Good vibes for the recovery process!
Good vibes for the recovery process!
Oh another bit of news, Grimmspeed actually was willing to sell a replacement airbox alone, at a reasonable enough price that it's worth not fabricating a substitute from scratch. When I tried to bend the wrecked one back into shape I tried a magnet on it and got no reaction, so it seems to be made of some super-hard aluminum alloy, I'd assumed it was steel from how hard it was.
The shop's started work on fixing up the front of the engine. No concrete bad news yet but no good news either. The crank pulley spacer was messed up (pin was sheared off for one thing) and the front timing cover to crank spacer seal is leaking. Also the tensioner pulley was bent, and again they don't sell that pulley separately so I should have quite the collection of spare tensioners soon.
Have you tried measuring the run out on the crank? If it was in spec I would be much more confident that the motor would be ok.
In reply to dean1484 :
I asked the shop to do that, they want to have all the parts needed to make the car potentially somewhat driveable together before they push it onto a lift inside the shop to start the real work on it though. The front main seal and tensioner pulley should be the last parts needed so I should find out in the next week or so.
You can do it in the parking lot in a couple minute. If they are not engine builders there is a good chance they don't have the tool needed to measure it. A magnetic base and a dial gauge a bolt and a pry bar and a small dead blow hammer is all you need. Most repair shops won't have the dial gauge and the base. I would have done that before doing anything else.
If they set up ring and pinions they would have one I would think. That's why I have one knocking around my shop.
I think the crank spacer (the part with the sheared pin in my last pic, it's a small cylinder that goes on the end of the crank, the pulley then sits on it and the crank bolt passes through it and screws into the crank) would need to come out first since it's taken some damage.
It's a shop that does some of everything but the bulk of their work is collision stuff. I'll see if I can get the runout test done any sooner.
I took apart the oil cooler today and confirmed it looks like just the core with its mounts & brackets are trashed, I just need to clean up some damage I did to the sandwich plate trying to get it off the engine. The oil filter actually got dented in the crash and I think that force kind of jammed the whole assembly together, unfortunately I caused some gouges near the sandwich plate's sealing surfaces trying to break it loose with different tools before I tried jiggling the whole thing by hand. After I did that it unbolted easily...weird.
So the shop confirmed today that the crank threads are messed up, they want to try cleaning up the threads for the stock bolt but they don't have a tap long enough to reach it, normally they'd call a mobile machine shop for this but to save some money they're giving me the opportunity to find the correct tap. Looks like it's an M13x1.5 thread, bolt shaft is 110mm long and about the last 30mm is threaded, so that's how deep into the engine it has to reach. A bottoming tap would work best.
The serpentine belt tensioner was also messed up and the AC compressor pulley might be tweaked too, but in Canada I only use the AC a few times per year anyway.
Tried the boiling water trick on the front bumper today and got some improvement. Before:
After:
Next time I'm going to try more force on it while it's hot.
I should get some info on the crank threads soon, so far we haven't found any more signs of potential damage, I had a look at the threads with a cheap borescope/endoscope and didn't find any obvious damage, just some crud:
Crank thread repair was a success, just waiting for news from the shop now, but I'm not rushing them, the sooner they're done the sooner I have to pay up...
It took a lot of shopping around but I got this to my door for less than half the base price of the cheapest new one I've seen:
These are very specific, some BRZ airbags will fit although they will look wrong, but then the 86 also has another steering wheel variant with a different airbag cover shape that won't fit at all. It looks like the plastic covers are permanently stuck to the airbag itself and can't be swapped at all, which is really too bad as being able to swap covers would open up a lot more interchange options. This one has a lot more blemishes than my old one did, they'll remind me to keep my guard up around hard obstacles and avoid unnecessary hoonage.
In defense of Toyota/Subaru and their airbag supplier, you would be astounded the amount of engineering that goes into one of those covers and how the weakened internal part lines (and their exact placement) affect the deployment of the airbag.
Glad things seem to be looking positive! Hope it keeps going that way!
Stopped by the shop recently and inspected a few more things.
Looks like the AC compressor pulley is still straight so that's good. I noticed the passenger-side cam sensor connector is cracked open but it looks electrically intact so I can probably just goop it up with silicone to keep dirt out. I also noticed that the driver's seatbelt is locked up, so I guess that's what happens when the explosive pretensioner goes off, I was going to replace it anyway but was hoping I could get a fresh belt put on the old reel to keep it as a spare, no such luck.
I got the replacement airbox from Grimmspeed, but it came with just the riveted sheet metal bits and no attachment/fitting hardware at all. No screws, bolts, washers, grommets, not even the badge. So I'll transfer across what I was able to salvage from the old one and fab up a replacement for what I couldn't.
Here's the other side of the oil cooler where the crank bolt bored in:
I'm not any closer to having the money to get this going again, but I was thinking about the gas in the tank, it's been sitting a few months now. I didn't note how much gas was left but it's probably 1/4-1/2 tank. I guess filling it up the rest of the way with stabilized gas would be my best bet?
I'd you have a working evap system, it'll be fine. People park their cars here for six months plus with no issues.
In reply to GameboyRMH :
I'm in northern Ohio, on the shores of Lake Erie, very similar to your climate. Ala the covid years, I let a Prius sit for 2 years with no fuel problems. During those two years I did start the car every so often but I did not buy gas (or change the oil) for those years.
We started and ran the Biturbo on fuel that was probably at least 5 years old, probably more like 10+. The gas in the Miata is from 2022 and it will start, run, and drive. The motorhome sat for nearly two years with no new fuel being added and both it and the generator had no problems.
I'm not saying that bad gas isn't a thing.... But the only place I have yet to find it is in my lawnmower.
No issue with modern fuels with a working/ semi working evap for at least 2 years.
That is my experience anyway.
I've fired up my mustang and drove fine on 3-4yo gas. Drop some stabil in there and when you go to drive it top it off with premium and run the tank pretty much empty before really hammering on it.
So this project has now run into the expenditure cliff of buying all the stuff ahead of the radiator support while being semi-employed at best. My idea to put the car away "faceless" for the winter won't work because the nose bodywork is used for checking the body & frame alignment. And to hold that front bumper cover on you need a bunch of hardware, and there are a lot of parts that if they aren't put on at that time, you'll have to take the bumper off again to do so later (and Toyobaru bumpers are well-known to get saggy after as little as one re-installation). So the end result is that there isn't much opportunity to save on buying the whole set of front end parts which costs into the 4-digits. I haven't had any luck finding any used locally. And the car needs to be out of the shop before winter.
I've perhaps unwisely spent money on the last few mechanical/non-bodywork bits, meaning an AC condenser + dryer from RockAuto and a passenger-side seatbelt assembly from a local junkyard. Yes, even though the car had a seat occupancy sensor and seatbelt sensor indicating that the passenger seat was unoccupied and the passenger belt was unbuckled, it still set off the passenger-side pretensioner. I didn't notice because it was hanging normally the whole time and I wasn't expecting there to be any possibility that it was set off due to the aforementioned sensors that cause the car to squawk at me if I put a bag of chips on the passenger seat (I guess the occupancy sensor is capacitive), but when I tried to put the AC condenser in the back seat area I noticed it was locked up solid just like the driver's side. Good thing the rear seatbelts don't have pretensioners or logically they would've gone off too. Logically, I don't know why the car didn't set off the passenger's dash airbag too, but at over $1k new I'm sure glad it didn't. The bodywork guy at the shop told me about a Volvo sedan that had a light corner hit with only the driver in the car and set off all 4 pretensioners.
Here's a little DIY'ed work. A little sanding and brush-on Rustoleum fixed the only damage to the front-right fender. Most of this will be hidden behind the headlight anyway:
Gooped up this cracked connector on the front of the engine with silicone:
Nice you see you're still making progress with it :)
Made another thrifty but possibly unwise purchase and ordered a color-matched complete front bumper assembly from a junkyard in Alberta for a bit less than a new, unpainted and fully unassembled one would cost from the dealership. It should be here next week. That's finally all the parts needed to get the car put back together, the only other part I know I need so far is the aluminum front undershield and there's about a 50/50 chance I'll need a replacement front-left fender.
So I'm up to about $3800CAD in parts total with only the radiator support and a few bits on the front of the engine bought new from the dealership, and everything else being aftermarket or used parts. If somebody had a shop just aim the dealership's parts cannon at this kind of damage it could easily run over 2x as much with extra paint labor as a bonus. And that's without even getting into the headlights I'm going to try to meticulously repair, which are over $800CAD each new and start at about $300CAD each used.
The used bumper didn't come with a lot of the plastic bits underneath so I had to spend another $580CAD on those and the aluminum engine shield. I think that buying the bumper used only saved on paint & assembly labor in the end. Dropped those off along with the replacement airbox with all the hardware transferred over, so all the parts are ready now.
I noticed the old engine shield seemed a lot heavier and beefier than the razor-thin replacement. That's good for a track car but it could be a letdown for someone who used the car for rallying.
Edit: Forgot to mention that I finished the headlight repairs and dropped them off as well, pics here: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/off-topic-discussion/patching-up-a-cracked-headlight-housing-glue-or-plastic-weld/272894/page1/
The shop's started putting things together. They got the front-left fender straightened out to the point that you have to look closely to see that there was any damage:
The wiring in the clockspring that connects to the airbag was melted (don't know if it was the heat of being set off or the current, a lot of the airbag wiring apparently isn't designed to survive the current of more than one deployment) so that has to be replaced, the dealer wanted over $650CAD for one so I ordered a used one for a bit over 1/4 of that.
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