A Dodge Journey decided to make one across the intersection at a red light into my car early October, totalling my car.

The middle of my semester, I decide to stop by the local pier for a break and play around with my Hero 5 so I do better with it. I figured since its my only dedicated camera and I want to get into media, I need to get better with it and night photos is something I want to be great at. Granted it's a GoPro, so it's not going to be stunning, but it's better than my iPhone 5s. For some reason, the app was giving me trouble and my battery was soon dying, so I cut my time short and decided to head home. That's when disaster struck.




(Photos ironically not taken with my GoPro)

Unforunately I was looking at where I was turning onto and didn't catch him in time. The guy was nice, but he really f*** me. This threw me into quite a loop because it killed not only my car, but routine and I like my routines when it comes to keeping my momentum going. My school work took a toll, my mental health took a toll, the fresh club I started in college took a toll and failed. Everything was going well. In reality, it's not totally his fault for ruining these things. If I were a bit stronger mentally and if I was more alert I might not have ended up in this position, but I digress. I came out with no bodily harm, so far. I guess I have my health and this is about my car.

The following day, I started looking at cars to replace mine with. I had more photos, but I lost them; I knew she was totaled. I tore out the full sound system, including the wiring, I put into her and had enjoyed for about a year. I wanted to pocket some of the money I got for her, but there was no car acceptable at the prices I wanted, so I broadened my horizons.





I was raped in total loan for the car, but I got the payments to what I can afford as a full time student and part time worker, and its for a car I've always wanted.

One owner, 78k miles, no mods but the wheels, and all maintenance was recorded in CarFax, including no accidents. I knew exactly what I needed to hunt for and she showed no signs of damage. Hard to find cars in this condition with low mileage. I hopped on it.

I started on what needed to be done, maintenance included. The rear motor mounts on all 3s are super hot garbage absolute garbage.



I never did this mod on any of my previous 3s because the power was miniscule, but the mount issue was even present there. This is where I decided to start and ordered the CP-e Stage 2.




Holy f*** was this mod a pain in my a**. I've never done anything more than just tire rotations, oil changes, filter changes and electrical f***. This was daunting to me and it took me more than an hour to do it, while it takes other something like 15-30 minutes. I hope I never have to do another mount in my life again.

I settled on this mount because it was the mount that offered me the least amount of NVH, while still offering me great performance. I installed it a couple of days after I received it. Not horrible NVH and it's suppose to get better to completely unnoticeable. Torque steer is curbed quite a bit and the other motor mounts that are reported to be terrible are showing no signs of needing replacement. Hopefully they'll never need to be replaced.



At the same time I was down there, I replaced the transmission fluid with Redline MTL. The mount was causing grinding and I figured the transmission fluid has never been changed and I would like to get rid of whatever metal filings I could. I would have liked to put magnetic plugs, but I didn't want to shell out $26+ shipping for them. While I was at it, I changed the motor oil, too. Pennzoil Platinum 5W-30 MS3s love this stuff, according to all Blackstone Labs results. Not cracking that I discovered she was overfilled by a quart. Not sure how long she was running with that, but I hope none of my gaskets and seals are damaged.

I figured my plugs might have been damaged, too. So I threw fresh NGKs. I don't believe those were ever changed, either.



And the power steering fluid was smelling burnt and got that as well. It goes in red, by the way.



Scared the hell out of myself. While she was on jacks, I wanted to rotate the tires. I didn't realize those are wheel locks, so I threw on the 17mm deep socket and took one off. Got stuck in there Got it out of the socket by tightening it back on and then going further until I heard it unstick. Ordered the key immediately lol.

The air filter is in good standing. I have a little bit of a rough idle. Just a tiny one. The needle doesn't even register it, but I feel it and hear the exhaust from it. Might be a boost leak and the stock rubber hoses are prone for cracking as any turbo car will have. I ordered JBR boost tubes and recirculation tube. I wanted to service the stock BPV, but I can't figure out how. If you guys happen to know how, let me know. When I'm there replacing the tubes, I'm going to clean the throttle body and MAF sensor, too. Hell, might even get to the EGR valve and clean that with the connecting pipe, but that will depend on the weather. I want to discover if there is a vacuum leak ASAP because knock. The coolant doesn't need to be changed and the belts were changed at 30k. I checked them and they look good still. I'll double check the bounce when I'm there replacing the tubes.

Anyway, after maintenance is completely done, I can hopefully put in things I want and the first on that list is tint.

Hope you enjoyed! Maybe I'll post updates in here. I will post pics of her after I completely detail her. Her eyes have a little bit of glaucoma.

Other section! What up!

Sucks you broke your car. Fix the glaucoma! :

Looks good. I need to get under my ST and just poke around. I get a faint coolant smell.
Turns out mine is a pre-production model too... vin # 69, built in April of 2012. Carfax said the radiator was replaced early in life.

Ace2cool wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 02, 2017 6:49 am

Other section! What up!

Sucks you broke your car. Fix the glaucoma! :

I didn’t break my car, nerd!

I am working on that right now

PapaSmurf2k3 wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 02, 2017 10:00 am

Looks good. I need to get under my ST and just poke around. I get a faint coolant smell.
Turns out mine is a pre-production model too... vin # 69, built in April of 2012. Carfax said the <a class="vglnk" title="Link added by VigLink" target="_blank" href="http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=radiator" rel="nofollow"><span>radiator</span></a> was replaced early in life.

Better get on that y0. Post pics of your work, too

I did my headlights and my car was soulless for 5 hours!


(Genuinely love this pic. I think I'm going to make this my sig)

Now, I didn't have to remove my headlights to do a good job, but I felt like they need to be removed to do an outstanding job. I've done headlight restoration a couple of times before on my N/A 3, but I was never 100 percent happy with it. Yes they were clear. Yes it kit was always up to par, however, I could always see things up close that never made me happy. There was always a patch of sanding that never actually sanded, or I could see swirls, or the lens in the tiny little corners where the headlight sinks in never received enough polish. So, I wanted to knock it out of the park with this go around.

A picture or two of some befores




Still getting to know my Hero 5 and cameras in general, so I'm sorry about the blurs. I haven't done much night shots before and I didn't know about the slower shutter. But you can definitely tell the headlights are in need of a little bit of TLC. I'm also really glad that I have a garage to work out of. Makes working on your cars possible.

Now, you're probably wondering "did he really say 5 hours of work?" Yes. I said 5 hours of work. I'm not going to lie, I enjoy the s*** out of working on things slowly and meticulously and having no time limit what so ever. I just get to turn off the outside world and think about the task at hand. I get to set the pace. I get to judge my work and get out what I put into it. I have no one to report to and I get to listen just drown in the music Pandora or Spotify decides to bring me. This reminds me that I am the king of my world and my world is completely moldable to my whims.

I know in my original post I said I didn't like doing the RMM. Well I have a confession to make: I did enjoy it. One thing though, I didn't like the fact that I had my friend over keeping me company because I felt like there was a time limit and being judged and not being confident in my steps while working. My friend was being very helpful and nothing he was doing was in any way rushing me, but in my brain I was just thinking "is he bored? Is he thirsty? Does he need to use the bathroom? I'm being a bad host." The reality of it all, he was fine and made himself at home. As for the car, I was a little frustrated, but once I started to understand what was going on, everything came together nicely.

Anyway, back to the headlights. taking off the bumper was easy, just really long. I think people who work fast could get it off in about 15 to 20 minutes. just lots of bolts, fasteners, and screws. It took me about 30 to 40 minutes. After that, its three bolts, a screw, and an electrical connector. Boom, done. These things are huge, by the way. I should have done a comparison, but I didn't. Deal with it. Here's a before pic, with the first sanding done on the other in the background.



Close up of the first sanding



Fast forward to done!




This headlights are immaculate afterwards. I'm 100 percent happy with these. No haze, no swirls, nothing left unsanded and unpolished. I could resell these as new and no one would be able to tell. Big ups to Meguiar's for the headlight kit, but I need to buy the sanding pads seperately and figure out how to wash the polishing tool. I have three sets of headlight kits simply because I need the sand paper. The polishing pads are still good, but they can use a wash.

And a comparison of before



Done. Thanks for stopping by!

Looks good!

Hey John, you wanna come polish my Z? Cause I'll pay you in beer. And pizza. And moonshine. And tours of Nashville.

Ace2cool wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 09, 2017 9:32 am

Hey John, you wanna come polish my Z? Cause I'll pay you in beer. And pizza. And moonshine. And tours of Nashville.

LOL
Pay for my ticket and I'll do it.

One of those rare times I get the garage to myself overnight so I decided to take advantage of it. Wash, clay, wax. I used Meguiar's everthing because they're second to none to me. I took a long time, as usual. Kind of. This was a rush against time, so this turned into a two day fiasco. First day was plagued with distractions. I really wish I had a polisher and the compounds because there is a lot of imperfections like spider webbing and stuff deep in the paint I can't remove with claying. Still though, great results. I did one layer of Gold Class with carnauba today and will do another tomorrow after my two finals tomorrow.

Note to self: don't do heaping globs of wax in weather that is less than recommended by Meguiar's. Wax will take forever to dry.

First three pics is before wax, but after wash and clay. Tons of dark spots that regular washing couldn't get rid of, but the clay did.







After first layer of wax







I want to take my tires to a place that will use a power wash on my tires. Then I want to take the wheels off and wash, clay and wax those bishez, too. Anyway

DONE!

Damn that's looking good.
My paint has water spots like you wouldn't believe.... like to the point where I may have to try wetsanding

Thank you.

Good grief, wet sanding watermarks? You're going to be there longer than the time the watermarks have been on there lol.

Before you try wetsanding, try and polish them out with the proper pads and Meguiar's compounds. There's a Youtube channel I follow who has amazing tips and he does most of this stuff properly. I say most because I saw him and his brother install speakers and I was aghast at the job job when he's usually top notch. Let me see if I can dig him up real quick. Use the stuff he lists in the description to remove them. If anything you'll have an excellent polish set up that if you don't want anymore I could buy off you for cheap #brokecollegestudent He also has a wetsanding video for bird droppings that I'm sure will help out with the water marks.

Boom. This guy.

http://youtu.be/GyLR4iIwsPo

This is what I want to do to remove the same haze and swirls I have in my car.

When I finally get around to rotating my tires, I'll be able to check my pads and rotors and see how they're doing. Hopefully fine, but if not I'll be doing his paint job for calipers and discs.

I couldn't do the second layer of wax today like I wanted. When I drove to class this morning, it was still so cold out that condensation happened while I was in class. I didn't want to wash the car again because I couldn't find info if that would wash off the newly setting wax effectively giving me one layer of wax total instead of two and the effort would be wasted. I think I'll wax again when it's warm out so I can do two waxing in one day and store it over night in a garage to properly cure.

Oh yeah, I already used a buffing and polishing compound on my car... now I just have shiny water marks.

LOL Yikes. GG ya'll

I wish I was good at paint stuff. I love washing the Z, but the paint is lackluster after so many years of California Central Valley sun abuse. It's in a garage now but the years took their toll. The rear bumper is downright

I think that might just be age. None of my cars get garage treatment regularly. Maybe once every year or so. Age and YOUR NEGLECT. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Also, I swapped out boost tubes and decided to do a compression test and I think I did it wrong, or the kit was broken. None of them got above 120 and only one was maybe 115. I think I'll stop by another place to borrow a kit tomorrow and redo it. Pretty concerned because I have a little bit of oil on the hotside of my intercooler tube and people are saying PCV failure, or ringland failure. I hope it's not ringland failure!

I genuinely with I had money for a FMIC. To do anything on this car, I need to take off the TMIC.

So basically you wanted a Subaru but got a Mazda instead? Also I hope your engine isn't borked. Tomorrow was a couple days ago though, so how did the new test go? Also did you do it while the engine was warm? Cause that's important.

Ace2cool wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 22, 2017 10:43 am

So basically you wanted a Subaru but got a Mazda instead? Also I hope your engine isn't borked. Tomorrow was a couple days ago though, so how did the new test go? Also did you do it while the engine was warm? Cause that's important.

Kind of. I've never owned a AWD vehicle and wanted one, the power on the WRX is comparable, but the handling is superior on the WRX. The pricing is also quite a bit higher on the Subie, so I couldn't afford it. I'm only working with $1000 gross pay while in college.

As for the compression test, I got mixed reviews again. I bought on test kit, and rented another kit from a different parts store. The bought kit gave me 150 across the board. Then I used the rented kit and it gave me 180. The engine was up to temp. I was driving around town getting the kits and I worked fast to get it done. I genuinely don't know what I could be doing wrong while doing this. I followed every single step precisely the second time around and I got the same reactions from the car as all the videos I saw that did it.

Also, now I'm losing boost at WOT on the stock gauge and butt dyno. It might be the hoses I just installed, but I will be doing a boost leak test soon to verify because I suspect there was an issue before hand. When I would push it with 50 percent to less than 100 percent throttle, the boost looked like it creeps and settles back down. Other owners are saying this is normal, especially at third gear because the turbo spools so fast and the computer cuts it a little to help prevent overspool. I really want a Cobb Accessport to have accurate readings. But $500 is heavy.

Yeah I'd definitely check the hoses you just did...

Checked them and I have a few questions:
1. Can you over tighten silicon hoses with t-clamps? If so, how tight does it have to be? I went over the whole system and nit-picked-fixed things I don't think would have caused a boost loss, but I really, really tightened down the clamps. Nothing callapsed, but I'm afraid that they'll tear under how tight I put them.
2. Do turbos naturally burn oil? I heard that the K04 is a coolant cooled turbo if that makes a difference. I don't think I'm smoking and I don't see any oil leaks on the engine, or on the floor, but I was on minimum oil when I checked today. I still have ~1000 miles to go before my next oil change and it was half a quart of oil I added today to go back to max. When I regapped my plug, I looked inside the hole to see any shine and nothing. Plugs were dry, too. Normal?
3. When I redid the hoses, I felt inside the hoses for oil and nothing inside the hoses, but feeling inside the turbo outlet to the hotside of the intercooler there was a small layer of oil. Inside the intercooler on the hot side I can see residue of dried oil, but nothing I can rub off. Normal?

This paranoia of the turbo going out is making me want to sink money into a BNR S1 turbo as a direct, reliable replacement so I can stop worrying about this s*** K04. I am not looking forward to replacing that turbo by myself.

I can search these things, but I am hoping you guys can do me a solid. I'm feeling lazy as f*** today.

I haven't driven the car yet to see if I'm still losing boost. I got busy scooting around town with my mom in her car. I want to build that boost test kit and test for a peace of mind, but it will have to wait for Sunday. Work tomorrow, then more tasks with my mom, and then family get together after work on Saturday.

1 - Yes, you basically tear into the silicone or collapse the pipe underneath.
2 - No, but you may have PCV issues that would cause oil to end up in your suck side of the turbo, then the oil droplets hit your turbo (which isn't really great for it), then they sling all through the system. There's a lot of surface area in your piping and intercooler, so it may take a while for all that to reach the throttle body, but this is why they have catch-cans. Dry plugs are normal... if they aren't dry, you should worry.
3- see above

I don't think I cut into the silicone. Should I back up just a little bit, or what? The PCV is notorious for failing on these cars. I will buy 2 new parts: aftermarket OCC and PCV plate. I will take apart my intake before I buy that PCV plate though. See if I can trace it there. PCV plugs into the intake, right? Or am I thinking of recirculation tube from the BPV...

Boost is stonger than before tightening, but I still can't hold full boost in third and I think it's hesitating in first. I haven't experimented with it completely to check for that hesitation at WOT. No real safe zones for WOT pulls. Still haven't put together the boost test kit yet.

Yeah, PCV usually vents from the crank case somewhere to the suck side of the turbo (so its always not under pressure).

Do a catch can! And you probably broke everything. Just go ahead and scrap it and start over. I'd replace the PCV though and go from there.

I don't like just throwing parts at the car. Not good for the paint. Or my wallet.

Whenever I get around to figuring out the problem. I'm just not mentally there right now to f*** with the car.

#depression

Come to TN and I'll give you a hug and a beer.

That cold you got there will probably cause me to kill myself, lol.

Still haven't done the boost leak test, but I'm also not romping on it. Car has enought power to get me up to speed without needing to put more 50 percent throttle. I know it's a band-aid on a problem, but I just can't pull myself together to get it done.

Bad KV. Bad.

Nah, the weather ain't bad here lately. We are slated for some bad stuff this weekend but it's been 50's and 60's lately

Damn, everyone has been absent on NICO since the holidays lol. Hows the motor coming along?

Still haven't done the boost test, lol.

New pic!

Dirty girl. I need to wash her and take more pics. I need to start editing pictures.

I just did a track event in the vette. Trying to see if high res pictures are available but the teasers I saw look good.
It was my first time at the track and I placed 12th overall out of 80 drivers (some of whom were in some pretty wild/modified vehicles). Pretty proud of myself!

Nice! Post up those pics when you get them man, I'd love to see them.

krimsonviper wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 07, 2018 11:50 pm

Damn, everyone has been absent on NICO since the holidays lol. Hows the motor coming along?

Clicky the sig! Just posted an update!

Also I think you've lost weight since I saw you last.