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What car projects would you tackle in quarantine?

53K views 670 replies 120 participants last post by  bronson75 
#1 ·
With all the doom and gloom out there, perhaps a some uplifting car/garage projects while at home for the next couple weeks.

Since big events have been canceled, did another tech night with some of the local car guys with some beers and putting a new exhaust on a buddies 996tt. With shows and major events looking very sparse this year, figure might as well enjoy some time with friends. Of course a couple issues popped up on the 996tt with the exhaust install. While looking things over the FVD header had a weld crack, which we will have to deal with at the next hang out.





Why OEM is the best



Stay safe folks!
 
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#67 · (Edited)
I bought front brakes (rotors, pads, hardware) for my 2014 Escape last fall. Inner pad low. 70,000 miles on the front pads. Decided I could get through the winter.

Need to get a set of A/S tires for my stock, summer rims and take off the snows soon. Will do the brakes at that time.

Just deciding which tires to get.

Also need to get the Moke inspected. Never got it inspected in 2019, and the hack garage in 2018 didn't know how to find it in the computer even thought I kept telling them to just scan the inspection sticker. :banghead:
 
#76 ·
I need to clean up and paint the another wall of my garage first before tackling new projects, although most of that will be taking a back seat to remodeling the house.

I noticed Costco had the QuickJack on sale (down to $1,100) but until there's light at the end of this coronavirus tunnel, big purchases like that don't seem wise. Then again I noticed it's back-ordered so clearly not everyone shares that mindset. :laugh:

But I'm definitely getting one. I wanna flush the Cayman's brake fluid and that (among other things) is gonna be much simpler now.
 
#78 ·
I need to clean up and paint the another wall of my garage first before tackling new projects, although most of that will be taking a back seat to remodeling the house.

I noticed Costco had the QuickJack on sale (down to $1,100) but until there's light at the end of this coronavirus tunnel, big purchases like that don't seem wise. Then again I noticed it's back-ordered so clearly not everyone shares that mindset. [emoji23]

But I'm definitely getting one. I wanna flush the Cayman's brake fluid and that (among other things) is gonna be much simpler now.
[emoji106] love mine.
 
#79 ·
I just installed a receiver hitch on my daily driver and the harness will be here Wednesday, that shouldn’t kill too much time. The transmission fluid needs changing but there’s no plug so the pan has to drop. I guess I could stretch that out to 1/2 day and make it a 6 pack job. It also needs a good detail but the pollen will have to subside before that happens.
 
#80 · (Edited)
Well, we aren't in any quarantine situation... yet. Still, last night after work I removed Mike's FiTech system from my Grand Prix and re-installed my own.



With that out of the way, Sunday we plan to bring Mike's C4 to my place and start pulling the engine. He is undecided about how we will configure the replacement engine's induction system. Will we keep the TPI setup? Will we install some Vortec heads and switch to his FiTech instead? Or maybe he'll dump the entire notion of fuel injection and drop back to a carburetor.

I guess we'll wait and see what we find when we open up the current engine.
 
#83 ·
I've completely rehabbed the front end of my 91 911.

Replaced the following items:
OE tie rods replaced with RSR solid inners and outers
New sway bar endlinks
stiffer control arm bushings
Stiffer steering rack bushings and new brace
Air filer
Transmission oil change, waiting on the oil to arrive via Amazon.

Hoping to get the car aligned on Monday and after that I'll change the engine oil, replace fan belts and likely order/change worn motor mounts to semi solids.

Phew.
It is a lot, but loving getting the sweat equity into this thing. Plus saving hundreds (if not a bit more than a thousand in porsche shop time)
 
#91 ·
Rebuilt '89 E30 antenna today. Success, goes up and down with radio power.

Been less productive than expected. Still working, relieving wife in taking care of kid when I get off. Plus battling cold ( I don't think covid, no fever).
 
#94 ·
Knocked out a paint correction and ceramic coating on the Rabbit the past few evenings and then wrapped up the track day prep on the Abarth. It's looking like the April event at Pocono is likely canceled but at least the car is ready for fun at some point.

Still have quite a bit of interior work to do on the Rabbit, removing all the old headliner foam from the B/C pillars is proving to be an absolute nightmare. At least the old headliner fabric and foam came off the backer board without issue.



 
#95 ·
Rabbit looks great!
 
#99 ·
Parts came for the 930. These are some beefy shocks.

Running out of garage space, one. Car stored for the winter on the 4-Post lift with another beneath it.

Set of Quick Jacks help with that in the smaller garage.





 
#100 ·
Set of Quick Jacks help with that in the smaller garage.
What's going on with the extra wood/beam, puck, and jack stands? Additional insurance or did you just use the QJ to lift it on the jack stands for long term storage?

I guess most people don't use a QJ to hold up a car indefinitely but I don't see why they couldn't.
 
#101 ·
Took the time to do a bunch of minor work on the fleet;
- new low dust brake pads front/rear on the 14 GT
- new General GMAX RS 255/40R19 & 285/35R19 going on the 14 GT today
- Oil changes on both 14 GT and the GT350
- removed and painted both of the battery tie down brackets on the F350 (common issue with rusting) seeing as they are the on part on the truck with rust
- Cleaned the interior of the F350 and the Explorer, washed down the engine bay and wheel wells too
- did tons of odds and ends on the chassis and body of the 37 coupe, hoping to get the body back on the chassis in the coming weeks

Lefts to be done this week/weekend;
- Jack bars on the GT350
- Rancho 9000 shocks on the F350 with new steering stabilizer
- brake flush on the 14 GT
- Coolant flush on the 14 GT

Alex
 
#102 ·
I am getting my wife's 06 GTI back on the road after sitting dead since Mar 2016.

2 of the 3 bolts for the motor mount to motor adapter broke in the block and dropped the motor a few inches. This cracked the timing covers, broke the lower charge pipe off its mount, dinged up a couple timing belt rollers, and severed the coolant return from the turbo. At the time this all happened we were quoted more to repair the car than it was worth to us so we towed it home and parked it. Time went on, a new vehicle was purchased and the GTI sat in the driveway. On new years day I made a drunken resolution to get the GTI running for her birthday on 5/16 by going as cheap as possible with used parts and OE equivalent new parts.

Progress so far:
-Tow from my house to a friend's garage 3/7
-Extract broken bolts from block - Done and embarrassingly easy (should have done this a long time ago) 3/7
-Reinstall all mounts and turn motor over to verify it's still in time - Done 3/7
-Remove all mounts and perform timing belt service and replace water pump - Went well until I broke the new timing belt tensioner during reinstall :banghead: 3/22

Still need to order/install following parts:
-Charge pipe to intercooler hose 1K0 145 832 E
-New timing belt tensioner ~$44 on order from Amazon and finish the timing belt service
-Replace turbo coolant return line
-Replace thermostat
-Fix damaged cooling fan wiring
-Install new serp belt and tensioner after t-belt service
-Set of cheap tires ~$450
-Pads and rotors at all corners ~$400
-Battery ~$125

I should be able to get the car driving as long as MD does not go on confinement lockdown, Amazon and shippers stay open, and I don't get sick.

I also need to do replace the spark plugs, clock spring, pads, rotors, and tire rotation on my daily 2013 Wrangler.
 
#103 ·
I am getting my wife's 06 GTI back on the road after sitting dead since Mar 2016.
2 of the 3 bolts for the motor mount to motor adapter broke in the block and dropped the motor a few inches. This cracked the timing covers, broke the lower charge pipe off its mount, dinged up a couple timing belt rollers, and severed the coolant return from the turbo.
:eek: Did that happen while it was being driven or was that a case of a simple repair turning into a disaster?
 
#104 ·
This happened while driving under 45mph on surface streets, fortunately not on the highway. The driver side transmission and lower dogbone mount kept the motor from falling further so nothing fell all the way to the ground.
I have no idea on the actual cause of the failure, we had the timing belt replaced 2 years prior to the failure and maybe some of the motor mount bolts were over/under torqued.
 
#116 ·
:eek::eek::eek: I bet that made a racket when it went!

Get your parts ordered, folks. I got this from Wolfsburg West, which is one of my go-to supply houses.

They're in California, which is on full lockdown, but that's coming most places and while some may be able to remain open, some will not.

Personally I have enough parts to keep me busy with various jobs if I get through the garage cleaning and home fix-it list, so I'm good. I might even get my trans mounts and rear suspension bushings replaced, and that's a fairly big job!
I got that, too. Luckily, I already have almost all of the parts I need to finish my VR6 rebuild.

Sunroofs are great, until they stop working. Nice work!
I still need to fix the sunroof in the Audi... it's not adjusted correctly. I haven't opened it since I bought the car last year. :laugh:

That Corvette needs its own thread!
Amen to that!
 
#105 ·
Get your parts ordered, folks. I got this from Wolfsburg West, which is one of my go-to supply houses.

Wolfsburg West home page said:
Updated 7:25 PM PST 3/19/20
Hello Wolfsburg West Customers and Friends.

Amid ongoing concerns about the Corona virus (COVID-19) and following the governor's guidance to avoid or slow the spread of the disease, we will close effective Friday, March 20, 2020. Due to the complexity and fluidity of the situation, a reopen date is TBD.

We are turning off the shopping cart for the time being. Please use our Wish-list function to keep track of items that you may want to order when we return to business.

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we continue to closely monitor the situation and evaluate additional measures to support our customers, community and employees.


Wolfsburg West
:(

They're in California, which is on full lockdown, but that's coming most places and while some may be able to remain open, some will not.

Personally I have enough parts to keep me busy with various jobs if I get through the garage cleaning and home fix-it list, so I'm good. I might even get my trans mounts and rear suspension bushings replaced, and that's a fairly big job!
 
#106 · (Edited)
True to our word, yesterday Mike trailered his 1987 C4 to my place so we could get started on the engine swap. I had to play musical cars, shuffling my fleet around my property to free up garage space... but, in the end, there was plenty of room. We put the nose on jack stands, removed the front wheels, and set to work.



We quickly learned something about the C4 Vette layout. The engine bay is tiny. Seriously, it has outer walls barely wider than the engine itself. But due to the shape of the cutouts for the front tires, with the wheels off you have unprecedented access to the engine bay. Once you step around the brake rotor you are standing directly over the engine--it is fantastic.





Mike decided he wanted to leave the transmission in the car, so we left the rear trans mount attached and supported the front of it with a floor jack. Eventually, everything was disconnected except for the motor mounts. This was the time to attach my engine tilter and hoist, but the tilter's chains were just barely too short to fit over/around the TPI plenum. Hmm. I guess we'll just remove the plenum now.



Perfect! Now I was able to hook up the hoist and we could remove the engine mount bolts.



After a few more checks to discover any connections we may have overlooked, it was time to lift. A couple minutes later, it was out. Success!



You may or may not have noticed me mention it on the last page of this thread, but the reason for this entire operation was a somewhat quiet rod knock noise coming from the bottom end. No big deal; Mike had another roller cam block on hand so he simple rebuilt that bottom end to swap into the Vette. The only dilemma was, how would he reassemble the induction system on the new engine? If he were to retain the TPI setup, he would need to swap the Vette's heads onto his new engine. On the other hand, Mike has a few sets of Vortec heads which will perform significantly better than the TPI system... but they require a different intake manifold, which means he'd need to ditch that and swap to FiTech EFI to use them. As a third possibility, he could use the Vortec heads and drop to a carburetor for simplicity's sake... but I advised him against this since the car is already set up for a high pressure EFI fuel system so why not use it and go FiTech? Decisions, decisions. Mike had been debating this in his mind for days, and even as we tore into the car he still hadn't made a final decision.

With the engine out, we put it on a stand. Immediately, Mike noticed the cast "logo" on the ends of the heads. Sadly, he recognized it as being the same as the heads he had pulled from a smog-era TBI engine in our past. To test his theory, he pulled a magnet from his pocket and tried to stick it to one of the heads. <tink!> Mike and I looked at each other and simultaneously said, "that's not supposed to happen." You see, for 1987 Chevy upgraded the Vette to aluminum heads. Clearly, these are not the factory original heads for this car. We ran the part number, and sure enough they are smog TBI heads we suspected. These heads are known as the worst, least-performing ones Chevy ever bolted to a small block, and are generally considered total junk.

Well, that made Mike's decision easy. Bye bye, TPI.

But that also got us to wondering. Why would you do a head swap to this car and use those heads? What if the bottom end was swapped along with them? We removed the rest of the intake manifold to get a peek at the lifter valley. The 1987 Corvette use a roller camshaft, but when we lifted the lower manifold we were greeted by a set of plain old slider lifters. This entire engine (known as the L05) came from some ~ 1990 pickup truck (all 180 HP of it) and someone hogged out the bolt holes on the Vette's TPI intake manifold to make it fit the engine. What utter crap.

We flipped the engine over to see if we could find the rod bearing that was making noise. As we grabbed one rod cap after another, we were at this point not entirely surprised to learn that every one of them wiggled just a tiny bit. It looks like someone assembled this bottom end with bearings that didn't match the tolerance of the parts. Looking at how things were kludged together, it kinda made sense.

Long story short, we were glad to get that pathetic excuse for a rebuilt engine out of the car.
 
#110 ·
Long story short, we were glad to get that pathetic excuse for a rebuilt engine out of the car.
These are the discoveries that really reinforce big decisions like pulling an engine. :thumbup:

You guys are gonna be saying "yeah it's a good thing we did that" for months. :laugh:

I finally made it this far:

Sunroofs are great, until they stop working. Nice work!
 
#109 ·
So long as I can get parts to the house..... The Brick (my Passat) really needs a right diff output seal.

So long as they make it to my house (tracking shows that the package was handed off to USPS on Saturday)..... Wilda (the Scirocco) will get rear shoulder belts (courtesy of a dead Scirocco in England.)
 
#115 ·
Still working on my timing chain replacement on my 22RE. I'm stretching the project out as long as possible so I have something to do, and also because I haven't gotten all my parts (still waiting on a front main seal). Timing chain, sprockets and tensioner/guides are all in. I also put the timing chain cover back on and am praying it won't leak when I'm done with this project.



Tomorrow I will be putting the water pump and thermostat in. Oil pan will go on Wednesday, and hopefully Thursday I will have the front main seal to get everything done.
 
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