Reelax's Ride - the 10 year build

[8thLS6]

I love ur exhaust setup!!fuck it i love the whole car!!!! Great job

I 2nd that

[oakrdrs187]

Reelax is definitely top 10 TGC.

[Redhaze]

i have to say your car has the sexiest ass

[Reelax]

thank you guys!

[Reelax]

so like anything, stuff breaks. driving to my cousin's house the radiator starts shooting coolant through a toothpick size hole out the front of the core. i tried to plug the hole w/ bar leak but it was too big so i sourced a new radiator and swapped it in. took about 2 hours (would have been much faster but i also had to modify the radiator rails to fit my jdm headlights). did the whole thing w/o having to raise the car, just took off the bumper for access to the transmission lines and lower radiator hose. fun!

[wetamup2k3g]

Any reason you didn't want to raise it up to change the radiator?

[oakrdrs187]

I don't think I've raised my cars to change the radiator before either. I didn't feel I needed to. With the i4 everything is so accessible from the top IMO

[wetamup2k3g]

I'm fat, so my gut needs clearance and excess bending over doesn't go over well with me, so the easiest thing for me to do when I changed out my radiator was to raise the car up and do the bottom work laying down on my back. Just me though.

[Reelax]

my jack stands were at home but i was at my cousin's house. but i found that it really doesn't need to b raised because you can get to everything once you take off the bumper (i've gotten good at taking it off). the lower radiator hose is the only semi-tough reach but i did it by feel lying on my back... the trans cooler lines can easily be reached after you pull the radiator halfway out/up and the top radiator hose is right out in the open. all the bolts that secure the radiator to the car are on top (4 bolts holding 2 brackets) then the radiator and fan shrouds slide right up. actually, come to think of it, i only had to remove the bumper because of it's design and how low my car sits (it sticks out alot further and lower than stock); i might have been able to do it all w/ the bumper on if it was a stock bumper and my car was stock height.

it's actually lucky that the radiator failed at my cousin's house (the radiator was in really bad shape for probably a very long time but i could not see the damage while it was in the car because the air conditioner condenser core sits in front of the radiator blocking any view)... it would probably have been much worse if it happened at some random place because all the shops were about to close for the long weekend (thanksgiving).

[wetamup2k3g]

I see. Thought I'd ask because I figured removing the bumper was harder.

[Reelax]

yeah it probably would have been easier to raise it but i didn't have my jackstands and i allready took the bumper off to try to see how big and where the hole in the radiator was so i just went that route. i was actually surprised at how easy it was to do the replacement; the hardest parts were modifying the radiator rails (cut and folded for clearance where my jdm headlights sit) and disconnecting/connecting the bottom radiator hose w/ one hand while squeezing pliers on the hose clamp w/ the other hand (while lying on my back unable to see what i was actually doing).

[oakrdrs187]

I'm fat, so my gut needs clearance and excess bending over doesn't go over well with me, so the easiest thing for me to do when I changed out my radiator was to raise the car up and do the bottom work laying down on my back. Just me though.

I had a talk with my gut that day and promised some good eating if it got the hell out the way for that one job! LOL!

my jack stands were at home but i was at my cousin's house. but i found that it really doesn't need to b raised because you can get to everything once you take off the bumper (i've gotten good at taking it off). the lower radiator hose is the only semi-tough reach but i did it by feel lying on my back... the trans cooler lines can easily be reached after you pull the radiator halfway out/up and the top radiator hose is right out in the open. all the bolts that secure the radiator to the car are on top (4 bolts holding 2 brackets) then the radiator and fan shrouds slide right up. actually, come to think of it, i only had to remove the bumper because of it's design and how low my car sits (it sticks out alot further and lower than stock); i might have been able to do it all w/ the bumper on if it was a stock bumper and my car was stock height.

it's actually lucky that the radiator failed at my cousin's house (the radiator was in really bad shape for probably a very long time but i could not see the damage while it was in the car because the air conditioner condenser core sits in front of the radiator blocking any view)... it would probably have been much worse if it happened at some random place because all the shops were about to close for the long weekend (thanksgiving).

I bet you were the only person to be thankful your car broke down (at your cousins) before thanksgiving.

[Gshark]

Sir reelax one question,did you encounter any problem with your car when you cut your h&r springs before your coilover upgrade?tia sir
&

[Reelax]

Sir reelax one question,did you encounter any problem with your car when you cut your h&r springs before your coilover upgrade?tia sir
&

no problems, but i only cut them because there were no other lowering springs available yet. if there were shorter lowering springs available back then i would have just replaced w/ those instead of cutting. i would also never cut stock springs as that is unsafe due to them being low spring rate to begin with, and would be not have enough load bearing strength which could cause spring failure if too much spring was removed.

[greddy]

I'm curious reelax, how often do you drive your car and what kind of miles are on it? after all the work and everything in it, do you daily it or is it more of a weekend car now?

[Reelax]

I'm curious reelax, how often do you drive your car and what kind of miles are on it? after all the work and everything in it, do you daily it or is it more of a weekend car now?

i dailyed it until around 2008. after that i started driving it only about once every few weeks. this summer i started driving it more again maybe once a week. the car has 136K miles on the clock now.

the only mods i've done to it this year are:

PROCLIP mount base to MOTOROLA navigation dock for Motorola photon Q, custom integrated, USB audio out to 3.5 aux audio input to HU, USB charge, tucked wires.
KOOLERTRON OBDII bluetooth scanner running on TORQUE android app.

[keith6110]

KOOLERTRON OBDII bluetooth scanner running on TORQUE android app.

Nice! ^^^ Work good I assume?

[Gshark]

Thanks reelax.

[Reelax]

Nice! ^^^ Work good I assume?

it works surprisingly well actually. i initially bought it just to scan a code that popped up. it displays the codes, can look them up, and can email them to you as well. turned out the code was a simple fix and the condition went away (was a misfire code but i pushed in all the spark plug wire boots and the rough idle immediately went away upon restart). after confirming everything was good again, i cleared the code via my phone. then i started seeing what the OBDII interface and android app actually can do and i was amazed that it can read and display (dial, graph, digital) all available OBDII sensors at near real time (1/4 second delay probably due to speed of the phone itself but in the options there are ways to speed up the sync that i haven't played with yet). there are a bunch of sensors that report to the OBDII like throttle position, rpm, speed, coolant temp, MAF, fuel pressure... i'm not sure about all that are available since i haven't thouroughly tried them all yet, but there are a bunch. on top of the OBDII reporting the app can use the phone's gps and accelerometers to add in acceleration, altitude, speed (GPS) etc. on top of all that, it can log all those things together including actual global position... like a mini data logger or telemetrics w/ integrated actual location using google maps and can email all of it to you in a file. it will also give drive cycle data since DTC clear and current cycle status. pretty cool i think, but i've only used it a few times so i'm not sure about all that it can do yet.

[oakrdrs187]

it works surprisingly well actually. i initially bought it just to scan a code that popped up. it displays the codes, can look them up, and can email them to you as well. turned out the code was a simple fix and the condition went away (was a misfire code but i pushed in all the spark plug wire boots and the rough idle immediately went away upon restart). after confirming everything was good again, i cleared the code via my phone. then i started seeing what the OBDII interface and android app actually can do and i was amazed that it can read and display (dial, graph, digital) all available OBDII sensors at near real time (1/4 second delay probably due to speed of the phone itself but in the options there are ways to speed up the sync that i haven't played with yet). there are a bunch of sensors that report to the OBDII like throttle position, rpm, speed, coolant temp, MAF, fuel pressure... i'm not sure about all that are available since i haven't thouroughly tried them all yet, but there are a bunch. on top of the OBDII reporting the app can use the phone's gps and accelerometers to add in acceleration, altitude, speed (GPS) etc. on top of all that, it can log all those things together including actual global position... like a mini data logger or telemetrics w/ integrated actual location using google maps and can email all of it to you in a file. it will also give drive cycle data since DTC clear and current cycle status. pretty cool i think, but i've only used it a few times so i'm not sure about all that it can do yet.

Ok i'm sold!

Where can we get?