Just a little maintenance, I thought. Ha ha.

[ozone]

So after 240,000 miles my wife's Solara had a bit of clunking in the transmission. I hadn't done any work on it in a while because I was working on my car, so I figured it was time. Because transmission work is expensive, I went online and bought a used transmission. The valve covers have been leaking for about 6 years, so. . . I decided to make a list.

The list grew to be pretty big. So I took the short holiday week off from work and dedicated it to doing some much needed repairs. That was nearly 2 weeks ago and I don't plan on having it done until this Friday. New stuff cropped up as I got into it and I figured, "Well, while I'm in here, I might as well do that too." Here's what the list ended up being (assuming nothing else comes up):
Transmission
Pressure plate
Clutch
Flywheel
Throw-out bearing
Rear main seal
Tie rod ends
Sway bar links
Axles
Plugs
Plug wires
Coils
Valve cover gaskets and bolts
Oil and filter
Transmission seals and fluid
MAF sensor
PCV valve and seal
Intake manifold gasket

And that doesn't even take into account all of the cleaning I did to get all that oil off of the engine, cleaning the K&N air filter, painting the valve covers and replacing miscellaneous bolts. Changing the transmission requires removing part of the exhaust system and dropping the front sub-frame. All in all it has been and will be a ton of work.

There was some good news, though. No sludge!

That's it. No question. Just had to vent a little. There were times when I kind of wish I had just bought a new car.

Should be good for another 100,000 or so, I hope.

[yaddadaimsayin]

you sound like quite a handy man.

[TheGreenDutch]

Nice I hope he lasts with all the love you given it...

[ThurzNite]

Great job! Your wife drives 5sp, that's awesome! What color did she have you paint the valve covers?

Well, you better keep drivin, I'm at 210k and creeping up on u guys. I'm getting around to the things you listed. Right now it's a tossup between end links, motor mounts, or getting windows tinted.

After doing all the stuff you did, did you notice an increase in miles per gallon? I'm getting 22 city, and 25 highway, but I'd really like to get 26 highway.

Dr J

[ozone]

Sorry. I hadn't looked here in a while.

The valve covers are just straight silver. She requested black but I convinced her that silver was better to see any oil leaks and stuff. They look good. I'll try to post up a pic later.

We're on our third tank of gas and didn't really calculate it, but this weekend we noticed that the mileage was really low. A long time ago we used to get 29 on the interstate. I would get 24 around town and she would get 26 around town. (I have a heavier foot) haha. We hadn't really calculated it in a while. I think the mileage was low because we forgot to set the odo or something. So I'm keeping my eye on it for this tank of gas. I'll post back with any results. I also want to do a horsepower run. I have a diagnostic tool that allows me to put in some values and accelerate in one gear and it calculates the horsepower. I don't know how accurate it is relative to a dyno, but I don't see why it wouldn't be consistent with itself and I have some data from previous runs.

I really would be surprised if the mileage was low, though because the acceleration feels much smoother than it did before. It feels really good.

The only thing I don't like is the Exedy clutch is very light and it releases close to the floor. I checked for a pedal adjust, but it doesn't appear to have any in the right direction. It's not hard to get used to, though.

[ozone]

So here's a pic of my wife's engine, the one in her car that is, haha. I did a lot of cleaning and I think the engine compartment looks pretty good for 240,000 miles!

[ThurzNite]

Looks great. Regarding the maf sensor, I just cleaned mine this weekend but its not reflective as I thought it would be.how's your maf color?

[ozone]

Not really sure. I just replaced the thing ($80.00) and while it did look considerably different as far as cleanliness goes, I didn't notice a difference in color. Because I made so many changes at once, I also don't know what effect it had, but I figured with 240,000 miles it probably wouldn't hurt to replace it either way. Not something I would do for a $4,000 part, but I would for an $80.00 part.

The car really is running well, now. It feels great except for the tire balance, but the car needs new tires, so hopefully that will go away when they are replaced.

[ozone]

So here are the results so far. In 90% city/10% highway driving with 100% ac usage and some horsepower and torque runs, the last tank of gas was 22.7 mpg. I'm not that happy with that since the last time I did this I got 24 mpg in similar conditions. However, it was a long time ago and I might not have been 100% on the air conditioning like I was this week, so I guess it's only 1.3 mpg off from that. I will continue to monitor. Here are the horsepower and torque runs I did, including the last time I did it in 2007. They are about the same, but I should note that was several software revisions ago. The car feels very smooth and much better, noticeably so, despite the way these plots look.

[Brandoe91]

What diagnostic tool did you use to do the dyno runs?

[ThurzNite]

*looking at graphs*
Trying to figure out when your VTeck kicked in...

Any idea about the dip in hp at 5100?

Dr J

[ozone]

Brando: The tool is called Dyno Scan. It's by Auterra http://www.auterraweb.com/. It's really a diagnostic tool like for the check engine light, but it has this horsepower feature, which is pretty cool. They say it's very accurate and that it's been calibrated to dynos, but I have my doubts as to it's accuracy. A 140 hp figure represents a 26% driveline loss if the engine puts out the 190 it was downgraded to. That seems like a lot for a front wheel drive car. I think for some reason it measures Toyotas lower than other cars. I used it on my friends Miazda and it was exactly what you would expect. Still, it's good for doing some runs before a repair and then doing some afterward and seeing what difference it made. I don't see any reason it wouldn't do that very accurately. I always do 3 runs and then average the numbers. The output does not look like this. I put it into Microsoft Excel to plot it out.

You have to do a little work ahead of time to use the tool. You have to calculate the frontal area, input the wheel diameter, weight, atmospheric conditions and the overall gear ratio, which the tool can calculate for you. Except for the atmospheric stuff, you only have to do this one time and if you have a gen 1 Solara, you could just go to my website to find these values. http://www.ozone2000.com

Dr J: Vtek is technically a Honda nomenclature. I know what you mean though. My wife's car is a 1999 model. It doesn't have variable valve timing. I guess the drop at 5100 RPM is where the engine torque just dies.

I messed up the software the other day so I repeated it yesterday. Turns out I did it wrong again, but I was able to correct the curves. Looks similar.

[ThurzNite]

LOL, the vtec reference was a joke. Awesome software

[ozone]

LOL, the vtec reference was a joke. Awesome software

Oops. My bad!

[trd4life]

stock v6 speed cars dyno around 170whp on average. The engine bay looks clean EXCELLENT job on performing all that work yourself, you would have spent 5x what you did had you brought it to a mechanic shop