Progress since last week
I remember thinking to myself I'd hardly drive her. Told the insurance company "not more than 3000 miles a year." Well, the good weather has hit Colorado, and it's hard not to take her to work every day! My poor old Subaru has got cobwebs growing on her now...
I've been keeping an eye on the mileage, and one thing I noticed was my miles weren't adding up. What was routinely a 11+ mile trip to work was registering about 10 and a half. The tires! I forgot about the larger tires! After finding an online converter...well, basically relearning 7th grade math (31/28 x "x" miles = X+Y miles), I've arrived at about 16.5 mpg's after adjusting the ignition timing by vacuum pressure. That sounds about right and good enough for me to let the old Subaru continue being used as a spider trap.
Other things I have been working on:
1) today, I finally got to testing the temperature sensor. Started out grounding the connector, and it shot right up. Seems the lead is working. There are instructions here for testing gauges, I'm sure a lot of you are aware of this site:
http://www.civilianjeep.info/Strenk/Gauge%20web%20page/basic_troubleshooting_for_cj_gau.htm
Basically, if you ground it and it shoots up, but your temperature reading is still off (mine barely makes it above "C" before dropping back again), you need a new sensor. There is a detailed write-up on making a curve using warm to boiling water, but for a $10 part, I wasn't interested. Took her for a test spin and now the needle goes up about a third of the way and barely fluctuates. Good enough for me, I'd call it fixed.
2) earlier this week, I dug around the off-road/fog lights, which had leads but weren't grounded well and had no working switch. There was a single switch under the dash that controlled the tach and radio, but I'd have to disconnect those to plug in the lights. Simple solution, a dual switch which I picked up at amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002UZZPVM/ref=oss_product
Installation was pretty straightforward, now I have dual switches controlling the fog lights and radio/tach. Working on getting the radio off the switch, more on that below.
Image showing the switch mounted, right below the factory headlight pull. You'll maybe notice my new dash pad. After practically trying to give it away
, both on this site and on eBay, I figured I may as well keep it to replace my old, cracked one. Besides, it matches the new VDP console (see below) and the new pair of sun visors I have coming. I'll be posting the old nutmeg ones here and on eBay in a few days. The seats are either going to have to be reupholstered or replaced, so a complete change over to spice interior will be complete sometime later this year. I'll probably pull the dash and repaint it a tan shade...
3) New console. My old console had a lock, but I had no key for it. It opened, but I needed something that locked and was functional, too. In my old Wrangler, I was happy with a VDP console I bought to replace my stock console then, so I stuck with that. Not stock, but lookin' pretty good:
4) Rollbar-mounted bike mount. For about $25, I put this together. Sure I could've bolted it into the floor, but it's got enough holes already. Besides, this looks way cooler, and when the soft top is on, it's still out of the way:
The mount you can pick up off of eBay or from their store for $20:
http://store.comcycle-usa.com/ProductInfo.aspx?id=5096979
the clamps you can find at Home Depot for a buck a piece.
That's it since last time. On the way I have a set of marine speakers to replace my non-functioning box speakers behind the seats (dash speakers don't work, either...will be replaced when the dash comes off for repainting). Also coming is a tape deck to replace the barely-functioning CD player, so I can finally use my old tape collection again! I think I have the connections figured out, for a continuous lead I'll plug into clock, I think, and for ignition-only I'll connect to radio, since neither of them have anything plugged into them right now. Of course, there may be a reason for that, but we'll see. It'll be nice to have some tunes while I'm racking up the miles, now!
Til next time