This is going to be what I did in the last week and a half-ish.

I adjusted my idle after swapping out that torn accelerator pump diaphragm from the 17th and have seen significantly better gas mileage and performance.

I swapped out my old speakers in the back so now I have two 6 ½ in 160W Kenwood speakers in the back with the two 4 ½ in 100W Kenwood speakers in front I got with my Kenwood stereo from Statique here on the forum.





Today, I installed an LED-lit racing switch where the unused section of rocker switch where the rear wiper would be on a GSL or SE.









Today I also replaced the thermostat because it was letting the coolant out at 210degF according to my Auto Meter gauge placed just outside the thermostat. So usually I would hit 250degF or higher while driving, almost getting into the dashed portion of the overheating area on the original gauge. So I took it out, and swapped in a 180degF one I picked up a few days ago, and here’s a picture of the thermostat letting it out at 180 on the dot.



Here’s the spot where it lets it out on the original gauge



So my dilemma is, this is letting it out really cold. Like really cold. I couldn’t even get the car above 180 driving today. Granted it was like 15mins of highway, but I would have thought I’d make it to that small hash mark (which is where the thermostat would usually let the coolant out at 210deg). The original thermostat said 82degC which is 179.6degF – so 180. Why would it wait till the smallest hash mark at 210degF to let the coolant out??? Anyone else have this as well?

Lastly, in the process of all this I took off my cracked steering wheel surround, and found out that it’s much worse that I thought. So if anyone has an extra, top and bottom, I would be in the marked heavily. I’ll be posting up a WTB ad soon here for one as well. Tragedy.



From the 17th,

Quote:

Originally Posted by DivinDriver

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.

I found that that torn accelerator pump diaphragm and swapped it out with the newer one. Thank you for the offer DD, it means a lot.

I appreciate the help you all show on this forum and it is what draws me to the site every day Thanks to all you rotor heads that help us younger rotorites learn.

 

So I had a pretty crappy day.
I went to go put in my HID's, easy enough right?
Well, my short story: First I decided to start it off my replacing the screws that hold down the headlight lids, everything went like a breeze..... then the "I'm going to ruin your day" fairy decided to show up. I couldn't remove the two screws closest to the hood. I was able to drill in them with that easy screw remover, but when extracting it stopped my drill. They stopped my big Milwaukee drill dead in it's tracks. To makes matter worse I damaged some of my already bad paint job.
So I decided to work around them, sounded like a good idea at the time but not really.
I removed the battery, but due to extreme wind trying to rip the hood off I gave up after an hour of fighting it and decided to put everything back. With my shoulder holding the hood against the wind and my right arm holding all the wires out of the way (extremely awkward) my arm twisted and put the battery in wrong. I hope you can see where this is going. I didn't catch it until I had put the positive of the negative terminal. So now my car won't start. -_-
The Tach. is showing the battery as dead, so now it's charging.
I hope everything ends well.

 

She's all good now. Battery charged for a couple hours and she started right up.

 

I cleaned and washed the car up for the local Cars and Coffee on Saturday.

If I get bored I may replace my bra with one painted on using plasticoat. I saw an
FD at DGRR completely painted using plasticoat and it look fine. Would make a killer
bra I think.

 

Dodged yourself a bullet, there.

I took the Beastie for a double-lap around the neighborhood last night - - it's just over a mile of stop signs and hills each lap, and since it's inside our Association it's private streets, so no worries about the expired registration - - and I feel pretty confident that I've got all the air out of the cooling system finally. No more occasional glims from the "Add Coolant" light. Always makes me paranoid after a fresh build when it does that, because it makes me think I'm getting blow-by on a coolant seal.

Afterward, I was tuning the carb a bit in the garage, when I acquired a new friend; a guy named Bob who lives on the other side of the community saw me driving around while he was out for a walk, and decided to wander into the garage and start up the "Wow, I remember these from when I was stationed in Japan with the Navy" conversation. So he hung around and we talked rotary for about 30 mins. Turns out he owned a Familia at one time, too.

I'm still getting the slight arrhythmic miss that I've had for years (and passed smog with once) & have never been able to track down. It's just at the noticeable level when idling. Videoed it back in '09; it'll shake a water bottle placed on the air cleaner but that's about it. Here's that old vid - still sounds like this.





In previous attempts to remove it, I've replaced everything in the ignition system with the exception of the dizzy & had no effect.

I remembered last night that I'd bought a used dizzy some time ago, so I pulled it out of the box. It's pretty rough-looking - - aluminum's quite corroded and there's some rust on the internals - - but the shaft rotation is amazingly smooth & end-play is minimal, can't feel any run-out at all. I decided to tear it down and see if I could freshen it up, maybe try the car with it & see if the 'burble' goes away.

Got it all torn down last night, and it actually doesn't look that bad inside. It seems like it got wet, maybe got rained on without a cap in place, so there's surface rust on the reluctor and shaft, and the mech advance is all orange, but the shaft seal and bushings are very good, and the pickup plate seems fine with a little cleaning & regreasing of the bearings.

It seems like an evening's elbow grease may be enough to put it back into better mechanical shape than my installed unit, which is all shiny & polished/painted but is original to the car and has something like 200k miles on it now.

So, that'll be tonight. if it runs better, it can be polished too. Function first!

 

So when I was going to work at 4:30 AM she started right up no problems. I got there in the middle of a thunder storm. (so glad she didn't stop then)
when I was leaving work, the something from yesterday started up again, no power. I sat there for 30 minutes while I was waiting for my dad to bring the jumper cables. I tried one last time and she came to life.
Can't figure it out. If she keeps this up a new battery has been bumped up to number one thing to replace and then maybe the alternator if it still happens. I'm not super hurt if this is my problem. All of my other electronics are fine and all of the fuses are intact.
Oh, to add that my cable connector have been trashed for a while, thepositive wasn't that bad but the negative had seen better days so I replaced that.

Divin, my car idles somewhat close to what yours does, I'm idling around the 800 RPM range though, now. We haven't been able to figure it out. Let me know if you ever find your problem and good luck.

 

the P port does the same thing! actually quite literally, the misfire is cause by too many burned gasses left over in the chamber, so its the stuff that doesn't leave the engine on the exhaust stroke, and gets cycled around on the next intake stroke.

see excerpt from SAE#950454

or in layman's terms, try running it a tad richer

 

Make sure you use a SA dizzy and not a FB one. Different shapes on the reluctor(?) wheel.

 

Yep. 1980 dizzy's are unique; they are the only ones with electronic pickups instead of points, but without any ignitor mounting pads since the J-105 ignitors mount remotely at the fender. Built that way for exactly one model year.

I'm sure I have the correct one; I'll do pix to my build thread in a day or two, when I finish dinking with it.

As I recall, the reluctor wheel is pretty much exactly backwards in pattern from the one used on the FB's, too.

 

worked on the silver one, swapped throttle bodies and no luck I am going to try the air idle control valve.

 

In California, richer is bad... at last once you pass what the TR can consume.


Dizzy pix going up in my build thread now. Not beautified yet - I'll do that once it proves useful - but thoroughly cleaned and regreased. Much tighter than my current unit. Tomorrow night I'll test it on the car.

 

Its not even that good.

SA dizzy:



FB dizzy:

 

So, reversed curve shape AND a much more aggressive 'edge' to the waveform it'll generate, too.

The reversed curve shape (but with the same rotation direction) is interesting. It means the SA ignitor control box, which includes a transistor amplification stage between the pickup coil and the actual ignitor, also inverts the signal waveform in the process. Triggers on the opposite 'edge,' as it were.

I didn't quite get the dizzy assembled last night (the wife demanded a food break) but I should have it done and in shortly after getting home. Real curious to see what difference it makes, as this unit has noticeably 'younger' bushings in it. Much less play in the shaft than my original.

 

Exactly, I discovered this when I was using my original dizzy to drive the HEI ignitors
I use in my ignition now. Switched dizzies, swapped trigger wires and bam it all
worked flawlessly. I didn't check the magnetic pickups but it could be they are
different as well. I guess the parts fiche might tell us.

 

Guaranteed they are, as the '80 pickups come with an integral 2-to-3-foot long shielded cable pair hardwired to the pickups. All one assembly.

 

Re-installed my vac secondary diaphragm, plugged a vacuum leak, got my idle down to 2.5k. Still have no working accelerator pump. Maybe my new diaphragm will fix that. Trying that this weekend.

 

I had a miss at idle and couldn't get my carb to idle down smoothly either until I put in that new accelerator pump diaphragm.

Funny thing is, it's getting almost 2mpg better and I think I'm doing even better on this tank! It was sucking in quite a bit of air and leaking fuel but not enough I could notice it until I took off the carb. From just adjusting the idle to 1500RPM with a vacuum leak (I can feel it, see it in the RPMs at idle, and had it confirmed from another guy who works on 80s NA cars). So we'll see on the leak and the MPGs.

 

I finished assembling the new (spare) dizzy, and set the timing. I shot some video before I readjusted the idle, so I could have a true "apples^2" comparison.

The original dizzy had quite a bit of end-play compared to the new one.

Explanatory note: our distributors have two separate shaft segments in them; the 1) bottom section which engages the e-shaft gear and rides on the housing bushings, and which also carries the bottom part of the mechanical advance mechanism,and the 2) upper section which fits over the top end of the bottom shaft, carries the reluctor wheel, and engages the top half of the mech advance.



Because the shaft is split in the middle, there can be end play in both parts.

End play in the bottom part would be more likely to mess with timing (seems to me) since letting the shaft move in and out would change the engagement point of the helical drive gears. End play in the top half wouldn't matter as much to timing, since the reluctor is straight-cut. Moving it vertically wouldn't effect timing.

Original dizzy had bottom-half end play of 18 thousandths, and top half play of 12 thousandths (0.018" & 0.012")

The freshly-rebuilt replacement ('new') dizzy had bottom play of only 5 thousandths, and top play of 18 thousandths (0.005" & 0.018")

Before and after videos:
Original Dizzy


Freshly refurb'ed 'Spare' Dizzy (newer camera, which sucks on audio and noise, frankly)


Seems to me that the replacement dizzy eliminated a lot of the 'impact' of the miss; you can still hear it just slightly, and see it if you look close, but it's much weaker - - it doesn't shake the engine nearly as much.

My theory is that the slop in the bottom end of the original dizzy allowed the timing to get 'tossed ahead' when the miss happens, making the next firing a bit off-time and contributing to the strength of the miss.

Looking at the timing marks with a timing light, I can say that the timing is visibly more stable with the tighter dizzy. It used to jitter a bit visibly, but now it looks rock-steady.

Bottom line is: replacing the dizzy greatly reduced the severity of the miss, to the point where it is barely noticeable now at idle.

It should be possible to tighten up end-play on a dizzy, since between the housing and the drive gear there is a hardened spacing washer. If a thicker washer of the proper ID/OD could be had, it would remove end play in the bottom half.



There's a load washer at the top too, but it is below a drive-in grease seal, and could only be changed by removing and replacing the seal.

 

The new baby came last week, so I had to put the fender pull to the side and welcome my daughter into the world. Rewarded myself with an hour to get back out and finish the project this morning. What was a big dent from a parked car & a previous owner is now just a tiny paint seam. Now if I could only get some ideas on getting those leading spark plugs out...

 

Congrats on the new family addition!

Sold my mariah hood and front spoiler, put the old hood back on till the new one arrives. With the front off I'm really not liking the dirty old oil cooler. May have to look into upgrading that now.

 

Major congrats to you and the missus!





Today, I did this:



I feel like dancing.

 

Had her towed to RE-Speed for the exhaust fab. Hopefully done soon, then it needs to be lowered, new plugs and fuel filters and an alignment.

 

charged my A/C with Freeze 12 and away i went... been freezing ever since.

 

What conversion/evacuation did you do first, if any?

 

nope nada.

went to my buddies shop, after this morning cars and coffee meet, and he had some R12 left over in his machine and let me have some "gold", the car already blew "pretty cold", so i figured it would work and it held the charge.

only thing is im missing the throttle opener so i had to adjust the carb to fast idle. or the car would die.

i guess im just lucky... car sat for 15 years in storage and everything works on it lol