What did you do to your projects today?

I think we need a thread to celebrate the little victories with our cars. Im pretty sure we have all felt stuck and in limbo. I have been making an effort to hit the garage for a a half hour to an hour almost every night over the last few weeks and it has done wonders for making me motivated to actually finish some of the projects. So what did you accomplish today?

I ran new wires for the starter solenoid and HEI distributor/relay on my 88 Wrangler. I can now start it with the key rather that connecting wires under the hood!

Nothing, drove 450 miles, leaving at 5.00 am, I am not in any condition to think right now.

Stuck some numbers on my sons race gator, and tried some new sleeping arrangements for event camping in the van.

about 20 mins ago I drove my 2.6 Impulse for the first time in months after pulling the engine(my first time ever, did it solo) and transmission to take care of an oil pan issue, bad rear main, bad trans mount and lots of little stuff.

ended up depowering the steering rack while I had the easy access.

I did all the work in triple digit temps, often above 110, sometimes 115.

runs nice & smooth & no leaks - I'm feeling some satisfaction right about now.

I walked by it. That is all today.

wasn't working on the saab.. waiting on a new steering rack before I can put the engine back in.. but I did get another 4 or 5 feet of the hull sanded before it started to rain

Cut the shields/dust covers/whatever they're called off of some Balljoint Bug "Lowered" gas shocks so I can run them upside down on my 850 without them binding up. Tubing cutter worked wonders on that little task.

Haven't touched it since the beginning of June. Tore apart the 4wd dakota to fix the burnt valve 3 weeks ago and haven't had time to lap the burnt valve and put it back together yet. Its always time or money with me and right now is when I have money.

Worked on removing weight from a Yugo hatch.

Replaced rear brakes on wife's Honda to pass inspection. Started removing the exhaust to make way for a simple cat back on the F150. Did nothing on actual project cars.

Thought a lot about it.

At lunch created a jegs cart full of $600 of brake pedals/MC/line kit and Vband clamps. Have not yet purchased.. it would depress me to have it show up and sit.

I finished the A/C job from hell. 96 Impala SS. Orifice tube; 37 seconds. Accumulator, 3 minutes 42 seconds. Flush lines, 24 minutes 8 seconds. Replace compressor; 2 weeks worth of free time.

Jeez.

The factory manual gives you a few hundred steps to get to it, and then ends with: "If unsuccessful, remove passenger side engine mount and lift engine."

Long story short, cold A/C now blows from the vents.

Oil change and valve cover gasket change on SWMBOs car.

Then I started on the energy suspension bushing kit for the race car. With no press in my collection of tools, I had to drill a bunch of holes through each bushing until the center practically fell out. Then used fire to take care of the remaining rubber. Quick coat of paint and some use of the vice makes for Brand new looking control arms with uber stiff bushings.

Checked the stator over in my VFR. Slightly low impedance between pins on the connector, but just slightly, and the guy I bought it from doesn't think it's that badly out. But the bike will still slowly discharge the battery. Wondering if this Lithium Iron battery was such a smart move, it needs slightly higher resting voltage than I'm used to.

I rewired my boat so I can get it running again, sell it and have some money and some space for my car projects.

It was 107 today, but sitting in the cuddy cabin with a fan in the door it wasn't too bad at all. I was semi-comfortable both in temp & the way I was sitting. Sitting in one place to do wiring was a change of pace. But all those danged ol' extra ground wires since you can't ground to the chassis were a really big pain.

It was easier than I expected, but that doesn't mean it was easy.

BTW what does a fan belt run nowadays? They wanted $111 for one to fit the 502 in the boat. I think I soiled myself when they quoted me the price.

Straightened & stripped the hood latch support for my 67 Camaro.

Not really project related, but I managed to get new tires for the TDi mounted and then did a 20K service (oil change plus air, fuel and cabin filters). For once, I managed to hunker down and get it all done in a reasonable amount of time for a change. Of course, I had to be somewhere at a specific time, so I had incentive to not dicker around like I often do.

I did drive the Mini to the dentist while the VW was cooling off, so I guess that was project related.

I started mentally writing my classified ad.

I unpacked the ECU wiring harness extension out of the box it was shipped in and placed it on the workbench. Alas, work is not leaving much time for projects during the week.

codrus wrote: I unpacked the ECU wiring harness extension out of the box it was shipped in and placed it on the workbench. Alas, work is not leaving much time for projects during the week.

Its still something. There have been nights when all i did was put away tools for five minutes.

Pulled an aluminum Porsche wheel out of the attic, my hose reel broke.

In the middle of nowhere, 150 miles from home and with 150 more to go, the Check Engine light came on in the most reliable car in the garage, a 40,000 mile 2010 Accord V6. Running poorly but without any obvious causes underhood, no tools and at least an hour away from the nearest Honda dealer, I managed to get the family safely to our destination on five cylinders. The car would barely idle but would manage okay at highway speeds. The last few miles in town were tricky.

After unloading the car, trip to O'Reilly for a code scan revealed "Misfire, Cylinder 3". I bought a 10mm wrench, a bottle of DryGas, filled the nearly empty tank with Super and disconnected the battery to reset the light.

Now it runs as good as ever. My guess is that it was just a bad tank of fuel. The wife filled the tank the night before while the station was getting a delivery. They must have stirred up the junk at the bottom of the tank at the gas station.

It was a very stressful start to a nice little vacation.

I wrote and posted the ad for my Cadillac on here.

I sprayed a lot of rallycross mud off of the codriven '85 Corolla, my Suburban and the trailer, then I returned the car to it's rightful owner.

I had replaced the front struts on the turbo Neon with some Koni blacks I picked up and swapped out the no-name ebay short shifter for a B&M model last week. I was pretty impressed with myself that the job which absolutely terrified me a couple years ago -- primarily because of all the horror stories I had heard about spring compressors coming loose and having springs shoot holes through cars, houses, and people -- could be accomplished in under an hour per side. I went to take it for a quick test drive over the weekend and it wouldn't idle without keeping partial pressure on the throttle and even after using a zip tie over the throttle stop screw, the idle had a terrible stumble and under load the car just ran terribly. The wideband indicated that it was just dumping fuel and all four plugs were black as night, confirming the AFR readout. Depending on which sensor you ask, the car has been running kind of hot lately and I haven't figured that out yet, so I was a bit concerned that I may have done something that would necessitate cracking the engine -- and my wallet -- open. With the second points event happening this weekend, I was really nervous about what I was going to have to do. I swapped the plugs (it is so much fun to go into the parts store and ask for four spark plugs for a 1997 Aston Martin DB7! Same plug as the Neon, but a range colder), used my stethoscope to ensure that I was getting action from all the injectors, checked the fuel pressure, checked compression, and hooked up my laptop to ensure that the CLT, IAT, and TPS sensors were all reading sane values.

My lesson for the week (and, yes, I do have to be re-taught this lesson on a very regular basis!) was that you always need to check the simple things first. After verifying that at-rest, the sensors were all sending good data to Megasquirt, I started up the car and let it cough through its idle while I watched the gauges. After watching it for a while it dawned on me that when the engine wasn't running, the CLT, IAT, and TPS gauges were rock-solid. As soon as the engine was running, they started bouncing all over the place. Stop the engine and rock-solid again. I hadn't done anything to the wiring or alternator or voltage regulator that would have increased electrical noise, so I started looking for connections that could be coming loose due to the vibration of the engine. As soon as I grabbed the harness bundle right behind the Megasquirt box, the idle instantly smoothed out. I've got all the MS and sensor grounds routed to the same place on the (the transmission is up front so I guess it's the exhaust) tunnel and held down with a screw. The screw had backed itself out and come loose, creating an intermittent grounding problem.

Fifteen seconds and a couple turns of the screwdriver and the car runs great again.

Long story short (too late!): What I did with my project was get a good refresher on a life lesson.