payaso del mar

back to going by the body shop late tomorrow afternoon with a 6 pack........?? hit up the old guy (who knows what he's doing) with the globe and anchor tattoo (who'd help one of his bretheren).....

well, this is a useful bit of data. to me, this indicates that issue is something with an erratic malfunction dragging your idle down, not something glitchy kicking it up above normal. obvious, huh? but a whole different realm of possible causes to investigate. a timing light (remember those?) can be used to isolate an erratic miss to one cylinder, but it sounds like you're not hearing any missing, just the idle dropping?

ah, the cascading chain of gumption traps, I know it well......... and I want you to know that the only reason i'm not wanting to arm wrestle you for the rights to the title is that you live in a different village than I do. they pull out the charge card and spend lots of their disposable $ that could have funded their next camping trip? trim hides all sins. I often use trim designed for acoustic guitar edge binding (look on ebay) to cover small gaps....it's usually about 3/32 thick and maybe 5/16 wide, and comes in all kinds of beautiful exotic woods. nice way to turn a booboo into classing the job up!

hilift is definitely also in the plans, but in addition to rather than in lieu of winch/comealong. around here, lots o folks use em as offroady bling....kind of funny to see one on a vehicle w/o a scratch on the paint anywhere!

heh. I think they're hanging out and partying in the 7th dimension somewhere with my stray flashlights, individual socks, sunglasses, and Elvis..........the only rulers I can't lose very well are the 4' ones, and even those, I give it a good try. if I lived nearer to Roswell, at least I could blame it on the aliens.......

thanks for info! yeah, planning on adding the fixins for a block n tackle if I get such a wimpy winch. your nephew's story describes nicely why i'm leery of the China Inc one. just learned my wife got laid off for the summer, so Jim's 2x4 n strap plan is looking real good right now................!! I guess I could stencil a Warn logo on the 2x4.......

I think Totem was talking about a "hot wire" type mass air flow sensor (MAF), not a manifold absolute pressure sensor (MAP) like you have....MAP sensor is just sort of a deluxe vacuum sensor that reads pressure above as well as below ambient.....that's where the "absolute pressure" part comes in. it's used in what's called a "speed density" controlled EFI system, where the primary ECM inputs are from the vehicle speed sensor and the MAP sensor rather than from a measurement of intake air flow or mass.....most of the manufacturers use this type now due to the reduced flow restriction and effects on mpg (and thus CAFE). from Wikipedia: The manifold absolute pressure sensor (MAP sensor) is one of the sensors used in an internal combustion engine's electronic control system. Engines that use a MAP sensor are typically fuel injected. The manifold absolute pressure sensor provides instantaneous manifold pressure information to the engine's electronic control unit (ECU). The data is used to calculate air density and determine the engine's air mass flow rate, which in turn determines the required fuel metering for optimum combustion (see stoichiometry) and influence the advance or retard of ignition timing. A fuel-injected engine may alternatively use a mass airflow sensor (MAF sensor) to detect the intake airflow. A typical naturally aspirated engine configuration employs one or the other, whereas forced induction engines typically use both; a MAF sensor on the intake tract pre-turbo and a MAP sensor on the charge pipe leading to the throttle body. MAP sensor data can be converted to air mass data using the speed-density method. Engine speed (RPM) and air temperature are also necessary to complete the speed-density calculation. The MAP sensor can also be used in OBD II (on-board diagnostics) applications to test the EGR (exhaust gas recirculation) valve for functionality, an application typical in OBD II equipped General Motors engines. * Vacuum comparison[edit] Engine vacuum is the difference between the pressures in the intake manifold and ambient atmospheric pressure. Engine vacuum is a "gauge" pressure, since gauges by nature measure a pressure difference, not an absolute pressure. The engine fundamentally responds to air mass, not vacuum, and absolute pressure is necessary to calculate mass. The mass of air entering the engine is directly proportional to the air density, which is proportional to the absolute pressure, and inversely proportional to the absolute temperature. ************ Common confusion with boost sensors and gauges[edit] MAP sensors measure absolute pressure. Boost sensors or gauges measure the amount of pressure above a set absolute pressure. That set absolute pressure is usually 100 kPa. This is commonly referred to as gauge pressure. Boost pressure is relative to absolute pressure - as one increases or decreases, so does the other. It is a one-to-one relationship with an offset of -100 kPa for boost pressure. Thus a MaP sensor will always read 100 kPa more than a boost sensor measuring the same conditions. A MaP sensor will never display a negative reading because it is measuring absolute pressure, where zero is the total absence of pressure. Vacuum is measured as a negative pressure relative to normal atmospheric pressure. Vacuum-Boost sensors can display negative readings, indicating vacuum or suction (a condition of lower pressure than the surrounding atmosphere). In forced induction engines (supercharged or turbocharged), a negative boost reading indicates that the engine is drawing air faster than it is being supplied, creating suction. The suction is caused by throttling in spark ignition engines and is not present in diesel engines. This is often called vacuum pressure when referring to internal combustion engines. In short, most boost sensors will read 100 kPa less than a MaP sensor reads. One can convert boost to MaP by adding 100 kPa. One can convert from MaP to boost by subtracting 100 kPa. interesting that Toyota was using this in 93......my 02 Taco and MR2 both have gone back to the theoretically less efficient MAF sensor approach fact that it's dropping to 400 rpms indicates something about your issue, I think. isn't this WAAY too low for that engine? i'd guess 800 is about normal idle. ???

brilliant. bet that would work fine in deep sand......but i'd have to carry the wood with me....usually anything in the desert has been scavenged for firewood

maybe depends what's bolted on the back. my Bandit came with a 5800 btu unit from factory and I bet this would be enough for a Chinook or small Sunrader too.

maybe the Chinese lenses will work after all. here's a quick shot of beam pattern....they seem to have the clean beam cutoff whereas the old sealbeam (on the left) is just a "blob" of light. another reason I hate sealbeams: look at the size of the spare you have to carry, compared to an H4 bulb. finally, what are these two rectangular holes in the bumper for? i'm assuming they're not so critical to cooling that i'll be overheating if some auxiliary lights fall into the holes? Hella FF75s fit almost perfectly......

and with the guard in place had so much fun with it, and had some mesh left over, so I also added some to back side of my grille to protect the A/C condenser....more from bug embedding than stones. secured it in place with black nylon coated fishing leader wire and crimp sleeves. we'll see if this gives me any obnoxious resonances.

anyone had any experience with any of the small winches (2000lb realm)? i'd long discounted the idea of a winch due to 150lbs on front bumper and a jillion amp draw requiring a power cable the size of my wrist. but, given that I only have 2WD, I was thinking about toting my come-along and 100' of Spectra/Dyneema rope to help pull me out when (not if) I miscalculate my sand flotation. but then...........I happened to be mindlessly reading the Northern Tool catalog while temporarily enthroned....dangerous practice..........and I learned that the 2000# winches from Warn, Superwinch, and their China Inc house-brand all weigh less than 20 lbs and cost >$100. hmmmm....... the Warn is heavier than the Northern one but claims 80 amp draw at max load as opposed to about 120. 2000# is of course way-too-small for Real Manly Jeeper Guys, but i'm not looking to pull a CJ5 back up a cliff, just help get out of deep sand..........and with the remote, I could run the winch and drive at the same time, a mite tough to do with the come-along. any thoughts? jeers?

keep the ideas and pix coming everyone! i'm about to have to dive into exactly this project, with the additional refinement of needing to carry 2 outboard motors back there. I have An Idea for a counterbalance but want to try it before I belabor y'all with it.

does the Haynes for that year cover removing this panel? how about the factory shop manual? if you can't find any other answers, go ask a body shop....cheaper than breaking an expensive panel, or the tabs that hold said panel on

that stands for "euro". Europe has had a standardized beam pattern since before there was an EU....sort of a modified "Z" shape, Cibie used to call their flagship line "Z Beams". I fell in love when I first installed a set of Cibie 7" headlight conversions in my MG in '78.....like night and day compared to the sealbeams of the Bad Ole Daze. have gotten to where I leave a lot of stuff stock on my vehicles because I have a hard time improving on Toyota's engineering, but I always swap out the bulbs for silverstars or PIAA superwhites. It's kind of weird being back to where I have to swap out the lenses too........these Chinese ones are trying to look like modern headlights, where the beam focusing happens through computer designed reflector rather than facets ground into the lens.....passes more of the light produced by your bulb, whereas the facets eat up a certain percentage. Correctly designed, they produce the same "Z" shape beam that cuts off the light in oncoming traffic's lane. the Chinese ones, however, ..........we'll see. i don't want to be like the guy in the butchered civic who's blinding everyone else on the road......... here's some good poop from Susquehanna Motorsports, the most hardcore aux-lighting place I know of: Parabolic Lamp This design has been around since before the development of electricity. These lamps have a parabolic reflector and a lens with fluting a.k.a a Fresnel lens. The reflector collects the light and the fluting in the lens does the beam control. They put about 27% of the light created by the light source (bulb) on the road where needed. The balance of the light is lost to refraction and stray light. Free Form lamp With the advent of the computer came the first real improvement in lamp construction in decades. The reflector is not a parabola but rather is a computer designed complex shape. Hella uses over 50,000 calculated points to define this shape. The reflector collects the light and shapes the beam while the clear lens simply keeps the dirt out. The lack of fluting on the lens reduces defraction of the light and increases output. Free form lamps typically collect about 45% of the light available. Projector or DE Lamps The next generation of lamps was developed not only to improve the output of headlamps, but also to reduce the diameter of the package for styling reasons. They have a free form reflector that is very deep. This results in a large surface area that collects a lot of light while having a small overall diameter. Unfortunately, the reflector is so convoluted that it takes a special projector lens to collect the light and get it going in the right direction. These lamps put as much as 52% of the light the bulb makes where it belongs. While this package is small in diameter it is by its nature, very deep. Bi-Xenon and Bi-Halogen A projector lamp can not produce both a high and low beam using a twin filament bulb as Parabolic and Free Form lamps can. The only system that seems to work well is known as a Bi-Xenon or Bi-Halogen. This lamp uses a shield that produces the low beam cutoff and then, when signaled, lifts to allow the full high beam. This system allows the use of Xenon (HID) high beams as well as low beams in one lamp without the loss of "Flash to Pass" and the detrimental effect of turning an HID ballast on and off quickly. A number of new cars now incorporate these lamps including Audi, VW, BMW, Mercedes, Ford (Mustang) and more to come.

Started work on installing the Rostra unit on the ole Bandit, and learned that one of the first things I'll need to do is relocate my coil....there's only one good location under my hood for the unit, right next to the coil's current location, and it can't be any closer than 10" to the coil. This in turn will require moving that piggybacked electronic unit (ignitor?) onto the fender by itself....I can move the coil by just lengthening the low tension leads to it, but there are too many wires to move that box.

on a fridge, first Q is whether you plan on much boondocking or are you more the "stay at a campground with hookups" type? especially if the latter, i'd take a hard look at JDemaris' thread on an AC fridge on an inverter. he converted a small Igloo AC freezer to a fridge by adjusting the thermostat, and this seems to result in very low compressor run time. his results seem to be less juice usage than even the current DC fridges. you do have to allow for the juice wasted by the inverter, which on my 1000W Xantrex is .6 amps/hour. whatever the merits of propane fridges, I don't see going with one of those if installing a new fridge anyway.

yeah, it is kinda fun now....perfect weather lately cept for the dust storms, I could work 24 hrs/day if aging body (and day job) would allow. wasn't so much fun when I was doing the scrubbing and prepping subassemblies part....and our lows were in the 20s. Jim, glad to do it. I figure even if someone doesn't plan on doing any work themselves, it's good to know what parts are under there and how "dem bones" fit together.....helps to interpret what the mechanic is telling you. i'm also trying to post potential pitfalls and my frequent screwups in hopes anyone else doing this job can avoid em. and for humor value......... started assembling the rear brakes this weekend and hit another snag: the damn starwheel on the adjuster is all hashed up, with about half the teeth missing. never seen that before. good thing it was the left, since rockauto don't have no more of the rights. not much else done....got the mesh armoring for turnsignals on and grille off (so I can swap headlights....replacing the sealed beams with replaceable-bulb lights with Sylvania "Silverstar ultra" bulbs......much whiter light without the reliability issues and cost of aftermkt. HIDs) (lights are another area like tires, where, IMHO, you can gain a lot of improvement over 60s-70s tech, and as my eyes age, I really like a lot of light on the road). the lights were another area where I cheaped out and went with Chinese ones off fleebay instead of dropping the $ for Hellas, and I suspect I may be buying the Hellas anyway....not impressed with the beam pattern in prelim tests. ordered the calipers etc from Rockauto yesterday morn. i'll bet it's all here by Friday eve. those guys are consistently beyond awesome in their shipping speed.

nicely thought out. i'm going to have to start thinking along these lines, as my wife just brought home another dog.....50 lb AUs shepherd. so that makes about 180# of dogs to fit in the motorhome.......... golden has that "Can't you ask the judge to reconsider granting bail" look in the first pic......

I wasn't trying to suggest the rates were especially unreasonable.....just likely out of the $ realm of many here. I know they are for me. I like JD's plan, with a twist: out west, there is still plenty of BLM and USFS land on which "dispersed camping" is allowed....the only "cost" is making sure it's no worse for your passing (the idea of "Leave no trace" is a good aspirational goal but kinda falls apart when you're parking an RV....).....reminds me of an old rhyme I learned in Boy Scouts: Let no one say and say it to your shame that all was beauty here until YOU came

to clarify, I was NOT trying to say one had to buy Toyota-branded stuff....you get great stuff but OMG do you pay. that might be the one exception to my skepticism about China Inc: if Toyota puts their name on it, some QC is going on. rear brake drums for Taco were over 300 from toy dealer; next set will come from you-know-where instead! Partsgeek usually has the stuff from the OEM suppliers for most Japanese vehicles......way more $ than the cheap Chinese stuff but lots less than same items with Toyota branding.

front suspension is back together....whee! but it looks like we still have a LITTLE work to do on adjusting the toe-in............ also went to start reassembling the cleaned calipers and found that I had some pitting on the piston bores, so I guess i'm buying the pre-built calipers and keeping the rebuild kits for next time.

altho I suspect the folks paying Greg to advertise their $899/month RV sites ain't gonna be getting a lot of business out of THIS crowd. sheesh. my MORTGAGE wasn't that much back when I had one. did they maybe get confused between Toyota" and "Sprinter"?/?

finally, there's been some discussion about whether hub-centric wheels (fit pretty tightly to the center bore, so the lugs aren't carrying the whole weight and torque) are important. I tend to think it matters. my wheels are far from fitting tightly to the hub, as you can see from pic. what you probably can't see in the other pic is how the lug nut holes have elongated slightly from the wheel moving. now these were on the rear so they were dealing with engine torque, the wheels are the Cheepest of the Cheep white-spokers, and who knows how well the previous owners kept the lug nuts torqued....but there it is. if your wheels don't fit the hub tightly, be SURE you keep em torqued correctly.

5 speed manual, but they must have regeared it since earlier Imprezas....turns about 3500 at 70. also, it's the 2.5 engine in the Impreza chassis so it has decent suds for 3000# car. here are some clearance pix, with the 27x8.5-14 LTs and suspension "topped" out against the bump stop......ie, this is about the worst case scenario and equivalent to hitting a huuuuge bump. so for those of you running 14" wheels, yes, 27x8.5s will fit just fine. these clearances will change slightly with the different offset Tacoma wheels.