Re: "crashing_sux"???
I'm back! A combination of events made me walk away from my truck for a while. The big two are the fact that I burned through all of my cash (and maxed out the credit card) trying to get my truck ready for the Canada nats last year and when that fell through I was burned out on my truck for a while. I also had a buddy a couple of miles away with a fast Sy (high 10's) and it was fun to go over to his place and wrench on our trucks but he recently sold his Sy (out of state) so he's no longer interested. I'm a terrible procrastinator but I don't let people down so when we'd make a plan to work on either of our trucks after work no matter how lazy I was feeling I'd get my ass over to his shop and get to work but when it's just me at home in my garage I always find something else I'd rather be doing.
Last year right before the Canada nats I was scrambling to get my truck ready for the trip after just throwing in a new tranny, engine, Vette brakes, coilover kit, and modded ecm (replacing my Accel DFI) and finally had everything working pretty well. I took a trip down to the track and was going to take a few easy runs just to make sure everything was working well. First run I only ran 15lbs of boost and ran a 12.00 which was about what I expected considering my crappy launch. When I lined up for the second run my tailights quit working so I had to leave early (turns out I can run headlights OR tailights/blinkers, but not both). On the way home the front diff locked up and I had to have the Sy towed. When I got it back from the shop that put the diff in the left front cladding was broken off and in the bed (not their fault though, it was a poor repair of a previous crack by the body shop) and when I drove home it ran like crap because there was false knock causing it to pull timing. Then I get it home and have to use ramps to get it in my driveway because the RPM coilover kit I put on there dropped the front so low that the intercooler scoop won't clear my driveway. Mike at RPM sent me spacers to get enough preload to raise the front up a bit but I haven't installed them yet since I've been disgusted with my Sy. Next I go to start it up a few days later to diagnose the false knock and it won't start, the battery is dead. I tried to charge it but it failed, the charger showed a bad cell error message. Next I pick up a new Optima Red Top, and it starts right up, but I don't have time to work on it so next weekend I go to start it and the battery is dead again, and again won't charge, saying it has a bad cell. Forgot to mention, I allready installed a new alternator thinking I had a bad alternator, seems the electrical issue is elsewhere (damn I hate electrical). At this point I threw my hands up in the air and said screw it, that was last summer.
I figure it's time to try and get it going again but I suck with electrical and don't have much cash to throw at it if it comes to that so if I can get it running easily/cheaply I'll do it, otherwise it will have to sit one more year.
Problems I know of right now that need to be fixed (seems like an endeless list).
1: The arm from the steering box (is it the idler arm?) rubs on my headers causing the steering wheel to stick when I'm turning. Yikes. The strange thing was they didn't have this problem when I took the headers off to be coated, they must have warped some in the process?
2: False knock.
3: Some sort of electrical issue killing my batteries and not allowing me to run my headlights/tailights at the same time.
4: Need to get it to the body shop to fix the left front cladding and shave my door locks, I still haven't fixed those after the truck was broken into last year and had both door locks punched out. Looks mighty ghetto.
5: I have to pull the coilovers off and install the spacer RPM sent me to raise the front end up.
6: Time for new tires, those Nittos don't hold up for long when I keep overboosting on launch and just smoking them. That and I smoke 'em just for fun because it makes my passengers smile
I guess that isn't a horrible list now that I look at it but the electrical will be the one keeping me from getting going on this, I despise electrical so much that I always find something else to do instead. Hopefully I can find the motivation to get moving on it because I would really like to go to the Nats this year.
How have your trucks been running Kurt? Do you Seattle SyTy'ers still get together from time to time?
