Sadly the world lost a great one for her to look up to Tuesday. RIP Jessi Combs. At least she went out doing what she loved.

 

I had not heard of her passing. That is sad. She was one hell of a roll model for girls and women in general. But, with the internet she has become timeless and will forever be there.

 

Sub'd! Love the wheel restoration!

 

Dove into the stereo wiring today as the wife said it was the next thing she wanted addressed. Grumpy came to us with an aftermarket head unit and hacked out HK harness in the rear with the HK amp missing. Only the front door speakers have been working, and the driver's side isn't as strong as the passenger side. I started by trying to track down which wires in the back lead to which speakers. I had my tablet out with the wiring diagrams for the stereo up and started trying to confirm. I hooked directly into the head unit wiring to bypass the funky way the HK system gets signals to the amp and used the right rear signal from the head. And I got nothing. I finally tried an aftermarket speaker I had lying around and also got nothing. Well, first problem, no rear output from the head unit! Maybe the previous owner's attempts fried it. Luckily I had another one sitting around and grabbed that and rigged it up. Bingo! At this point I have all the wiring at the HK amp harness in the hatch sorted and labelled to be connected. Now I just need to get some decent speaker wire to run back there from the head unit and we should be good to go.

 

Buttoned up the HK amp wiring bypass today. Back to some decent quality sound, despite a less than stellar mid bass speaker in the left front door. With the sound running directly to the speakers it works much better.


Bypass bundle run back and ready to be connected.

All connected and ready to rock n roll. I left the extra for any future need.

 

Nicely done!

 

Thanks. The best part about it was fixing the damaged clips and loose fitting interior panels in the process. No more unsightly gaps along the passenger door opening. All the little things add up in the end!

Next is getting front end aligned. The steering wheel has always been a smidge off, but Grumpy has driven well, overall. However a peek at the front tires shows extreme wear for the mileage on them, and it's more pronounced on the inside edge indicating a front toe issue.

 

It’s all in the details.

It will be interesting to hear what you find in the alignment.

 

The front end feels pretty tight, overall. No noticed shimmies or shakes when driving, just a slight leftward clocking of the steering wheel. Ideally I'd replace the front control arms and bushes, but for now I just want to get it a bit more straight.

 

I was also curious about the tire wear you noted and if there is something else that shows up in the alignment. I know you said you suspected the toe. Just curious.

If you get into replacing the lower control arms and bushings, I would suggest the Power Flex purple. Gives better feel to the steering inputs and no noticeable in noise or vibration.

 

Here is a guy in Qatar who has also saved a R53. He is pretty much going at it on his own and has run into his own “not running” issue like you had....
https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...ml#post4491678

 

You the man!

 

So Grumpy had chewed up his front tires in a little over 7000 miles. The wheel had always been off center a touch, but he seemed to drive well, so I let it go. Well, when I noticed the tire wear something needed to be done. First attempt failed, the tie rods were pretty seized and the torch was out of oxygen. Yes, Eddie, the toe was definitely out of spec. +0.75 degrees on the left, +0.20 on the right. Not sure what that equates to in distance differential, but it was significant enough to destroy a set of tires. Spec is about 0.15* on both sides.

Second attempt was a success yesterday. It's probably still not 100% perfect, I had to keep tweaking it as things cooled down. I had to heat them so much they were actually shrinking as they cooled and the toe setting was changing! It's getting into fall, so I'll probably just toss the winter wheels back on. The rain will be coming and the front slicks will not be fun!

This morning our daughter wanted to ride in Grumpy, so I had him again, as I drop her off in the mornings. Opportunity! I'd been hating the driver's seat cranked up the whole way on the height adjustment, I pulled the seat after work and dug into it. End result is a lower seat, hooray! The adjuster is toast and only works to raise the seat. I pulled the height adjuster off and got the seat lowered down. I drilled out the holes a smidge and bolted it back on at the lower height with some m6 bolts as I didn't have any rivets or a rivet tool at work. I haven't told the wife I did anything to it today, we'll see if she notices!

 

Good to get that done... The old heat wrench works wonders...

Do you know what the camber is? On mine, that amount of toe-in resulted from going to -1.5 deg camber. This will increase the toe and why the toe needs to be corrected when changing camber on these cars. I suppose you know that ...

A thing I did with mine was to fill the slot on the tie rod with penetrating oil, then I filled it with never seize. Then I twisted the rod a half a turn in each direction to work the never seize into the threads. Of course I did this when the car was new and the rods move freely.

 

I don't know where the camber is, but I also don't fully trust our alignment machine. I didn't even bother to save or print the report for Grumpy. I just wanted it much more in the ball park.

 

 

Back to tatty stockers today...

Sadly too many other projects got in the way and I didn't get around to peeling the Plastidip off of them to freshen them up.

Here's the other tires, all installed at the same time, about 7k miles on them. :eeps!:

 

Wow!
Hope the alignment helps...

I’d save the 2 not-worn ones....

 

Drove the Grumpster to Annapolis for a regatta last weekend and reset the OBC to see how he did on fuel economy over a decent highway haul. OBC said 34.5 mpg average for the trip, probably about 250 miles total. Not bad for a 16 year old car with 176k miles! And definitely more comfortable with seat adjusted down, which the wife hasn't said a peep about, yet!

On that trip, however, I hit a nasty bump/transition on 695 outside Baltimore and the TPMS and DSC lights came on. Scanned the ABS/DSC and had a CAN communication code, a steering angle sensor code, TPMS warning activation code, and another random code along the lines of the CAN fault. Cleared them out to see what happens and the lights were back on within about a half a mile. Will scan again today and report back.

 

Only one code returned, 5E40 for the steering angle sensor calibration. I performed the calibration and cleared the code and all was well on the way drive home. Has me worried that big bump knocked something out of whack, though. I'll need to get him back in the shop when I have a bit more time to check over things than I had today. I'd love to do front arms and bushings just because, but any extra $$ right now needs to go towards finishing the 5 speed swap in my Jeep before winter sets in to keep my BMW out of the salt.

 

A few developments with Grumpy. I think the alignment issue is in the rear, rather than the front. I noticed the other day that the right rear wheel didn't look centered in the wheel arch and compared the two sides, the right is definitely back a smidge. Will have to get it looked at this week.

On a more positive note I scored one for Grumpy at the junkyard today! I noticed they had an R50 Cooper and wandered over to take a look. It had an intact glovebox! Sweet! Five t20 screws and $20 later it was coming home.

 

 

Long overdue update. The problem is, indeed, in the rear. The right RTAB is toast and got dislodged in its housing. I made an adjustment on that side to get things close, as it refuses to go back into place. I still haven't picked up new ones, and I'll be doing the tie rod assemblies at the same time.

On the positive side I absolutely love the yin and yang aspect of this little car. From fuel miser to ripper, all it takes is a change in throttle application. I can baby Grumpy and get his "miles to empty" display to read higher when I get to work than when I left the house, or if I need to blow off some steam I can plant my foot and revel in the whine of the SC.

I also revisted the R50 in the junkyard and grabbed a little rain gutter trim piece for the top of the a-pillar last weekend. Was hoping to grab some i terior trim, as Grumpy's is pretty scratched up in places. Sadly the R50 has silver trim and Grumpy has grey.

 

Glad to hear things continue to go well. Sounds like Mr Grumpy is treating you well.

 

Well, the free trim part took a free trip to the trash can today when my wife cleaned out the car a bit. She even told me she paused and considered if it was good or trash before tossing it. I asked her to please ask in the future before disposing of anything she even thinks may belong to the vehicle it's in.