heinzboehmer's 2002 Topaz 6MT Coupe

[heinzboehmer]

Managed to get through all 32 pages. You're on another level. Amazing work bringing this car to this state.

BTW been there done that living in the city with a project car, your experience with the garage size and nails in tires gave me anxiety just reading about it.

I'll ask some questions:
-with regards to washing the engine bay, anything to look out for with running water damaging components? what cleaners did you use?
-i have some oil leaks i need to locate, along with rod bearings, coolant system and front suspension overhaul. would you recommend pulling the front clip as you did? worth the effort? annoying part is having to pay someone to discharge-recharge the AC.
-now that you have the mk60 for a while, still stand by it not being worth the effort?

Thanks, it's been a lot of work!

To answer your questions:

1. I don't use anything fancy. Waterless car wash (I use the AMMO NYC stuff) for making things look pretty, diluted dish soap in a spray bottle for dirtier areas and diluted simple green in a spray bottle for super grimy stuff. Just make sure to use the aluminum safe simple green if you're going that route.
2. Pulling the front clip is great if the front of your engine is super dirty and you want to clean everything up. If you're already draining coolant, then it's not a ton more work. No need to discharge the AC, the flexible lines going to the condenser allow you to just swing it out of the way.
3. I think it was definitely worth the effort on this car because of all the maintenance/work that had gone into it prior to the swap and because I don't really plan to get rid of the car. However, I'm not sure that's true for everyone. The swap is extremely time consuming/expensive, adds zero value to the car and effectively makes no difference in regular day to day driving (unless you're driving like a lunatic). I do think that the MK60 is a much better system than the MK20, and you can make a case that the better ABS makes the car safer on the street and that the better traction/stability make the car safer in the wet/snow. However, for me, the benefits of this upgrade are almost exclusively limited to the track. If this car was 100% a street car, I likely would not have bothered with this.

[bavarian3]

Managed to get through all 32 pages. You're on another level. Amazing work bringing this car to this state.

BTW been there done that living in the city with a project car, your experience with the garage size and nails in tires gave me anxiety just reading about it.

I'll ask some questions:
-with regards to washing the engine bay, anything to look out for with running water damaging components? what cleaners did you use?
-i have some oil leaks i need to locate, along with rod bearings, coolant system and front suspension overhaul. would you recommend pulling the front clip as you did? worth the effort? annoying part is having to pay someone to discharge-recharge the AC.
-now that you have the mk60 for a while, still stand by it not being worth the effort?

[0-60motorsports]

Would love to get one of those zcp/csl dsc units


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[inlinesix123]

You definitely should! You can get a long thin screwdriver in between the thermostat housing and the head to check if the bolt has backed out and is loose. Finicky, but better than draining the coolant!

Thanks a bunch, i just replaced my thermostat 50 miles ago because i couldn't get my emissions state ready, so i'm slightly upset that i didn't find this thread earlier lol.
I do not want to drain my coolant again

[heinzboehmer]

Holy moly, i think this might be my issue, i have a brand new beissan and i have a "rattle" around 3k rpm and also a small oil leak that doesnt seem to track from any of the usual suspects. For the longest time i thought my rattle might be an exhaust bolt being loose somewhere or possibly how my new headers sound.
I will check this out soon.

You definitely should! You can get a long thin screwdriver in between the thermostat housing and the head to check if the bolt has backed out and is loose. Finicky, but better than draining the coolant!

[inlinesix123]

"The car developed a small oil leak and I traced it back to the timing chain guide bolt that's located behind the thermostat. Thought it would be as simple as cleaning the threads, applying some threadlocker, and torquing to spec. Turns out the bolt had snapped, which made the timing chain rattle around inside the engine and in turn shear the lower bolt as well. Quickly learned that the rattle I heard around 3k rpm was not the VANOS, like I originally thought."
Holy moly, i think this might be my issue, i have a brand new beissan and i have a "rattle" around 3k rpm and also a small oil leak that doesnt seem to track from any of the usual suspects. For the longest time i thought my rattle might be an exhaust bolt being loose somewhere or possibly how my new headers sound.
I will check this out soon.

[heinzboehmer]

Installed some more ZCP bits on this thing recently. First up, the 817.3 MK60:



I moved all the electronics out of the way to make my life a bit easier:



You can just barely see the pump down there in this pic:



With the electronics out of the way, I was able to get a regular ratchet and socket in, so that was nice. It was still a pain to get out though. Had to lift the valve body much more than I expected to get the pump contacts on the 817.3 unit to clear. And then of course I dropped one of the fasteners for the DME plastics under the interior carpet, so had to disassemble a bunch of stuff in the driver's footwell to retrieve it. Anyway, it's now in!

After that came the trim. The passenger's side dashboard trim was falling apart on one side and had previously been reglued on the other, so I separated it entirely. Heat gun and some (very careful!) prying was all it took, but I was left with two pieces that were covered in adhesive:



The plastic was easy to clean, as I could just scrape everything off with a razor blade. I was scared to crease the aluminum with that method though, so instead I spent a million hours rubbing it down with a MF towel soaked in acetone. This is how they looked after some time:



I then used my favorite trim adhesive and a bunch of clamps to glue it back on:



Came out great!

Last thing I did was to replace the window switch that I had attempted to fix with another from the junkyard. The circuit board and switch caps were in worse shape than the one on my car, so I made a good unit out of the two:



And here's a quick picture I grabbed of the car today. Thought the scenery fit the mood, so I stepped out and took it real quick:

[heinzboehmer]

Alignment done. As expected, front toe was way off:



I say this every time I get an alignment, but I really really need camber arms in the rear so that I can get the camber I actually want (both front and rear).

Anyway, car feels awesome. I am really liking the ZCP rack. The difference in ratio is pretty slight (which is a good thing!), but the difference in feel is huge. The dead center feeling is mostly gone and I really like the weight of it. Excited to rebuild the rack, as it should make it feel even better.

[heinzboehmer]

I've been thinking about what to do with two of the same car (context) and I think I have a plan for the short/medium term.

Grey car is getting all the maintenance it needs and some hand-me-down parts from the blue car (like the belly pan). Blue car is getting some ZCP bits along with brand new parts to replace the hand-me-downs. I did toy around with the idea of stripping the grey car and building an M3 wagon (and the shell into a racecar?), but I just really have no need for that class of vehicle at this point.

So for now, the grey car is going to be made as nice as possible while sticking to a set budget and the blue car is going to continue to be treated as has been since I bought it. It is a bit weird that the traditionally less desirable car (mainly because it's an early car) is getting a larger time and money budget, but I just can't shake the emotional attachment I have to this stupid thing.

Anyway, first thing I did was swap the ZCP steering rack into this car and code the MK60 for the new ratio:



The steering rack was disgusting when it came out of the grey car. Here's a before (after some preliminary cleaning) and after:




I also swapped in new inner tie rods, new outer tie rods and new boots. The rack feels perfectly fine, but I am going to rebuild it in the nearish future just because of the mileage. Have done a decent amount of research and it seems like a job that I should be able to get done without too much frustration. We'll see if that's true once it comes time to remove that inner seal though...

Here's both cars getting their power steering systems bled:



After that came a brand new belly pan:



And that's it? Feels weird to get a job done in a couple hours after the amount of hours I've been spending on the grey car.

Haven't driven this car at all because I don't want to kill the front tires with my very (very) approximate toe settings. Have an alignment appointment on Friday, though, so will post up some impressions after that.

[heinzboehmer]

Cool...I've been wondering about replacing the seat studs in my car. Any reason to not install studs in the rear holes as well?

No reason really. Went with bolts simply cause I had new ones in the garage and I did not have two more studs.

[bigjae46]

Hardware I ordered to fix the seat studs arrived.

New studs installed with red threadlocker:

Cool...I've been wondering about replacing the seat studs in my car. Any reason to not install studs in the rear holes as well?

[heinzboehmer]

Yes S5 with DSC on, S6 with DSC off. The CSL tune will help with overall shift performance. Remember there are adjustments to make on the main DME and SMG DME. If clutch is slipping due to age that could impact as well.

Makes sense, thanks for the info. I'll give it a try in those modes.

For now, car is staying locked in the garage until I do the bearings

[oceansize]

Transmission is shifting much slower than I expect. It's possible that I wasn't in S5 or S6 though. Dumb question but S5 is max bars with DSC on and S6 is max bars with DSC on?

Yes S5 with DSC on, S6 with DSC off. The CSL tune will help with overall shift performance. Remember there are adjustments to make on the main DME and SMG DME. If clutch is slipping due to age that could impact as well.

[heinzboehmer]

It is. No auto mode, ever, just yikes. S5 or S6 only. CSL tune will help. Let off the gas just a hair on shift. I've gone back and forth on letting off the gas and I've finally settled on it does seem to help a bit. If you've got a 181k and the original clutch/pp I'd say your due lol.

Yeah I figured out the no auto mode thing pretty fast. It's not goot at all. Thing I have trouble with is timing when to let off the throttle. Transmission is shifting much slower than I expect. It's possible that I wasn't in S5 or S6 though. Dumb question but S5 is max bars with DSC on and S6 is max bars with DSC on?

Slave cylinder blew a hole through the clutch pivot fork 15k mi ago and all that was replaced. For some reason clutch wasn't, but invoice says it was inspected and "is good" lol. I'll throw a new one in if it starts giving me trouble.

Also, thanks for the reminder about the SMG work, forgot to list that above. Updated.

Yeah it's going to be really cool seeing the condition of the bearings. Please do keep us updated when you do that.

Agreed! Will definitely post pictures when I take the thing apart

[0-60motorsports]

Yep!

Here's all the good things about it:

- ZCP
- Built 04/25/06
- Clean title
- No accidents
- California car
- Cinnamon interior
- Has every single option (even the rear sunshade!)
- VANOS done
- SMG pump rebuilt
- Completely stock
- Cheap!

And the not so good:

- Originally alpine white (which would have been awesome against cinnamon, sigh), but was resprayed some sort of metallic grey by the previous, long term owner
- Car sat in a driveway most of it's life, so paint is hazy, but looks like a paint correction can fix that
- 181k mi and still on original rod bearings (!). Actually kinda excited about this one, really want to see what those bearings look like
- SMG. It's still on all stock everything, so maybe the CSL tune will help, but man SMG is weird

Yeah it's going to be really cool seeing the condition of the bearings. Please do keep us updated when you do that.