Nothin' Special

Today entailed just a little cleanup work.

I replaced the two bolts that held the ABS controller in place with a pair that were shorter, vac'd, shampoo'd, and vac'd the passenger side carpet front to back (easy with the seat out!) and plunked the seat back in. Since the trunk carpet was convenient, I did that, too.


Ameer showed up, and after we hit the Taco Bell, he gave me a hand in replacing most of the catch cans' hoses with black ones that don't show how filthy the lines get. We also emptied the catch cans.

I'm guessing that's a lot of gas? Yeesh.

More tomorrow!

ABSolutely not.

My boss was rather surprised to hear that I got a new belt - 55.5 inches. He didn't think it would fit me! It went over the pullies on the SVX nicely, though.

There are quite a few things that can be removed from the car for the lack of their purpose. One of them is the ABS controller and its harness. The module itself is under the passenger seat. 15mm bolts hold the seat in, and 10mm bolts hold the module in place. After pulling this and trimming all the wires (I intend to remove them from the harness in their entirety later), I taped off the brown and brown/red ones (power from the fuse and the alternator) and threw the thing on the scale. Two pounds! Every bit counts...


The easy way to control the DCCD is with a Velleman K8004 PWM kit. It converts a DC voltage into a pulse width signal. Our goal here is a 100Hz signal, varying with duty cycle to adjust the torque bias. The Silver has one of these in its console, and Tom told me it was "shorting out". I figured I'd have a look.

See that resistor? It's a 4.7k that's for testing; it's not supposed to be there. I picked up another K800 to replace the resident one...

Mixed Progress

April 10, 2011:

The shifter surround that I snagged a few days back fit exactly over the tabs that hold the panel around the shifter in place, making it quite useless. Fortunately, they are in demand, so I was able to recoup much of the price I paid. There ends this entry's fail.

Between yesterday and today:

* I swapped the centers of the steering wheels between the Pearly and the Silver. The one in the Silver said "Impreza" on it, and it's surely not one of those. It now just says "MOMO". Trick of it is, I wanted the cruise control switch to stay with the Pearly, partly for keeping it active for some possible future buyer, but also because it may as well stay, as the wheel in the Silver doesn't have a hole to accommodate it. This meant a lot of messing around with the bracketry that the airbags mount to the wheels with. I also had to do some goofing around with the horn wiring. I didn't even get around to taking pictures during it all. Maybe I'll shoot some later.

* The antenna is finally installed. This turned out to be a real pain in the ass. I don't know if there are different antenna bodies and different trim pieces, because these surely didn't match. There was a key on the antenna shaft that didn't have a matching keyway on the trim. The trim had a pair of legs that collided with a land on the antenna, keeping the mating surfaces too far apart. All told, with a file and some needle nose pliers, I was able to rectify the obstructive bits and all went together. Some time ago, I'd installed the new side lamp bulb holders, so my business behind the trunk panels is complete! The trunk is all buttoned up and good to go.


* Lewis had snagged me a piece of trim to complete another project. There's a C-shaped plastic piece that goes on the back deck under the glass that covers the wiper arm shaft, which is installed as of today!

I've got some great ideas on how to get the DCCD working. It could actually go right through the Hydra for automatic mode. Details as they roll in!