For the past few years, some stuff about the front end of the car has bothered me, along with rock chips and such. I finally bit the bullet and had it repainted. To make a long story short, I had a phone number saved from 2013 for a guy selling a Berhman / Wise square front bumper brand new. I hit him up this past summer and he still had it brand new in the box, so I went and scooped that up. I had gotten a smoking deal on a front 4 piston Rotora big brake kit through the homies over at Subimods, so I couldn't pass that up. I ordered the calipers in black, but you know I wasn't going to let that happen.
My painter called me and said the car was finished, so we scheduled a day to pick it up. Still being plagued with an intermittent spark issue I thought was fixed, we went and grabbed it with my F150 and a trailer. I was super pumped. The Berhman bumper is slightly more aggressive than the aero bumper, and its something I didn't know the car needed. I don't think i'll ever go back to the aero bumper after having this mounted on the car.
On our way home, going through an intersection at about 45MPH, a lady decided to drive between my truck and the trailer while she was at a blinking red light. I'm unsure what her thought process was, as I made it a point to let the cops handle it. Too old to be telling people i'll kill them, ha. My truck and 240 are "fine" aside from the fresh paint being covered in coolant and misc small car parts from the impact, her car on the other hand was not. And my buddies trailer is fucked. Honestly, this was the best worst case scenario.
By the time the car got home, I was so irritated I just pushed it in the garage and decided to work on the intermittent spark issue in the morning.
Morning came, and I was out in the garage. Travis came by and we started to just wiggle all wires that have to do with spark. Wiring for the coilpack relay, wiring for the coils themselves, and finally the car had spark randomly. We decided to run the car, and try to see if we could get it to lose spark. About 10 seconds into it running, I noticed it had no oil pressure and shut it off. I noticed the pan was dented pretty bad in the sump area, so I pulled it off, banged the dents out and still no oil pressure. Having been down this road before, I ordered a whole new front cover from rockauto, and OEM pump gears / cover / relief valve. I also ordered a new pick up, but the old one was fine.
I brought the whole cover to work prior to taking it apart and x-rayed it to see if the relief valve was stuck open, and it was not. I however believe the pressure relief valve failed and was stuck open. it was oddly scored when I removed and inspected everything which is slightly concerning. I don't think my first 2 were shimmed, and relief valves come with shims. This one is shimmed now, so we will see what happens.
As it turns out, the intermittent spark issue that left me stranded twice was just a shitty crimp at a connector I used when I build my harness. Irritating, but its nobodies fault but my own. Once the car was running, I installed the Rotora big brake kit. I am very satisfied with this purchase. Its hard to explain the difference between these and my Z32 front brakes, but these just feel more predictable. They feel firmer, more planted, but not stiffer. It seems as though they take less energy to work better (I assume the larger surface area of the pad plays the biggest part in this)
The homie djnoway taking sunset pictures:
Powersteering pump has been whining for a few years. Finally decided to replace it with a remanned unit...can't imagine why it whined.
I also noticed I had a bad front passenger side ball joint. So I ordered new control arms and had my buddy press in S14 balljoints, since I run S14 knuckles.
Yesterday I finally installed my matching rear Suspension Techniques sway bar. Pretty simple. Fits nice and comes with bushings and endlinks.
Aside from that, i've just been driving it as much as possible. I think I have 1,700 miles on it so far. I won't name names but, one of my friends bought a dyno, and theres a pretty good chance this thing will actually get a dyno tune this year.