Slartibartfast

Gassed it up and actually drove it somewhere for the first time in months!

Locking hubs in the front have nothing to do with the diffs. They just allow you to save a little gas and some wear on the CV joints by disconnecting the front drivetrain entirely when you're not going to be needing 4x. Common mod for the R50s.

I think the fluid in the pictures is just aerated, not emuslfied with water, especially compared to pictures of what comes out of SMOD trucks. I've read that overfilling can cause aerated fluid (like how the crankshaft will froth up the oil if you overfill your engine), which I'm sure would make the trans act funny. I remember having some trouble getting the fluid level correct in mine. That could explain the bubbles in this batch, but it doesn't explain why it was acting funny before. After watching the video, I can see why you were worried about the shimmer. I had another look at mine and while it does have a little shimmer to it when I stir it, it's nowhere near that metallic. I'd hazard a guess at aluminum given that it didn't stick to the magnet. Hopefully the metal in the oil was from normal wear and the TC didn't push into the trans hard enough to damage anything apart from the O-ring. Keep an eye on the fluid.

Good to hear you got it before it made itself at home! I think mice got into the cowl on mine through the openings where the cowl drains into the fenders. From there, it's a short jump into the blower fan, provided the recirc flap isn't shut. (Looks like the R50s are the same, though possibly with a filter between the cowl and the blower.) I'd hope a rat would have more trouble getting in this way, but I know they can get through some pretty small holes too... as evidenced by the one that got into the intake resonator in my truck and couldn't get out again.

Weird. Makes me wonder if it might have an electrical issue. Have you run codes on it?

Looks clean! Hopefully the salvage title and the alignment problems aren't connected. Keep an eye on the oil level, some of the VQs use oil.

Is your trans overfilled? There's a TSB about overfilling them to prevent damage to the countershaft bearings, which will whine when they start to go--though IIRC they'll whine in every gear but 4th, so only whining in 5th is interesting. I dealt with a loud intake whistle from mine a while back, but it only did it at idle. It turned out to be a sharp edge in the rubber intake tube where the line to the idle air control tees off.

I saw a bunch of trucks with their hoods up at a lake once and wondered if they'd all overheated on the way up or something, and was told it was to keep mice from nesting. We didn't get a mouse in the engine bay, but we did get one in the headliner of my dad's Yota somehow. I'm still not sure how it got in. My dad likes the electrocuter mouse traps. Little black tube kinda deal, takes C-cells, mouse walks in and gets zapped. Easier than snap traps and less chance they'll go off without killing the mouse. If you've got lots of mice, the best trap I've used was a bucket with a pop can free to spin on a rod across the top, with peanut butter on the can and water in the bucket. That'll catch quite a few mice with no need to reset it. The trouble with poison is that the mouse dies somewhere else and something else eats it and gets sick. I've heard of the smell of dryer sheets repelling mice, but I've also heard of the mice shredding them for nesting material. Speaking of which, I've thrown away two underhood insulation sheets due to mice nesting in them. +1 on checking the airbox and cabin air filter. I screened off the HVAC intake in my WD21 and installed a stamped steel mesh cover from a foam air cleaner over the intake inside the fender. When mice ate through the cabin air filter on my dad's Audi, we made a wood frame the same size as the filter and wrapped it in metal mesh.

cue tokyo drift music

Felt a whole lot better about how difficult mine is to work on after helping a friend replace the steering box in his S10 Blazer. The pitman arm joint refused to let go of the centerlink (and there was no room for a puller) so we ended up cutting the pitman in half with a Sawzall just so we could get the box out.

I don't have a good recommendation but I do recommend not getting the style the PO of mine did. It had no holes for drainage, just a solid lip all along the front edge of the hood, so it filled with pine needles and water and destroyed the paint.

I took a picture of the used ATF I've got, with the flash on, and it's got that same chocolate milk look as yours when the light hits it at the right angle. (It looks more like used motor oil when the flash is off.) My trans wasn't acting up or flooded when I flushed it, either, I just figured the fluid had been in there since it left Kyushu and was probably due for replacement. So, good news, you didn't drown your transmission on dry land. I thought I'd posted this before but it looks like I didn't. Bent flexplate meant the torque converter wasn't seated right, which in that case caused torque converter clutch issues and codes.

Hmm. That doesn't make sense, unless the water got into both boxes when you drowned the first motor and you didn't change it afterwards. Now I'm looking closer at the first picture and I'm not sure it looks that different from what I flushed out of my '93 when I got it. Look up strawberry milkshake of death, it looks like pepto bismol. I wonder if the bloom in the picture is just the camera flash catching whatever wear material happens to be in the fluid. I've still got the bucket of fluid I drained from mine, I'll take a look tonight to compare. I need to find it anyway to add what I just drained from my PS system.

Wow. Yeah, that ain't helpful. Was it running when you went at it with the hose? All I can figure is that the torque converter wasn't sealing and the pump sucked in water.

I did the hubs on my WDs without removing the wheel. If there isn't room to work with your wheels, you could have someone hold the brake, stick a screwdriver into the cooling fins on the rotor up against the caliper, or thread on a couple of lug nuts and set up a bar between the nuts and the ground to keep it steady. I had to heat/quench and beat with a hammer to get the allen bolts out of my '95's hubs. I think I also used a cheater pipe. Hopefully the nut is stripped on the stud, not the stud in the hub. If you turn the nut with a wrench you can watch to see if they're turning together. If the nut's stripped and it's in the way, you could probably cut it off the stud with a little careful grinding, leaving yourself enough stud to back out with vise grips. Retorque the hub fasteners a few days after install. I've had mine back out a little as things settle in. If you're using stainless, use some antiseize so it doesn't gall.

Coming along! New wheels look good. Sounds like PBlaster on a rag should get the paint pen off. If that doesn't do it, my usual strategy is to start with a weak solvent (like PB, WD40, or alcohol) and then start trying nastier things until something works.

Bolts are good at clamping stuff together, especially when you've got a bunch of them working together. I've heard of people bolting up transmissions with the converter not seated right in the pump and breaking the pump internals. There's no lack of force there. The flex plate center is just sheet metal and it's meant to flex (hence the name), so I doubt it put up much of a fight. And because the force was spread evenly over multiple points, it moved without developing runout like it would've if you'd only left one of the bolts in. I imagine the ring gear also helped spread the load and keep the plate flat. Good to see you've got the other flexplate. Just for grins, when you've got both flexplates in front of you, set them on the floor and measure the offset from the floor to the mounting surface of each. I don't see a spec for that in the service manual. Hopefully this is the last time you have to tear the SOB apart!

I had the wheels turned when I set it. I think what might've screwed me is how tough it is to keep the setscrew where it should be while tightening the locknut around it. The setscrew has a screwdriver slot in it, so you're trying to hold a flat screwdriver in place while tightening a nut around it, which of course wants to turn the setscrew with it and screw up the adjustment. I thought I'd figured out how to work around that, but apparently not. Whatever the reason, mine's right and proper borked now. The replacement should be here Thursday.

You'd have no visibility out the back when it's on, water getting in whether it's on or not, and also wind noise. What were you hoping for? For what it's worth, you can drive with the rear window open. I drove halfway across a mountain pass like that once (not sure if I forgot to close it or it didn't latch or what). Finally I realized that the increased wind noise and the unusually bright image in the rearview mirror might be connected!

Whining noise isn't a good sign. From what I've read, the temp light tends to come on after the trans is already much hotter than you want it to be. Have a good look at the fluid when you drain it to see if it's got anything in it that it shouldn't. Also check that your cooler isn't blocked! This wouldn't be a bad time to add a better cooler, though, yeah, it doesn't sound like it should've overheated under those conditions. The '03 manual says the sensor should read about 2.5 ohms cold (68°F), about 0.5 ohms hot (176°F).

Good to know about the crank position sensor. I just confirmed with the manual, it's just there for sensing misfires apparently. Bummer about the flexplate. If it comes down to it, someone else here probably has a borked engine in a corner somewhere. Doesn't sound like the usual failure mode of the dizzy to me. It's not warmed up, it's not cutting out. The back-and-forth makes me think the computer is trying to adjust for something that's borked and having a bad time. Fuel mixture maybe? Crossed fuel lines are an interesting theory. Excess pressure to the injectors could be making it run pig rich when it's open loop, then back off when it starts listening to the oxygen sensors, then look at the fuel trim and think wait no there's no way that's right and go back to open again. You might see if you can find a picture of someone else's engine bay and see if their fuel lines are routed the same as yours. I'd also pull the vac line off the fuel pressure regulator and make sure it's not puking gas into the intake, though I'd be surprised if the ECU was able to smooth that out half the time. I'd also check the wiring to the oxygen sensors. Maybe one of them's reading funny, so the ECU goes into closed loop, the engine starts running like crap, it goes back to open loop and smooths out, back to closed loop and everything goes sideways again? Seems like it would throw a code for that, though I have been surprised in the past by what an ECU doesn't think is a problem. If your scantool can monitor live data, you might have a look at various things when it's alternating between running right and running like crap to see if you can work out what condition or sensor reading or whatever is changing when the engine starts running like crap.

That sucks! Don't beat on the crank bolt. The crank can't move fore and aft enough to matter, not unless something's gone horribly wrong with the crank bearings. If the flexplate is scraping the starter, the flexplate is bent. The three bolts you left in the torque converter may have bent the flexplate equally so it doesn't wobble but I'm guessing it's dish-shaped now compared to what it should be, if that makes sense. Hopefully the torque converter didn't take any damage. It doesn't look obviously damaged in the picture. You've still got a good flexplate on the scrap motor, right? I'm sure you're as excited to pull the engine again as I am to bleed my brakes again but I don't think you're gonna fix this without taking it apart and swapping that out. Even if you could shim the sensor and the starter I'd be concerned about the torque converter sitting forward from where it's supposed to be and possibly causing issues like this.

Hmm. I guess if the MAF is flaking out, that could be making it stall. Also have a look at the MAF filaments. If they're caked with schmoo the curve would still be smooth but the values would be wrong. A filthy MAF solved a lot of issues on a friend's Buick, but that one was leaning out and going into limp mode if you pushed it rather than dying at idle.

The service manual says that's a theft warning horn. I assume that means it's what makes noise when the car alarm goes off. The WD21 alarms had plastic sirens in a similar position but on the driver's side. Hopefully the flexplate didn't move enough to cause problems apart from being too close to the starter. At least you found the problem before you tried to start it!

The service manual calls that a power transistor. I can see why someone might call it an ignition module if they're used to other systems, but it's way simpler than that name implies. The ECU controls the ignition timing. The transistor just amplifies the ECU's signal so that the ECU doesn't have to power the coil directly. It's basically a relay, except it doesn't have moving parts to wear out. Unplug the coil and test its connector with a meter while cranking to see if power's getting to the coil. I'd crank it for a few seconds just in case it takes the computer a second to work out what position the engine is in before firing the plugs. (IIRC it waits for the sensor in the distributor to see cylinder 1 hit TDC before it starts firing the injectors--I don't know if it does the same for spark.) If you have no power across the pins in the coil, I'd check from the blue wire to ground (like the intake manifold) to rule out an issue on the ground side. If there's no power, and the transistor's good, the ECU may not be getting signal. If you crank the engine for a few seconds and then run the codes, it should throw a position sensor code if that's the case.