ST162-7254182 "Dirty Deeds" Edited

second rim is ready for paint


painting with a brush doesn't get the greatest results


a cloth and a bit of piant thinner can clean things up, let the paint get pretty dry but not totally dry


once the edges have been cleaned up


the first rim has got it's second coat, I decided to go with semi gloss, still wet


the second rim is ready for its second coat

 

No, the paint doesn't need it and it would dull the polished aluminum. The polish itself does a good enough
job of protecting the aluminum so I would rather just polish the rims a couple times a year. The only reason
I clear coated my engine parts is that the polish just burns off in the engine bay so its impossible to keep
those parts protected with polish.

 

Well good news, bad news, good news, bad news and probably more good news and bad news.

Bad News : I had to go all the way to page 3 to find my Dirty Deeds topic

Good News : I finally got my rims painted and on the car



Bad News : Dirty Deeds only made it about 1 car length farther down the driveway than in the above picture before it died and would not restart,
it would crank but no signs of any combustion in the cylinders. The next day it would try to fire and if you hold the gas pedal to the floor it will
fire briefly and with the pedal to the floor will idle around 1000 rpm for a few seconds and then die so I'm pretty sure the fuel pump is toast

Good News : I have a spare fuel pump so time to drop the tank


Bad News : Gas tank straps are toast


More Bad News : Drivers side strap for 162's is obsolete and unavailable at the stealership, passenger side strap is available from the California warehouse for about $100

Good News : I can make my own, some 14 gauge steel to make the loop at the end of the strap that the pin goes through, pretty much the same as a door hinge and a
piece of 1" X .125" bar. I'll mig the 14 guage piece of metal to one end of the bar and drill a hole for a 14mm bolt at the other end and I'm pretty sure that that will be stronger
than the OEM toyota strap. I'll re use the rubber from the old straps if their good enough if not a few layers of duct tape should work


More Good News : Anybody else need a new strap I can make them, $25 per strap plus shipping just let me know if you want drivers or passenger side

 

I'm going to sandwich the bar in between the sheet metal loop and weld it


first I'll grind everything nice and flat


and I'll weld were the end of the sheet metal overlaps the bar on both sides




clean up the old hinge pins


now I need to put some bends in the bars for the contour of the tank I also made a template of each strap
in case I have to make more


I decided to use 4 layers of duct tape to protect the tank from the strap


and now ready to be installed








Well I'm happy, I'm pretty sure their stronger than oem and they definetely beat the pieces of crap that were holding the tank up before.

 

It does turn heads and I get alot of comments from people about it, it probably split 50/50 between people saying its a Mad Max style and Back To The Future
Personally I like the Mad Max idea better it's probably a better fit with my driving habits too.

I think when I'm on the freeway in the fast lane a lot of drivers look in their rearview mirror and think I'm a cop with the lights
on the roof because I get way more cars to move out of the fast lane and let me by than I ever do in any of my other vehicles

Have I not shown over and over again that you can use duct tape for almost anything.
Do you not get the show Myth Busters, or the Red Green show ?

The reason for the duct tape is the same as the reason for not painting it.....withdrawal I already got almost 25,000 on it
this summer and I don't want to spend a couple more days waiting for paint to dry (I like at least 3 layers of paint and a
layer of clearcoat) and searching for some rubber that can be done this winter while the car is hibernating.

You might be surprised this winter when I take the straps of at how well the duct tape has held up over the summer. I
really expect they'll be almost as good as when I put them on.

 

Well its been a pretty crappy summer overall for me Dirty Deeds died a month and a half ago and between
my mom visiting the hospital numerous times and myself having to get an artery that was 90% blocked
opened I haven't had the time or been healthy enough to work on the car so I finally got the chance to
look at the problem but it had sat so long the battery was dead so I couldn't check for codes.

The engine would crank real strong but no sign of any detonation in the cylinders. So no spark or no gas.
I know I put gas in when I re-installed the gas tank so I went with no spark.

I can take the high tension wire from the coil to the distributor and hold it 1/2" from ground for a 3sge like
the manual says and I can't get a spark to jump but if I move the high tension wire close enough to ground
I will get a spark, I can remove a spark plug and ground it and almost never get a spark.
I tried
-2 different coils
-3 different ignitors
-2 distributors
-new rotor and distributor cap
-2 different ECU's

So after all that and it still not starting I decided to loosen the the bolt on the fuel line to the cold start
injector to make sure I had fuel pressure and found there was no gas in the line so WTF ???? Turns out
the return line to the gas tank had a bad clamp and all the gas in the tank had slowly syphoned out over
the past month so after putting more gas in and fixing the clamp it fired and I took it out for a blast
around town, probably about 10 minutes and I was pretty happy with the way it ran. The next day I took
it out for a drive and it made it about 4 houses up the road and died. Exactly the same as it had done
before, it didn't stumble or seem to be missing just seemed to shut off.

So now I'm pretty confused, I know I have lots of gas in the tank this time but it was a fuel issue last time
so I'm wondering about a bad fuel pump again. I was allready to drop the fuel tank again but then decided
that couldn't possibly be the problem so just to check I loosened the bolt on the cold start injector's fuel
line again turned the key to the run position and then jumped FP & B on the check connector and fuel sprayed
right out of the loosened connection so I was right to think it wasn't the pump.

So now WTF I've replaced
-2 different coils
-3 different ignitors
-2 distributors
-new rotor and distributor cap
-2 different ECU's

When I do the coil check I know the spark is week but I also know that we have tested enough 4th gen
coils to know that none of them are in spec or even close to being in spec according to the manuals tests
but they all still seem to work okay so I'm thinking I've tested / replaced every part of the ignition system
so how could it not be firing ?

I finally get the idea to check for codes and get codes 12 14 24
code 12 is no N or GE signal to the ECU from the distributor
code 14 is no IGF signal to the ECU from the ignitor
code 24 is open or short circuit in the intake air temp sensor signal

So I think I can explain code 24 because I tried starting the car without the AFM pluged in
and I once tried starting the car after swaping ignitors without pluging it in so that would
explain code 14 so I'm left with code 12

So I pull the 15 amp EFI fuse to clear all the codes and then try to start the car again and
it doesn't start but I didn't expect it to but when I check for codes I only get a code 12
which is what I was expecting so now options are dwindling. It is definetely distributor related
but it is a different distributor than was in the car when the problem first appeared so I have
either killed 2 distributors or the wiring between the distributor and the ECU is fucked so I
took the wires from the harness to the distributor and twisted them into a different shape and
the car fired right up so I now know the problem is in the wiring and its probably in the area
where the 4 wires for the distributor come out of the main harness since thats the only part of
the harness that I moved so I was going to just cut that part of the wiring out and replace all
4 wires but when I cut the protective cover of the wires I find out that the 4 wires are electrically
shielded or insulated by an outer ground wrapping as you can see in the following picture.



So I check the manual and I guess thats what the dashed line around the 4 distributor wires is
supposed to indicate, so that sucks since I don't know where to get a shielded wire with 4 wires
inside it


Shorted wires are no surprise to me, one of the ignitors I was swaping is a good example. The wires
themselves look good but the insulated covering is just crumbling of as you can see in the example
of the yellow wire. Check your igniter and you will find that these 5 wires are wrapped with a braided
cloth covering which probably acted as good protection 20+ years ago but is now probably working
more like a sponge keeping those 5 cracked wires close together and full of moisture just begging to
short out on one another. One of those 5 wires is a ground wire and another of those wires is a 12
volt wire both going to the coil so I would hate to have them short together.


In the case of the ignitor I removed each pin 1 at at time from the plug and removed the dried up
and cracking insulation and retaped each wire.



All Toyota plugs are designed so you can remove and re insert individual pins.


So for now I have just wrapped the old wiring around the top of the distributor so it streches the
wire out and hopefully prevents the kink or short from hapening until I can replace the wiring.


To make the final repair I'm going to remove the distributor wiring from another engine harness I
have and use it, I would like to use new wiring but until I can source some 4 wire shielded cable
I guess I'll have to settle for this solution. I also know that at some point I would like to swap in
a newer engine preferably turbo charged and I know a company about half an hour from me that
has a st215 caldina 3sgte engine/tranny for sale for $1800 and they've had it for a year now so
not to many locals are looking for 3sgte's so I may even be able to get it a bit cheaper

 

The donor harness


theres the wire I'm after


I was wondering where they had grounded the insulating wire


one end ready for removal


I pull the wire almost all the way through


I make sure the pins are inside the middle of the bundle so their protected


then I pull the rubber boot over the the area where the pins are


now I can remove the little bit of tape and the wire I need


to try and waterproof the wire I use a bit of high temp silicone sealer


it wasn't to important on the other end of the wire but this end I do more prep work


add some silicone


tape it up


got lots of silicone squirting out the end so I'm guessing its probably sealed pretty well


get a measurement in case I want to build a new one, I'd probably go about 6' 4"


ready to go


starting the install


had a spare connecter from another butchered harness so it's going to be the new ground connector


old pins removed new pins installed


all plugged in and ground connected


in the engine bay I used some corrugated wire split loom to protect the wire


got a couple hundred km's on the wire and no signs of problems so hopefully good to go now

 

Yes basically it just shields the wires from stray signals, alot of the O2 wires I see
are shielded to.

No......at aprox 350km's after replacing the wire the car died again. I jiggled the new distributor wire
but no go I was pretty perplexed now.......2 different distributor wires ? So I finally decide that it
must be somewhere else in the engine wiring harness so I try moving different parts of the harness.
AFM wires, check connector, coil wires and the wires that come of the 12 volt battery post and
the car starts and I manage to drive the 150km's back home.

So I decided that since the summers been so crappy so far I need another Celica to cheer me up
so hopefully once I've replaced Dirty Deeds bad harness I can go and check it out. A guy a couple
hours from me has an 89 GTS for sale. 186,000 km for $1,500.00

Dam I normally pay almost that much for rust buckets, not that I don't think their is rust on this car
just alot less than some of the heaps I have dragged home

So as soon as I can get a new harness in Dirty Deeds I'll be giving it a 400km test drive

So I'm motivated, old harness is out so in the morning I'll be puting the new harness in as soon
as I finish taping it up, I had to re add the distributor wiring I had removed from it.

 

Yeah 20+ year old wiring is going to degrade sooner or later, the wire itself is in good shape its just
the insulating covering has dried out and cracked in some places, the higher the heat in the area
the worse the damage


I find now that if I lift up on this section of the harness the break or short in the wire will go away

 

Well I got the chance today to get down and take a look at that other Celica that I had posted about.
Got the new harness in Dirty Deeds on friday but the guy was away on saturday so I got a buddy and
the license plate for my red All Trac and we headed down to check it out. Decided to take the back
roads (blue route) since its the weekend and the trans canada highway would be a nighmare.


All nice and happy in its new home
The best part about avoiding the trans canada highway was I got to race my buddy all the way back
home on some nice country roads and that was quite fun, luckilly no cops cause I know I hit 140km
in the new car


As I suspected more rust than claimed but the drivers side rear fender is the only bad spot so I can
deal with that


Back to the engine wiring harness I have noticed that since I have swaped out the old engine harness
I can start Dirty Deeds every time with the key whereas with the old engine harness I almost allways
had to use my bypass switch which I had ran a dedicated wire from the drivers compartment over top of
the radiator and straight to the starter.


I think the wiring in the engine harness has more than one bad wire in it,
starter wire and one wire that just shuts the engine off.