Leaderboard

Have to agree with idosubaru - this is a fantastic learning opportunity for your son and he should be helping you with things, even if the dipstick issue is not on his car. It is a good way for him to learn about taking care of his own car by helping you take care of yours. I also completely understand about the arthritis. My hands are not nearly as strong as they used to be either because of it - it can be quite frustrating at times.

"You get what you pay for." you're doing this for free, you shouldn't have to worry about it. he is choosing to let you do it. Like the rest of the quarter of a billion of Americans - he has a choice who does the work. He's not doing the work, he's not willing/able to learn it, he's getting free labor, and a free car (you insinuated you "picked it up")? The best value in this whole car deal is the present opportunity to teach some values, economics, skills, and opportunity costs and more... I help people all the time with cars - my rule has always been "i only work on cars for free". I will not accept payment. And I tell people - I might screw up. I rarely do, but sometimes i break something or something is collateral damage for certain jobs. They pay for it, no big deal. No one ever minds - they're unbelievably thankful I'm saving them hundreds (or thousands) of dollars. You should not have to think about possibly breaking something for your efforts and lack of his.

It may have been pure coincidence but disconnecting that green connector under the hood 100% solved the problem. Was able to drive it out of the woods and work on it now.

Can you grab onto it with ViceGrips? Any reason your son seems reluctant to do any help with this? I just happen to have that trim piece. Just pay postage and I'll mail it to you. Thinking there is only one bolt down by the base of the tube. Could just remove it and then pull the complete housing.

The test mode (D-Check) connectors are plugged in causing the relay to cycle for testing purposes. It has nothing to do with the idle speed or the running behavior. Once the engine is running, even in D-Check, the relay will not cycle. GD

depending on where the crack is (and yes, they do crack fairly easily) you can try super glue, but my personal preference would be some 2 part epoxy - just a small smear in the crack itself, then more on the backside, with something stuck on to help provide a bit more strength - a piece of a popsicle stick, round toothpicks, you get the idea.. allow it to set up completely before reinstalling. I use a 5 minute epoxy i got from my local hobby shop meant for building balsa wood airplanes, LOL it is great stuff and I have enough to last me a LOOOONNNG time. For the dipstick - try twisting to break it free - I know it is awkward to get in there, but they do have an o-ring on them to seal the stick to the tube to prevent fluid from seeping out and it is possibly baked on good & hard.. if you can twist it a little you should be able to break it free.

My ea82t runs hot, but I''m pretty sure it left the factory that way.

You have to get the trans dipstick out because that's how you fill the transmission! You should of course do a drain and fill on the fluid ASAP because it's liable to really be bad. It's really hard to get a straight pull on the depstick. How about trying vice grips between the hoses? You can put a hair dryer on it for a while to get it hot. Good luck.

Finally got spark after getting a refurbed hitachi distributor and then had to chase down a few changes that needed to be made from switching to an internally regulated alternator on the ea81. Once I fixed my spark issue and set the timing, I got the ea81 to run for the first time, and surprisingly it started right up and ran pretty well for not touching the carbs at al. I didn't get a chance to hook up the radiator and heater core yet so I've only run it a few times for a few seconds. The rebuilt ea81s first time running. I still have to make the rest of the exhaust so it's running open headers EA81 first time running by Luke Hoffman, on Flickr

The machinist finished up my heads tonight and sent me this picture. Machined Heads by Luke Hoffman, on Flickr