fiveocd.com

Ever since I bought the bird, I never really cared for the blue.  Well, to be honest it grew on me a little, but I still wanted something else. It took a couple years, but I finally sprayed it Summit epoxy gray primer.  It was my first paint attempt and the primer went on pretty nice.

I then decided to add some clearcoat over it and chose the pre mix off the shelf Duplicolor stuff. That did not turn out so well at all. I don’t believe I did anything wrong, but it was very hard to coat it evenly, it was relatively expensive, and afterward it started to discolor (turn white) in places. Now, this is no show car so it’s no big deal to me – it was an experiment, but if it weren’t I would be pretty irritated.

All in all, I learned a lot of things such as use lots of light so you don’t miss spots (oops) and use a decent clearcoat.

Bird masked.

It’s not too much to ask!  Although my Sunbird is very stripped down, there are a few things that I wanted to maintain for now given its daily driven status and some semblance of an audio system was one of them. I don’t need fancy speakers or any of that stuff, I pretty much just want it to function and be light and out of the way for a clean/nonexistent look.

My solution to that problem is a hand-me-down ipod and a Pyle PLMRMP3A marine mini amp. I chose it because it’s pretty small, light, cheap, and included a remote aux. input and volume knob which made it perfect for a standalone system with no head unit. The amp is mounted to the housing that used to carry the original amp up inside the dash. With no ipod connected, you can’t really even tell there is any stereo at all unless you look underneath the console where I mounted the knob and input. It only weighs a couple ounces less than the stock amp, but I don’t have a head unit to deal with and the ipod is removed when not in use. It may be a little bit of an unorthodox setup, but I like it a lot.

Not much to see here!

One week after finishing the head gasket, the car started running like crap again. It took me a while to figure it out, because I didn’t believe that a new coil pack would die in a single week … well, it did. Cylinder 3 stopped firing. Made in Taiwan.

Disappearing coolant, a worsening hesitation, and a little white smoke led to the realization that yet another head gasket swap was in order. This one just didn’t exit quite as fantastically as the last one. I left everything attached to the head that I could (intake, exhaust, injectors, coil pack, wires, etc.) and pulled it off Fri. after work, put it almost all back together the next day, and then polished it off Sun. morning. Unfortunately, after all that, all it would do is crank. It had spark, fuel, nothing was forgotten, and several days of head scratching and sensor testing turned up nothing. To make a long story short, apparently lining up the cam and crank sprockets was not good enough for this motor. In order for it to run, it had to be a half tooth off … the cam pointer has to point at the valley to the left of the marked tooth on the cam gear. Go figure.  Anyway, the good news is it’s running again!

Please note irony of previous quote from two months earlier, “I didn’t feel like taking the head off since I just did that with the head gasket on the other sunbird…”

12/04/09 – teardown
12/11/09 – it finally lives

Headless bird.

When I drove the 93 bird the first time, I knew it had less power than the 91 which is TBI and supposed to have 15 or so less horsepower. The body wasn’t rotten (just lots of dings, but that’s better than rust) so I decided to buy it anyway and if it needs a few things so be it.

Anyway, it turns out the cam and rockers were fried. Missing .100 off the tops of the lobes, scored, ugly.

After flipping through my manual, it said to swap the cam you pretty much have to tear off the whole top end unless you have the special GM tool which they make no other mention of and dive into the teardown instead.

I decided that for one I didn’t feel like taking the head off since I just did that with the head gasket on the other sunbird and for two the chances of finding said special tool were probably about zero… for three the tool would probably cost more than I want to spend anyway.

So I decided I was going to make my own tool. Anyway, it worked well and it’s back on the road and the valves are actually opening now! The trickiest part was probably sneaking the rockers in and out around the cam (the journals hit the rockers if you try to take the cam out with them installed.)