The Lawn Dart

[davej]

mount a couple of a steel bars or a plate between the studs and go from there. easy to take with you when you leave.

try to get a controller cable long enough you can hide upstairs when you operate it

[Deceus]

mount a couple of a steel bars or a plate between the studs and go from there. easy to take with you when you leave.

try to get a controller cable long enough you can hide upstairs when you operate it

Considering my lease says I'm not even allowed to use nails to hang up pictures, I'm sure they wouldn't be too happy about a half dozen lag bolts in the wall lol. I'd be more inclined to say "fuck em" if there weren't holding $1,300 as leverage.

[D_Eclipse9916]

Concrete anchors. Available at any Home Depot. I do a lot more work on non running cars and I have a hill but it's paid for itself many a time over.


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[Deceus]

Currently trying to talk myself out of picking up my motor and just breaking it in here this weekend. I bought a truck from Jeff yesterday and might as well make good use of it. The main thing I'm worried about is I have no idea how the hell he wired this thing up. It already started smoking pretty bad once but that just happened to be a bit of oil on the ballast resistor. Also clueless on how to adjust timing but I'm sure that knowledge is just a Youtube video away. Decisions, decisions ....

[Jeff]

I can come down one evening next week and we can probably get her running. Lets see some pics of that truck!!

[Deceus]

I can come down one evening next week and we can probably get her running. Lets see some pics of that truck!!

I was going to text you later asking if you'd be able to lend a hand. I think my biggest concern other than burning my apartment down is getting a noise complaint from running the motor at 2500+ for 20 minutes for the break-in. I suppose it is mobile so that's a potentially easy problem to solve. Just needs a battery and gas can really.

EDIT: I think I've only taken one pic of the truck actually but I did share it in the chat. I'll post it here too.



I upgraded my boat to a bigger boat. Still have the Challenger for now until I get it prepped and find a buyer. This was just about everything I wanted. Older truck with low miles, V8, 4x4 and a long bed. Mostly just going to use it to tow the Dart for out-of-state shows and any event i feel like I might break something. Still haven't worked out how I'm going to store a trailer but that's a problem for another day. The GF likes this better than the Lancer and I like driving the Lancer more than driving a big ass truck so she'll probably drive it more than I will.

[*insertusernamehere*]

What does she dislike about the lancer?

[Deceus]

What does she dislike about the lancer?

Nothing really, she just used to drive an F-150 and kinda missed it when she had to give it up and drive a beat up Caliber. The Lancer has been great, can't wait to autocross it on some Summer tires.

[Jake]

To be fair, driving a Caliber is one of the ultimate forms of punishment.

[Deceus]

To be fair, driving a Caliber is one of the ultimate forms of punishment.

Reminds me of this Reddit thread:

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It's full of gold like: "I wanted a convertible that looked like a bathtub on wheels when the top was down"

[*insertusernamehere*]

Oh my god I was driven in a caliber once. I ejecto seato'd myseld.

[Deceus]

Didn't get much done this weekend, shame me. I did do some tool shopping and mocked up the grill and gas pedal. The interior is clear of parts once again but they're now laying all over my powerlifting platform. I haven't been using it but I need to get on getting them back on the car. Can't really do much until I get the trim fasteners I left behind at my dad's. I think my plan is to just leave here Thursday night, work from my parent's Friday and get everything prepped that night. Hopefully Saturday will be nothing more than a quick break-in/tune and drive back here to start the real work of getting this thing together.







Was really hesitant to drop $400 on these tools but the "cheap" Ryobi kit was only going to save me like $150. The driver definitely puts out a good bit of power for something so small. Not really happy the angle grinder was $80 more than the alternative but the batteries and charger are painful enough as it is without having to buy 2 different sets. Will probably pickup some more when the Father's day sales hit if they're good.

[Deceus]

Spent the weekend working on the motor. Was hoping to fire it up without much issue on Saturday but that didn't happen. The fuel pump was bad for some reason but that was an $18 fix. Burned up a few wires in the process of figuring that out. Never could get it to fire even though the spark plugs were getting spark and the cylinders were getting gas in em. Thing is: it wasn't even trying. There was 0 detonation going on in any of the cylinders and we couldn't think of anything that would be so off. We worked til about 7 and then gave up for the day. I decided I was just gonna take the motor anyways. I got a quote from a shop off 33 to take a look and it was only $100-200 but Jeff said "Fuck that, bring it over in that truck you just bought".

So Sunday I bring it to Jeff's garage. First thing we noticed was the starter was moving at like half speed due to a redundant starter solenoid and shitty jumper cable wires. After some really weird behavior from the wiring and few runaways we got things fairly sorted out. I say we but really I know fuck-all about that tangled mess of wiring on the stand at the moment, so Jeff is really saving my ass here. Despite this we're still not getting shit. It's been in the back of my mind the whole time but I didn't wanna consider it a possibility. But something confirms what I've been thinking since Saturday evening: there's air coming OUT of the carb while it's cranking. The few times I've seen gas fly out of it, I just blamed it on the choke plate. Nah my camshaft timing is definitely off. We place a grocery bag over it and cranked. It didn't even try to suck it in. Not sure how, but that's definitely it and solves all the mysteries. Even though it had only been 2 hours or so with that news I was done for the weekend.

The good news is it's not leaking anything anymore. The $80 water neck not only looks sexy but I had 0 issue getting it to seal. I pulled the oil filter plate as well and replaced it with a billet aluminum piece with an O-ring seal to replace the shitty paper one just in case that shit was gonna leak under pressure. Jeff also let me keep the engine there. I wasn't sure how I was going to fit it in the garage but now I don't really have to worry about that.

Loading it was pretty scary. Had to get it up pretty high and it was basically sitting at the top of a 45 degree incline. Only had one oh shit moment but I was able to stop it before it could get any momentum.


RIP my garage and gym space

[Deceus]

So the current plan is to tear off the pulley kit ... again. Then I should just need to pull the timing cover and adjust the sprockets. I want to pull the valve covers as well since there was a pretty loud ticking noise coming from there everytime we finished cranking on it pretty good. I'm debating throwing in a gear drive but I don't think it'll be worth the money. With a double roller chain and tensioner on this thing, the only reason to get one would be to make people think it's supercharged when it's really not.

[Jeff]

Simple answer...supercharge it!

[Deceus]

Simple answer...supercharge it!

It's on the radar. My compression is too high for starters I believe. I'd be looking at 13.4:1 @ 6psi if I have 9.5:1 like I think I do. Some aluminum 360 heads might solve that. Would still probably need different pistons. But I also really don't want anything coming out of the hood but really want a small roots blower for the bottom end power. Just too many issues and not enough need. Definitely going with a Whipple and a Gen 3 hemi at some point down the road when I feel like creating a massive money pit again.



so much want

[Deceus]

Finally found some time and motivation on a weeknight t to work on the car. My place is going to start showing my apartment since I'm not renewing so i figured it was probably a good idea to get some of my parts off the floor and on the car. I started with the door panels and then moved to the interior around the back seat.









Honestly I'm already kind of regretting putting in the rear seat. I should just go full race car and leave out the trim and rear seat. You might not be able to tell from the pics but it just looks shitty. It came from a car that sat in a field for probably a decade. I cleaned it up and used a spray can vinyl dye and then it sat in a dusty attic for 2 years. The dye scratches super easy and everything is already marked up pretty bad and the plastic is basically crumbling at this point.

I suppose it'll stay for now but I'll likely just tear everything out when I put in a rollbar and just spray paint everything black. The alternative is paying a few thousand to have it done "right". Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have a nice custom done interior but with the giant rust bubbles and hacked up floor panels there's no real reason to invest anything in the actual body of this car. I plan on waiting for a decent shell to come up for sale since a lot of guys start with body work and primer, only to realize they're way in over their head financially. That's way down the road though, I think next up is fixing the fender extensions. Might try to snag a pair of the ABS ones since they had bolts and not shitty pot metal studs.

[Goodspeed]

Yeah, I mean, what's the overall motif that you're going for with this car again? More of a pro touring build with all the creature comforts, or more of a auto-x, trans-am inspired "race" car look?

I think a color matching paint job in green to the interior, with a black roll bar & modern race seats would look pretty rad.

Like the Kiwi Kuda, but maybe a bit more polished/put together.

[Deceus]

Yeah, I mean, what's the overall motif that you're going for with this car again? More of a pro touring build with all the creature comforts, or more of a auto-x, trans-am inspired "race" car look?

I think a color matching paint job in green to the interior, with a black roll bar & modern race seats would look pretty rad.

Like the Kiwi Kuda, but maybe a bit more polished/put together.

Yeah I've changed my mind too many damn times. Definitely want something a little more put together than that but not far from it.What I have in mind is something similar but with carpet and a dash. Not a fan of being baked alive by my headers. Been on the fence about losing the rear seat for a roll bar but really I don't think I'd have any real use for it. We'll see, I'll probably take a break from messing with it for a few months while everything is breaking in. Should give me time to get an idea of how I want to button everything up.

[Deceus]

Put a lot of work into the motor at Jeff's shop Friday night and most of Saturday. The cam timing was off because the crank sprocket was on the wrong key way. Comp cams timing chains come with 3 different settings: stock, retarded and advanced. They're marked with a circle, square and triangle. Can't remember who put the thing on but I was under the impression they knew what they were doing. I guess that's my fault for not reading up on it and double checking.



Had to remove everything but the heads and rotating assembly but it should be good now. The downside is I managed to get a bit of water in my break-in oil and tear my oil pan gasket. So I'm out $52 on the oil and $30 on a nice crush-proof oil pan gasket. Had to use a shitty cork gasket since I had to rely on what the parts store had available. Sucked leaving it pretty much ready for round 2 but it was 11 when I was finishing everything up. Hopefully we get a chance to take a crack at it before Friday since a friend and his wife will be coming down to do some hiking and I'll be acting as their tour guide and then I'll be back on baby-sitting duty from 5-9 during the week after that.