The Lawn Dart

[Deceus]

Sorry about the neighbors, man. Good thing you can't hear them complaining over all of that America pouring out the exhaust.

Yeah, hopefully for their sake it's running when they decide to throw the next fit because that's all I'm going to do.

[ScottyB]

i hate oversensitive neighbors but trust me, when i had an infant in the house that HAD to sleep there's a definite line of what amount of noise i was willing to tolerate as "normal" (although that was an HOA neighborhood). it doesn't sound like they're anything more than just annoyed that you're disrupting their special little world though. might be worth just idling down the road once you get moving to keep them from starting to call the cops on you for noise violations.

[Jake]

i hate oversensitive neighbors but trust me, when i had an infant in the house that HAD to sleep there's a definite line of what amount of noise i was willing to tolerate as "normal" (although that was an HOA neighborhood).  

Ohh man. I got home from Summit a few weekends ago and was unloading my trailer in my apartment complex. I got the car unloaded (and it's actually fairly quiet, has a muffler, etc) and am about to head out to park the trailer when I hear this "HEY!" I look up and some guy is hanging out his 4th-floor window and starts absolutely screaming at me about how I just woke up his sleeping baby. Keep in mind this was at 6:45 PM on a Sunday and the loudest noise was unhooking the straps as they clang against the trailer for a second.

I apologized because I know newborns sleep approximately never and he was probably just exhausted, but like... he lives in a complex of 5-6 story buildings with neighbors of all ages and interests packed on top of each other. Noise happens, especially on a weekend afternoon. I just said I was sorry and left, but my neighbor was also outside (who thinks the racecar is cool AF) and apparently tore him a new one and then reported him to the leasing office.

[ScottyB]

I apologized because I know newborns sleep approximately never and he was probably just exhausted, but like... he lives in a complex of 5-6 story buildings with neighbors of all ages and interests packed on top of each other. Noise happens, especially on a weekend afternoon. I just said I was sorry and left, but my neighbor was also outside (who thinks the racecar is cool AF) and apparently tore him a new one and then reported him to the leasing office.

yeah i hate being "That Guy", because noise is just a fact of life, and I almost didn't even want to mention that i get like that, but my threshold is like...kids riding 2-stroke dirtbikes up and down the street or trying to have a stereo bass-off in the driveway at like 8pm on a Monday.  i get that people do stuff during the day, and sometimes noise happens.  totally cool.

90% odds that guy is on 3 hours of sleep and would probably murder his phone if it rang too loud.

[Deceus]

There's a set of train tracks, a fire station, car wash with a ridiculously loud air dryer and 2 lane highway full of semis all within half a mile of this place. Not to mention the couple of bikes and a dickhead with a Mercedes convertible that flies out of the neighborhood pushing 40. I'm not sure what this lady was smoking in the 70s that's got her thinking she can come over and single me out but like I said: heaven help her especially if I've been elbow deep in my exhaust fucking with my starter.

[Senor_Taylor]

i hate oversensitive neighbors but trust me, when i had an infant in the house that HAD to sleep there's a definite line of what amount of noise i was willing to tolerate as "normal" (although that was an HOA neighborhood).  

Ohh man. I got home from Summit a few weekends ago and was unloading my trailer in my apartment complex. I got the car unloaded (and it's actually fairly quiet, has a muffler, etc) and am about to head out to park the trailer when I hear this "HEY!" I look up and some guy is hanging out his 4th-floor window and starts absolutely screaming at me about how I just woke up his sleeping baby. Keep in mind this was at 6:45 PM on a Sunday and the loudest noise was unhooking the straps as they clang against the trailer for a second.

I apologized because I know newborns sleep approximately never and he was probably just exhausted, but like... he lives in a complex of 5-6 story buildings with neighbors of all ages and interests packed on top of each other. Noise happens, especially on a weekend afternoon. I just said I was sorry and left, but my neighbor was also outside (who thinks the racecar is cool AF) and apparently tore him a new one and then reported him to the leasing office.

Remember that time we were hammering and impacting your E46 at like Midnight?

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[Jake]

Remember that time we were hammering and impacting your E46 at like Midnight?

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I suspect that was before this baby was born, otherwise he'd have come and strangled us with bits of the car's wiring harness.

[*insertusernamehere*]

You're all my HOA heroes, make me proud. I hope I don't ever walk myself into an HOA. I'll get myself into some serious trouble. #carguysmatter lmao

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[Deceus]

Promised myself I'd take a few days off from wrenching on the car but I'm finding it hard to stick to that with it not running again. The starter is working fine but just isn't getting a steady flow of power. That really narrows it down to just the battery cables/connections. I'm still pretty new to dealing with electrical problems but I got to brainstorming and realized right now the battery is properly grounded to the frame. This is great but the power is going to the starter/engine and it needs a solid path to the battery through that ground. There's nothing really connecting the block and frame except for the 4 K-member bolts. I need to run a cable from the starter bolt to the frame. After a bit of reading I should run a ground from the body to the frame for all the things like my instrument panel that are grounded to the body and possibly another ground from the engine to the body to be safe.

Ideally I'd just run the battery ground up to the block but I need 15-20ft of 1 gauge battery cable which I'm finding hard to get without spending a good but. I can buy a $200 kit that comes with a positive cable I won't need or just spend $140 on a 50ft reel and terminals. Going to try and take the easy way out first and hope I can just run a short cable to the frame. If I have anymore ground issues after that I'm probably just going to buy the reel.

Started planning going to manual brakes as well. Removing the booster is going to shift the location of the master cylinder quite a bit. I'm thinking of just picking up a set of 3/8 IF to -3 AN adapters and just running a short length of braided line to bridge the gap. The alternative is bending a loop or 2 into the hardlines and hoping I can get them to line up right or simply remaking them all together. None of these options really seem appealing but I guess it has to be done if I want my brakes to work properly. Can't wait to get brake fluid everywhere again ...

[Deceus]

Engine fired up without a problem once it was properly grounded. Knowing what I know now, I'm not sure how it ever started in the first place. I imagine it was grounding through the engine mounts to the K-member and then into the frame. Accidentally left the check valve unhooked when I went to move the car back into the garage and the brakes were actually pretty good. I might not have to remove the booster to go to manual brakes after all. Would just have to re-plug the intake and maybe block off the opening in the booster since the check valve won't stay in place by itself. Gonna take it for a spin around lunch to see how the brakes behave without vacuum.

[Deceus]

Well the pedal is firm but I have almost no stopping power. Even with both feet on the pedal I couldn't get them to do anything other than slowly roll to a stop. Feels like I'm at 50% tops. Manual conversion it is. I'm dreading it but in reality it shouldn't be all that difficult. The NiCopp is pretty easy to bend by hand so 2 of the 3 lines shouldn't take much work to fit. It's the short line running to the driver side fender that's going to be a pain. There's no way I can do anything useful with it.

Just gonna have to remove the lines from the portioning valve, plug it, remove the master cylinder and then the booster.

[ViPER1313]

It really sounds like you have a bad brake booster. Before you convert, go out, start the car so it pulls vacuum, push down on the brake, then cut the motor. The pedal should stay down towards the floor. If it starts to push back against your foot after 2 or 3 seconds, the booster is leaking internally.

I had a bad brake booster on my old Taurus; it pushed back against my foot hard in the test above. It also made almost no assist if you let off the pedal then reapplied quickly, which made creeping up at intersections scary as all hell.

[Deceus]

Ditched the booster and not looking back. Went pretty smoothly until I tried to get the hardlines to work. They're just too long with too much stuff in the way to get the proper tools where they need to be. No big deal I guess, time for plan B. Ordered the necessary adapters and 3 short -3AN lines to bridge the gap. Just wishing I had done this in the first place and not messed up my brakelines because they're pretty ugly now. May just replace them with some good braided lines or new hard ones in the near future.



Hopefully tomorrow I'll finally be starting, steering AND stopping.

[Deceus]

So in typical fashion I'm already considering an expensive alternative: Hydroboost.



Reading A LOT of great things about this setup and with my powering steering already running braided lines the install should be very smooth. Instead of relying on vacuum from the intake, this system taps into your power steering pump. Just about everyone that's installed one on a pro-touring car has said they won't build another brake system without one. Going to see how the brakes feel without it since I've already ordered the stuff needed to make it happen but I'm worried this setup isn't going to be very manual friendly. From what I've read going over 1" on the bore creates a pretty hard brake pedal in a manual setup and makes it difficult to brake hard without locking everything up.

[Deceus]

So it's done. It's ugly as hell but it's done.



Just have to wait for the gf to get home to properly bleed the brakes and then it'll be time to test everything. I'm positive they'll be at least 1-2 leaks with all those fittings but we'll see.

It seems this is going to be somewhat of a never-ending story because I now have a small transmission leak coming out of the front of my bellhousing. After a bit of digging it's likely that I overfilled my transmission and blew the front seal. Easy fix, hard to get to. Probably looking at around $400 to have a shop fix it. It's just a small drip so I'm just gonna run it for now and keep an eye on it. I should've been more patient adding the last few quarts but I was paranoid about driving it around with as low as the dipstick was reading.

There's also a small whine coming from the rear when I let off the gas but I don't think it'll be an issue. By some miracle there's no vibrations at all in the driveshaft so the pinion angle is good as is. Need to figure out why my swaybar isn't lining up quite right but for now it's functional and that's I care about, the bushings are just aren't flush. I will say the steering is unbelievably better with all the upgrades. I can't wait to throw on some subframe connectors, a rear sway bar, some 235/45s and get this thing on a course.

[Deceus]

Captain's log 3984: brakes are still shit. Running critically low on supplies and the crew is getting restless...

Ordered a bleeder system that'll do a reverse bleed and/or vacuum bleed. That'll at least eliminate the possibility of air being in the lines. It's too hard to get a decent bleed when I can only see 1/2 of what's going on. Hopefully trying again Sunday evening or Monday morning.

[Deceus]

So the pressure bleeder didn't do much except make a mess and verify there really isn't any air in the lines. The pedal just doesn't do shit for like 75% of it's travel. There seems to be some play in the handbrake lever and that may be the cause of the issue, I really don't know at this point. There's a million and one discussions online about this issue and none seem to be really conclusive. "Just keep bleeding" really doesn't help me at this point. The pedal does feel firm if I pull lightly on the handbrake but that's kinda of normal behavior since they're fighting for control of the back calipers. I guess I have to take it out and see how it stops with the lever pulled in a bit. I really only tested each individually so far.

I suppose I could just buy a -3 AN coupler and bypass the handbrake to see if that fixes everything. I would pull the master cylinder off again and redo the bench bleeding but I'm tired of redoing all this shit, getting brake fluid everywhere and getting the same results. Not sure why the pedal was firm with the booster on but not now. I was thinking of possibly going with a longer pushrod but I can't have the pedal sticking way out in BFE so i doubt it's that. The fact that I can't lock the rear wheels with the lever kind of points in that direction.

[Deceus]

I forgot I had a -3 AN cap laying around from the brake swap, so I got a crazy idea. I blocked off the rear brake line and went to see if improved anything. Turns out it did, quite a bit actually. So now I know it's isolated to the rear brake line/handbrake. I took the car for a few spins around the neighborhood again and it was stopping decently. I'm still not sure what 100% is supposed to feel like with manual brakes. It does take a good bit of effort to get it slow down but the pedal isn't on the floor anymore. The only thing that worries me is that I still can't seem to lock the brakes up but I was only on 2 calipers. I'm also worried there's a bit of kink in the passenger side hard line.

I at least had the confidence to give it some gas and get a feel for the engine. This thing launches pretty hard and these tires seem to be up for the challenge.

The coolant leak seems to have been resolved as well. I guess the fancy radiator hose just needed a little of the trademark cornfed muscle-fucking to cooperate. The transmission also doesn't seem to be puking anymore but I'll have to wait and see. It dripping a bit when it got hot but the real mess only came after it had a chance to sit for a while.

[Deceus]

Ran the car out of gas before I got the balls to drive to the little station around the corner from my house. Picked up some terminals I needed to hook up the speedometer while I was out and got to work. I kind of look forward to my wiring nights. Electricity seems simple compared to the rest of the build, I'm glad I took the plunge. There's just not much that can go wrong, you just follow the diagrams and make a few crimps.

Fixed the brake lights and they seem to be working fine. Somehow my turn-signals are backwards but I can just flip the switch around if the fronts are as well. They need new bulbs but the rear turn signals and brake light switch all work well. They're wired right because I can read the labels still and I checked the switch like five times before putting it in, not sure what happened there. Worse case scenario I just have to flip the connections on the switch itself, no big deal. Wired up my GPS sending unit for my speedometer and it seems to be getting power. I'll need daylight to test it out because I still haven't gotten around to ordering my dimmer switch needed to hookup the headlights. I suppose that'll be the next battle.

[ScottyB]

this is the best saga ever.

i have no idea what a relatively simple, efficient solution would be for your rear brakes but at least you've isolated it, and it wasn't your front brakes that were having the issue...wouldn't' want to find that out on the road. is the handbrake something that would affect fluid getting to the rear calipers properly or is it a separate aspect of the caliper operation?