I think it's actually okay. Kinda boneheaded but the issue may have been with the temp selector.

8/24/2014 1:56:45 AM

.... so operator error?

8/24/2014 10:05:11 AM

Haha...that oh-en, oh-eff-eff switch is a motherfucker. It'll get you every time.

8/24/2014 2:07:28 PM

el oh el

put new tie rod boots/bellows on the 240 today after 3 years of exposure to the elements

8/24/2014 8:04:37 PM

Not gonna lie I had a couple panic moments in the legacy where I was like climate control is set ok 68 why is it 74 and not blowing cold air? Ohh.... I bumped the a/c button...

But in my defense that whole sequence took like 1 min and never made it to the internet.

8/25/2014 6:21:58 AM

no comment

8/25/2014 8:25:33 AM

^^^^duke, that's awesome that you have your daughter involved. i'm the same with with mine who's also 7. she broke the starter rope on her 4wheeler and told her if she ever wanted it to run again she needed to fix. obviously i had to show her what to do and help her break the tension on the screws but she did it all herself. i think it's very unfortunate how little a lot of parents actually do with their children these days. give them an ipad so they can play games or drop them off at a "playdate" seems to be the norm.

8/25/2014 8:42:27 AM

I guess I cut a tire in the scrap yard, lost a chunk of tread I40... snot impressed with the retreads after 3000 miles, so four new tires on. When they put the tires on, they checked the alignment (my steering wheel has been off the whole 10 months) and I wasn't shocked to hear that I needed all four ball joints. I was shocked to see how the previous owner had hit something and bent the VERY stout factory steering rod on the Superduty... so one cut tire ended up being a set of four, four ball joints, all new steering, alignment, and fuck it, four new shocks.

All of this occurs while I am on vacation... meaning I couldn't do any of it myself (I didn't even bring a screwdriver) and I had no choice but to bite the bullet with wife and kids to transport home. So for the first time since I got my license, I paid a shop to fix my vehicle. And it wasn't cheap, but they did a good job, and it was a pleasant experience.

9/3/2014 9:11:46 PM

Quote :

"But in my defense that whole sequence took like 1 min and never made it to the internet."

haha yeah, i think most people have been there.

^^ yeah dude, she helped me with an oil change before that, and i figured she could do the CVT fluid change by herself. It requires removing some access panels that the oil change doesn't, but you don't have to fuck with a filter (which would be tough even with a strap for a 7 year old, i think. i guess not with a big enough breaker bar, haha).

I adjusted the valves on my old BMW (motorcycle) tonight, and replaced spark plugs and a leaky valve cover gasket. she wanted to help by holding the flashlight, and wanted me to show her how the torque wrench worked. I let her put the feeler gauges in and feel the clearances after I had everything set.

9/7/2014 8:43:39 PM

swapped my 325/60-18 Toyo Open Country A/T 2's (33x13.0) out for some newer 325/70-17 Falken Wild Peak A/T's (35x12.50) on stock polished wheels:






... I've averaged 16.0 MPG over the past 4000 miles with the 33's, we'll see how this round goes with taller tars. I love the stock 3rd gen dodge aluminum 5-spokes; plus these tires are much quieter than the toyos.

[Edited on September 8, 2014 at 8:21 AM. Reason : -]

9/8/2014 8:19:08 AM

placed 2nd overall out of 37 drivers at the Inaugural THSCC RallyX at VIR

'lot of butthurt involved, which made it more bitter sweet

9/8/2014 2:57:16 PM

Well insurance paid decent money for the old one and being my creative self I picked up the same car, same color, just year older.

'02 M5. $13k OTD, 128k, 1 owner CA local car, garaged, mint inside/out, not a single dent, all maintenance recs including original window sticker, fresh michelin pilots. Straight piped from resonator. Sounds mean, but only past 3k. Wood trim decent on black interior. Really happy and hopefully this one doesn't get fucked by idiots running a red light. 4th one is the charm! This cars are just unbeatable value at this point. I cannot think of single 4-door practical car that is more visceral for this amount of money. Just want to buy more of them and collect them in different color combos. They are yummy!

9/9/2014 1:53:13 AM

Changed the oil and filter in my motorcycle. The BMW R80RT and R100RT filter changes have got to be the biggest motherfuckers in the history of oil filters. It would be comical if it wasn't such a fuckin' pain in the ass.

9/9/2014 2:01:03 AM

^^&^congrats to both of you.

9/9/2014 8:44:08 AM

From my Facebook, where I vented about this ridiculous design last night:

On most vehicles, changing the oil and filter is about the simplest, most mundane task imaginable, next to filling them with gas or checking the tire pressures...yet, then there are BMW motorcycles. While nearly every other part of the motorcycle is both robust and easily serviceable, the lowly oil filter is more than enough to trigger fits of rage. Never in the history of the internal combustion engine has there been an oil filter design as diabolical as that of a BMW airhead motorcycle equipped with an oil cooler and full fairing. This little miracle of German engineering was surely the brainchild of Adolph Hitler himself, as it is truly a crime against humanity.

The first step in the journey to the oil filter is to remove the lower right fairing, which is accomplished with 3 bolts in front (easy), 2-3 more bolts accessed via the bottom of the inside of a storage compartment up top, and finally, two nuts attached to the engine mount underneath, which are moderately aggravating to remove due to there being very little room to move a wrench or ratchet.

Next, you must remove the two banjo bolts fastening the oil cooler lines to the filter cover. Easy.

Now, however, you must remove the oil filter cover. Even with all that other stuff removed, a couple of the Allen-head bolts are a pain to reach. They wouldn't be difficult if you had long, metric, ball-end hex drivers; alas, I did not, and had to suffer through removing them with a too-short Allen wrench. When you finally remove this thing, note the arrangement of two rubber O-rings and a metal shim. Hopefully they didn't just fall out before you saw what order they go in.

Now you may finally remove the oil filter. Pray to every deity can think of that the last person to perform the job used a hinged oil filter, otherwise you will also have to remove the exhaust (which requires a special, proprietary tool, by the way). Yes, that's correct--a 2-piece, HINGED OIL FILTER, so as to not require removal of the exhaust header...to change the OIL FILTER. Seriously.

Now, you just put it all back together, snaking the new, hinged oil filter around the exhaust header, bolting back on the cover with two new O-rings, a metal shim, and a new paper gasket...it will be just as aggravating to reach those 3 bolts this time as it was to remove them. Don't forget the 4 new crush washers on the 2 banjo bolts for the oil cooler lines...and then, finally, you can put the fairing section back on, with a half dozen bolts/washers and two rather aggravating to tighten nuts.

I am certain that I could adjust the valves on both cylinders on at least 5, and maybe 10 of these motorcycles in the time it took me to change the oil and filter. It's as if the oil filter placement and design was contracted out to Ducati or something.


and:


Oh, and one of those O-rings is called the "$2000 O-ring" because if you screw it up, you'll ruin the bottom end of the engine. It's probably more than $2000 to repair nowadays. To really be technically correct, I think you're supposed to measure seating depth of the oil filter, and shim things to get proper compression of the ring. Screw that, though. I've reached my limit on how much trouble a filter change can be; if I blow the engine up, I'll just figure it was my time. It's made it this far; I just replaced everything exactly as it was before.

http://largiader.com/tech/filters/canister.html

OK. Now I am done venting. It isn't exactly difficult, but it's a case of making something so simple be so needlessly difficult, that I feel like the Marine Corps had a hand in it.

9/9/2014 10:12:41 AM

I'm gonna do an oil change and tire rotation for my taurus.

9/9/2014 10:18:25 AM

^^that's ridiculous!

9/9/2014 10:25:19 AM

An entire essay on an oil change. An oil change? What happened to this place?

PS : Its German. What do you expect? Their electrical work is even worse.



[Edited on September 9, 2014 at 8:13 PM. Reason : .]

9/9/2014 8:10:59 PM

??

9/9/2014 8:28:54 PM

I mean, point is that it is absurdly involved and unlikely any other vehicle I've ever changed oil, which is extra-odd given how serviceable the old airheads are generally.

Seriously, WTF is up with an oil change taking 5x longer than a valve adjustment?

I mean, look at this shit:





I think that the basic boxer twin design had been around for decades, and in its final evolutions had grown in displacement and output, and placed in an application designed to cruise for long distances, heavily loaded, at high speed. The oil cooler is an afterthought (and only common to a couple of the models in the range), and the fairing is only common to a couple of models as well. All the old R-bikes are the same basic platform, and the RT (faired tourer like mine) is the furthest removed from the baseline.

Still, damn, couldn't they have fed the oil cooler from some other oil source? I don't see why it had to be plumbed that way. I mean, all of them are a little bit aggravating with all the O-rings and gaskets and shit, but I think the bulky housing specific to the oil cooler models is the part that really makes it an extra pain in the ass, and it's probably the part that could have been designed differently

[Edited on September 9, 2014 at 8:36 PM. Reason : if you have to hinge your oil filter, maybe you should reevaluate!]

9/9/2014 8:36:06 PM

incidentally bmw car oil change is probably the best design ever and super easy to change. weird..

9/10/2014 12:04:23 AM

Yeah... BMW motorcycles are something else... I hooked up some auxiliary horns to the bike to make it louder... It is louder, but only for about a second... Then the Canbus system disables my horn altogether until I turn off the bike. I guess it didn't like the change in the load. :'( One of many quarky things about BMW bikes...

9/10/2014 6:38:45 AM

Quote :

"An entire essay on an oil change. An oil change? What happened to this place? PS : Its German. What do you expect? Their electrical work is even worse."

Pfft, oil change on the Cayman is easy street.

9/10/2014 9:13:00 AM

Yeah everything else I've ever done on this bike is easy. They have enjoyed a reputation for decades of longevity and serviceability, which is why BMWs are largely what you see people using for long-distance "adventure touring" over remote areas. In particular, the old airheads are the most preferred by some due to their relative simplicity and serviceability. It's just that damned oil filter is a pain in the ass, for something that must be accessed so routinely.

(Again, primarily on the oil cooler + fairing models)

9/10/2014 1:49:03 PM

Drained and refilled the gear oil in the transmission, driveshaft, and final drive on the BMW motorcycle.

all I have left to do now is change the fork oil (going to go slightly higher viscosity and overfill them by a few cc to stiffen things up some), change the brake fluid, and add additional valve cover gaskets (apparently that's the trick for stopping leaks from the valve covers on these bikes).

[Edited on September 12, 2014 at 11:03 PM. Reason : next up will be the 7...]

9/12/2014 11:02:09 PM

^ I did the driveline fluid (final drive, gearbox, motor oil) about 400 miles ago. Day and night difference in how the bike behaves. Feels like new!!!

9/13/2014 2:23:32 AM

do the oilheads require fluid changes on the driveshaft as well (like where it goes into the final drive)? If so, don't forget that one.

Also, fork oil. Don't forget that. Do NOT use gear oil for that, haha.

I can't tell any difference in mine. I think you'd have to be hurting badly for some lubrication to feel any difference there. My old gear oil looked pretty good.

9/13/2014 11:59:50 AM

And I thought the filter location on the Ford InTech V8 was bad...yeah it's hard to get to, and you pretty much have to fully rotate it to get it past the bits and pieces around and below it (which means you pretty much always spill used oil all over everything) but it's simple compared to that BMW BS. Wow.

9/13/2014 3:06:37 PM

I have a hexhead; I don't know much about oilhead maintenance. For me, it's just the transmission and final drive. The fork is free-floating... No oil for dampening or anything. The oil that is in there is just to lube the tubes, but really the fork is just a giant steering knuckle that compressions with the suspension. The telelever coilover does all the suspension work and I'm thinking it's close to needing a replacement..

My gear oil had 50k miles on it (oem fluid). It had a tint that's a little darker than new motor oil, where-as the fresh gear oil I poured in it was very transparent like mineral/vegetable oil. Minimal metal deposits came out, so I was pleased. It just runs noticeably quieter and the shifts feel crisp again.




[Edited on September 13, 2014 at 7:19 PM. Reason : .]

[Edited on September 13, 2014 at 7:19 PM. Reason : ,]

[Edited on September 13, 2014 at 7:20 PM. Reason : .]

9/13/2014 7:10:37 PM

Oh ok, cool. I love the hex heads, too. Dad has an R1200RT; I've ridden it a fair amount.

BTW, I found a few more old airheads that came from my granddad's old shop...I think one is an R75/5 ("toaster" tank model), and a couple of R90 bikes. Once I get another job and talk the owners into selling, I might pick up one or two of them. I kinda want to make a cafe racer style custom out of one...especially that /5.

9/13/2014 7:33:02 PM

I guess I've been riding a little harder than before as I only got about 12.5k miles from my front Pilot Road 2, 1.5k miles less than before.

Alas, a PR4 is on its way. I'm excited after all the reviews. I've spent a lot of attention on the R12R this month.

9/14/2014 2:26:07 AM

Changed the 240's water pump, thermostat, and radiator hoses, flushed the coolant, and bled the cooling system. I probably need to re-bleed it as I was in a rush to get to work and it's a bitch to get all of the air out.

9/16/2014 3:39:28 PM

Here's my dilemma.

Mx6 threw a camshaft sensor cel. I replaced the sensor and the distributor. then the crankshaft sensor code was thrown. No big deal. I replace that too. Now there's no code, but the car won't hold an idle. It'll bounce/surge 500rpms and won't drop lower than 1,100rpm. I've tried to adjust timing but no dice. I cleaned and inspected the TPS and the IAC, and those are fine. throttle body was disassembled and cleaned up. Coolant bled/burped. Still persists... Doesn't idle right. I don't understand what the problem is and the forums are no help since 2 other people are having the same issue. Thoughts?

I sprayed combustibles everywhere and no apparent vac leak. Maybe an intake manifold leak?

[Edited on September 18, 2014 at 3:35 PM. Reason : .]

9/18/2014 3:34:31 PM

wish I had some advice for ya

9/19/2014 9:15:27 AM

have you checked for a broken wire somewhere?

9/19/2014 9:23:05 AM

IAC is faulty. I used a coolant bypass hose cap on the throttle body and the car idles pretty well. It doesn't like it when the AC is turned on as the motor doesn't have a way to pull more air to offset the load, but it'll runs. I can only assume that the IAC plunger doesn't close all the way when it should and seeing how it's a relatively sealed unit, I've got to get a new one or a junkyard working one for it to be officially fixed.

I don't think the IAC is needed to pass emissions. I got timing and idle down to factory specs, car runs solid! The CEL will come on for the IAC failure after about 5 miles of driving, so I'm thinking of clearing the code (i've got an OBD II reader) just before I pull into the inspection station and then letting them do their walk around on the car if a CEL for the IAC is a problem.

[Edited on September 20, 2014 at 7:46 PM. Reason : .]

9/20/2014 7:46:03 PM

clearing the codes right before pulling into the station won't work. it will fail.

9/20/2014 9:52:13 PM

I cheated out on the new lawn mower thing my friend was throwing away an old one with a beat up deck and a bad carb so I stole the rod and head out of his and fixed my old one... Free mower woot

9/20/2014 11:45:45 PM

I read up on it. I see. Hmm.

9/20/2014 11:55:26 PM

New:
front ball joints
tie rod ends
front tires
exhaust header
engine mount
battery

including 3 bolts snapped off in the engine block, engine mount bolt hole stripped and one broken exhaust bolt.

no I didn't do most of that work, but oooh boy does the car drive considerably better now.

9/25/2014 9:10:42 AM

lol.....

you were all "i thought porches were refined... this thing has more rattles than a classic diesel"

9/25/2014 6:32:52 PM

I assumed he was talking about the teg

9/25/2014 7:08:42 PM

ohh yeah i keep forgetting he still has the teg..

doh...

9/25/2014 7:53:37 PM

sold my '69 dart GTS with 440. no time for it...

9/25/2014 11:04:28 PM

^why did we not know about this thing?

I'm PISSED

9/26/2014 7:59:45 AM

Yeah when the hell did you get that? I might have enjoyed some of your posts for a while lol.

9/26/2014 9:07:02 AM

Quote :

"you were all "i thought porches were refined... this thing has more rattles than a classic diesel""

Haha, yes I'm talking about the Integra

9/26/2014 9:23:26 AM

Finally picked up the rest of the '30 Ford I bought.

And by "the rest" I mean "the most important part."



I also got an extra pair of doors, a few extra cowls, and a ton of other stuff. More than enough to put together a solid body.

I'll figure out the chassis stuff eventually. I'm in no rush. It'll be some sort of aftermarket thing. Definitely not going to use the stock frame.

9/29/2014 12:49:23 PM

Are you going to chop it?

9/29/2014 12:58:08 PM

Duh.

Step 1: Chop.

Step 2: Put it on the ground.

9/29/2014 1:05:20 PM