Mooneggs 92 MX-3 Daily Driver IP 2013 in review

[mikeinaus]

have you tried hooking the up to those power adapters that come with the el gauge covers? that may be your problem the badge...

could it be burnt out? my speedo cover stopped working randomly and i havnt been able to fix it. tried soldeing new wires directly onto the leads and didnt have any luck with mine. no burn marks or anything just doesnt work.

[Mooneggs]

So it all started on 6/11 with my car having problems shifting and then I couldn't get it in any gear... details here: http://www.mx-3.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=74439" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Anyways the problem ending up being internal with the shifter fork being cracked in half.

Since I had the tranny out of the car and was replacing everything else and since I have an MFactory LSD sitting on the shelf... and I know I want to have LSDs in both of my cars eventually... what the heck why not!

So I opened up the transmission today and I have to say that I'm not sure why I was so nervous... it's basically all very simple in there. I was amazed at how it worked though... mechanical stuff like this really blows my mind haha

Everything was going well until I realized that I had to remove the main drive gear from the old diff. I'm not sure how I didn't know I needed to do that but it caught me off guard as well as how much of an effort it took to get it removed from the old diff! There are 10 "bolts" that are basically heat welded together from both ends and they have to all be drilled out! I finally got into a routine and got them all out in about 3 hours... not bad for just using a basic drill, dremel, punch and hammer

Anyways lots of pics to come once I'm further along. I'm pretty excited about this and I just hope I get everything back together ok!

[fowljesse]

Cool. I was wondering how you were doing with those rivets. Did you find a method?

[Mooneggs]

Yes, I was able to get the rest out pretty quickly... I basically drilled out the very center of the rivet until right below the surface, then dremelled the edges into 6 pieces and then knocked the top part of the rivet with a screwdriver and hammer. after that I was able to just use a punch and knock the rest of the rivet out!

I've got the LSD completely installed but now I need to crack open my spare tranny to retrieve a better reverse gear (the one I had in mine had a couple small chunks missing). The problem is that the driver's side axle is stuck in the tranny... I'm afraid I'm going to crack the casing with as hard as I've been trying to pry and bang on it... sigh

[solo_ryder]

Yes, I was able to get the rest out pretty quickly... I basically drilled out the very center of the rivet until right below the surface, then dremelled the edges into 6 pieces and then knocked the top part of the rivet with a screwdriver and hammer. after that I was able to just use a punch and knock the rest of the rivet out!

I've got the LSD completely installed but now I need to crack open my spare tranny to retrieve a better reverse gear (the one I had in mine had a couple small chunks missing). The problem is that the driver's side axle is stuck in the tranny... I'm afraid I'm going to crack the casing with as hard as I've been trying to pry and bang on it... sigh

Use a heavy piece of metal, like large chisel or solid iron or steel pipe. Give it a few good whacks with a hammer and u should get it.

[Mooneggs]

So after working on the car all weekend and then a couple nights this week, I finally started it again and drove it around.

From what I can tell, the transmission is shifting excellent and everything appears to be working fine but I only drove it a couple miles.

The problem now is that it is bucking really badly like it was before I replaced the fuel pump so the plan is to swap over the fuel rails, fuel filter and AFPR from the race car. I have a suspicion it is the FPR that is causing the issues.

[chrome730]

hows the lsd feel?

[Custommx3]

hows the lsd feel?

Trippy

[chrome730]

hahaha funny nah i was wondering cause i may include that in my build if its worth it.

[Mooneggs]

So thanks to SuperK who recommended I swap the VAF which corrected the bucking issue. Everything works perfect except for 5th gear. I must have done something wrong when I put it back together since it's as if there is no synchro. Anyways I figured out how to get it into 5th by rev matching so it wasn't a huge deal.

the LSD feels fantastic! When exiting tight corners I really feel it pulling... I just did a 1300 mile trip to Canada and back this weekend and the car did awesome (except for the bogging issue below).

I still have a bogging issue which solo_ryder looked into. We are pretty sure it is spark related so I'm going to test the wires and get new plugs (and wires if I need to).

[Mooneggs]

here's some pics from the LSD install and trip to Canada:















comparing the 626 5th gear vs. the mx-3 5th gear

[marcdh]

excellent! Glad the LSD went well. Interested to see if it cuts down 60fts much. It's fantastic fun coming out of roundabouts. Drag racing is about $75 here, so I'm holding out for my overdrive pulley before dragging again!

[fowljesse]

Congratulations!
Now I'm less intimidated to do mine
I'm glad it worked out!
Let's go driving!

[Mooneggs]

So the bogging down issue I've been facing in this car for some time was due to fouled plugs and a hole in my #3 spark plug wire. I put in NGK BKR5E-11 and swapped over the MSD wires from the RC. I haven't driven a ZE with full power in some time and man... it's nice to have it back

Last weekend I lubed up my front control arms (they were starting to creak again), installed all new KYB struts, installed new camber bolts, and a whiteline swaybar with wytbishop rear endlinks.

Today I went through all my boxes of mx-3 parts and got rid of quite a few parts I probably won't ever use and aren't really worth selling (pretty common stuff). I found things too I didn't realize I had haha including a few rare parts

I also sprayed all 4 sets of my RHD/LHD combo taillights. So basically now I have 2 sets with clear reverse lights and 2 sets with red reverse lights. Each set is a combined RHD/LHD so one set has both rear foglamps, and the other doesn't. But all 4 sets have square partitions. The reason I did this is so that whenever I'm swapping the CF hatch onto a car, I will swap in the non rear foglamp set since the CF hatch doesn't have a third brakelight. I modified the wiring as well so that I can easily plug and play into the non rear foglamp set and be good to go with 4 rear brakelights! I will probably keep the all red set on the DD since it makes everything look darker. The theme on the DD is darker anyways (tint, black headlamps, front signals, black headliner, b pillar bar and eventually black gauges).

[solo_ryder]

Glad the plugs/wires worked for u