WIDTM7T: I MacGuyver'ed my way into my own engine bay. Yay.

 

I just popped my hood from underneath! I reached up between the tranny and the heat shield on the passenger side. First I found the heater core tubes, then the lifting hook, then the slave hose, then really reached and I felt a really thin wire or cable with a familiar shape at the end. Gave it a little push and VIOLA! That wonderful hood popping sound!

Anyway glad you got yours open, DD. That is what you meant by that MIDI7T or whatever, right?

 

Haha WIDTM7T - What I Did To My 7 Today.

I'm also glad to hear that you got it open DD, I've been keeping track of your progress on this thread and your build thread. The best of luck to you in the near future with trip decisions and the "smog *****" as you call them.

I got a fricken awesome present from a warehouse the other day, but I'm refraining to show it off until tomorrow, after I compile my weeks worth of carb work. Let's just say, it was in a GP Sorenson box, under a Walker part number, and DD recently posted about these small parts a week or two ago...

 

Nikki floats!

 

Is there any way to tell if my alternator is internally regulated or not? I read somewhere that the '79 is set up to use an externally regulated alternator and I'm trying to troubleshoot my radio issues. I think I've found the external regulator in the engine bay and after a drive it is hot to the touch so it seems to be in use still. I've read you may have electrical issues if you don't do some wire mods to use the newer alternator, like your tach not working, but everything other than my radio is working fine. I just don't want to take the time to swap a nice radio out for a crappy one just to have it not be the issue and have to swap them back. I just want to listen to my music while I drive to work! Please help

 

79 should have an external regulator, so if its unmolested it'll have one. the regulator lives in the left rear corner of the engine bay, maybe a 3"x5" gold box.

also the alternator case should be kind of square with the fan on the front.

Mazda actually updated the external regulators, the units up to like 1997 are mechanical, and the newer ones are solid state. so when you order the regulator for a 79, you get the updated part, which is nice.

 

Key to judging if your alt has an internal regulator is usually that the sticker on the alt says "internal regulator" or something similar. Truly. If the sticker is still there.

The 79-style alt has a total of 4 wires going to it; the fat black lead that goes to the threaded stud on the back, a two-pin connector with two wire in the lower left rear, and a single wire, originally white with a black stripe, that goes to a QD connector, I think on the upper right rear.

The 80-style doesn't have that final wire; only the big black lead and the 2-pin connector.

The 79 was the last year to use external voltage regulators. The external reg is a largeish metal box on the driver's side of the engine bay, mounted just forward of the firewall in the top rear corner of the bay. There's a cluster of smaller relays mounted just forward of it.

 

the external regulator is the semi shiny thing .... obviously not DD's engine bay lol

(pics makes me appreciate the new paint on the car )

 

Okay, so here's what I found.

My alt does have a fan in front but it's not really too square.
There wasn't any other single wire but there are 4 wires going to the alt, 3 to a plug at the bottom plus the big black one.
My external regulator box is hooked up and seems to be working, only thing odd there was an inline 0.5A fuse on the yellow wire and it was fine. It isn't shiny like the one above but it's gold with a black plastic cover. I assume it's the same thing, it's in the same place. My wiring in that corner of the engine bay is a total cluster f*ck.. so messed up I don't even want to touch anything lol.

I'm not having problems with my alt, I'm just trying to figure out what could be causing my radio to cut out with the motor running. I assume all is fine with the alt and I should just swap the radio next.

I really appreciate the help guys, so thanks

 

Ooook, this is gonna be what I did this week.

I rebuilt that extra carb of mine, doesn't work. I either didn't set the floats just right, or forgot something, I don't know. I have my working carb anyways and I'm just gonna replace the torn secondary thingy, seen here



While in the process of moving carbs around and such, I reached my hand to pull away from the area and *SNAP* goes the OMP lines. I lost my breath and couldn't say anything.



I just stared and my knees buckled and I did a little something like this :.............
when I realized that there was a parts car that I ripped that extra carb off of only 30 minutes from my house. I got there in 20, 15mph over the speed limit the whole way, and got another set!!!

I also picked these up since I was there anyways, the carb spacer and an uncracked drivers side turn signal lens since mine is cracked slightly. After all this I got out for less than $6 with my OMP lines, SCORE!!!



The next day I went to my local parts store, O'Reilly's to be exact, and said I wanted to order their BWD rebuild kit. He said they didn't have it, and I could get the Walker kit. I didn't necessarily want the Walker one, but I just needed that one part seen in my carb pic shown above. Low and behold, this is what I got.





It's a Walker part number, written on a GP Sorenson box, with a backwards E and 2 stamped on it. I believe it is the front float, if I'm not mistaken (which I often am, so don't be afraid to hurt my feelings). And best of all I got it for about half of the Black Dragon float price!!! SCORE AGAIN!!

Now only if I could get the damn wind to subside so I could go do some carb switchin... Ah well, off to work for the day.

 

jeg0024 go over you radio wiring ... I'd bet a loose ground ... keep in mind the 79 alt is whimpy if you have the a/c on and stereo oh heaven forbid the lights you are taxing the system and it may not be able to supply what is needed .... yes I am still running the 79 set up

 

The steel shell is usually shorter too, so it's easy to tell which type you have. But be aware the transistors can burn out in the solid state style.

 

I had double checked everything over and over. I even moved the power wires from the battery to the ignition to see if that was the problem and nothing helped. I don't use my A/C because for some reason it only blows about 2 inches from the vents.. it's still reasonably cold air, it just doesn't blow. I will probably remove the A/C later this weekend if I don't get called into work, it's just dead weight now.

My issue is this, my radio works perfectly fine until the motor is running and then it cuts out the more throttle I give it. I guess you can see why I was thinking alternator but maybe it's just the radio, after all it didn't always do this. I will try another grounding location but if that doesn't work I'm just going to go ahead and spend the 2 hours swapping the radio, I'll either come back here later happy or confused as hell. Wish me luck lol.

 

lol actually mine does that somehow .. but if I charge my battery a little it stops ... beleive it's 2500 rpm before alt kicks in ... and mine is not a daily driver

 

That's the accelerator pump diaphragm, there. I believe I have a spare one that's good, if you don't need a whole kit.

Definite score; the MOP (OMP) lines are still available (at least, the "short" one is), but just a tad more than $6.


Yep, front float. Nice.

 

Might want to rethink pulling the AC. Sounds like your blower motor is not getting the air it
needs or its blocked up or its weak due to a poor ground. Hmmmmm, maybe you have a dash
ground issue. The ground for the dash is straight up behind the speedo console and screws
into the bottom of the metal dash support up there. Maybe its gone, loose or needs to be
tweaked.

 

^ if I may add ... I beleive there are two different resistors for the blower motor one for w a/c one for w/o ... may have the wrong one on car .... I beleive I do have I have vents temps in the 30's but like you poor air flow

 

I had no problem thinking about pulling the A/C in the winter, now that it's summertime in Florida I think twice about it everyday lol. I will check my grounds and try to get into the blower motor area and see what's up, it might be clogged with something.

I'll look into the A/C problem more later, but I have some good news and hopefully nothing changes this fact lol. I swapped in the other radio I had, everything worked fine when I installed it so I went for a ride. I turned some music way up and did everything that made it cut out before.. taking off from a stop shifting around 3k and then again shifting around redline, cruising at 70 (around 3k) and some parking lot drifting (high rpm range was the problem so this was a good test lol). It was pretty fun to say the least and I had clean audio the whole time, it didn't cut out at all! We'll see how it holds out, if it starts cutting out again then I have some other problem and will probably just ditch the audio system, park the SA and get myself an RX-8

 

Well I think I will post in here. Not everything was done today, but as for what I did do today on my car was replace the cheap, old front brake pads with brand new Hawk HPS pads and bedded them in. They feel real nice, much better than the old pads. Next job might be to convert the rear manually adjusted drums to GSL disks since I already have the calipers and mounting brakets for the job, just need new parking brake cables and disks. Will see how the drums perform at my first track day in June.

As for the other part of what I have done, over the last few weeks I have got a lot accomplished. I'll just put this in list form.

-Greased window regulators for easier movement, they were getting real stiff from the old dried out original 33.5 year old grease.
-Adjusted the rear brake shoes. They weren't too far out really, just wanted to be sure they were good.
-Polished and waxed the whole car, can't believe its original Aurora White paint on this thing, looks excellent besides a few small chips.
-Repainted the badly stone chipped and damaged header panel, bumper and lower valence. Turned out quite good, I am happy with the paint match. Few people have been able to spot it.
-Engine oil change with 10W30 oil and a liter of Lucas Oil Stabilizer, mixed at 20% of full engine volume. I used the Lucas to hopefully reduce the oil consumption I was seeing and posted about before, and it worked like a charm.

Turns out the stumbling issues I have been seeing all along was caused by the engine stucking in oil past seals somewhere in the engine. Will have to see how long this lasts, but so far so good. The engine runs better than ever now and makes great power. Spent a lot of money tracking down a problem that was solved with a $14 bottle of super thick oil, but at least I will know that the parts I replaced are good to go for a long time yet.

 

I ordered the seals and gaskets to rebuild my AC compressor, and I pulled the compressor off of the car to clean it off. Did you know the compressors were silver? It was totally black the day before!

I was hoping to rebuild it and work on the AC system this weekend, but the site still hasn't sent confirmation that they've even shipped the parts, so I guess another week will go by with no AC. At least it's not very hot here (yet.)

 

So finally got some time to start getting the project I just bought cleaned up, repaired and running. Really not sure why the previous owner used not only a plug I've never seen recommended in a 12a, but also why he over-tightened them all the way down into the housing so a 13/16th spark plug socket can't even begin to loosen them. The two so far I've gotten out were so fouled it explains a lot of the surging and idling problems I felt pampering it home. Hopefully some PB Blaster and some hints from around here will help me on getting the last two out.

 

Yesterday: Not a damn thing. She's being punished for barfing up her hood latch cable at exactly the wrong moment... bad car! Bad car!

Well, that and I had to go sign my new re-fi last night instead.

 

PLASE DO NOT ADMONISH THE CAR!!!

I may have to report you to PATUTOC. = (People Against The Unethical Treatment Of Cars).

And.....
I hope your car was not within sight of the computer when you typed those mean, mean words. Revenge could make you realize that your luck has not necessarily been that bad!!!!
.

 

So I went to get gas for the lawn mower (first time ever at a gas station in my SA without putting fuel in it lol) and the whole time my motor was running on the way there and back the radio sounded like **** again. So it wasn't the radio, I give up on this whole deal.

 

Sounds like you have a questionable power or ground connection. Those can be hard to diagnose and cause issues one moment then work fine the next. Check the resistance from the ground pin on your radio connector to the chassis ground and also check resistance from the positive battery cable to the positive on your radio connection. Unhook the battery for the second test otherwise you could fry your meter. Both tests should show no resistance, if you see even 0.5 ohm resistance on either there is a connection issue.

Another test you can try to find out if it is the alternator causing a feedback issue, just remove the alternator belt and run the engine. If this is the only belt running your water pump, don't run the engine too long, but if your air pump and belt are still in place and running the water pump, the battery simply won't be charging. Sometimes when a regulator goes bad or some of the suppression circuitry goes bad, it can cause "noise" in the power system, which will directly affect the sound through your radio. If the bad sound persists even with the alternator not functioning, you have other issues.