1991 RC recovery mission - "Rebel Scum"

underscore

Well-known member
It seems my happiness was premature, even with the new wire code 52 shows up and gets worse when everything is fully warmed up. I tried swapping in my spare ECU and had the same result so the only thing left is the sensor itself. I know the plug is the same as the 5SFE knock sensor so I might try swapping the sensor from my spare 5S over and see what happen.

I don't really mind dealing with hiccups, but I hate doing the same thing over and over again, especially when you have to fully reassemble everything to test it. Loosen the lugnuts, lift it up, pull the wheel, pull the crossmember, unbolt the front of the exhaust, break my arm in 3 places so it has enough joints, blindly find the stupid plug. I'm not even sure if there's enough room to get a socket up there to get the sensor out on a RHD model but I guess I'm about to find out.
 

underscore

Well-known member
I replaced the sensor and the problems are finally cleared up, it felt good to drive it and have everything behaving as it should this evening. I'll be getting the door vandlism dealt with next week as well, that'll take care of all the major stuff so now it's just tidying up little odds and ends.
 

underscore

Well-known member
I've completed the break in and I'll be doing the 3rd oil change this weekend. After that I'll be slowly turning up the boost and seeing how it behaves. I did get a bit of a scare this past week because it was running quite rich and felt like it was down on power. It turned out that I had filled up with some less than stellar quality gas (even though it was the same fuel from the same chain of gas station as I always use), so once I refueled it at a different station all was well. Lesson learned to either a) dump the fuel and refill somewhere else or b) drive gently to use up the gas if something isn't running quite right. Either way don't panic immediately.
 

underscore

Well-known member
Now that I'm older than I was when I started building this car I've been looking into softening my suspension up a bit for future trips with the wife and incoming child. I pulled up the info from BC on the Swift springs for my coilovers and while looking for deals on the springs I found this site http://www.streettunedmotorsports.com/p ... mm_z65.htm which has the tables of all the specs of all the Swift springs. According to BC our coils need a Z65-178-xxx up front and Z65-203-xxx rear (the format is [diameter (mm)]-[length (mm)]-[rate x10]). The 185 apparently has 60/40 weight distribution, which made BC's suggested 8kg front/4kg rear seem soft in the rear to me. What I didn't realize when I first bought the coilovers is that because the rear springs are longer, the spring rates listed by BC are more balanced than they sound.

According to the tables:
Suggested fronts - Z65-178-080 (8kg springs) - max load 2,064lbs
Suggested rears - Z65-203-040 (4kg springs) - max load 1,228lbs

60/40 = 1.5 (weight distro)
2,064/1,228 = 1.68 (load distro)

Since that's the softest option for that length of rear that's about as balanced as it could be without reducing stroke. I assume you could go to shorter springs and move the perches up but I don't know what effect that would have.

Looking at what I put in:
Front 10kg - max load 2,551lbs
Rear 8kg - max load 2,259lbs

2,551/2,259 = 1.13

Oops. That explains why the rear feels quite stiff to me. I'm leaning towards going to the suggested spring rates so that I can keep the stability in the corners while making some of the crappy roads around here more bearable.

If any of my logic or math here is wrong please correct me, I'd prefer to only have to change this once.
 

underscore

Well-known member
Before my road insurance ran out in the spring I went for a drive with a few friends of mine and let them try the car out before I started making it more stock. I got one of them to do a flyby for me since I'd never actually heard it from the outside.

https://youtu.be/EbLEw8xw2mM

I've since started swapping things back to stock and refurbishing some of the stock parts that will be going back on. Progress is a bit slow since my Jeep is broken at the moment but I'm hoping to have the car done by fall so I can enjoy it for a few months while it isn't so hot. Assuming it doesn't sell first that is.
 

underscore

Well-known member
I got the intake and rad systems back to stock, so now it looks a lot more original under the hood except for the oil filter relocation and a couple of green hoses on the rear side of the engine. I also did an oil change and just need to burp the coolant and I can start enjoying it in the cooler weather we've been having.
 

underscore

Well-known member
Thanks, I know the direction I've wanted to take the car has changed a lot over the years (probably too much for how little I've actually driven it) and it's a bit odd to be working on it while trying to sell it but at least I'm getting it close to the point where I'm pretty happy with how it's set up.
 

underscore

Well-known member
Some of them I'll hold onto in case I end up with a 6th gen, others I'll be selling if the car sells or if there's still no interest and I keep it. The original post has been updated with what's currently on the car and what I have as spare parts, if you're interested in anything let me know.
 

underscore

Well-known member
Back in the spring it once decided to not supply power to the fuel pump while trying to start it. Of course this was in the middle of nowhere and in an area absolutely packed with mosquitoes which made troubleshooting very time sensitive. It was annoying to have that happen while trying to start but if something like that happens at the wrong time while driving it could be catastrophic, so I took a look at all the components that the failure of could kill power to the pump. From my understanding this includes the EFI relay (since a loss of power to the ECU kills power to the fuel pump), the circuit opening relay and the fuel pump control relay. I installed the replacements for the EFI and COR today, the fuel pump relay was expensive and seemed needlessly complicated so I sourced an OEM bypass jumper from a GTS and installed that. I'll keep the originals in the car as spares but hopefully I won't need them.
 

underscore

Well-known member
Winter is here and my Jeep is broken so the Celica may need to pull snow duty, not that I'd mind embarrassing some Subarus.

47465007_10161380932430193_9221966822339772416_o.jpg


At the moment it still has the coilovers on, I'm hoping to toss the stock suspension back in to gain some height and travel.
 

underscore

Well-known member
So it turns out the Beck/Arnley COR I bought was defective, good thing I kept the old one as long story short due to a mouse my wife is driving my Jeep right now and I'm driving the GTFour. I pulled onto a snowy/slippery road with it and man did it step the back end out smoothly. Even with studded snow tires it didn't take much to get the rear end to misbehave but it felt completely at home doing it without getting out of control.
 

underscore

Well-known member
I'm going to replace the capacitors in both my main and spare ECUs as they're about 28 years old now and the main thing in the ECU prone to failure due to age. For reference here's a list of the capacitors in my ECU (part # 89661-2B310):

2x 10uF 50V
2x 100uF 10V
1x 47uF 63V
1x 33uF 35V
1x 15uF 35V
1x 220uF 10V

I ordered Panasonic caps from Digikey (if I remember right they're supposed to be pretty good), total cost for 2 ECUs worth was $15. $8 of that was shipping so it's pretty cheap maintenance.
 

Corey

Active member
Car looks awesome!

Looking forward to hearing if you notice any sort of difference once they are swapped out.
 

underscore

Well-known member
Thanks! One cap in the spare ECU is starting to leak a bit already, I did use it briefly last year so I know it should be good aside from that. I don't know exactly what circuits they're part of so I don't know what effect each one might have but at least I shouldn't have to worry about a failure at an inopportune time.
 

FC Zach

Active member
In both my original and spare ECU, I've had to replace both 10uF 50V caps. One I did just recently (on my spare actually) and the symptom from it was the CEL randomly flashing and slowly illuminating on and off. I recalled it being the same symptom as the first incident from when it happened on the original years ago, so that is why I suspected this as the issue. When it happened years ago I bought a qty of two off ebay for $2 not paying attention to what a qty was. . . which was actually ten per qty of one LOL. Good thing because it was nice to have some on hand :)
 

FC Zach

Active member
I'm not positive about this but what I gathered from searching about the 10uF 50V caps in the past was that they are for diagnostics. . which makes sense given that my CEL was doing random things and I wasn't able to pull a code.
 

underscore

Well-known member
That might explain why a couple of times I haven't seen the CEL on startup. I ordered the parts and they were delivered the next day, I found that pretty impressive since I placed the order later than I would've expected anyone to be sending out shipments and it had to cross an international border. So a big thumbs up to Digikey for getting me overnight parts from Minnesota. I always find it funny that stuff I'm in no rush to get shows up immediately, and stuff that I need urgently seems to get delayed.
 
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