It's not so compliant as to be infuriatingly dull -- I have an undying love of Escorts for a reason -- but it's not the torture box that the hard-steering, hard-riding, uninsulated Miata is. I have the added bonus of only having to maintain the Miata for race duty, I don't have to worry about wear from commuting as well; it can be out of service for weeks at a time while I rebuild the engine or order parts.

The down side? I won't have super-buff arms anymore, since I'm now spoiled with one of those amazing modern luxuries: power steering.

What do I do with the Escort now? Neglect washes. Do only the most necessary maintenance. Maybe do a few aero tricks and such to improve fuel economy. Treat it like the beater it has truly become. Eco-mod rat rod, anyone?

Zetec timing belts

The Zetec engines in ZX2s are famous for timing belt problems. Well, with the pulleys anyway. (Many sources incorrectly indicate that the Zetec is an interference design, but it is not, and I will cut my timing belt with the engine running to prove it. But that's another issue.)

Amanda's car started making a squealing noise recently. It sounded suspiciously like a slipping belt, but I had just put a new serpentine on there not long ago. I checked the serp belt, removed the belt and checked the pulleys, and decided I'd check out the timing belt while I was there. And I saw this:

If you look closely, you can see a ridge on the left (front) side of the belt. That's where the belt is not riding on one of the idler pulleys. This immediately told me that the squealing noise was coming from the timing belt, and that it was dragging along a pulley with a worn out bearing. I loosened the belt and found the top left idler pulley was fairly close to seizing. I've had this problem before, not long after I got this car. My timing belt snapped -- shredded, I suppose is more accurate -- due to seized and disintegrating pulleys.

So, by my limited experience, I must go ahead and make a maintenance suggestion for any owner of a Ford Escort ZX2: replace those timing belt pulleys every 80 thousand miles or fewer.

I got a new kit, including belt, tensioners, and both idlers (later engines had just one idler in addition to the tensioner) on RockAuto.com for less than $80 plus shipping. The local O'Reilly had it in stock as well, but they wanted a ridiculous $180. Amanda said no. Considering the price of the belt alone at most stores is around fifty bucks, the extra thirty for a set of pulleys is a good deal.

On oversimplification

I have a problem. It's called oversimplification. I have a feeling most car guys get this when they start to think about a project.

Today, for example, I was telling Eric that we should probably go ahead with the drivetrain swap on our Escort (ZX2 into a 2nd-gen LX). He asked me what was involved in the process of pulling an engine and transaxle from the wrecked ZX2. This is how it initially played out in my head:

1. Bend shit out of the way.
2. Disconnect hoses.
3. Disconnect wires.
4. Remove motor mount nuts.
5. Lift entire assembly out.
6. Remove wiring harness.

Sounds easy, right? Well, it is. Sort of. It's the details that get in the way. Each one of those steps can take a lot of time, because they all involve many, many substeps. Also, things like hammering, bending, prying, wiggling, and dealing with rusted fasteners are very big time-eaters and muscle-fatiguers.

The actual process is something more like this (which is what I sent him):

1. Remove the hood (4 bolts).
2. Disconnect and remove battery.
3. Hammer/pry/smash/pull the radiator support out of the way, along with any other bent shit that interferes. This may be the most physically strenuous and improvised portion of this exercise.
4. Inspect for broken shit.
5. Disconnect the radiator hoses (2), heater core hoses (2), power steering hoses (2), and any other hoses I can't remember.
6. Label all electrical connectors with tape and sharpie, on both sides of the connection.
7. Disconnect all electrical connectors, and unbolt any ground wires to the engine.
8. Disconnect positive starter wire.
9. Pull out axles.
10. Attach engine hoist to engine.
11. Remove the nuts or bolts on each of the 4 motor mounts (max. 2 each).
12. Slowly lift the engine and transmission out of the car, watching for any remaining connections.
13. Roll the engine hoist (with drivetrain) into the garage.
14. Disassemble car interior to locate the entirety of its wiring harness.
15. Remove wiring harness, engine computer, CCRM (a control module), and instrument cluster.

Not quite as simple, right? It suddenly went from, "Yeah, we can do this" to: "... that's pretty intense." And I'm still leaving out quite a bit (especially in terms of the interior). Once this is done, we do it again to the other car. Then we swap sway bars and steering racks, overhaul a transmission, and then reinstall one of the drivetrains. Two removals, one installation.

Nobody ever said racing was easy. Or cheap. But at least it'll be fun.

Hairy Farts

I got this e-mail from Amanda the other day:

Subject: My car got weave

The strangest thing happened.

I got an e-mail from another girl in the office this morning, saying "Have you looked at your tailpipe? It appears it needs a shave."

I went outside, and there was about a 1.5 feet of grey/white/silver HAIR (HAIR!) hanging from the exhaust. Like, inside of it, spilling out. I pulled it out with my foot. It's a huge pile and it seemed to be stuck in there and possibly like there's more. It looks like the scalp of the singer from Dinosaur Jr. I'll go out at lunch with a flashlight and make sure nothing's clogged and maybe get a picture if the weave pile is still there.

Do you have any idea what this is? How it got in there? It's definitely LONG and human looking, so not an animal or a bird or anything like that.

It is BIZARRE. I want to brush my teeth now and wash my hands compulsively. Buh.

---------------------

This is what happened.

Faucet: 1, Escort: 0

Amanda backed the car into the house. Unfortunately, rather than just scraping the paint a bit, she hit the house where the outside faucet is.

These pictures are post-op. The bumper cover was torn almost completely off; we screwed it back in place. The hole the faucet gouged into the car we filled with expanding foam insulation. I later sprayed over the exposed insulation with undercoating.

Notice how the foam, once it squeezes itself out of the hole, begins to form testicles. Better than truck balls!

I hacked them off the next day with a hatchet.

Spark plugs - ZX2

Yes, spark plugs are routine, and especially easy on a DOHC 4-cylinder. But it was a learning experience for Amanda, and it confirmed for me personally the problem with those fancy Bosch 2+ electrode spark plugs.

Amanda did most of this job herself. I replaced the first spark plug to show her, then she did the rest. She is slowly learning everything, as each job comes up. I'm impressed at her tenacity to continue learning this art of grease-monkeying. Also, her willingness to get (somewhat) dirty.

She has yet to bust her knuckles or be elbow-deep in grease and dirt, but those days will come.

About the Bosch plugs:

It's well documented on TeamZX2.com (the most populated and active ZX2 forum) that the best plugs for Ford's Zetec engine is the OEM Motorcraft platinum plugs. Some members specifically say to avoid the Bosch Platinum +2 or +4 spark plugs, that they work fine initially, but cause misfiring after a while. Me, I replaced the plugs when I first got the car, before I was a member of that forum and aware of this problem. Wanting high-quality plugs, I bought a set of the Bosch +2.

And sure enough, after 60 or 70 thousand miles with those plugs, the computer threw a CEL. The error code? P0303 - misfire on cylinder #3. We replaced them with Motorcraft Platinum.