Trip to get it registered and licensed was more interesting than I should have been (ALWAYS CHECK YOUR LUG NUTS ARE TIGHT) but it’s done. It’s drivable but has (unsurprisingly) a few issues to work out.
Trip to get it registered and licensed was more interesting than I should have been (ALWAYS CHECK YOUR LUG NUTS ARE TIGHT) but it’s done. It’s drivable but has (unsurprisingly) a few issues to work out.
You are not alone, I once torqued the lugs on 3 wheels, then I must have gotten tired. Is that a bearing or what, nope, that is the sound of being dumb, not the first of last mistake I will ever make, but one I hope to not repeat. I like to make new mistakes.....
Biggest issues are that the brakes are a bit soft (did absolutely nothing to them so far, so not a surprise completely...) and that the trans DOES NOT want to let the engine rev much- it kicks up to 3rd gear before I'm even going (I think- don't have the speedo hooked up :P) 30mph, and even pretty much flooring it the trans wants to shift up. Don't know if there's an adjustment on the kickdown that needs to be done or if it's something to do with the fact that the Rampage is likely solidly lighter than the LeBaron the drivetrain came out of, but I've not been able to get the engine into boost at all that I've seen.
Need to run to the hardware store for stuff to hook up the temperature sensor (so I can see that it's not overheating!), and then I'll be spending the evening bleeding the brakes and probably getting started swapping in the new struts and air shocks (on the rear). I have new brake shoes & hardware for the rear, but had held off on the front to see if I was going to get the larger brake setup- I checked, and unfortunately at least the closest parts store to me can't get the Rampage's front brake pads in for another week and nobody else has them either. Amazon can get a set here Sunday, so I guess I go with them. RA looks like they can get me new brake hoses by Tuesday- but I'm not sure I want to be changing brake hoses a day before I'm supposed to be leaving...
Unfortunately I'm not too confident on taking the Rampage on the highway at this point, so I'm hopefully borrowing a vehicle to go get tires/wheels & hit a junkyard in Louisville tomorrow morning.
In reply to TED_fiestaHP :
That's pretty much exactly what I did.... -_-
Heh, built a friend’s Shelby Charger with a similar drivetrain as your Rampage.
I warned her to torque the wheels before she left for home. Even got the torque wrench out for her to do it. She apparently didn’t and lost a wheel on the way home.
Luckily, other than a shattered alloy wheel (it exploded into aluminum powder it seemed) and a destroyed rotor, everyone and everything was fine.
Her new BF tried to blame me for it. Needless to say they didn’t last too terribly long after that.
so it could have been worse :)
As to the transmission. One must embrace the manual shifting of the automatic to extract some performance/fun.
to test for boost, brake stand it while holding it in first.
there is an adjustment for the transmission cables, it should be in the Haynes manual.
the brakes could be miss-adjusted drums or an incorrectly sized master cylinder. A good gravity bleed and checking the adjustment of the rear drums should get you closer to where you want to be.
Tip for sporty brake pads...
Get heavy duty brake pads from a truck. Get out the angle grinder and cut them to the correct size.
Cheap, fairly easy, always available.
Stefan said:As to the transmission. One must embrace the manual shifting of the automatic to extract some performance/fun.
to test for boost, brake stand it while holding it in first.
there is an adjustment for the transmission cables, it should be in the Haynes manual.
the brakes could be miss-adjusted drums or an incorrectly sized master cylinder. A good gravity bleed and checking the adjustment of the rear drums should get you closer to where you want to be.
I assume you mean put it in first, stand on the brakes, and floor it? Tried that and didn't do much of anything- didn't see any boost at all from it. Looked up the kickdown adjustment and got that a bit better- but it still shifts far faster than I think that it should.
For now, I have it back in the garage to work on the suspension and brakes while the engine cools off so I can put in the adapter and actually have a temp gauge on the engine. Will also swap on the new plugs and plug wires. Should probably also check the timing and make sure it's good- honestly the engine just feels sluggish to me, so I wonder if the timing isn't set right (had the same problem with the Caddy 500 in the Fiero 5 years ago).
And because I have priorities- I also loosely installed the new speakers in the doors. Unfortunately, when I hurriedly moved everything off/out of/from around it to leave earlier I put the cassette adapter down someplace and now can't find it- so when I headed to Lowe's I tossed in a mix tape I came across from like 25 years ago (for some reason I'm not getting any radio stations...). I made it about half the drive to Lowe's before I shut it off... I couldn't take any more 3/4 speed 80's music...
The excessive vacuum, lack of boost and sluggishness points to a timing issue.
Since you didn’t put the motor in, I’d suspect they put the timing belt on incorrectly. It’s really easy to do, especially with the engine in the car. You’ll want to double check and correct it if necessary before you head to Gainesville.
If you shift it to first and stand on the brakes and the gas it should load the motor up and eventually stall it, or if you release the brakes (or they don’t hold) it will spin one or more tires, but it won’t shift unless you move the lever forward.
YEah, it didn’t seem like it was anywhere near stalling even with my standing on the brakes and flooring it. I REALLY don’t have enough time for everything... I’m unfortunately thinking I may have to give up on going and getting the tires & wheels from Louisville tomorrow... that’s essentially 4 hours that I really need for other stuff. I may have to figure something else out wheel-wise and just get new tires put on the wheels the car came with. It sucks because $40 for a full set of wheels with decent tires is a STEAL.
In reply to Stefan :
Do I really need that special tool?
Not really, its damned handy and I have one, but setting the tension via the twist method has worked for me.
The main point is to set the timing belt, rotate two full rotations, then check it again. If its off a tooth or half-a-tooth, reset the belt, rinse repeat until its correct.
You'll have to retime the distributor afterward, but that's not terribly hard once its running as long as you have a timing light, jsut disconnect the coolant sensor on the side of the thermostat housing and point the light at the flywheel, adjust the distributor until the timing is correct.
Would these likely work well for the drags? https://cincinnati.craigslist.org/pts/d/14-inch-racing-slicks-on/6334645265.html
Today is the last remotely full day I have to work on the car without blowing more vacation time... here’s hoping I can get everything done...
Timing checked and adjusted up to 12 degrees advance. Been texting with Vigo, but still can’t figure out why I’m not seeing any boost. 
Is the wastegate arm connected?
is it holding vacuum?
can you apply pressure and see the arm moving?
First thing I would do is put a cap on the piping and do a boost leak check. The turbo itself is pretty simple and lack of pressure is almost always caused by a boost leak or a sticky wastegate.
Well, today sucked. After getting the timing set, I lost over two hours because the distributor apparently failed and it took me a while to figure out why the engine wouldn’t start... all which would have been avoided had I just swapped in the remanufactured distributor when I was checking and adjusting the timing.
I do probably know what the boost problem is- it looks like the stock bov/bypass that I’ve been using is stuck open and just venting straight to atmosphere. For now I guess I just cap it off... I’m hoping to be able to use the piping and intercooler which has a BOV, but there are a lot of other things I need to get done first.
I at least was able to track down some wheels with good tires for the drive down.
I also got a number of smaller necessary things done like the battery tie down and mounting the ignition coil. Bled the brakes too, which hopefully will improve braking. I won’t get to do much of anything else though until Monday, which means I’m only really going to have time to get it ready for the drive down.
So, current state of things:
The Good News: As far as I know, the car should run right and be drivable. Assuming I'm correct and the stock bypass/wastegate was the source of my boost problems, that should be resolved as well by capping it off. I have a decent set of wheels and tires for the drive down, so that's taken care of finally (literally cost me 8x what I'd hoped to pay- but they're also much nicer wheels that I can probably re-sell after the race if I don't want to keep them). Everything under the hood should be good to go with the exception of needing to flush the coolant system cleaner and refill it with regular coolant.
The Bad News: At the point (with one exception) I'm not going to be doing any more major work on the car before the drive down. I will have just a few hours tonight, tomorrow night, and Wednesday night, and if I get into anything major like swapping out the struts or shocks and something goes wrong, I'll be in danger of it not being ready and capable of making the drive down at all. The exception to this is the BOV that should be coming in tomorrow- that I will try and get installed.
This means unfortunately that by and large (with the obvious glaring exception of the turbo engine...) the car will be essentially stock and un-upgraded for the competition. I will be bringing the shocks & struts with me so if there is time (and probably some help) I'll swap them in if I can. I will also bring the intercooler- but as of now I've not been able to make the piping I have work and have not been able to find anything that I think will work that I can get soon enough to try and get it installed. If I had more time to hit junkyards and try and pull stock piping from cars I might be able to do it- but I won't have any time when any would be open to do so.
It's really frustrating, since a few minor things (the original distributor failing and me taking forever to figure it out and the brake light circuit problem) cost me essentially half a day's time where I could have at least gotten the new suspension parts swapped in.
The test drive tonight will decide it ultimately, but the car at last count BADLY needed aligning- but I hate to take and pay $80 to have it aligned if I'm going to just berk it up by swapping in the new struts up front.
So, current plan:
TONIGHT (tonight, toniiiiiiight)- finish up the things needed to be sure the car is roadworthy, and test drive it up to highway speeds. #1 with a bullet (or at least the hearing protection you need when firing one...) is the exhaust. Right now, it has none. I have the adapter I need now though, and plan to pick up the parts I need to make sure the car has one after work. The plan is to have two setups that I can swap out: I hope to use the original muffler (with a 2.25" OD inlet) for street driving (like the drive down), and a straight pipe for actual runs.
Other than installing/fabricating that and probably putting the new brake pads on the car, I just plan to get everything else all back together and ready to go. If perchance I get done REALLY quickly with that (unlikely, since it will involve setting up and using the new welder for the first time...) I'll see if I can work out a front strut-top bar solution.
TOMORROW NIGHT- Clean up the garage and sort out what will be coming along with me, and make sure everything will fit that I need to bring along. Right now my garage looks like it got hit by all of the hurricanes that have hit the US recently and is a complete disaster area- it's a miracle I can find ANYTHING in it at the moment, and it will take some time to get together all the tools and parts that I'll need/want to come along with me.
Also plan to get the BOV installed when it shows up. IF- and this is a MAAAASSIVE IF- I manage to get everything sorted out and the truck otherwise ready to go.... I'll see about doing some masking and paint prep on the car and getting a coat of primer on it. I would LOVE for it to at least be one consistent color, even if that happens to be primer- but if I can get it primered before the drive down, hopefully there'll be time Thursday night to rattle-can it to look a bit better.
WEDNESDAY NIGHT- eastsidemav, wae, and company should be down so we'll take care of anything that needs to be done on the respective vehicles before we leave for the competition before the crack of dawn Thursday.
I can't remember, how flat/level is your garage floor? I can do a toe alignment fairly quickly with a tape measure. If your struts have the ability to adjust camber, we can complicate things a bit, but I bet just setting them to max negative will improve the autocross times a bit, although we may want to set it back as close to zero before the drag race. If the car is being driven to FL, we'll probably want it close to zero then, too, to cut down on tire wear.
I'm planning on making the Miata drivable for the trip, if so, the trailer spot may be yours.
I'm not sure about level, but the garage is moderately flat. I do still have your magic curtain rods up in the rafters too from the last Challenge. I picked up two camber bolts (all I could get on short notice), but I think the struts have some basic adjustability (that was one thing people complained about when swapping to Neon front struts, they lost that capability).
We can see how things go with the respective cars and decide which we should trailer and which we should drive- the Rampage's interior (minus the passenger seat, which I don't plan to bring unless really necessary...) is pretty complete including a functioning (AM/FM/Cassette...) stereo, so it may be a bit more comfortable than the Miata. Really wish the PO had grabbed the cruise control actuator from the LeBaron, I could possibly have gotten cruise working as well to make the drive easier...
Oh yeah, regarding paint - I kind of like the way it looks right now, but I’m a bit odd.
In reply to eastsidemav :
I'd rather have it either one consistent color- or better yet, clearly intended to be multiple colors:
We can paint it in parking lot. I know a guy with some experience in that regard...
In reply to pimpm3 :
It may end up that way (at least the second color)... will have to see, there are things that are solidly higher priorities than paint, but it's also something I can be doing that won't impact the drivability of the vehicle, and I will likely have plenty of room in the budget.
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