Floppie's Blag » Car

Vacuum/Boost Gauge for the RSX Type-S

Floppie — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 03:19:34 +0000

Breather Tank for the RSX Type-S

Floppie — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 16:59:21 +0000

Ford Product Quality

Floppie — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:17:11 +0000

I was too lazy to go out and take one, so here's a picture, via Google, of a Mustang that looks identical to my mother's.

I have to say, I am officially floored by Ford quality right now. My mother owns a 2001 base model automatic Mustang, and for a while now she’s been having issues with it idling too high. Yesterday I decided to look into the problem. I came upstairs and asked the Internet, and the first result on Google for 2001 mustang high idle was the first of a series of five articles on Muscular Mustangs detailing how to fix the five most likely causes – this one shows you how to remove and clean the idle air flow control (IAC) motor.

I figured, why not, I’ll tackle it. So I went outside, pulled the throttle body apart, took the IAC motor off, and – lo and behold – it’s got a pretty good amount of carbon and shit caked on. I also noticed that the air filter was filthy, and the housing had a fair amount of leaves in it – she’d also been having an issue with throttle responsiveness, so I figured that might be the cause for THAT problem. So I went to Wal Mart to get some throttle body cleaner and a replacement air filter, came back, cleaned out the IAC motor, and dropped in the new air filter.

While I was at it I took a look at the inside of the throttle body, and this is the part that really floored me. It was clean. Like, brand new clean. I sprayed a bit of the cleaner on and around the throttle plate and wiped it off, and the rag came back damn near perfectly clean. There was also not a drop of oil to be seen anywhere in the intake or throttle body. This says to me that this motor has zero, or as close as you can reasonably get to zero, blowby – which, after 130k miles of my mother’s driving, says to me that Ford makes one damn high quality product.

So anyway, I put everything back together, reset the ECU’s idle parameters, and then we went for a ride. The idle issue was completely solved, and even I, from the passenger seat, could feel the difference in throttle response and power. Previously it had some hesitation, which it certainly does not anymore. It also shifts smoother, both down and up – I guess the restricted airflow was actually causing the motor to not meet the transmission’s power delivery expectations. The transmission still needs a fluid flush, but it’s certainly a big improvement.

So, the moral of the story is, Ford quality gets a thumbs-up from me.

Injen Cold Air Intake for my 2002 Acura RSX Type-S

Floppie — Mon, 11 May 2009 02:08:16 +0000

Wire Tracing

Floppie — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 01:01:25 +0000

This morning, I decided that enough was enough. It’s time to get my driver side speakers working, damn it. None of them work – tweeter, door, or rear; all three of the passenger side ones and the subwoofer all work. This makes blown speakers a fairly unlikely cause.

So, I opened up my service manual, figured out exactly how the sound got from the head unit to the speakers, and went outside to get started. First things first; I disconnected the negative battery terminal and pulled out the head unit – nothing new there. I also pulled the back speakers out, which was real easy; took a look at the connections on the left rear speaker, noticed some loose aluminum leads sticking off one of them, and pulled it off. Then I came upstairs and copied down the diagram for the head unit’s wiring harness – where each wire goes and what it does.

Went back down, investigated things a bit, and noticed that there was some speaker wire running into the driver side door. Hmm, that’s a little odd, that should be in the stock wire housing, rather than next to it. Look over toward the center, by the pedals, and there’s some identical wire. I pulled on it a little bit and found that the other end didn’t lead anywhere. Hey, maybe that’s part of the problem.

The passenger side of my car, minus one seat

Looking at my wire diagram, I notice that the head unit doesn’t connect directly to any of the speakers – it goes through an amplifier. Fair enough, I should probably look at the amp wiring as well – come upstairs, find out where it is…it’s mounted on the bottom of the passenger seat. Awesome, I’ve got to pull the seat out. Get some instructions on that – turns out it’s actually pretty easy, four bolts to unscrew and a few wire harnesses to disconnect.

Go down, yank the seat, get the amp off (also real easy, it’s mounted on two bolts and held on by two nuts), and take a look to make sure all the wiring looks solid. It does. So I come back up, copy down the wire harness diagram for that as well (26 leads instead of 20, that’s 33% more fun!), and go down to see if I can find any obvious issues. I can’t. Then that purple wire that’s pigtailing off of the brown one (lead #1, switched power) behind the head unit catches my eye. I’d really like to know what that is.

The path that this mystery purple wire follows

So I trace it. I find that it leads from its position behind the head unit, down under the carpet on the passenger side, back along the base of the doorway, underneath the back seat, and finally back into the trunk. Upon reaching the trunk, it is spliced crudely (electrical tape) with a similar blue wire that has a grounding connector on the end. Except it isn’t connected to anything; I’d thought maybe it went to the subwoofer or something, but no. It was just sitting there, drawing juice back to ground against the chassis uselessly. So I wrapped the end in electrical tape to at least eliminate the grounding.

At this point I decided to go for a drive without the passenger seat in – just for fun. I plugged the head unit and amplifiers’ harnesses back in, reconnected the battery, and went. I found this odd side effect that my blinkers didn’t work, but I think that was because I didn’t reconnect the hazard light switch (it’s mounted on the head unit’s facade), because they work fine now.

When I got back, I decided it was time to do something about the extraneous wiring going throughout my car. In the back, near the sub, there was a fairly heavy-duty white cable that grounded against one of the screws under the back seat – except that it was cut roughly two feet from the end. So it was just a useless piece of aluminum and rubber. Pulled that out. There were also four pigtail connectors (with no wires leading off of them) connected to four of the amplifier’s wires – pulled those off and wrapped the spots they were connected to with electrical tape.

That white grounding cable that was cut a couple feet from the connector

[caption id="attachment_259" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Mystery purple and white cables, after removal, sitting on my passenger seat...which was sitting in the driveway "][/caption]Then it was time to do something about that damn purple wire. I decided that it couldn’t possibly be important since it wasn’t connected to anything, and therefore was just adding extra weight to the car. So I opened up the pigtail connector, pulled it off the brown wire (taped up the very excessive amount of exposed copper), and started pulling the purple one out. This ended up being a bit involved – had to take the panel at the base of the doorway off, among other things.

Under the back seat, I discovered that it was ziptied together with this thick silver cable. I reasoned it out that this couldn’t be serving any useful purpose either and I wanted it gone. So I got the pair of them out from under the back seat, up front through the floor, and out from under the carpet. Finally, these damn things are gone. I’m decently confident that the purple wire may have been the cause of my battery drain.

White and purple cables, showing the white cable's connectors

I’d just like to take a minute to rant about the previous owner of this car. As you can see from the pictures at the left, this mystery white cable was used to connect some sort of home audio equipment to the car. Home audio equipment has no place in your vehicle unless it’s a ricer show car, and if that be the case it should be an XBox and a big screen TV replacing the back seat or something along those lines. This, quite frankly, is ridiculous.

The bits of silver speaker wire that were visible before removing anything

Then I decided it was time to take a look at this speaker wire down near the driver’s feet. After pulling the plastic panel out from the underside of the dashboard, I found that this speaker wire wasn’t being used for speakers at all – it was being used as power/ground for the red light by my feet…the one that doesn’t work. Well, I’m down here, might as well pull this out too. So I get all the wires out, except the one that leads into the driver side door – it’s connected to something, I’m going to need to pull the door panel off to figure out what.

Finally, I decided that it was time to call it a day. I pulled out the vacuum, got the trunk rug real good (it’s still a bit discolored from boxes of cat litter, but I’ll get it taken care of), got the entire passenger side floor since I had the seat out, everything. Then I remounted the amp to the bottom of the seat, reconnected all the wire harnesses, bolted the seat back in, and finished up. Just for fun I took a picture of the resulting pile of extraneous bullshit that came out of my car, and of the nice clean passenger side with the seat back in place. I didn’t manage to get the speakers working, but at least I got some garbage out, and possibly fixed the drain.

After eight hours of fun today, I leave you with these beauties

The passenger side (taken from the driver side) after vacuuming everything and bolting the seat back in

The pile of extraneous shit that came out of my car today

Acura RSX Headlight Issue

Floppie — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:09:58 +0000

So for probably a week and a half or so now, my low beams in my car haven’t been working. Neither one of them – so I figured it had to be a wiring issue. However, literally everything I was finding on the Internet said it was the bulbs – even cases where they were as new as two weeks (mine were a month and a half or so), or (like mine) both went out at the same time. So, I figured I’d try them next time the weather was warm.

Well, it was pretty nice out today, so I decided today was the day. I went outside, popped open the hood locks, pulled the socket off the passenger side low beam, connected the negative battery terminal, turned them on, and stuck the volt meter in the socket. Lo and behold, it’s definitely got juice. So I pull the whole bulb-and-socket assembly out (a pain in the ass with the stupid X clip setup they have going on…even worse putting it back in), pop in a new bulb, and connect it before putting it back in the lamp housing – turn it on, and it works. Son of a bitch, that’s two bulbs at $20 each (Sylvania Silverstars – 4100k) that lasted maybe a month and a half.

So, I’m going to end up switching to HIDs as soon as I get a check in. I’ll be buying them from Retro Solutions, LLC – recommended by the vast majority of Club RSX members. Obviously, low beams will be first – I’m thinking 5000k for those, then when I do the high beams, 4300k. Eventually I’ll also do the fog lights with 3000k bulbs.

Anyway, I’m posting this here in the hope that if anyone else buys and RSX and has the same headlight issue, they’ll find this and know that the real issue is, the RSX goes through halogen low beams like underwear. Even if they’re very new bulbs, even if they both went out at the same time – at least try switching the bulbs.

Sea Foaming my 2002 Acura RSX Type-S

Floppie — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 02:37:40 +0000

Sea Foam - a deep clean for your engine

Yep…I’m back again this time I’m here to post a series of videos me and Chris took when we Sea Foamed the Acura. When we did it to the Nissan, it was both a really cool process and it yielded impressive results (as far as power/economy are concerned), so we decided to take videos of it this time – both to document it and to help instruct people who desire to try it themselves.

Keep in mind that we don’t pussyfoot around. The Sea Foam manufacturers recommend only doing it in the crankcase (to treat your oil) and fuel tank (to treat fuel system and upper cylinders) for the average consumer. However, we do it the way the mechanics do it for a tune-up – both of the above, plus direct induction to the cylinders for a nice, deep clean. This is a bit more complicated – not to mention fun – so if you’re not good with cars or, at least, technology in general, I don’t recommend this. However, if you are, and you’re simply looking for help on how to do it, view on.

Note that I accept in no way whatsoever any responsibility for damages that result by the viewing of this series of videos.

Seafoaming a 2002 Acura RSX Type-S (part 1) – hosted by MetaCafe
This video shows where to find the correct vacuum line – the brake booster line – that feeds all four cylinders. It’s important to make sure you get one that feeds all four, because otherwise, you’d end up only cleaning some of your upper cylinders.

Seafoaming a 2002 Acura RSX Type-S (Part 2) – hosted by MetaCafe
This video illustrates approximately the correct amount of Sea Foam to use for an engine that runs 4-5 quarts of oil per change. Note that the total oil capacity of the K20A2 engine is 6.1qt (5.8L) – but that’s only for a complete overhaul. The amount to do per change is 5.0qt (4.7L) for a change with filter, or 4.8qt (4.5L) without filter.

Seafoaming a 2002 Acura RSX Type-S (Part 3) – hosted by MetaCafe
This is the fun part. The Sea Foam has been induced into the engine via the brake booster line, and allowed to sit for fifteen minutes or so. It got dark pretty quickly at this time of year

In this one, I start it up, and rev it up and down for a while until the Sea Foam has been burned out of the system. All the white smoke is completely normal; in fact, we thought it was pretty cool the first time we’d done it, to the Nissan, which is what inspired us to record this one.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the whole thing – and I hope it helps if you’re planning on Sea Foaming your own car, especially if it’s an RSX. Also, if you really enjoyed them, click the links below each video and rate them high

O Lawd, is Dat Sum Update?

Floppie — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 23:08:39 +0000

1991 Nissan Sentra - my old car

Hey look, I am still alive been a while since I’ve made a post here. Been real busy, between work, play, and buying a car.

That’s the first thing I’m here to post – I bought a car got rid of the old Nissan (to the right) and bought an 02 Acura RSX Type-S (down a bit and to the left). Thing fucking rips. I wanted a Z28/Trans Am, but I fell in love with this thing when I got in the driver’s seat. It’s only a 4cylinder, but with Honda’s i-VTEC technology, the motor’s rated at 198horsepower/142lbft. And then there’s the gearing – 4.77 final drive ratio, it’s geared like a hotrod. The top end F-bodies I was looking at only had 3.73 gearing. Ironically enough the EPA rates both vehicles for the same highway fuel economy – 28mpg with 91 octane fuel. One of these days I’m going to see how well it runs with 93, since 91 is so ridiculously hard to find.

2002 Acura RSX - my new car~

Thing fucking flies too. With its redline at 8000, and the VTEC kicking in around 5800, even with the real low gearing it maxes out at a normal speed in each gear. In 4th I can exceed 100, and I’ve still got two gears to go after that. I’m considering having the transmission modified come springtime, see if I can’t have the ratio lowered on 6th a bit. As it stands I’m revving ~3700 at 80mph, if I get that down to 3300 or so I’ll see a pretty sizable improvement in fuel economy, which is important for me. Besides, I can always just use 5th when I want to accelerate moar.

That aside, there isn’t much to tell – that’s why I haven’t posted much. I got smashed and went trick or treating on Halloween, dressed as a pirate. Thanksgiving has been and gone without anything that eventful that I’m at liberty to discuss.

I have found that I really hate fixing laptops though. My buddy Chris has been subbing out work to me, and aside from all the driving (which I really don’t mind), the job mostly entails fixing laptops and printers. Printers I don’t mind so much – I hate printers in and of themselves, but fixing them really isn’t bad. Laptops are a pain in the dick though. Especially motherboard replacements. Looking at at least an hour for these, compared to 15-25 minutes for most printer repairs.

Spore got a bit boring. The space phase was fun for a while, but I just lost interest in it after a while. Which is rather depressing, because as far as galactic conquest games though it was actually a lot of fun – which says a lot for galactic conquest games. I thought I’d love it, unfortunately it seems I was mistaken.

As a result I’ve mostly been playing a lot of WoW, especially since Wrath of the Lich King came out. At this point I’m about halfway to 76 – I went strong for the first week or so but I just haven’t been playing much since around Thanksgiving. After everything that went on that weekend, I just haven’t been that interested in playing WoW. As a result I’ve been very bored.

I got Rock Band, which is a lot of fun when there are people around – the problem is people aren’t generally around that much during the week. Which is where the problem lies anyway.

Wow, this really seems to have turned into a depressed-sounding rant…not really sure how that happened. Anyway, I’ll cut it short – I saw Role Models with Anthony and Brianna on Sunday, which was very funny. I’m not going to review it, but I advise seeing it, it was very funny