The other engine vibration/pitch control bushings are in need of replacement also. The only thing I dread more than putting the steering column boot & dust cover back in place is replacing the AC expansion valve. It appears innocuous enough, but this task is very frustrating.
After 50,000 miles, the poly bushings no longer had lube. The control arms would hold any position they were placed at. The busings weren't squeaking, they made a noise more like a groan when the arm was moved up & down. Fresh lube and they're ready to go. The bottom side of the bushing with the bearing peeking through shown earlier. The bushing on the right is torn top side, yet the bearing didn't press through like the one on the left. An odd discovery, one of the caliper guide pin bushings was missing. The gear box fluid drained from this car was almost like water; it had a little bit of amber color remaining, but not much else resembling lubrication.
Keith... After 50K miles, if this was the "Lifetime" OEM transmission fluid, do you feel the fluid was near the end of it's useful life? Chuck
The polyurethane Powerflex bushings had been on for 50,000 miles. The transmission fluid was in for 158,000 miles; based on the appearance of the fluid, I think it was close to useless for film strength, probably adhesion too. The condition of the clutch and release bearing is predictable; with the three main failure symptoms present, pulsating pedal, slipping going uphill, screeching with the pedal down, I expect to see a mess.
Nah, I don't think so. When oils get in there the water pump combines the 2 in an emulsion that is lighter in color. That just looks like rust, scale, and deposits, etc. K can you verify, and oil in the coolant? And yeah, I would expect you had to run plenty of water thru before it was clear/clean. Does coolant always flow thru the heater core on an R53, or is it valved off when not in use? So, is the heater core clean?
There was no significant amount of oil in the coolant. Coolant always flows through the heater core and I'm sure it is not clean. As bad as this appears, I've seen a large amount of silica material come from a low mileage radiator with almost clear colored fluid, and flow was just about as limited. Not much sandy precipitate was present in this drain.
A common issue I see are rub areas on the upper radiator hose. The upper rub is caused by an edge on the radiator fan shroud. The fix is to cut or grind the corner away. The lower rub is caused by a hose clamp, be sure to rotate clamp ears to avoid contact with hoses.
The bell housing bolts, including the starter, were way over tightened on this car. I broke a socket trying to remove the hardest to access bolt on the gear box. I knew the clutch release bearing was going to be bad when I split the transmission bell housing from the block and a ball bearing dropped out.
Wow, not nice looking at all. It seems like the clutch was used and abused very thoroughly. They did get their money's worth out of it for sure. Hey K, I was wondering if you had any pics of used trans-axle lube. I just replaced mine: - ~1 yr, 8K mi., including some track time - Redline MTL, still had a hint or red, but was mostly grey in color, viscosity was about like 30W instead of the 70W80 of MTL. - definitely not transluscent in the slightest. Normal?
Surprisingly the disk was OK, glazed, but OK. The pressure plate and flywheel heat ring only had one high side, and wear was normal. The flywheel had no spring action remaining, but no rocking of the secondary mass, which I usually see on a high mileage or failed flywheel. I don't know that color tells a story when it comes to transmission fluid health. It shouldn't be dark since there's no exposure to combustion byproducts, but I do see it sometimes, and in the case of Gene's transmission fluid his was multi-colored swirls. The fluid in the first photo is unknown, and only a year old, it came from a MINI with a seized clutch and failed 2/3 gear synchro. The second photo has 30,000 miles with a Quaife differential, it was a cocktail mix of Silkolene Syn 5 and OEM MTF-94.
Hopefully the owner went with all new as once you are in there..... And yeah, swirls can be used to describe mine as well. Definitely not engine oil like darkness. Ok then, I declare mine looks normal, thanks for sharing. On refill the Plews pump seemed to work very nicely, even though it the MTL bottle has a small screw top. [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Plews-55001-Tools-55-001-Pump/dp/B000BQW5LK/ref=sr_1_cc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1299507424&sr=1-1-catcorr"]Amazon.com: Plews Tools 55-001 Pump: Automotive@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/318zLBTi8CL.@@AMEPARAM@@318zLBTi8CL[/ame]
I like the little pump. I use a small funnel with 2-3' of tubing attached. I feed it down from the top of the engine bay and let gravity do it's thing. It goes a bit slowly when the oil is cold, but a fill only takes 10 min or so when at a normal temp (or I soak the bottles in hot water for 10 min if I forgot and left em out in the cold garage in the winter).
Finally a hot-rod task on this job; bench install of a reduction pulley. The pulley was perfectly true, that doesn't always happen.
This car gets a fluid filled damper from PRW as replacement for the wobbling early model damper. At 8.5 lbs it is no lightweight, but it does satisfy the need for a lower price point than other crankshaft vibration dampers. The PRW damper body will never separate as is possible with the stock elastomer based damper.
This is a "wrench" that is meticulous in his work. Everything gets checked and torqued. As it should be.
Keith: I really like your "today's job" series. You see things that most of us never want to see. It is never the end of the world with your car in the right hands. Thanks.
About $100 less costly. Hard to believe, but there was a little luck in the timing of this service visit. All the spark plugs were loose, one in particular was about to jump. The grey coloring is from combustion gasses; the tube and plug boot were also covered. The oil on this plug probably came above, unfortunately there was also oil in the combustion chamber. We won't be looking into that right now. Broken insulator here. I'm not too sure about this "air-gap" technology used in this design. BTW, there was no center electrode remaining within that gap on two of the plugs.