1991 RC recovery mission - "Rebel Scum"

underscore

Well-known member
I put almost 900km on the car over the weekend and the only hiccup was the wideband O2 sensor dying so I'll call that a successful trip. It really isn't a highway car though since it gets quite loud over 100km/h and shouldn't really cruise above 120.

Tonight I managed to get the Alfa rally computer test fitted along with the drivers display and codrivers lights, to be tested this weekend. I think I'll be changing at least the mount for the main Alfa as I think it'll be too bouncy.

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underscore

Well-known member
Sitting on my wifes Matrix's all-seasons til her new winters come in and I can take her old ones. Dim lighting so you can't see how insanely sunk the rears are while I wait for the new hub-centric rear spacers to show up :lol:

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underscore

Well-known member
After the usual headaches working on an old car (like drilling out a snapped bolt) I got the Hellas on with the harness I made for them. I just need to hook up the switch to the high beams and then test them out.

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underscore

Well-known member
Thanks!

I put 1500km on the car going to the Totem TSD, the refreshed suspension and lift made it an absolute joy to drive both on the highway and the forestry roads, especially on loose surfaces. I did have one small off into a ditch when the weather turned against us but the only damage was the passenger side fender turn signal, which was already partly broken so no great loss. Here's a few shots from the event.

All the Historic class cars at the start (my Celica finished 2nd in class, the BMW and RX7 each had 2 offs and DNF'd, the Porsche and Corolla kept things tidy and were 3rd and 1st respectively)

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Getting gas after the daytime regs on Saturday, before the snowy chaos

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Before the second reg on Sunday, at nearly 100km and over an hour long it was by far the longest one I've ever done

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After that long reg, you can see the hole in the fender where the light I ripped off on tree branches trying to get out of the ditch is supposed to be. Aside from some BC pin striping that's the only damage.

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More mud on the car

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FC Zach

Active member
That's neat seeing an FC doing something like this. . . I'd just hate to see a nice example get dented up while off-road :(
 

underscore

Well-known member
It looked pretty clean from a distance but apparently it was a beater one he got for cheap. Considering how far off he went the damage was pretty minimal, but the roof did get damaged a little.
 

underscore

Well-known member
I was finally able to get it into the garage and swap the front calipers since one started leaking a bit. The Cardone reman'd ones look pretty good, hopefully they work well. They come with a new mounting bracket and a full hardware kit (the little retainer springs for the pads, the V springs for the pads, squealers, crush washers, banjo bolts) which was nice. The first one I put on didn't have the lock washer put on the lower caliper to bracket mounting bolt which made it foul the rotor when I tried to put it on. You have to remove the bolt to put the pads on anyways so no big deal (and the washer was in the hardware bag). The banjo bolts for the lines were far too long though, I'm not sure what they're for but they're definitely wrong for these calipers so just a heads up to not even try them.
 

underscore

Well-known member
I swapped the hatch struts before tackling adding another spacer plate to the rear struts, I was considering adding two but there wasn't enough thread on the studs for that so we'll see where it settles to. Not having to worry about having the hatch decapitate me was nice though :lol:
 

underscore

Well-known member
The lift saved me some hassle today, I wanted to adjust the resonator so it stopped hitting the forwardmost of the rear crossmembers and I didn't even have to jack up the car because I can slide under it enough to work on things with it sitting on the ground. I was able to get it where I want it so hopefully tomorrows commute will be a lot quieter.
 

underscore

Well-known member
A while back I replaced the EFI main relay and the circuit opening relay with the intent of protecting the motor from a sudden loss of fuel. They worked fine but were quite old, so logically the brand new EFI relay was defective and twice now I've had the car crank but not start until I jumpered the fuel pump in the diagnostic box.

I've deleted the fuel pump relay, so according to the diagram in this thread: viewtopic.php?t=51893

My issue has to be with either the circuit opening relay, the fuel pump switch in the AFM, or the wiring right? The annoying part is it never happens at a convenient time when I could diagnose it, and I really don't like driving around trusting a paperclip to keep me going.
 

underscore

Well-known member
After removing the FET combo driving/fog lights I wanted to add some pre-facelift 2WD foglights to the front bumper, but sorting out mounting looked like it was going to be annoying. I'll get to them eventually, but right now I have a lot of other things to do on the car so I ordered up 4 LED pods off eBay. They sent the wrong ones so I got spots instead of floods, but I needed to dim them a bit (way too bright to use on the road as-is) and make them yellow so I ended up putting a couple layers of notepad paper behind the lens which softened it a lot and diffused it nicely. It looks a little funny but once it's on the car and behind the mesh I doubt it'll be visible.

The other two will end up mounted at the rear as extra reverse lights. The factory lights don't do anything for visibility when you're in the woods at night.

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Corey

Active member
Awesome. Looking forward to seeing how you end up mounting the fog lights. That's something I also need to do, but haven't gotten around to yet.
 

underscore

Well-known member
There's some little tabs with the clip on screw threads just behind the openings in the corner of the bumper, I'm not sure what they were originally intended for (brake ducting maybe?) but I'm hoping to use them for the lights.
 

underscore

Well-known member
Thanks! It's not going anywhere for a while so it's in the garage about to get a bunch of the stuff I haven't had the time to do because it puts the car out of commission for too long (like swap the door).

I sold the RPF1's recently which I hated to do but turning nearly new tires into hockey pucks wasn't worth it.
 

Celicaatrac

New member
That sucks dude!

But then again could be worse and you could have sold the car hahah


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 

underscore

Well-known member
Yeah I'd be pretty bummed now if I sold it. I've run through every possible replacement I could think of with a buddy of mine and nothing seemed like it would actually be better (especially when you factor in cost).

Since there won't be any TSD events for a while I decided to start tearing into some of the things I've been needing to do but hadn't because I didn't want to have too much downtime. Among the first up is the hot start mod, I had the car refuse to start for me once during the summer and its had an intermittent pause between when I turn the key and when it starts to crank which I really don't like. Of course my mechanical ADD kicked in and while I had the intake off I taped up all the wiring I added into a bit of a harness and swapped the ground harness for a stock one I pulled off the parts GTS I had (which weirdly looks to have a thicker cable down to the trans).

I must be getting older if I find an OEM battery terminal exciting, but in my defense these aftermarket lead ones are horrendously ugly and complete junk (I've broken two just installing them).

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underscore

Well-known member
Quoting myself and alltracman78 so I don't clutter up the other thread too much.

underscore":2vgzzlw1 said:
Sorry for the slight off topic and I can delete this part if the OP wants but in this shot you can see the hose for the AC idle up blocked off with a rod. The end of the rod is pointing at a cap on what I think is idle air supply? I have no clue what's supposed to be hooked where that cap is. Next to the AC idle up and that other device you can see the end of a bolt that's in a line the same size as the other large one off the end of the manifold, it disappears down by the manifold somewhere and I can't bend my arm in enough places to follow it further. Is that the other AC idle up line?

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alltracman78":2vgzzlw1 said:
As near as I can tell the 2 ports off the RC throttle body (and I would assume regular JDM) are both for the EVAP system.
US spec cars the port closer to the manifold is for the EVAP and the port closer to the intercooler is for the EGR.

Best place for a boost gauge is off the spare port on the rear of the intake manifold. It will give you a nice clean signal separate from everything else. This at least used to be the preferred location on these engines. Maybe things have changed.
There are other places you can hook up to that will work fine. This is just the simplest IMO.

Underscore;

- You're definitely missing some vacuum line stuff. Is that vacuum line off the TB port for your boost gauge?
- Yes, that's the stock MAP sensor. IIRC There are 2 more vacuum ports on the bottom L (timing belt side) of the TB. One is for a small PCV system (independent of the larger system on the other end). A vacuum line runs from a small port on the valve cover by the #1 spark plug boot up to the TB. The other port is actually for the MAP sensor and I believe the factory FPR. They are tee'd together from this. I wouldn't hook anything else up to this port, best to leave those 2 alone there because of the size of the port and plenty of other locations to get manifold pressure from. I know I said you shouldn't use a TB port for manifold vacuum, but the factory designed it this way so.....
- The line with the rod in it should go to your AC VSV, which I can see isn't hooked up at all. I believe the other line for the VSV should go to that capped off port you mentioned. That's actually going to be the air supply (it provides before TB air to all the idle up stuff, IAC, pwr steering, ect.).
- Not sure about the line with the bolt in it. I see the head of the bolt but can't tell where it's running to. AFAIK that's not a factory line, unless it's for the charcoal canister. But it shouldn't be that long. It's possible someone hooked that line up to the spare port on the rear of the intake manifold?

Hope this all makes sense?
 

underscore

Well-known member
The vac line off the top TB port goes to the MAP sensor.

The port off the bottom of the TB (purple) goes down to the valve cover. The two off the manifold under the brake booster line go down to towards the fuel rail (blue) and run off to a T which feeds the boost gauge and BOV (red).

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The line with the bolt ends up somewhere down by the TVSV (red circles) so I *think* it's the line for that, it just seems really big to me.

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While I'm at it here's how the brake booster is set up. I think this ones probably right but at this point I'm not sure. The E on what I assume is a one way valve points to the engine. When braking after a long pull under boost I find there's little to no assistance coming from the booster but I assume that's normal.

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On the back of the intake manifold the port closest to the transmission is capped off and the port on the timing end goes straight down, IIRC that goes to the PC pump switch.
 
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