I'm going to be moving soon, so I wanted to get some parts of the car put back together so I would have less stuff to move or worry about breaking in transit. I got the headliner put in, and have the interior about 2/3's of the way complete for the first time in who knows how long.

for those of you with broken hard plastic interior bits, here's a useful tidbit.

The interior trim parts are all ABS plastic, and ABS pipe cement appears to do an acceptable job of holding the parts together. in this case, I repaired the A-Pillar trim where the tab broke off. I roughed up the area where I applied the cement, applied cement to both parts, held them together for a few minutes, and now they're stuck together nice and tight.

The downside, the cement is black, and will likely not match if it is visible. for things like the console skeleton, this is fine, visible stuff, not so much. I painted my "A" pillar trim black, so it doesn't matter to me.

I'm told the cement is ABS plastic, dissolved in acetone, I have not confirmed this, but it may be possible to dissolve some of a non-salvageable piece in acetone, and have a "DIY" cement in the factory colors, to avoid an obvious repair job being an eyesore.

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"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper

bleh, I hate brakes so much... My buddy with the LZ9 GT came by to help me bleed the brakes, we bled them and bled them, and got nothing. I used a phoenix systems reverse bleeder on the calipers as a last ditch effort, and the fluid that left the front right caliper was disgusting. almost black, all the others were clean. the calipers on this car, were a hybrid of C5 and 4th generation F body calipers, which took a ton of effort to assemble, as all the parts look the same, but are different enough to cause problems. so instead of just replacing the front right, I swapped all four for off the shelf C5 calipers to prevent any further headache down the road should I need to replace the pads or hardware. The next night, my buddy came back over and we bled them again, this time getting a better pedal, but still very low. at this point, I figured the master cylinder was too small, so I stepped up bigtime.

Here's the new master alongside an S10 blazer master:



The new master is off of a 1996 chevy C3500hd and has a 1.57" bore, it physically bolts in place fine, but the reservoir is HUGE, so I pried it off and installed a stock fiero reservoir. The reservoir removes by simply pulling it off, not fasteners hold it on. The lines connect in the same position, but, the fittings are not the same size. I fixed this by cutting the lines just behind the flare, and removing the OE tube nuts, which I replaced with nuts of the correct size, then I flared the line and bolted everything back together.

where I cut the flares:





use a double flare kit, it looks like this:




The parts list:

New MC:

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/aaz-13-2754

1/4" tube nuts:

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/sum-220115

3/16" tube nuts:

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/sum-220137

now, lets talk results. with the S10 MC, the pedal feel was crap, and the travel was very long. Using the C3500HD MC I have a firm pedal, but the travel is very short, honestly I think it might be too short, so if I have a reason to crack the system open again, I'll probably install a 3/4 ton master to replace the 1 ton, it's 1.25" instead of 1.57" and should be a direct bolt in now that the I have the 1 ton master installed.

3/4 ton MC:

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/dhb-m390257

after all this nonsense, I finally drove the car for the first time in ages. because my fuel sender works, and it showed empty, I figured it would be a good idea to stop and fill it up at which point I found out the O ring on top of my fuel tank is shot, or not sealing, as the pump clicked off, and I heard the splash of the fuel hitting the ground...thankfully it was a very small amount of fuel, probably only a 1/2 cup or so, but it was enough to let me know I need to drop the tank and fix it. the part I'm still unsure of, is if my car has an 85 sender still, or an 87+, I don't remember which I installed when I put the tank in 7 years ago, and I don't know how to tell the difference, if it's still the 85 sender, that would explain the leak, as both senders are different.

I ended up putting about 35 miles on the car today, and it felt really good, but it does need more front camber, tighter rear springs, and/or a rear sway bar.

as proof it left the house, here's a shot of it outside the brewery I frequent.

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"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper

quote Originally posted by La fiera: So you went for a drink to celebrate your success?!!

just one, but yes, I did. if you're ever in Bremerton, WA Crane's Castle has some of the best damn beer I've ever had.

https://cranescastlebeer.com/

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"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper

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"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper

well, the past week or so has been pretty frustrating. Since I got the car running, it would occasionally have a tick to it, which I thought was a lifter not playing nice. I drove it to a buddies house and on the way back, it very suddenly became constant, and clearly not a lifter...

the other day, I pulled the oil filter, cut it open to find this:







I dropped the pan, for inspection, and found and the number 2 rod bearing decided it wanted to spin. I'm not 100% sure why, I had some theories, but they don't seem to hold water, as all the other bearings looked like new, the only showing any sign of trouble was number two, which catastrophically failed. At this point in the failure analysis, my best guess is that I must have over torqued the number 2 bearing cap, or there was some other defect with that cap/bearing that I otherwise hadn't seen. originally, I suspected some kind of oiling issue, but I feel like I would have found another bad bearing, or indications of a loss of lubrication, of which none were found. the bolts in the number 2 cap were tight, so I doubt it was under torqued. I didn't take pictures of the engine, I probably would have thrown my phone...

when the noise started I assumed it was a rod, so I bought a set of rod bearings, with the hopes that I could throw a new rod bearing(s) in and keep going. when I found the spun bearing, I realized there wasn't much hope for this short block, as bearing material was embedded into both halves of the rod. I tried very hard to remove as much of the material as possible from the cap, and it really didn't want to budge, and the cap is the easy part, as it's removable from the engine, and doesn't risk further contamination of other parts of the engine. the other end, on the connecting rod however, would be virtually impossible to handle in the car. I cleaned up as much as I could and aggressively "polished" the crank journal with some sandpaper to knock down any egregious high spots, put a new bearing on number 2, and bolted it all back together. at this point, I just hope I can get it on a trailer for the move under it's own power, so I can deal with it later.

My current plan, is to get another LX9, put a "stage 2 turbo cam" from WOT tech in it, with my heads and intakes, and call it good. The cam change prevents me from having to cut new valve reliefs, as my current cam requires reliefs, which will make the whole process faster and easier. Ben at WOT tech also said his dynomation software suggests I should pick up a considerable amount of torque with the stage 2 compared to what I have. Because I can't leave well enough alone, I'll start working on an LZ9 swap on a spare cradle, but I will implement a significant amount of lessons learned with the LX9, into the LZ9 build. The LZ9 work will not begin until after the car is running and driving again.

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"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper

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"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper