Duder's Beige Brick - ARUNDL - 1981 242 DL +B230FT

Like that car/wheel color combo....so much that mine kinda looks like that.

M.H. Yount said:

Like that car/wheel color combo....so much that mine kinda looks like that.

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I tried to find photos of your car but came up short...thanks though!

Steps forward, steps back...

Got the RX7 brakes installed with new pads and 940 rotors. The rotors have to be drilled out to clear the shoulders of the 240 wheel studs; not a big deal but worth noting. I know this has been done a millionty times before but I couldn't find a comprehensive guide to the RX7 conversion so that was a surprise. Also had to trim the backing plates, but didn't think to do that until after the strut was built and installed; oh well. Struts are installed with the ipd springs and Billy HD dampers. New wheel bearings in the original hubs.



I had a hell of a time bleeding the system. I replaced the master cylinder with a new Centric one as well, and a new reservoir - it would've been rude not to. Of course the old original brake components looked terrbile, but the system was bled perfectly and always felt great. Now that I opened up the system and replaced stuff, we have issues. "You touched it, didn't you." For the RX7 calipers I first deleted the front-most brake lines on each side shown in the photo below, not realizing that this left me with both front calipers being on the same circuit - whoops.



So I moved the passenger front hard line up to the front circuit, which helped things. Do not plumb your single-circuit front calipers as I did above!

Still couldn't get one of the rear calipers to bleed at all - zero fluid movement. New rear brake hose fixed this. Old hose must've been swollen shut which I've heard of but never had the pleasure of experiencing firsthand.

Using my Motive power bleeder normally makes quick work of brake bleeding; this time wasn't so smooth, as you can gather. Last night I had a 30psi brake fluid explosion all over the engine bay when one of the power bleeder soft hoses burst. I was following the greenbook procedure as much as possible, trying to run very high bleeder pressure to get the master cylinder fully bled. It still had some air after bench bleeding several times.

Anyway - brakes are finally bled enough to drive, new tie rods in the front, adjusted toe (ish), Adjusted panhard rod as much as possible, took the car around for a first drive. I got a slight rub at the passenger rear fender lip as expected. This will need some slight fender adjustment and more panhard adjustment.





On my way to work this morning, I heard something that sounded like a jackhammer at low speed somewhere nearby. Windows were down but I didn't see any construction crews working. Foot off the throttle - jackhammering stops. Back on the throttle, giving the engine some load - jackhammer starts again. Crap.

I limped it into work and found an oil explosion all over the engine bay. Oil level was just topped off this morning. Leak was coming from the filler cap, so it's blowby. What's the over-under on a broken piston ring? How about a broken ring land, or a dropped valve? Going to investigate soon. Davis is looking unlikely at this point...for this car. I'll be there regardless.

That's horrible to hear. I was really looking forward to seeing this car in person. At least you'll still be there.

Were you really getting into it or something? What could have caused the failure?

t8fanning said:

That's horrible to hear. I was really looking forward to seeing this car in person. At least you'll still be there.

Were you really getting into it or something? What could have caused the failure?

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Ugh - that's what is even more frustrating - I was just cruising along slowly! The right rear tire rubs a bit and I was on a bumpy road so was driving more conservatively than normal. I had accelerated briskly once or twice earlier but nothing crazy. Not abusing it at all.

I'm going to go back out to the parking lot in a few minutes, now that the engine should be nice and cool. Will pull the plugs, look at the turbo, I dunno what else!

Oh man! That sucks.

Well it turns out the jackhammer noise was my e-fan hitting the water pump pulley. Shroud came off of the radiator on the drive this morning and it fell back into the engine under acceleration. There does seem to be more blowby than ever before, but I found a broken PCV hose and suspect the oil cap gasket isn’t sealing so well. So there’s hope yet!

A clink of the beer bottle to relatively simple problems and solutions.

That brake bleeding debacle sounds exactly like what I just went through with my 142. I used two different power bleeders and still had a rear caliper that wouldn’t bleed, even with new hoses and hard lines. Then I also had a bleeder hose explosion that drowned half of my engine bay in brake fluid. Of course in a panic I didn’t think to just loosen the cap on the bleeder reservoir but instead quickly removed the MC cap. So then I’m running out of the garage with a still-pressurized, spewing Motive bleeder. It was really a good time.

Glad your engine issue is seemingly less serious than you thought.

Thirded on this Motive hose explosion debacle. My solution was an immediate 5-gallon bucketful of water all over the engine bay. It sucked.

The amazing thing is that Homer and Alex Buchka both had power bleeder explosions all over their engine bays on the SAME DAY as mine. So that’s 5 of us now total? I smell a very sticky messy lawsuit coming!

I’ll be expecting my replacement 1’ section of clear tubing

What was the gauge reading when the stuff on the inside came out? Might have to rethink my self-imposed 10 psig limit with brake fluid. Mine managed 25 psig for a good 45 minutes while priming oil system in a new motor.

Mine burst at about 25 psi. I was trying to max out the power bleeder to approximate the greenbook procedure, which calls for 50 - 60 pisg! With the bleeder pressurized and the front caliper open, Volvo tells you to pump the pedal 5 times. I think this is to bleed the master cylinder in lieu of (or addition to) bench bleeding.

I do all my bleeding at around 10-15psi, and have yet to have a failure. I also don't use brake fluid in the Power Bleeder (or store it with fluid in it), I just use as an air pump and pressure chamber. This started as I was tired of cleaning out the brake fluid, and racing brake fluid is extremely corrosive and loves to absorb moisture. So my laziness was a win-win in the end.

Mine was probably at 12-15 psi. I never took it over that. I only got that last caliper to finally bleed properly by having Kyle pump the pedal and hold it like a bunch of Neanderthals - but it worked

I also do all my bleeding around 10 psi and never had a problem.

15 PSI also. I do not store any brake fluid though.

I never usually go above 10psi, but this greenbook procedure called for 50-60, so I figured what the hell, I'll try a higher pressure. That's when it (literally) exploded in my face.

Here's the source of much concern yesterday. Fan hub hitting the water pump pulley bolts. KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK proportional to engine speed



When I pulled the plugs to check for internal damage, I somehow managed to crack the tip off of #2. It gave no indication of failure, just fell apart when I removed it from the socket after pulling from the head. Would you look at that.



Last night I fixed my oil blowby issues with some new PCV hose and futzing with the oil filler cap gasket. No pics of that.

Today was "take your daughters & sons to work day," and I volunteered to guide 31 youngsters through our Motorsport turbo department. Just highlights to show cool stuff that kids might pay attention to for about 1.8 minutes before spazzing out. Went pretty well - some of the boys were smashing magnesium compressor housings into $10k turbos on the display table, but no permanent damage and no injuries. We brought a few cars out in front of my little building for an impromptu show for the kids. 242 had the hood up to demonstrate turbo dominance (shh...it's still an MHI). Missing from the photo was my coworker's airbagged Ranger with an SVO 2.3L running a GTX2860R. The Rally car is non-turbo but it's a real rally car so my coworker Kurt brought it in (since we supply WRC and RallyX turbos). That's me DWooding my car, with my buddy DWood sneaking in to DWood me DWooding my car. It's a thing people do and it was named after him. True story bro.