Someday the AC in this car will work! Lol. System held vacuum all night. I got the old dryer off and prepped the new one. I fought and fought with the line that attaches to the evaporator. The fitting just would not start. I even had my wife in the garage helping!
I finally got fed up with it and pulled it out and capped the ends. Just for giggles I grabbed the old dryer. It went on with no issues. Super easy.
The treads are messed up one the new or the wrong size. I took it back to the parts store. Got a new one coming. Should be here Tuesday.
Before I forgot about it I decided to change out the coolant in the car last night. While I was fighting the water leak I was just putting distilled water into it. No since in wasting antifreeze. That stuff cost so much now. Anyway, I figured if I didn't do it now I would forget and even though it really doesn't get that cold where I'm at if my car didn't have antifreeze in it it would freeze. I also went ahead and changed the oil. This will be the last oil change for a while. I put the Royal Purple back in it. By the way. The only reason I'm running RP is because a friend of mine had a 5 gallon pail of it. He sold the car that he ran it in and it was just sitting around. So I ended up with a free 5 gallon pail of the purple stuff! When it's gone I'll still run a quality oil, but that stuff really isn't necessary for my car.
The new new dryer should be here today. Maybe with a little luck I can get it installed tonight.
The last time I had the wheels off I noticed that one of the studs on the back right axle was a little messed up. I got the lug nut on it, but I'm pretty sure that one or two more cycles and it will be toast. Can you change a stud without pulling the axle? Pulling the axle isn't that big a deal, but thought I would ask.
OH, the unthinkable happened over the weekend. I was going to take the car for a joy ride Saturday. I said something to my wife about going out for a while in the car. She said, "you've only got one seat in the car right?". I'm like yeah. Then it happened. She said, "Can we throw some cushions in the floorboard so that me and Link can take a short ride?" I'm not endorsing riding around with your wife and child in the car riding on cushions, but it was a short ride and fun that she was that interested in going for a ride.
You aren't talking about the line end that goes on the compressor are you ? They don't tell you but there is a metal clip inside the compressor end that has to come out for the new line to go in ( on some new lines ). The factory line has a notch in it that the piece would line up to. Replacement hoses usually don't have that notch. If it the firewall evaporator nut thing....then that's weird.
Its at the firewall that it doesn't want to connect. I didn't spend a lot of time messing with it last night. When it started doing the same thing the last one did it got pretty frustrating quickly. It was also late. I decided to step away from it for a bit and think about it. I find it hard to believe that I got two defective parts in a row, but stranger things have happened. I plan to call the place that I bought the kit from and ask them if they have had trouble with replacement parts not wanting to fit right. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't feel like I was on a timer working on this thing. I guess I am on a timer. Being its the dryer!
I've been out of town and busy with other stuff, so not much is going on with the car. I have the new dryer and I've messed with it a couple of times. Really has me scratching my head as to what dumb thing I"M doing that is causing issues getting it back together. I should get some time to play with the car on Saturday or Sunday.
The weather here has been really cool so far this year. It will be ridiculously hot before to long though.
This is for any auto technicians that might look into this tread. I bought a 17 Tacoma last year. It had a really loud Magnaflow exhaust on it. I bought a factory style exhaust to replace it. When taking the two bolts loose that held it on they came out but for some reason destroyed the threads at the end. I put the new system on and tried to use the old bolts and nuts. They locked up and would not come off. I ended up cutting everything off with a grinder. My question is does Toyota use some kind of one time use bolt system on the exhaust? Sorry I didnt take any pictures.
I'm putting the car back on the lift tonight. I need to pull the tail shaft housing to fix the speedometer gear issue. I still have a dragging noise coming from the back right tire. I also need to replace a stud, so I'm going to tear all of that down and pull the axle. I'll continue to work on the AC in the meantime.
I drove the car to work today. Ran great! Only issue is the exhaust exits straight out of the mufflers right now and I have no catalytic converters. I swear I have a headache right now from the fumes! Lol. Fixing the exhaust and installing cat has gone WAY up on the list of things to do.
I changed the title of this thread because I'm starting to feel like every-time I do something I imitatively turn around and have to do it again two or three times. No big deal, and from what I read on lots of other peoples threads there are lots and lots of people in this boat with me! At least I have good company!
Moving on. I removed the differential cover last night so that I can get the axle out to replace the stud. I caught the oil in a clean container. It's fresh oil. I just put it in when I put the new wheel bearings in. Is there any reason not to just reuse this oil? It has the friction additive in it as well.
I plan on doing the same thing when I take the tail housing off. It's also fresh oil.
Lastly. I do plan to have this car painted at some point. When that happens I'll strip the interior out so that it can all be painted.
A) Is that overkill?
B) If the answer to A is NO and I'm going to put sound deadener in the car should I hold off on doing that until after I actually get it painted?
Just my opinion here - if you have the time and space to pull the interior before painting, I would absolutely do it.
There are so many nights I sit here fiddling around in the garage wishing I could take this entire car apart, and put it back together like new.
Everything I do, I say “I wish I could get that done, or I wish I could get this done”. But I need more space, or it will become one of those clusterphks people end up selling. I refuse to go that route.
I think your pretty into the details, from what I’ve seen you do, so if you can manage to get that car apart, repaint, and then put back together, that’s what I would do.
I think, and this is from a very small amount of experience working around fresh paint years ago, I did everything I could before the car is painted, if you are going to pull the interior to put sound barrier in leave it out until it's painted, if you paint it yourself you can tape up the door opening to keep out over spray, a competent shop can do the same so it boils down to what you are comfortable with.
I don't see a problem with reusing newish/good oil. I would do it. And I don't think it's necessary to completely remove the entire interior for paint. Sounds like you want to though.. I don't see any issue with putting the sound deadener in before paint.
The paint is a long term goal. Say 5 year plan. Hopefully not that long but I'm going on how things seem to have worked out in the past. When I get to this point I plan to strip the car down as much as I can then take it to a shop. I love working on my cars but I'm not truly interested in learning to paint, maybe, we'll see. I just have everything out of the car right from the door seals down, so I could put in sound deadener now if I wanted to. I guess in the end I'm not going to be going for a Concours restoration so I dont need to paint everything.
I might go ahead and put the sound deadener in now to cut down on road noise.
I'm going off of watching shows and looking a builds where people totally strip a car to the bones and paint it completely like it was at the factory. Tempting but not necessary.
I'm going to reuse the oil in the diff.
As always thanks for the input and I welcome more as people read this.
I guess my issue is this..... I’d like a toy to take apart and rebuild, and I’d like a toy to drive on the weekends and to cruise nights.
I don’t have the space, time , or money for both, so I try to do both with what I’ve got.
Id like to think I’m not alone in this boat!!