Well, things haven’t been great financially. We (the car and I) went to go autocross down in Tavares a bit over a month ago and didn’t pass tech due to a corded tire. Good thing because I both needed the $25 entry fee to cover bills and when I parked back home the tire was flat the next morning just from that bit of highway driving.
Then I finally got some money and bought 2 tires, and three days later shattered the clutch disc. Well, a new clutch and lighter flywheel are in the mail. They are eBay (XTD) but I did a good deal of research and read consumers opinions on forums. Some people have had terrible experiences, and many people have great experiences. From what I’ve seen with how the quality of installation the average eBay part-buyer performs, I decided that while not necessarily all, many of the terrible experiences are probably due to improper installations. Another motivating factor was that the flywheel was chromoly and I’ve heard of the Fidanza (only .5 lbs lighter) aluminum flywheel’s friction surface bolts coming loose. Of course, lock-tite can solve this but why bother when it’s more expensive anyhow.
I’ve also got the speedometer working (with trip odometer so I don’t run out of gas as much since I still haven’t fabricated a setup for the gas level sender (Autometer guage using 80s Ford sender).
I’ve already got the transmission off just waiting for the parts to come in… while it’s off I’m going to do the fluids again, and hopefully I’ll get motivated enough to put the motor mount fail-safe cup we overlooked on the motors installation oh-so-long ago. What else… I still have to get a proper coolant bypass setup, find a starter heat shield which no-one seems to want to sell at a decent price, finish the dash, get bumpers.. okay I’m just depressing myself now! It’s okay… soon we’ll be driving again. Here’s a pic of us with the flat.
