[The_Evenger]

Since the system is mostly drained, it's always a good idea to do a little more maintenance work while at it.
Keep in mind, rubber bits and some fluids have miles AND time limits.
Good job.

As to your throttle plate, I wonder if someone messed with the mechanical idle adjuster at some point to fix another issue. This can allow the plate to dig into the body bore causing a sticking.

there was definitely a non-original groove cut into the throttle body and a lot of pitting. is there a way to adjust it's fully closed position? I thought that was pretty much dictated by the butterfly hitting the housing. if you look at the part the cable attaches to and the part the butterfly attaches to, there's about a 1/4" gap between the two. in other words, the part the cable attaches to has to travel about 1/4 of an inch before it actually starts to move the butterfly. (sorry for my lack of terminology)

I had this same problem on my i4 which I "fixed" it by having the cruise servo hold it open past it's sticky point. but I noted before doing that it also had that 1/4" gap.

 

[Charlie-III]

There is a small arm on the throttle shaft that has a set screw in it. This is the ONLY thing required to set the throttle plate.
This can be done with the throttle body in your hand sitting at a work bench.
Using cables to set this is WRONG!!! Pretty much on ANY engine.
Some peeps "fix" an idle issue by messing with this adjustment.
This is WRONG!!!!
The adjustment should have the throttle plate "just kiss" the inside of the throttle body bore......nothing more, nothing less. Typically this adjustment is "sorta glued in place" to prevent easy adjustment.
Usually, the plate has a bevel on the OD, this allows a mating surface when closed. Flipping it usually puts the bevel the wrong way, thus an issue down the road.
Better to remove the plate, dress up high spots in the bore, reinstall, "snug" the plate screws, then operate the shaft to center the plate. Tighten the plate, then adjust the exterior stop so the plate "just kisses" the bore.
The brass plate is harder than the aluminum TB, thus not much wear vs. the TB.

Questions........ feel free to ask.......:nerd2::wink2:

PS, not picking on you, just stating fact......

 

[The_Evenger]

finals week is finally over!

Now that I have time to do stuff again, I was able to get some stuff done. First thing I did was try to locate my A/C leak, I filled the system up with compressed air and sprayed soapy water everywhere I could in an attempt to find the leak, but wasn't able to find it. I fear it's either in the evaporator or compressor. with a complete failure of the soapy water test I added some A/C dye and refrigerant, which also turned out to contain stop leak and it's doing it's job. I didn't notice the stop leak on the can, only the big "A/C refrigerant and dye" above it.

I have pretty much no faith in stop leak so I'm rather annoyed that I missed that, but it is doing it's job for now. it's more than likely only a matter of time before it starts leaking again, which will be nice because then I can fix the problem for real and change out the drier. since my A/C works right now, I found a new problem to deal with, the climate controls. the A/C light flickers and goes out on anything other than 1, leading to no A/C. looking around it seems to be a pretty normal issue with the contact within the blower motor switch, so I took it apart, cleaned it up with an eraser, added some new dialectric grease, and PRESTO! it works perfectly now! no drop outs turning the switch what so ever.

-Before-

-After-

​

I also found some 12v 3mm LEDs that fit in the switch light bulb sockets, you just need to take out the bulb and wrap the LED legs round the way the bulb's were. they work great, they also make a 5mm variant that has a orange color. the 3mm are a great no solder or modification replacement. I used it to replace the yellow indication light from my gauge cluster switch with a green one and a red one to replace the illumination light to match the rest of the switches. Linky

I also found some orange LED wedge bulbs for the multi-gauges, it was surprisingly hard to find ones that were actually orange and not yellow/amber. Linky

I'll take apart my throttle body again in a few days and try to follow @Charlie-III 's advice to properly set it up.

also, the SBB was NOT capable of programming fobs on the tiburon.

 

[Charlie-III]

Good looking job on the switch.:grin2:

 

[The_Evenger]

Lots of stuff & super late on some of it.

The cruise control servo has the "set" light functionality on all years 03+ and I finally wired it up in my new cluster! a thought occurred after installation: I could have moved the "cruise" wire to the "set" pin at the servo and had effectively the same thing. only down side would be the ON/OFF switch is a momentary switch and you wouldn't be able to tell if the cruise control was on or off.

The new gauge cluster was reading the fuel level wrong because the fuel level sending unit was changed between 04 and 05, the 05 cluster needs the white level sending unit.

Relatively recently I installed new struts, control arms, and sway bar end links. the suspension started to bottom out for big dips in the road so it was beyond time to replace the struts. one of the control arm bushing bolts seized inside the bushing incredibly bad and would rather bend the frame ears than come out. I had to employ the "can't be seized if you're liquid" approach to get it out, which was insanely weird considering everything else came out without any difficulty. I was also going to replace the rear sway bar bushings but I ordered the wrong ones. I thought only the special editions had the performance suspension bits, but mine had the bigger rear sway bar instead of the normal one. my only guess is the previous owner changed it out.

It's really nice driving what feels like a car again.

I installed an ignition hold switch. I used two relays with both 86 pins on ignition post key, 85 pins on a switch that connects it to ground, 30 pins on B+, and 87 pins on ignition and accessory to run the car and A/C. the ignition needs to be already on to activate the relays thanks to the coil + pins being wired post switch, this way I can leave the car running without the keys in it if I want to keep the A/C running. (which is still working)

I also finally got my fobs programmed, $80 later and I finally don't need to use my keys to lock/unlock it. I particularly wanted to have the alarm working again since it's stupidly easy to pull back the glass and use a coat hanger to unlock the door for cars without pillars around the glass.

 

[The_Evenger]

I made my spoiler look halfway decent... or at least better than it was.

the spoiler lost it's clear and even it's paint on the top and I set out to fix that but I massively underestimated the amount of primer I would need to work out all the pits. it's at least all one color now, but I wasn't particularly impressed with how well the "color matched" painted matched. the instructions said to spray lightly for colors like mine, but by the time I had even coverage I had a billion coats already on the spoiler resulting in it being darker than normal. and the pitting is definitely noticeable but at least it looks better i guess.

I should have just went the extra mile and used proper automotive paint and paint guns.

-before-

-after-

​

in other news, I also got some 05-08 mirrors to replace my current mirrors with the same issue, but not through the paint yet.

-before-

-after-

​

the 03-04 and the 05+ glass is difference but luckily my local wreckers only wanted $10 for each mirror glass, and the passenger defroster works! the driver side and passenger side both show .07 ohms of resistance so maybe one of the connectors are too corroded to pass current? they did look pretty bad so I'll probably go back and try to clean up the connections and use some dielectric grease to keep the moisture at bay. it would be nice if I could get the the heating elements working.

it would be even better if I didn't rip off the rear defroster trying to remove the tint.

 

[The_Evenger]

Oh boy, it has been... a while.

I finished school & got a job since my last update & this has been the primary reason of my absence. I'm stuck with a long commute for now & have been saving up to buy a house closer to work, but my commute has been taking a lot of my time.

I don't remember if I posted this already or not, but the A/C w/ stop leak did not work. it ruined every rubber hose in the system & caused the compressor to leak down the middle of it too. I had to replace every rubber line & compressor to get rid of all of the leaks. I actually got very lucky on the compressor because my parts store only had two in their whole network, and the first one I got had a bent pulley so I ended up ordering both their compressors to get one working one. I also replaced the drier sleeve that's in the condenser, pulled a vacuum for an hour, and purged the charge line of air before opening up the charge lines to give me the best possible charge I can get. It's been a few years since I did this & it's still working perfectly.

Next thing that I can remember doing is replacing the radio... again. I had an alpine, which could sound good, but it took a ton of setup every time i disconnected the battery & I got very sick of that. I ended up buying one of the OEM Kenwood units for nearly nothing & am now using it. It had an issue where it would make loud pops over bumps & turned out to be broken solder joints on the amplifier IC, re-flowing those made it good as new. It also had an annoying issue with the face plate connector getting dirty every couple weeks, but I found deox-it to work incredibly well to fix this problem. I used to have to clean the connector every couple weeks, but I haven't had to clean it since I put deox-it on it.

My engine then developed a coolant leak last summer after being put away for winter. I drove it through the summer keeping it topped off, but I knew I had to fix it. Problem was I couldn't find where it was coming from, looked like it was coming from the water distribution block but I couldn't get it to stop leaking. I eventually found out it was an external headgasket coolant leak, meaning I had to pull the head off again. So decided to remove the engine last winter to do this repair instead of trying to do it in the car again.

I'm guessing the head gasket failed due to insufficient cleaning of the gasket surface. I still had the block in the car when I did my timing belt failure repair & had to lean over the whole engine to clean the rear headgasket surface, so I'm assuming I ran out of patience at some point & called it good enough when it was, in fact, not good enough. So, I decided to pull the engine to avoid this being a problem again. I'm mostly surprised it took like 3 years for the headgasket to fail.

I did a clutch job & changed some seals that were leaking while I had the engine out, I really didn't need to do the clutch though. it looked brand new but I already had the new one so I went ahead and got the flywheel re-surfaced & put a new OEM clutch + pressure plate in. I also, unfortunately, made a very big mistake. when I put the timing covers back on, I thought both the longer bolts were the same size. they are not. I ended up putting the longer bolt in the lower hole & cracked the oil pump housing from tightening it down w/o thinking about it. I didn't find out until I had the engine installed & had a massive oil leak but only when I turned the car. I had to then pull the engine out again because I couldn't get the upper oil pan out from under the flywheel. I also found out I had a huge groove in my crankshaft from the front crank seal, so I installed a speed sleeve to avoid a leak with the new oil pump housing / seal.

Now, for the recent & fun stuff...

I've been looking for a supercharger kit pretty much since I got my new job since I could now afford to get one, many years too late to get a new one, and finally scored one from a member of the forum! I won't name them for their privacy, but they can chime in if they want. I got an NGM Sniper stage 2 w/ a tuned ECU and a 70mm BBTB! The ECU was setup for an immobilizer but @chase206 was able to disable that for me, which is absolutely awesome! He's been a huge help in my journey to F/I & has been giving me tons of useful info & advice.

Unfortunately, The kit arrived with a lot of damage, with the worst part being the BBTB having it's throttle blade shaft being snapped in half. I was able to weld it back together, but it's sketchy at best.

• The bypass valve was snapped off the bracket, I was able to re-attach it.
• The FMIC fan was pretty much wrecked
• The upper intake manifold got pretty badly damaged on the gasket surface but it was repairable.
• The water pump connector was completely corroded to hell & had to be replaced. I was able to use an EV1 connector & clean up the water pump to get it going again. I don't think it worked in a very long time based on the corrosion.
• The upper intake manifold leaks water from the intercooler into the intake.
• The upper intake -12AN fitting was stripped out & leaked.

I didn't like the NGM icetank blocking over half the radiator so I decided not to use it & mount a smaller tank near the strut tower for now. I'll probably try to sell it to someone who wants it, as I'm planning to put a better ice tank where the battery sits & don't plan to ever use the NGM icetank. I welded a new -12AN fitting to the end of the old one, but that ended up being a wast of time as the intake itself leaks.

The 2.8" pulley that came with the kit didn't work at all, it would hit the end of the snout before the nut was tight & locked up the supercharger so I had to get a new pulley to replace it. I ended up getting a 2.7" pulley from pulleyboys it's it's been fine, only problem is that none of the pulleys really seem to fit right. only the 3.4" pulley lined up with the belt drive, where all the other pulleys either pull the belt off one way or the other, depending on which way you put it on.

I also didn't like that you're suppose to cut your hood to get enough clearance for the throttle body, so I decided to modify my BBTB instead. I machined the throttle cable block until it was even with the nut & cut a new grove into it for the cruise control cable. and I really don't get who thought putting the idle wheels for the throttle cables so far below the throttle body was a good idea, but I wasn't having any of it. So, I made a little extension block to lift the idle pulleys up enough to give the cables a straight shot at the throttle block instead of making the cables to a 45 degree bend that wasn't necessary.

Next thing I did was finally do some of the face lifts i wanted to do for years. I installed the face lifted front bumper, tail lights, & gills. I also re-painted the rear spoiler, bumper, & mirrors. I'm going to have to paint the whole car at some point because the clear coat is beginning to fail on the roof and hood, it's going to start flaking off sometime soon.

Last thing I did was adapt my manual HVAC controls to the automatic ones. This was far less painful than I thought it would have been, it was mostly a matter of connecting wire X to wire Y as all the actuators & sensors are the same. The engine-side harness even has the necessary wires run for the ambient and AQS sensors. You definitely need a parts car because you won't find sensors like the light-load sensor anywhere, but it's simple enough to run new cables for the additional sensors once you have them. The most difficult part was getting the blower motor transistor to work but even that was pretty much just a matter of fallowing the wiring diagram.

http://imgur.com/a/lQboxXV

 

[RandomIdoit]

Nice Find! One of my fav colors for the tibs...

 

[The_Evenger]

So, I've been up to a bit lately.

I got my NGM upper intake manifold repaired by a local shop that generally makes things such as roll cages. They cut the intake manifold apart & welded in a new intercooler core. I haven't been able to test it yet as I'm having the supercharger rebuilt but they did at least fill it with water to make sure it's not leaking. I also had them change the -10AN fitting to a -12, so I'm really excited to see how it performs. I also found some really cheap hose that's anti kink reinforced to use for the intercooler hoses at only .79C a foot! It's not really made for this application, but I'm happy to give it a chance given just how cheap it is.

http://imgur.com/a/SRo0Geo

Another thing I found was an Icebox for a Mustang, specifically the supercharged cobra variety. It's designed to go in place of the battery, and it almost drops in since the mustang has a very similar battery to ours. It is just a hair too wide for our battery box, so a little persuasion is needed to make it fit, but I'm otherwise happy with it's fitment. This will allow me to really up the general water capacity of the intercooler & clean up the entire intercooler setup.

I did give the intake manifold a lazy coating of black paint. It'll do for now, but I really need to do it again with some actual prep. I had to litterally shovel snow off my car just to get it inside to start installing and test fitting those parts. I also found that my oil catch can is certainly working, so that's nice. I still need to give it a better installation though. The pure weight of the snow makes the car look like it's lowered, lol.

Obviously this means the battery must be relocated, and I've decided to move it to the generic trunk location. I used a 2AWG wire as I think that'll be plenty of wire for this car. I ran it across the passenger side & crossed it over to the driver side through the windshield wiper linkage area to keep the cable hidden. I used plenty of zip ties to keep it out of the way of the linkages, but it didn't want to fall into them even without the zip ties so I'm not too concerned even if they do break with age.

I welded a tab to the battery box to hold a battery stud for the OEM cables to mount to, then I mounted the battery cable from the back to that stud to power up everything as normal. The car started as normal with this setup, no slow crank or noticeable affects, everything acts normally. I did however add a 150A circuit breaker near the battery just in case it rubs through on something, this did have the effect of making my boost gauge switch back to the default color when cranking though. The glowshift gauges I'm using has been known for losing the color memory during cranking, only needing to drop to around 11.4V to reset, but this would still be annoying so I may have to address this if it becomes a reoccurring theme. I'll also have to see how it does when the car is truly cold & not sitting in a 60°F garage.

http://imgur.com/a/TqSULTY

I'm still waiting on some parts, such as adapter fittings and the actual battery tray, so I couldn't get everything done that I wanted to, but at least I'm getting closer to having it back on the road.

 

[The_Evenger]

I finalized my water tank and battery relocation today.

I bought a nice bracket to hold the water pump & made another bracket to mount that bracket to the body using an existing bolt hole. The location has it right in front of the drivers wheel, next to the CAI filter. This location gives the pressure hose a nice curve going over top of the ice tank & to the intake intercooler. I also added a bracket to hold the pressure hose to the top of the ice tank to hopefully keep it from moving around too much. I also modified the original battery + post cover to fit the positive stud I mounted to the back of the battery box.

My only concern with this setup is potential heat soak from the radiator hoses right next to the ice tank & general heat from the engine bay, but I'm going to do some testing to see just how bad it is. I bought some 5 meter long thermal couples I can plug into my multi meter so I can put them in the ice tank & monitor the temperature while I'm driving.

I mounted the battery tray by welding 4 nuts to the floor of the trunk, then screwed in some threaded rod to act like studs in order to make it easy to remove the carpet in case I'd have to do that in the future. then I just used nuts to act as the "floor" of the rod & hold the battery tray slightly off the carpet. I welded some super overkill steel to the ends of the battery box to be used as the mounts for it, all I can say is it's likely more solidly mounted now than it was from the factory.

The only thing I'm torn on is the floor mat. On one hand, I could just cut it around the battery box & call it a day. But on the other hand, these floor mats are really not easy to find if you want one, so I would kinda feel bad cutting a giant piece of it off. I could put holes in it for the battery studs, but then I wont be able to remove it without removing the battery tray, which kind of defeats the purpose of a floor mat imo.