Was driving the G in Portland the other day, the roads are like no man's land. Afterwards noticed clunking coming from the front whenever I turned the wheel left or right while stationary.

Parked, turned the car off, and had my dad turn the wheel and the noise seemed to be coming from the power steering rack where the gears mesh. I tightened up the steering rack preload screw until the steering was too tight to turn with the wheels off the ground, then backed it off about 1/4 turn until it felt normal.

Clunk is gone, and so is a pretty significant dead spot I've had since I bought the car and didn't notice because it still handled better than anything else I'd ever driven. The wheel zero input now when cruising, I can easily smoothly drive it with 1 finger even though fast sweepers and highway lane changes unlike before when I had to always make little corrections subconsciously back and forth through the dead zone.

My car has 130k, I highly recommend everyone with this kind of mileage tighten this even if they aren't clunking - it made that much of a difference and it was stupid easy. If I had to use a word to describe the steering now I would have to use "telepathic"

 

I replaced my steering rack last year where is that screw you speak of?

 

Here, I really recommend setting it at factory spec and not just eyeballing these adjustment, you can prematurely wear the R&P but I understand why you did. If it's obviously WAY out of spec then you gotta do what you gotta do lol.

 

Urban, the screw is on the driver side of the rack to the left of the two mounting bolts facing towards the back of the car, you can easily get to it with just the driver side wheel jacked up. I used a monkey wrench to tighten it, worked great.

Cleric, I actually did look for that screw in the FSM and the procedure was much more involved than I was willing to undertake and involved measuring rotationg torque of the whole rack assembly, and getting that adjusting screw to a pretty small torque value. I'm definitely not over that value as I backed off quite a bit and the rack is much tighter than it was before so I'll call it a win! I do have to replace both my boots though (one is very slightly ripped where I had to cut it to get it off, my epoxy "fix" didn't hold) and use something other than zip ties to keep them on as some water has gotten in there and was beading on the grease.

Until then I'll avoid driving it in the wet.

 

Bought a pre-owned nexus 7 for $35 using it with my cellphone Hotspot for navigation and music.
https://imgur.com/a/iq6Wpw0

 

That looks freaking great! I have that same mount for my cell phone and love it.

 

It' a scosche magnetic mount. Loving it!!!

 

Painted reman calipers before installing so they won't rust to hell

 

Just ordered some Michelin Pilot Super Sports (rears only) from Tirerack for $187/tire, plus free shipping. Fortunately I don't need fronts as those are $217, which oddly enough is about the same price as the new Sport 4S. (Although I'm wondering if that's because they're BMW spec.)

 

How did you get the price down to that? And how are the rears cheaper than the front? Usually it's the other way around

 

Sorry, I didn't include tax in the price because not everyone pays the same (or any) sales tax. They're still listed as 187.34 w/ free shipping (before tax) on the site for 245/45/18, no special discount codes or anything.

I've been watching these almost daily for the past few months, as I knew I would need new rears when I put the G back on the road for the summer. I saw them at ~169 (+ship) for a day about two months ago, then they went up to $187 (+ship) for a few weeks, before going all the way back up to ~200! Early last week they went back down to $187 (+ship), and a few days later they added free shipping to certain tires. So with the free shipping it's about the equivalent of when I saw them at ~169 without the free shipping. I wouldn't be surprised to see them drop again if they get low on stock, or if they have some older date codes in inventory.

As far as the rears being cheaper than the fronts, it happens. As I mentioned in my original post the 225/45/18 they have listed shows that they're BMW spec, so that's my guess as to why our "fronts" are more than our "rears".

 

At some point this summer I plan to pull all 4 of my calipers and pull them off for painting. Stupid remans come bare..

 

Took my G a few body shop to get the rust looked at. The highest rated shop around quoted me $1700 to do a complete job of removing all the trim, windows, etc, cut out the damaged metal, replace, and paint with the understanding that "rust always comes back". They wouldn't give me a quote if I did the rust repair work, essentially saying that they didn't want anything to do with that because they can't guarantee I'd be satisfied with the results.

Took it to local Maaco and asked them what they would charge if I were to do all the rust repair, prep, etc and gave them the car with primered left and right quarter panels for them to paint. They told me $400 a side, which is better but still too way too much for a college student with more important bills to pay, not to mention saving for more important car parts


Looks like I have no choice now but to do both bodywork AND paintwork myself - I had hoped to farm out the paint to a professional so at least that would look half decent, not to mention saving my sanity, but I guess not. The upside is that while I'm painting my QPs, I might as well repaint my front bumper and hood while I'm at it. Anybody have any experience with DIY car painting (rattle cans, Rustoleum roller paint, etc) around here?

Most of the paintwork on my car looks like the surface of the Moon from 10 feet away so I figure any paint that lasts is an improvement.


It drives great now though! Ever since I tightened up my rack the other day I've had lots of confidence to push my car. Really enjoying my commutes to work and back, can't wait to take it to autocross so I can really see what it can do!

 

The Pilot Super Sports I ordered yesterday are already here. I had also ordered something else over the weekend, you'll have to guess what it is though.

 

Nice packing lol. Shippped through greyhound I assume?

PSS very nice.