Houston Auto Show 2006 photos

Took a few pics at the Houston Auto Show. Really cool Lexus and Porsche stuff. You'll need the Flash player to view it, and you can get it here if you can't view the gallery.

Here's the link: http://www.demonpixel.com/AUTOMOTIVE/HoustonAutoShow2006/

Enjoy!

Autorama 2005 photos

Hey guys, just wanted to let you know that I took quite a bit of photos at the Houston Autorama show and made a little gallery for it. You'll need the Flash 8 player to view it, and you can get it here if you can't view the gallery.

The gallery is here: http://www.demonpixel.com/AUTOMOTIVE/Autorama2005/

My favorite part of the show was that Spirit Industries built a car one foot away from me! Check out images 37-92 to see how they did it.

I know some of the images aren't the best quality. That's because I had the wrong batteries in the camera half the time I was at the show. Sorry about that! D'oh!

Carburetion - First Post, Barry Grant Demon Carburetor

This is my first post. I started this blog because growing up I never really had any friends that were gearheads but always wanted to learn cars, and so if there's anyone out there like me who wanted to get into it but never could, this blog is for you. I'm a beginner still, so these posts will also be about what I go through when I do little automotive projects for my 1972 Formula Firebird.

I got this car because those kinds of cars are mostly mechanical with very simple electrical wiring....usually. I felt that since they were mechanical, as opposed to all the computerized cars these days, I would learn a lot more about the different systems of a car and just cars in general.

So with that said, I'd like to share my experience with the carburetor.

The carburetor is a mechanical device that basically delivers fuel to your engine. It sits on top the the intake manifold, which sits on top of the engine. Somewhere on the carburetor is this thing called a choke. As far as I can tell, the only thing that a choke does is help start the car. It's called a choke because it restricts airflow from one part of the carburetor so that the intake manifold vacuum can pull a richer mixture of fuel into the engine.

When I bought the Firebird, it started and ran fine for a while, but then one day, for some reason, it wouldn't start up right away. It took a long time before it started and I had to keep pressing the gas to keep the car on. As soon as I took my foot off of the accelerator, the car shut off. I took my car to a shop to adjust the choke or idle screws (the idle screws control how much air/fuel mixture you want the car to have at idle but they also aid in startup), and they dropped my carburetor. I towed it to another shop because I couldn't stand those shady ass mechanics, and they told me there was a crack on the inside of the carburetor. It was an Edelbrock Quadrajet carburetor.

So I had to get a new carburetor. I thought long and hard about it, between Edelbrock, Holley, Rochester, and Barry Grant's Demon carburetors. I researched on the web and went to Borders and read their carburetion books to help me make my decision. Since I'm new at this and I wanted something that would teach me the quickest and easiest way, I got the Demon carb. It was way more expensive than the other ones, but it seemed clearer to me, so I got it. The Edelbrock and the Holley looked more complicated that what I wanted to mess with, and the Rochester is 20 to 30 year old technology (they stopped making them in the 80s), and the Demon was much, much newer, and when you buy a new Demon carburetor, Barry Grant also sends you a video that shows you how to install it, how to start it, how to adjust the choke, the throttle valves, and the idle screws. Learning by video sounded excellent to me, so that was all the more reason to go with the Demon.

However, my friend Kelcey had a 68 Mustang a few years back and he told me that he ordered an Edelbrock carburetor online, and when he got it in the mail, he opened it up, he took off the old carb from his car, bolted on this new one, and connected two lines - the vacuum hose and the fuel line - and started up the car and drove away.

So I probably would have gone with the Edelbrock if I didn't take it to a shop and if I hadn't already ordered the Demon.

Since I knew nothing about installing carburetors, I wanted a shop to do it. I paid an insane amount of money, although to be fair, half of that was the carburetor itself, which was around $500. I could have done it myself though, I am SURE of that.

Basically, you just do what Kelcey did. You unbolt the old carburetor from the intake manifold...there should be four bolts holding it down...then you remove the vacuum line(s) (some cars might have more than one vacuum line), remove the fuel line, and remove the gasket that was sandwiched between the carb and the intake. Remove the accelerator link also. Then, clean off the little area where you removed the old gasket with a light sandpaper. On my car, I needed an adapter plate for my intake so the Demon carb could go on there, so you put that on the intake manifold, and then put the new gasket over that one. then you bolt on the Demon carb, but don't bolt it on as hard as you can because if you do, you'll break the gasket. Get on there snug, but not like you're going to break something. Hook up the vacuum line(s), and the fuel line. Then hook up the accelerator arm to the throttle linkage. The Demon carburetor video shows you how to do all of this. Press on the accelerator arm a few times to prime the carburetor, which means to put a little gasoline into the float boals of the carburetor, so that it can start easier.

Put the air cleaner back on.

Crank the engine, and it should start. If not, crank it again, and maybe a third time, and it should fire right up. Let the car sit for a bit so that it can warm up. After it's warmed up some, drive it around the block to see what it's like; you'll probably have to do a little tuning to make it idle the way you want to via the idle speed and idle mixture screws. Here's where the idle speed and idle mixture screws are on my Demon carburetor (click on the pic to view a larger version of the image):

Here's the other side:


Now for my car, with the spacer, the hood wouldn't shut. So what I had to do was get a different air cleaner. I got a Mr. Gasket drop base air cleaner. The hood cleared fine.

Next I'll talk about hooking up an aftermarket tachometer.

Tachometer - making it work

When I bought the Firebird, all the gauges seemed to be working except the tachometer. For some reason, the backlight on the tach came on when I turned the headlights on, but the needle never moved when I was driving around. It's a Super Sun II Tachometer, and I chose to try and get it to work as my very first project on the Firebird that I could do all by myself (meaning, without the help of a shop).

I have this book on auto electrical systems, a really easy to read book, perfect for newbie beginners like me who didn't know anything about how electrical circuits worked.....the title is "Automotive Electrical Handbook" by Jim Horner, and I got it at Borders for about $20. On page 44, it had a diagram of a typical tach hookup, along with a few paragraphs about it. It said there are basically three wires. One is red, one is black, and one is green. The red one can connect to some place that provides power in your fuse box, the black one goes to ground, and the green one goes to the signal. The signal in this case is a place on the ignition coil that's labeled NEG. or DIST. or TACH. Luckily, the backlight came on mine already when I turned the lights on, so I thought that it just wasn't getting signal. I found the green wire in the back of my tach, along with a black wire, a red wire, and a white wire (the white wire goes to lighting but I'm not sure yet). Those were hooked up, I just needed to find where the green wire went.

I followed the green wire coming out of the tach through the firewall. It was shoved into a body of wires and took me quite a while to find the end of it. I found the end of it finally, and sure enough, it wasn't hooked up to anything. I got this kind of wire connector:


and crimped it down onto the wire, and connected it to my ignition coil. Now, the service manual I had for the car talked about a normal distributor, the stock one that came with those models. But mine had been upgraded to an HEI distributor so I was having a hell of a time finding my ignition coil. I asked a few guys from a chat room, and they told me the ignition coil was inside the distributor. There was a section in the Haynes book I have that confirmed this. So once I knew that, I just connected the wire with its connector to where it said TACH DIST. on my distributor.


I started the car and drove it around for a while, and sure enough, the tachometer needle went up as I accelerated. Success!!

How to remove the instrument panel

I have been wondering for quite a while how to remove the instrument panel. Mine's woodgrain, and even though I love woodgrain, with the metallic blue paintjob that I have and black leather seats, I thought a black instrument panel would look a little nicer. Here's an example of a 1972 Firebird with a black instrument panel:


There were only a few steps involved for me to remove it. The Haynes that I have says to first remove the lower instrument panel. Well, when I got the car, that panel was already removed, so I was lucky (don't worry, the panel was in the trunk, so I can easily bolt it back on).

Next, locate the three screws at the top of the instrument panel, that are hanging upside down, and unscrew them. I used a Phillips head screwdriver for these screws:



Now would be a good time to mention a really helpful socket toolkit I bought. I got this one:


and even though it's probably for amateurs, it really helped me to remove the instrument panel quickly.

Ok, so after you remove those three screws at the top, look up underneath the steering column. You will see two screws to the left and right of the steering column, about 3 inches each from the steering column. I used a hexagonal socket on the socket wrench to unscrew these:



The last thing I had to do was to remove the cigarette lighter parts. You can easily just pull out the cigarette lighter:


and you'll be left with the outer rim of the cigarette lighter. Just twist this hard to the left:


And it will screw off the instrument panel:


Now all that's left to do is pull the panel off! Start with the left side, and put your fingers through the air vent. Then tug it toward you some:


Then you can put your fingers inside the instrument panel on the left, above the air conditioning controls:


and tug that toward you also. And that was all I had to do to remove the instrument panel!

How to change a taillight/backup (reverse) light

Changing a taillight bulb or reverse/backup bulb is fairly simple. First, open your trunk and take a look at your taillight housing:



The green arrows indicate where the lights go inside the taillight housing. To take them out of the housing, just put your hand around the base of the light, called the socket (you can see that the sockets for the taillights/stoplights in the above image are black, and the reverse/backup light socket is white or cream colored), and give the socket a good twist to the left or the right, but usually to the left. It should pop out without any problems. Once you've done that, you take the bulb out of the socket. Use a small towel or in my case a raggedy t shirt, and put it around the bulb and give it a good twist to the left. You might have to wiggle it while you're twisting a little bit, but eventually, you should feel it kinda pop. When that happens you just pull the bulb straight out of the socket.

Once I did that I consulted my Firebird's owner's manual to see what kind of bulbs the taillights are:


You'll notice that it says 1157 next to where it says Stop Light and Taillight. So I went to the Autozone right around the corner from my place, and found the aisle where they sold the bulbs. I found ones that said 1157 on them:


I bought these, which cost me less than five bucks. Now when you put in the new bulbs, notice the two little notches on the bulb:


You'll need to match up those two notches with two slots inside the socket.


So then you just put the bulb in the socket with the notches on the bulb matched up with the slots in the socket, and give it a twist to the right to kind of lock it in the slot. Once that's done, all you have to do put the socket back up into its hole in the taillight housing, and twist it left or right to lock it in place. A note about the owner's manual though...sometimes it won't be entirely accurate. I found out that even though my owner's manual said that backup bulbs were 1157, when I took the bulb out of the socket, it was actually an 1156 bulb, NOT an 1157 bulb:



So what's the difference between 1156 and 1157 bulbs? Well, if you notice in the above image, the 1156 is a single filament bulb, so it has one contact at the base of the bulb. The 1157 bulbs are dual filament, and they have two contacts at the base.

Changing the Upper Radiator Hose

In addition to my '72 Firebird, I also have a '93 Camaro v6. The upper radiator hose had gotten a leak in it, so I thought I'd post how I replaced it with a new one. Here's the story:

So I went to CompUSA yesterday and when I got out of the car, I heard a hissing sound. It sounded like a sprinkler was on but I didn't see one nearby so I thought that was kind of weird. I thought it might be coming from my car, so I popped the hood, and sure enough, there was a little mist spraying out of a rubber hose. This hose:


Well, there was an O'Reilly's auto parts store around the corner, where I picked up a few things, like black tape to wrap around the hole, a new upper radiator hose, some clamps, and other stuff, and I made it home with the tape wrapped around the leak hole and some new antifreeze in the car. When I got home I got out the stuff I knew I was going to need, which were the jack stands that I had gotten from O'Reilly's, a jack to jack up the car, the new radiator hose, my toolbox which contained pliers and flathead screwdrivers, clamps, a worn T-shirt that I use to wipe stuff with, and some paper towels from the restroom at the CompUSA I went. OH, let me say this before I forget to tell you guys: the last time I worked on the car I was bitten by mosquitos a dozen times, so before I went outside to work on the car THIS time, I put some of this stuff called Off! on me:


After spraying this stuff on, no more mosquito problem.

Here's an image of what I brought down with me to work on the car, including the jack stands and the jack. When I'm learning, I like to know what equipment/parts someone is using, what it looks like, and where they got it, so I thought I'd share in case you guys would like to know that also:


The first thing I did was jack up the car.

Now let's talk about this hose. If you noticed in the first image, the upper radiator hose goes underneath the Air Inlet Duct. I know it's called the air inlet duct because I have a Chilton's for this car and that's what it says it is in one of the diagrams. :)

So the first thing I had to do was to take off the air inlet duct in order to get to the upper radiator hose. On the driver's side, the air inlet duct connects to the air cleaner, and there's a screw right where the duct connects to the air cleaner, and I needed to unscrew this to begin taking off the air cleaner duct.


Now at the other end of the air inlet duct, the duct connects to the throttle body, and just like there was a screw at the air cleaner connection, there's a similar screw here also:


Now once these are unscrewed all the way, go back to the air cleaner and just give it a tug upward, and should pop right up. Mine did. This is kind of a bad pic, but here's an image of it anyway:

Now go back to the throttle body, pull the duct out from there also, and just kinda move this one big piece off to the side so you can have much better access to that radiator hose:

Now, just underneath and a little to the (passenger) side of the throttle body, the upper radiator hose has a screw that I needed to undo:


After I unscrewed it and pulled the hose off at that spot, I knew there was going to be fluid in there, and to catch the fluid, I just used a large freezer bag:


After that, what I had to do was the same thing but at the other end of the hose. This other end connected to the radiator on the driver's side of the car. The clamp that connected this hose to the radiator was a pain to undo. It was one of those clamps you had to squeeze together to undo. Here's a picture of the type of clamp:


And here's an animation (click the image to see it animate) of how to squeeze them together with a pair of pliers in order to slide the clamp down the hose so you can take it off where the hose is connected to:


So the clamp was facing toward the ground, so I had to get underneath the Camaro:

And when I got underneath there, looking up (cuz that's pretty much the only place I could look), this is what I saw:

See the clamp? In order to get to it I had to worm my arms around a little, and put the pliers up against it and squeeze as hard as I could:

After fighting with it for quite a while, I finally got it to slide down the hose some. After that I got up from underneath the car, and pulled the hose off the radiator. Again, I used a freezer bag to catch some of the fluid.

I then took the new radiator hose and just connected it appropriately, with the new clamps I also got from O'Reilly's (you saw them in the pic with the jacks and jack stand).

Next I just put the air cleaner (along with the air inlet duct) back into place, screwed that screw tightly, just like it was before, and screwed the screw by the throttle body.

I then lowered the car.

The last thing I wanted to do was put some antifreeze and distilled water into the car. After a leak, I thought it could use more. So I got these:


and here's where you put it:

It unscrews easily. Be careful when you're pouring these liquids though because it's right next to the battery.

After I poured the antifreeze/water, I turned the engine on and let it run for a little bit to see if there were any leaks. I didn't see any, so I took it around the block. It ran fine and the temperature seemed to stay low, so I thought I'd mark this one down as a success, cleaned EVERYTHING up (antifreeze is toxic) and start this blog post!

On a side note, I thought this was cool, so I'm sharing...while I was working underneath the car, a lady walked up to me and asked if I was a mechanic. I told her I was actually a mechanic wannabe, and she asked how much I would charge to change the battery on her daughter's convertible Porsche!! I told her I'd do it just for fun, but be on the lookout for my first Porsche post! Ha!