After my exam on Saturday, I ran by the shop to fix my panel. Knocked it out, put a fresh coat of ceramic on it, and then drove to the parents house to give her a much needed bath. Had a fun car show at GoPro MotorPlex on Sunday, met some cool people and did 2 races on their outdoor go-kart track. Pretty eventful weekend. Sometime soon I would like to get rid of all the grey on my car and make it more uniform; so flares, handles, and the mirrors all to the purple-orange color. I have enough vinyl to do it, just gotta find the time to make it happen.

 

Neat! Glad it's getting back to clean again!

 

Sanity update here.

I got tired of my car giving me a headache, and a cheap exhaust on Craigslist caught my eye. Talked the dude down to $140, so this weekend I threw it on the car. The G went from ignorantly loud inside and out, to sounding amazing from the outside and pretty much ZERO cabin noise. If it looked more factory, I'm sure someone would ride in the car and think it was a stock exhaust, its super quiet in the cabin and I love it. Also, a while ago, my passenger hood hinge got bent (idk how) and I saw someone on here had both OEM hinges for sale, so I snagged those and threw them on. That was quite difficult solo, but I managed. Right after I bought the exhaust, my driver window stopped working so I ordered a new motor for that, so that is getting added to the To-Do list. AND now that I can actually hear inside the car while I'm driving, I noticed my rear bearings are humming pretty loudly, so those have also been added to the To-Do list. Eventually Berta is going back to gloss blue, I'd love bags, I want new wheels, the list gets longer every day sadly. I threw a short video together of the new exhaust, so for those of you that read this, let me know what you think.

 

I like it It sounds polished with just enough jenkiness to make it still sound pretty raw. I just wish I got pops like that

 

I'm ecstatic with how good it sounds. Outside sounds rowdy but still kind of tame, and inside it's dead silent. Sad thing is I can't hear the pops from inside, so I can't 'reproduce' them with downshifts and what not.

 

Back to reality lol. Very nice man. Unfortunately this age thing leads to this I guess. My dash peeled for the first time this past weekend I am not happy, but it's almost 12 years old at this point ;/.

 

Yeah my leather panels have started to act up, like the door panels and rear interior panels, but luckily the dash hasn't done anything. She's 15 at this point, going on 16.

 

I'd love to hear an interior exhaust video as to what "dead silent" sounds like to you. I've got HKS rep exhaust, stock cats, Magnaflow x pipe and while I love the sound I wish it was quieter from 0-3000 RPMs. Sounds very similar to your new exhaust on the outside but yours has more buzzing and sounds more raw while mine sounds smooth until around 4500 and then makes more of a "trumpet" when at WOT

 

I'm not kidding when I say it sounds stock in the cabin. I had an HKS rep and it was meh, droned kinda bad. Then I got test pipes and it sounded like complete butt so I threw the stock exhaust on but did a muffler delete and it was much better sounding, both inside and out, but still loud enough inside to give me a headache. From 2-3k RPM the TP + muffler delete was almost unbearable. This new exhaust is ridiculously quiet. I'll record a clip with the same GoPro and external mic that I did the outside video with soon.

 

Sweet thanks man! Your last video was really well done, the way all exhaust videos should be with examples of all types of driving.

 

So the stock radiator pooped itself. Got out of the car one day and smelled coolant, and after pressure testing I found that the upper tank was leaking. Didn't really want to get another OEM style rad, so I spent some extra money on an aluminum one. After many hours of frustration, it's in and working awesome. I'm curious to see how much / if the thicker rad cools when at speed. On the way to my parents house, I had my spare phone with Torque open on it and was monitoring the temperature, so on the way back later today I'll do the same and see if the temperatures are any different. The last picture is showing how close the fans are to the belts.









Since the radiator install went so poorly, I was extremely frustrated and wanted to do something fun. I remember seeing a thread on here about a "cool air injector" which scoops air from the opening in the bumper on the drivers side, and forces it into the bottom of the airbox. I had the supplies lying around, so I broke out the heat gun to bend the PVC pipe, cut a hole on the OEM plastic piece to affix the funnel to, and then painted it all black to keep it hidden. With a very crappy box fan in front of opening in the bumper, I could actually feel the air being pushed up into the airbox. This is very sporadic air and maybe going 10mph, so I imagine at speed it will be pumping some air. I also recorded my intake temps when I recorded by coolant temps, so I will be monitoring that as well to see if it affects it at all. All in all, a pretty successful day of modding.

 

"Runs cooler with this coolant/radiator" is pretty silly when you consider the thermostat is what actually controls cooling in the engine.

I'd say the aluminum rad is great because it has more capacity for cooling if you decide to spriritedly drive on a hot day. Should also last longer, unlike the cracking plastic ones.

 

I wasn't aware that the thermostat opens and closes to regulates temperature. I thought it only opened once the engine was at operating temperate, and then stayed open. It makes sense that it technically COULD regulate the temp, but that would require the coolant temp to drop below the valves opening temperature; otherwise it would remain open. Or am I just understanding this all wrong?

 

An addition to what I said previously, the coolant before hand was sitting at 196-200 degrees when traveling down the interstate at 75-80mph on a 90 degree day. On the way back, it was 89 degrees, same interstate and the temperate was at 180-185 degrees, so it dropped the temp 10-15 degrees. There are a lot of variables in play there, so that could just be margin of error.

As far as the intake thing goes, it made no difference in actual intake temperature, but it did effect how quickly the intake temp dropped when going from sitting in traffic to moving. It stayed at ~8 degrees above ambient while driving.

 

The thermostat rating is when the thermostat BEGINS to open, it usually takes an additional 20 degrees of heat for it to fully open. As coolant temperatures fluctuate the thermostat opens and closes as needed but operating temp is usually within +/- 10 degrees F. It's definitely common for a thermostat to almost fully close again like when you are sitting parked at a drive-through but when you're out screaming around on the highway or climbing a hill and the engine is under load and generating a lot of heat it will stay open about halfway or more. It's incredibly rare for a thermostat to stay fully open, normally just track conditions.