Yeah, like a fish scale, but accurately calibrated in grams and Newtons of force. This particular one reads 0-2000 grams; it's meant for scientific use, physics classes & the like.

http://www.amazon.com/Tubular-Spring...2&sr=8-1-fkmr0

The FSM calls out using a spring scale for calibrating the steering column preload, and also for setting up the front bearings. I've never had one, and for $4.75 (plus no tax and free shipping -thank you Amazon Prime!) it seemed like the time was ripe.

I don't have the special tool (40-0180-510A) that is to be screwed onto the column to hook the scale to (which converts linear force to rotational torque), but I can easily make do with the steering wheel, or even a pair of vice grips, so long as I know how far from center the scale is supposed to attach - - and I'm going to work that out by scaling the photo of it being used, against the known diameter of the column shaft.

yeah for under $5 its totally worth it, i might even get one!

My calculations show that the offset from shaft center to the scale attachment point should be 100mm. Which makes sense, as it keeps the torque math easy working within the metric system.

Are you measuring the torque to turn the steering shaft? What about a beam style, inch pound torque wrench off the center nut on the steering wheel?

That would work, but mazda does not give the spec in torque measurements... only as linear force applied via the special tool: 0.2-0.5 kg (0.4-1.1 lb) prior to sector shaft installation, and 0.6-1.2 kg (1.32-2.65 lb) after installation but before attaching to the center link.

:scratch:

I'd have to dust off my thinking cap, but your 100mm lever arm is about 4 inches off center and your looking for .4 - 1.1 lbs (not inch lbs, right) of force at that distance.

Aren't torque wrenches calibrated at what ever length handle they have? Using a 12 inch (long) beam (inch lb) torque wrench, you'd look for 1/3 of that spec, converted to inch lbs? Might be interesting to measure both ways and see what the difference is. Then again, maybe not. You are on a deadline......

Ok, just cause these morbid, useless tidbits that no one will ever use intrige me, I stoked the furnace enough to get a glow out of the picture tube in my head. Since 1 ft lb = 12 in lbs, then .4 to 1.1 ft lbs equals 4.8 to 13.2 in lbs.

If it says to measure that force 100mm (or 4 inches approx) from the center of rotation (which I think is what you are describing) then I'd say you could use those exact numbers if you had a 4inch long torque wrench. This is where I wander off away from the glow and into the darkness.....

Most torque wrenches are standard lengths. I know a 12 inch long beam type (mechanical) torque wrench in inch pounds used to be fairly standard in cave man days. Now we have Infra Red, Lazer Beam torque calculators that could probably reach to the Moon and read you the torque off each leg of the Apollo 11 Lunar decent stage with only a tiny watch battery and a couple of keystrokes.

But if you were to pry that old 12 inch torque wrench from a prehistoric mechanic, would you divide the force values by 3 to compensate for the longer wrench? (12 divided by 4=3) If so, then the values become 1.59 to 4.39 in lbs. All these numbers are so close to one another that it becomes splitting hairs. I guess I get too bored in the winter and get cabin fever. I wonder what the torque would be at the rim of the steering wheel? Hmmmm........

Never mind me.

I suspect there are other complexities involved ... such as, the only way to apply a torque wrench to that shaft would be to first thread on a nut - - but then the torque of the nut to the shaft becomes a complicating factor in measuring the torque of the shaft against the bearings, and you could only measure it in one direction. So now, you aalso need a lock nut for the nut you plan to measure the torque with... and you have to specify a tightening torqure for them before you do the measurement...

Gotta be some reason Mazda thought making a special tool was a better idea. Most dealer shops would have had torque wenches handy.

Banzai, perhaps I'm just not following your math correctly, but it seems to me you're missing the definition of ft/lbs. In order to measure torque, you have to first define it. We know torque is rotating force, and it is measured as linear force applied at a right angle to a lever a specified distance from the fulcrum. Okay, that probably sounded kinda confusing. Say you want to apply 20 ft/lbs of torque to a bolt. You could put a one foot long wrench on there and apply 20 pounds of linear force to the end, or a two foot long wrench and 10 pounds, or a 20 foot long wrench ( now THAT'S a breaker bar!) and one pound of force, or ... well you get the idea.

So now let's calculate 0.2 kg at 100mm, or 0.4 lbs at 4 inches. That would be equivalent to (0.4 * 4) = 1.6 lbs at 1 inch, or 1.6 in/lbs, right? Continuing, .5kg or 1.1 lb works out to 4.4 in/lbs, 1.32 lb works out to 5.28 in/lbs, 2.65 lb works out to 10.6 in/lbs.

So prior to sector shaft installation preload should be set around 1.6-4.4 in/lbs, and with the sector shaft without attaching to the center link you would want 5.28-10.6 in/lbs.

Day 1300
Let's see, this weeked saw:
*Two irons masked and painted (still awaiting front iron - supposed to be here any time) - - masking the rear iron takes for-freaking-ever.
*Rotor housings srcubbed clean. Need to finish decarboning the exhaust ports, then they get polished, cleaned again, and clearcoated.
*Started in on polishing the front cover. What a PITA. about 80% thru the first rough pass. Considering how little of it is visible when the car's assembled, I may just really be crazy.
*Received my new aluminum thermostate cover from Re-Speed; thing is beautiful, and wondrous light, as is... but it's even better polished.
*Got the new bottom seal in the steering gearbox - fit like a glove- but haven't moved forward on assembing it, as I need to clean out it 's mounting position in the engine bay first. Steerning boxes with columns are cumbersome and difficult to store, so it stays apart until I'm ready to install it.
*Extracted the pilot bearing and seal from my e-shaft, which would have been better to do while the engine was assembled, but I made do. One more time to use my gen-u-ine extractor tool, which when disassembled doubles as an exceptional quality dowel pin remover.

Had to call off car work to do some honeydews. Visitors coming in town, so some cleaning and yardwork had to be caught up on.

Some choice pix from the weekend's progress:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...emoval/178.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...emoval/182.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...emoval/185.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...emoval/186.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...emoval/188.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...emoval/189.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...emoval/192.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...emoval/195.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...emoval/197.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...emoval/199.jpg

...aaaand project is temporarily stalled; out-of-country visitors in town, which requires some days of socializing.

One of our guests, a nice young man of college age & son of my wife's high-school chum from Seoul, was engaging in some dinner table chit-chat when the subject turned to cars, and my wife asked him what kind of cars he likes.

He answered that his dream cars came mainly from video games he'd played... and that his all-time favorite was the Mazda RX-7.

He hadn't been in the garage yet. :egrin:

Sounds like I have a willing helper, for the duration of his stay. Muahahah.



My replacement front plate arrived on Monday, so it'll likely get scrubbed and painted this weekend. That will allow engine assembly to start the following weekend.

I still have the carb situation to address, too. Working on that.

Time is the fire in which we burn.

Day 1306

Got the front plate cleaned and painted, and my 'replacement' steering gear assembled & started on adjustments. Trick will be to see which one of my two now (the replacement & my original one) I can get dialled in the best on lash. The other goes to spare.

I also dropped my heater-hose hardline (the one that runs along the right side frame from the firewall to the lower rad connection) and my brake booster hardline off at the plating shop; as much as I liked the blue anodized look, it was just too hard to keep it scratch-free in that location. Pix when they are back, of course. Plating things is addictive; you do a little bit,and you suddenly start seeing other parts that would look good that way.

I'm going to try my hand at nickel-plating the line hold-down clips, but not right away - - they can be got to with the engine installed, so they are an 'eventually' item.

The rest of my weekend went to time spent with our house guests. And this week I have a business trip to deal with. Then more house guests, then later in the month another business trip.

That deadline is looking steeper. But I'm close to the start of engine re-assembly. Gotta get the trans cleaned up first, as they will go in as they came out, in a pair.

i totally want to pull my car apart and replate all the stuff that needs plating.... its one of those little things that makes it look new

Problem is, the more you do, the more there is to do. :gwink:

You going the chrome route again, to match your lugs?

i know! you should see my friends GSL-SE, it sparkles underneath...

Uggghhh....why am I reading this thread???? I know it is meant to inspire, but this type of attention to detail makes me want to go out and burn my cars to the ground...lol. DD...those irons came out great, and I still think you will make your deadline...not by much though...lol!!

Yeah... I teetered on going with yellow chromate, but that side of the engine bay is pretty empty; it really needs some highlights.

I may be sick, but I'm not that far gone just yet. :)

Funny, my wife seems to feel the same way about mine; when the credit card bill shows up this month, I'll be glad to be on that business trip.

Thank you, sir. Still a long way to go; haven't even started on carburation yet,and that'll be the ticklish part.

This box I've been keeping my steeriing gear part in seems to be trying to tell me something:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...emoval/200.jpg

Checking to make sure the bearings settled properly:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...emoval/205.jpg

My jury-rigged pre-load test:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...emoval/206.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...emoval/207.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...emoval/208.jpg

Laser-alignment to find the center point...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...emoval/210.jpg

Bunch more pix in the public album.

I pulled off the water pump pulley tonight so I could get it clean.. and looky what I found:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...emoval/222.jpg

Yep... Just starting to go out, we were.

I found my receipt for my 'lifetime' pump... from 1994, from an auto-parts chain that no longer exists in CA (Trak Auto).

I guess 'lifetime' meant theirs, not mine.

Scored what appears to have been the very last Gates new (not reman) cast-iron water pump off Rock Auto. On it's way.

That's two "lifetime" warranties that croaked on you! Your not the only one thats been lied too. It's harder all the time to find places that will actually give you the time of day once you close your wallet. Funny how your money is never broke.

So did your fish scale work out? Looks like just shy of .5 Kg. that would go along with the .2-.5 callout w/o the sector.

Yeah... I'm still kind of bent at Tokico over that.

I had the guys at Racing Beat calling them for a couple weeks, to see if they'd honor the 'lifetime warranty' on my front struts.

First, they tried to give them a runaround about having to have the original warranty cards (from 17 years ago - - you know, the ones I mailled to them to register the warranty?) in addition to the receipt. It was pointed out to them that their warranty statement doesn't require that, and that there's no question that they are legit Tokico struts bought thru a legit reseller, and that I had a legit receipt. And that they are in fact failed, and undamaged.

Then they tried the approach that since they no longer make that model, the warranty doesn't apply (their 'New' warranty statement says that product discontinuation voids the 'lifetime' warranty - - some lifetime, huh?). Jim at Racing Beat pointed out to them that California law doesn't allow that escape - - that a warranty that can't be honored for replacement due to unavailability must be honored with refund, unless the warranty in force at the time of sale included the escape clause.

They said they'd look into it and call him back. They never did, and stopped answering his messages, too. Been months now, and I told Jim to stop wasting his time trying to chase it.

Make of that what you will; as for me, I've put Tokico struts under three cars - - currently still-new ones on the rear of the -7, and all four corners on my -Z, in addition to the wife's Maxima before she sold it - - but I'm doubtful that I'll ever buy more.

It seems getting purchased by Hitachi has not served the company well. Their webpage FAQ still says they have a "Limited Lifetime Warranty" and refers you to the "Warranty" section for details... but the website does not have a "warranty" section. You can only find it by downloading their printable catalog.

Bottom line is, Tokico's view of 'lifetime' is 'until we decide not to offer replacements any more.'

Edit: Oh, and my hand dynamometer worked very well, thanks.

yeah that is kind of lame, i mean they could have said hey we don't make those anymore, but we can give you a deal on something else, or i dunno, they just could have handled that better....

Exactly; half-off a set of FB struts would have kept me a fan.

As it is, I'd be scraping their stickers off if I'd ever actually used them.

That's piss poor seriously. I would be second guessing buying another set if I were you as well...

Oh and as cfamilyfix said, you're attention to detail makes my cars look like crap... lol

Day 1312

Still making headway:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...emoval/242.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...emoval/243.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...emoval/244.jpg

Where I ran out of daylight today:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...emoval/240.jpg

Ooh... shiny... :egrin:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...emoval/241.jpg


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...emoval/245.jpg

nice work.....going for best of show ....:biggrin::icon_tup:..good luck

Well, "best of my garage," at least.