I'm sitting here drawing up some budgetary stuff to try to figure out how best to tackle this pig... er, rat, and since I have this here and I know Clokker is dealing with this this week, I thought I'd rub it in:

________________________________________________

....................READINGS............LIMITS.... ..........RESULTS
HC GPM............0.3822..............2.5000......... ........PASS
CO GPM............4.2431.............20.0000......... .......PASS
CO2 GPM........459.7472............................... ................
NOX GPM..........1.1083..............4.5000........... ......PASS
________________________________________________

That reads to me like a healthy little engine! I sure didn't buy it for the paint! I'd probably trade a few PPM for some working brakes and doors though...

 

Oooh...salt in the proverbial wound.
I'll return after my test and compare notes.

 

Just as a note, that fuel switch is normally added when compression drops. The engine puts in a good bit of fuel on start ups and cutting fuel pressure will help starts without flooding. Not to scare you or anything, but I would recommend a compression test soon!

 

It's also added due to flooding from leaking injectors.

 

The shop that did it said it was because of leaky injectors. Something about a design flaw that's since been rectified or some other lame sounding excuse. I asked whether putting new injectors would allow me to pull it, and they said that would likely be the case.

I have a potential game changer in the works if the ******* will just quit being such a goddamn flake... I hate people.

Craigslist Is A Terrible Place To Actually Buy Anything

 

Lol I did it again. Replied to the last post and missed the first page (where you mentioned about the leaking injector info).

The primary injectors mount onto the center housing ('block'), so the upper intake has to come off. No big deal for you, it seems. Might as well also send out the secondary injectors (two primary, two secondaries that come online at higher rpm's under load). I say send out because there are services to rebuild and flow test them at a fraction of the cost of new or rebuilt ones.

The car indeed is a funny mix of options. Kind of like the GX available here (in Canada), since mine came with sunroof but now power windows or locks or security system. Do you have the 'security' light near the power mirror switch? Also, you have the 'better' sound system in the sense that it has the equalizer at the bottom. The GX's here didn't have a factory security system or equalizer. Do you have power steering and A/C? Probably. So it seems you have a couple extra options, but a couple missing (for the luxury package). Confused.

 

Yes on the EQ. No on the power steering. Yes on the AC. Maybe on the security system; most of it is there, but it's been disabled/partially removed. My statement regarding the luxury package comes from Mazda looking up the VIN, and reading through the specifications sticky. It may not seem super luxyoorius, but every feature in the package is present and accounted for.

 

I passed.
In fact, I passed with lower readings than you in three of the four categories.

So there.

 

Yeah... Big ol' asterisk there though... NOX and CO are from high combustion temperatures because I have better compression. HC is low and CO2 is high because I'm more thoroughly burning the fuel.

 

Seriously with the edit button... I got too many tongue sticking out guys in there...

In other news, Clokker and I took a drive on down to Pueblo today to pick up 5-lug hubs and fancy new brakes. Also, and this is possible the more important part, a new set of door latches! I still have some parts to drum up, but going to be getting some better binders soon.

That's not what was cooking though. That might have been meth or something... Flakiest bastard I've ever encountered on Craigslist (and that's a flaky group of people). Guy had a lightly wrecked vert that had all the parts I needed and then some for $600. Long flaky story short, dudes a flake and the biggest time waster EVER. Holy crap...

 

You being so close to clokker is great news! Now we open a new chapter in the clokker chronicles.

 

Is that like The Chronicles of Riddick and The Chronicles of Narnia?

Do I have magical/super powers in this script...cause that would be bitchin.

 

Yes, clokker can be riddick, spectre can be jack

 

yeah, that "medical" stuff you smoke can give you any magical super power you can think of

 

Yes, I am a Guild Navigator.

 

Oh yeah, we also got this:



An '88 owners manual! Maybe I can figure out how I would set my clock if it worked! This assumes I can read through the mud and mildew, but it's what I got so far. j9fd3s is doing some archeology for me to hopefully dig up and scan an '86 manual.

 

Haha! Right after I posted that I started trying to open it and see what was still legible. The many shades and colors of mold prompted my wife to suggest I not do so where we breathe. The pages are pretty well stuck together and not coming apart with the text in tact, so it's probably a lost cause anyway... Oh well. Didn't cost anything.

 

The clock is easy, you just turn the **** to the left for hours, and right for minutes

Good luck getting you clock working unless your handy with soldering. Mine still works.......intermittently, which makes me sad, i like my fast looking clock

 

So, get those latches in yet?
Gotta start somewhere.

 

Also, when you push the **** near the clock, it'll go to '00', IIRC, so that you can synchronize the watch when you hear a time signal on the radio..."At the sound of the tone, it's xx o'clock."

Small detail, but worth mentioning.

 

No latches yet. I threw the window scraper back on in advance of the light rain we got yesterday evening, but that's all I've really been able to touch it. I did order in some parts though. They'll be ready to pick up at 7:30 in the AM tomorrow!

As for the clock, mine must not be functioning properly. The hour direction responded when I turned it, minute didn't seem to respond. Not sure if pushing did anything or not... Probably didn't try.

 

Well that didn't work out like I wanted it to...

I was planning to get the car fixed up and at least mostly baselined today. Unfortunately for that particular goal, this weekend is Frozen Dead Guy Days (look it up) and I got outvoted regarding when we leave. So I only had a few hours to really get anything done. I figured I'd do the doors today and could wrap up the rest tomorrow. So much for that!

First off, I discovered the mechanisms I got from the yard somehow managed to get enough sun to really chalkify the plastic.




This would be pretty annoying and disconcerting in any case, but given the way my original latches failed...






...Using extra brittle plastic components seems like an especially bad idea... Hopefully you can make out in the pictures there that the nylon/plastic piece that comprises the core of the door latch fractured pretty thoroughly somehow. Clean breaks all the way through in several places. I've never seen a door latch of any sort fail like that.

To make things ten times more frustrating, when I was removing the plastic clip that holds the outer actuation pushrod to the outer door handle...



That bastard broke on me too! WTF plastics? This is why I hate you!

Clokker said he might have a spare door handle in his parts stash with a lock barrel for my passenger side. Maybe it has that plastic clip too...

Meanwhile, I threw it all back together. At least I can open the door from the inside.

 

I'm sure spectre will be on soon to detail his trials and travails but I can say, having seen the car a few times now and watched him work, that the rat is going to fight every inch of the way.

Not sure if blood has been shed yet but it's going to require sacrifice soon.
I stand around saying how easy/simple something is going to be and an hour later it's still not done.
Pretty much everything that can go wrong has, so far.

I realize now how charmed my Mazda-life has been...spectre has already run into more snags in a week than I have in seven years.

 

Beat me to it!

My stuck caliper was actually a clogged flex line. I started by thoroughly cleaning and greasing the door handle (since Clokker tells me they're prone to breaking) and the new door mechanism. Had to fight the linkages a bit more than the last time because I somehow managed to get the pushrod for the exterior handle stuck in an odd place... Ultimately got it though.... I'm going to be a door guru before this is over!

After that, we threw it up in the air and took off the wheels. The stuck caliper was actually a clogged soft line. That soft line refused to come off, and the fitting for the hard line is now a perfect circle. We went and got some more line, but for some reason it was decided to run a piece of safety wire that was lying on the ground next to the wheel after measuring the hard line up to see if any clogs could be alleviated. Sure enough, the brake fluid was just that gross! Only one brake rotor decided to give us any real trouble, and I think it was Clokker that beat it into submission.

We took the rotors to the FLAPS to get them turned, and their computer says they're non-serviceable. So we went to the next FLAPS and they turned them instead. Got brake fluid, gear oil, and rear shoes (front get here this morning) then went back. Threw the rotors on (I'm missing a set of screws for one rotor, hoping to solve that this morning).

I changed the fluid in the diff and the tranny, and it was actually better than I thought it would be. My truck had some thick sludge in its diff when I serviced it that was likely from Desert Storm, and I thought this would be the same thing. It certainly wasn't new, and was probably still a good decade old, and there was a little fuzz on the magnetic drain plug, but all in all I've seen a lot worse come out just fine.

Finally we bled the brakes. That was by a long long long... long long way the most insanely bad brake fluid I have ever seen. Either Clokker or another car club guy had left a partially consumed clear plastic cup of Coke on the tailgate of my truck. I dumped it and used it to bleed the brakes into. What left that cup looked very similar to what ultimately ended up in the cup... It looked like a thicker flat Coke. For the beer drinkers this is a much more accurate description: that brake fluid was like a super thick and delicious imperial stout. Black with a hint of brown, a little brown head, thick like it was brewed from a super syrupy mash... I've paid unconscionable amounts of money for beer that looked like this brake fluid. If I found it on the counter in my kitchen, I probably would have drank it without thinking (and been sorely disappointed). We flushed the crap out of it (with DOT4 since I'm likely to be changing the brake system over soon), and now it's nice and clean and clear. But seriously, that was bad stuff.

Today I'm going to get those missing screws, get the front brake pads, get them swapped, and see if I can't order the broken door handle piece. Almost to a decent baseline.

 

oh i don't know, brake fluid is pretty bitter....

the rotor to hub screws can be left out, as they are more to hold the rotor on the car on the assembly line than anything else.