heinzboehmer's 2002 Topaz 6MT Coupe

[heinzboehmer]

Check your toe

I see road force balancing (RFB) more as a diagnostic tool than something I would routinely do. I used RFB to determine how out of round a wheel was - can't always see it on a dynamic balancer or if the tire was bad (it happens). I never saw a situation where a RFB fixed a vibration issue where a dynamic balance couldn't. In some cases, a RFB made noise and vibration worse. Whoever is mounting a new tire needs to understanding the markings on the side of the tire to orient the high point of the tire with the valve stem which typically optimizes the balance.

IMO, RFB as a routine is the nitrogen of tire balancing - mostly useless, makes the shop more money, and is often "flat rated" by techs. Meaning they say they did it...but didn't do it.

That makes sense.

Due for an alignment soon, we'll see what the front is at. I always go with 0 toe up front, so not the best for tire wear.

[heinzboehmer]

Quick side project.

I had previously tried to fix the tab that's under the light on one of my C pillar covers by just gluing it back together, but the repair didn't stick:



So I came up with this:




A three piece replacement that mechanically interfaces with the remaining parts of the tab, so that it doesn't have to rely on the adhesive for strength. Chose ABS-GF for this and managed to print with no supports by setting the layer height to 0.08mm. Overhangs came out great.

You can see how the three pieces lock together against the remaining material in this cutaway:



To install, you need to trim the remaining plastic, mark out the location of the notches, then cut those bits away:





A bit more involved than just gluing the piece on, but it results in a super solid mechanical interface.

Here's an impact driver hanging from the replacement tab. Note that there is no adhesive present here:



In hindsight, running the above test was kinda dumb. If it failed, I would have had to source another pillar cover. It survived though, so we're good

For the final install, I did add a bit of epoxy in between the replacement tab and the pillar cover, for max strength. Seems to have worked out great!

[heinzboehmer]

Well, had to tackle another unplanned side project today.

Drove the car in the rain for the first time in a while and quickly learned that my windshield wiper stalk was not working correctly. The only setting that worked was the full blast intermittent one. Fortunately, I could flick it up and down quickly to trigger a single wipe, but having to do that for the entire drive got old pretty quick.

I did take the stalk apart to clean the dust out of it from my little track adventure, so must have not put it back together properly.

First, a quick overview of how the stalk works:

There are two perpendicular "tracks" on the circuit board that two separate wipers (think potentiometer wipers, not windshield wipers) "ride" on. One track is for up/down stalk movement and the other for in/out. Depending on the position of the stalk, the wipers connect different traces together, which sends out the appropriate signal to the LSZ (GM5? I forget where the wiper logic lives).

What's really cool is that wiper movement along the tracks is continuous and the mechanical detents for the stalk are completely decoupled from the electronics bits. Guessing this separation is why the action on these things feels so good. Can tune the feel without affecting the electronic characteristics.

A picture should help explain what this all means:



Housing parts:

A - Up/Down wiper riding on its track
B - In/Out wiper riding on its track (you can also see the linkage that transforms in/out stalk movement to left/right wiper movement)
C - Header for dial wheel (and "S" button)
D - Detent plate to discretize stalk movement (basically just a section of a hemisphere with a bunch of divots in it)

Stalk parts

A - Pin that moves Up/Down wiper
B - Lever that moves In/Out wiper (hard to see, but it's L shaped from the side)
C - Connector for dial wheel (and "S" button)
D - "Stylus" that follows detent plate

As you can imagine, this thing is a bit finicky to get back together, since have to make sure that the features that interface with both wipers are in their correct spots. The image above shows how I found the stalk when I took it apart. Close inspection revealed that the Up/Down pin was not sitting correctly in the wiper, which made the stalk work unexpectedly.

Took a couple tries, but managed to get it back together correctly. Probably could have avoided this if I had tested the stalk after I first took it apart, but oh well.

On the upside, I'm getting reeeally good at taking the steering wheel off. Can do it in a couple minutes now

[Arclitgold]

Wow, can’t believe you even had dust in there!

[heinzboehmer]

Wow, can’t believe you even had dust in there!

It got eeeeverywhere, it was crazy.

[heinzboehmer]

Aaand another of those quick side project things.

A pillar cover screw cover fabric (sorry) was starting to come off, so glued it back.

Peeled off half, masked, cleaned, sprayed super 77, waited until it was tacky, reattached.




Let that dry then did the exact same for the other half. You can see a little bit of the new adhesive exposed.



And done, they look brand new again:



(man, the lighting in that last picture is terrible, gotta find a better solution for photographing dark objects)