Brought the car home tonight. It's in better shape than I remember. Not perfect by any means, but it's in decent shape. I'll grab some good pictures tomorrow after work. My plan is to grab the radiator and a couple of other little things I need to complete the blue car and see if that gets it to start. If it does, the red car might be sold as a roller. My blue car still has some electrical issues so the red car is looking pretty tempting right now. I really don't want to deal with the auto to manual conversion, even though it's pretty simple and I have everything I need. I just have a personal connection with the blue one so I don't want to give up on it so easily. I should be deciding in the next day or two which car I'll be keeping, then the other will be parted out. Start calling dibs now because the doors and spoiler and a few other things are already called for. I owe a few people some favors so they are at the top of the list for which parts they get.

Got the valve cover gasket for the BEAMS in today. It only took ten days to get here...



I'd hate to see what their Economy shipping is if 10 days is their Expedited shipping. But the important thing is that it's here. Got some pictures of the new Celica today. It's dirty from the trip home, but you get the idea.












I may have accidentally bought a much better car than I thought here. I charged the battery up and the car starts right up and idles/revs just fine. Everything seems to be in perfect working order, apart from the transmission. I put it in gear and you can hear something kind of clunking around. It registers speed when I put the car in reverse and give it gas, but not in drive. No matter, if I keep the red car, then it'll be getting a manual anyway. In the next day or two, I'll get the new valve cover gasket on the BEAMS and hopefully get that running well then try to get my blue car started. If it takes too much effort, then I'll just go with the red car and I won't feel too bad about it at all. I thought I was getting a good parts car with some pretty good parts but I've really just gotten a good car in general, apart from the transmission.

check the axles and make sure that it didn't break off in there. it just happened to Cam (ted95's) car. the shop didn't put the axle in properly and it broke off. it would accelerate, but it wouldn't move and it would register speed as well

thats what i though as well. it might also have broke the diff its self.

you can even put a new tranny in it and sell it for profit!!!

that car is excellent...

I have literally no experience with diagnosing or fixing transmissions, but part of me is tempted to get another auto and just fix this car. Apart from minor paint fade, the dent in the fender, and the rips in the driver's seat, it's in good shape. I really don't want to deal with the manual swap. Not if there's any way I can avoid pulling both motors from both cars.

pick up an auto tranny, swap it in, clean the car up and drive it.
or sell it and make $.

>

Sounds like an extremely reasonable plan.

Hell, pick up the tranny, drop it in, sell it and use the money to build up the blue car.

PS: I'm exceedingly jealous of the black leather interior.

This post has been edited by Keiri: Jul 29, 2011 - 2:50 PM

I considered that. But I paid $1,500 for the car so assuming I sell it for fair value, I wouldn't make a lot of money. Then I wouldn't have a transmission for my blue car anymore, so I'd be forced to buy a BEAMS with a tranny, which would negate any point in ever buying the red car. Everything is up in the air between those two cars right now. I got the valve cover gasket in the BEAMS tonight. What a pain in the a........ That's what I get for not doing it before putting the motor in the car. One of my bolts pulled a Danny Glover and decided it was too old for this s***. I get the feeling that'll come back to bite me and this new gasket will leak exactly where the old one did. On the plus side, this BEAMS is clean as hell. No sludge at all.




As far as progress on the gray Celica, I got a new battery tonight. Last September, I got a free Neverstart batter from Wal-Mart. Warranty ftw. Then I put that battery in the car and didn't touch it again. It was all kinds of dead a few days ago with no hope of ever being recharged. So I got this new battery for free again. Once again, as with the BEAMS, I have no check engine light. This time, I am 100% sure that I'm using the right ECU, so I don't know why the ECU isn't getting power. You can't plug it in wrong. However, with the new battery, my weird wiring gremlins seem to be gone. No more speed showing when I turn my lights on.

I just peeled the Fox decal from the rear window of the red car tonight. So far, everyone seems to heavily prefer the red car. If it was a '96+, I probably would too. I've just put so much thought into the gray car that I just really don't want to quit on it now. My parents are fine with me having one car. They don't mind me having a second car, but they really aren't happy that I let it sit this long. Now that I have a third car and it doesn't move either, they really aren't too happy. I wouldn't be either. So fixing both the red and blue cars is not an option for me.

Brian, don't be too jealous of the black leather interior. It's a little dry, but in far better shape than I could have ever hoped. It's been consistently 90°-100° here lately and I really wouldn't look forward to having black leather seats.

The Beams is clean

My wife did the valve cover gasket in the car, I wanted no part of that... !

>
Lucky... I should have made the girlfriend do it. Right behind the center bolt on the back of the valve cover, there's a bottomless abyss designed to capture your sockets and never give them back. It lured 3 of mine in with the hopes of getting this bolt but it was nearly impossible. Once you drop a socket down there, you don't get it back until the valve cover is off. I'm waiting for the gasket sealant to dry tonight before I try starting the car tomorrow, but I added some octane booster to the fuel and reset the ECU. Hopefully that'll smooth out the idle problem and the valve cover gasket will stop the oil leak, but I don't see where the old one was leaking from. I'll start the car up tomorrow afternoon and see where I stand. The rest of my day I'm going to spend with the gray Celica, trying to figure out why I don't have a check engine light. I know I'm not using the Subaru ECU this time so I'm stumped. It can't be that hard to figure out though.

refer to THIS THREAD to help with your ecu not getting power

Thanks, Stephen.

I started the BEAMS up this morning. It idles a lot better. Still not smooth as silk, but good enough. Took it for a drive, and under normal driving, it seems to run well enough. Still not great, but well enough. Give it gas, it'll bog down again. Give it gas in first and tear through the gears, it'll run about like I feel a BEAMS should. Downshift to any other gear while driving and it doesn't feel so great. Then you get back to 5th and try to accelerate slowly and it'll hesitate pretty bad. I'm letting it cool down right now so I can pull the plugs and see if they're covered in oil or not.

I'm telling you. Pull the tank, drain that 'water' out of it and put some real gas in it.

It's got just a little more than half a tank in it. I'm going to take it on a casual, normal drive to town in a little while and fill it up with 93. Also, how much R134 does that system take? I'm 3 cans in so far and the clutch on the compressor hasn't engaged once. I suspect it's going to take a lot more R134. I'm taking a lunch break then I guess I'm going to go back out and get some real gas in the BEAMS and come home then start on my own cars.

21-24oz. Two cans should fill it up, but I have noticed mine likes 2.5 cans or so.

The compressor should kick on within the first can. Sounds like you need to diag why your compressor isnt kicking on before you add more 134.

like this...

http://www.6gc.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=80337

i will be doing the cleaning of the injectors if all else fails...

Yeah, I should probably replace that compressor then. The low pressure line gets pretty cold but the compressor never engages.

Noberto, I'm keeping a close eye on your thread. Sounds like we're having exactly the same issue. Under normal driving it runs fine, but give it gas and it bogs down.

try running 12v to the compressor clutch & see if it engages. i wouldnt look at the compressor so quickly.

Haha Stephen.. I know nothing about a/c compressors. That's a job for somebody else. I've decided that I'm sending the BEAMS out to a mechanic. Brigette's stepdad is a mechanic and although he's not familiar with a BEAMS and doesn't know where to get parts, he at least has a good knowledge of motors. The BEAMS really isn't anything special. It's just a 4 cylinder with VVT. What makes that so different from any Honda motor or any newer Toyota motor? The only difference is OBD and parts availability. Whatever is wrong with the car at this point is probably something pretty basic that he'll figure out pretty quickly, then I order the parts for it and call it done. I promised everyone that the swap would take one weekend and it has very clearly gotten out of my own hands. I have three cars of my own to tend to, and I have no space or time to deal with all of them. As far as the red car, that's the same story. I'm going to drain the trans fluid and see if there are any metal shavings or anything in the bottom of the pan. If there is, then obviously the transmission is beyond repair. If not, then it's something that can be fixed. So after I figure out how bad it is, I'm going to send that car out as well. The way I see it, I have a '94 that runs and a '96 that doesn't do a thing. Why mess that up? The bumper, sound insulation, everything I want from the '96 can be transferred over. I might as well just keep my '94 running and let the '96 sit until such a time that I can actually do something with it.

Great success! I had a fresh pair of eyes look at the BEAMS a little while ago. Of course it would be something little that I would forget to do. He got in the car and went for a ten second ride and heard a sound that I assumed was my exhaust leak and he says "You're running on three cylinders." I told him I thought that was where the header met the B pipe, where I couldn't really get under the car and fit it together 100% tight and he said he heard that too, and that sound was accentuating the chugging sound of a four cylinder motor running on three cylinders. We take it back to his house and start unplugging coils and sure enough, unplug the coil on cylinder #3, and absolutely nothing changed. We checked the injectors, all 4 were running great. Took the spark plug out of cylinder 3 and it still looks brand new. I've got probably 100 miles on them now so the other three are a brownish color, but that spark plug is still bright silver. I know the heat from the motor can make the coil wires a little brittle so I'm waiting for the motor to cool down then I'm going to start taking the wiring apart to see if I can find the issue.

In other news, I've overheated my vacuum 4 times now trying to clean my red car up. And there were purple neons in the foot wells. I promptly deposited those in the trash. It looks like it has MTX speakers in the front and I haven't checked the rear yet, but the system sounds good. All the wiring I need for a sound system is already in place. Definitely gonna do some sound insulation on that car and get the tranny rebuilt.

Try swapping the coil with a different coil to see it its just a bad coil.. i wouldnt wanna tear into the wiring so fast lol

Already did. The misfire stayed on cylinder 3. I can tell you that the problem isn't right on top of the motor. It has to be a bit farther down. I'm going to check into it a little more tomorrow.

good luck with that. u can also swap fuel injector plugs to fee if it changes anything, though u already determined you are getting fuel to that cyl

^this.

If the plug is still bright silver, that tells me that its a fuel issue. If it was a spark issue, you would assume that there would be some sign that there's been fuel sprayed on that injector.

Am I making sense here?

We checked for spark. There was nothing. Running it without the spark plug, fuel was shooting out of the cylinder.

hmmmm. Ok. Nevermind then lol

so there is no spark?

check the grounds..... you may have a loose wire or a short.

Only on cylinder 3. Unfortunately, I'll be rummaging around the motor tonight, trying to figure out where the wires go. Good thing I have that Greytop I can tear apart first.

if i recall correclty the coils have a ground and a positive terminal..


try to look if the positive terminal is firing. simply use a multimeter and ground it to the car chassis.. if you get firing then its a ground issue, those grounds go all the way into the main harness and loop around and attach below the manifold...



when i did my swap i checked my whole harness to make sure, and i even changed the plastic looms to new ones..

but just trace the positive, and do the multimeter test. if there is power, then you have a ground issue... even the conector just spray crc, sometimes oil is the culprit..