Mazda Tribute..CEL

Mar 25 2012 wes Editorial No Comments

So one of our great Porsche customers bought his son this little Mazda a while back.  Lately is has a stumble off idle and a CEL.  Code shows a failure of bank 2 primary coil.  Only trouble is that this is a v6 COP car, so there are 3 coils on that bank.  After some searching we find a break inside the insulation of one of the wires just beyond the ECU connector. After cutting back the insulation to reveal …

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Mar 23 2012 wes 356 No Comments

My biggest pet peeve when doing carbs is trying to do them quick, cheap, and fast.  We are doing these right.  First thing is we must have the jets to tune with.  The screws are for tweaks, not major changes.  You need a healthy motor.  Valves must be set. Timing/dwell must be set. Linkages were a mess here, bent with boogered threads.  Obviously linkage had been binding.  Your leg will be much stronger than these little rods so check for …

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Went after the leaking rear shocks on this 911SC today. The left rear was completely blown out and puking oil everywhere, so it needed to be replaced. I also found the air intake boot torn, so we will be replacing that while we are in there. Top nut of the shock is accessed behind the engine. The lower shock bolts on this car were incredibly seized up, but a big enough breaker bar and some heat took care of that. …

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Got the new parts in for the little white Boxster today so I went about installing the new cables and transmissions. The updated kit. The early Boxsters used weak transmissions for the top mechanism, which Porsche later updated to beefier units. The old units are no longer available, so updating is the way to go rather than buying a used unit that will fail eventually. Old transmission to come out. New transmission installed. Then there is a lot of measuring …

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Had this Pepper come in this week for a full brake job. At about 70k miles, pads and rotors were pretty well shot. Wes pulling apart the front caliper/rotor assembly. Pads had triggered the light and the rotors were below the spec for thickness. One thing people tend to ignore when doing these brake jobs is to clean up the pad retaining hardware. Over time the brake dust and rust build up, and can cause the pads to hang up …

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This little 964 came in the other day to have some oil leaks repaired. While it is a fairly low mileage car, the rubber seals will still go bad with age and start to leak. This one had it bad. Timing chain gaskets, valve cover gaskets, but the big one was the oil pressure sending housing (thermostat housing on the older 911s), and the breather plate gasket. While you can get to the rear gaskets with a partial drop and …

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We’ve seen this car via a PPI before, but now it was time to get that 23 year old distributor belt taken care of before it broke. There were no records of it ever being replaced, so we decided to get it done. Up and ready to go. Now you see it…. Now you don’t 🙂 After removing the wires, caps, and rotors, out comes the distributor. I thought it might show up a little better in the picture, but …

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KC Auto Show 2012

Sunday we made our annual trek over to the KC autoshow to check out the new releases 😉 We got there early Sunday morning to beat the crowds. Jim immediately found himself a new Fiesta. mmmmmmmm cool. The Porsche booth. Nothing we haven’t seen before 😉 Mini cooper gets another model. Pretty cool! Audi S5 of course draws my attention. And an R8. Love the interior! An old Volvo 1800. Pretty neat little car. And Fiat was of course there …

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Dragon Revival

As I have time, I have been ticking away here and there on this project. Slowwwwly. Pan on, motor mounts on, and crossmember installed. In preparation for the engine, the engine bay needed some paint. The dash. And the rollbar. For now the rest of the cage is removed. The interior is primed and ready for white paint.

Boxster Repair

Had this Boxster come in this afternoon for a mechanical top failure. Pretty common in the early boxsters, as the transmission and/or cables will fail, causing the top to not raise correctly or evenly. If you force it, you can cause serious damage to the mounting points of the top. It also had a check engine light and the low washer fluid light was on even though it was full. Curses….mice! To the right of the white tag you can …

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