So my Retrosound Zuma radio has always had a constant white noise. At first I thought it was the Rockford amp I have running the rear speakers and sub, but then I discovered it was in the front speakers too. Those are run solely by the head unit. After playing with ground loop isolators on the inputs as well as completely disconnecting the inputs, I tried an antenna filter. That didn't do anything either. So then I was convinced it was a bad ground. So I cleaned all grounds and even added a couple body to frame connections. Still white noise...
At that point I was frustrated... all the wiring in the car is new, all the speaker wire is new, and even all the speakers are new. I contacted Retrosound, and they agreed something wasn't right. While in contact with then I added a power filter to the 12v line to the radio. After adding that I discovered something about the noise. It only happens when the EQ in the radio is used. A preset or using the bass/treble adjustment. Any amount of EQ (positive or negative) and the noise started. It was a constant level of noise unless volume was set to 0.
After telling this to Retrosound they said I would need to RMA it so they could test it. However since its over 1 year old (the warranty length) I would have to pay full price for the new model to replace it if it was bad. Drives me crazy to hear things like that... It's always been this way, and I didn't have the time until now to prove it was a problem with the radio. Why would I bother sending it in? It's clearly the radio... Seems like the least they could do is offer a discount on the new model. I mean this radio has maybe 2 hours of total use on it and has been in the car for about 1600-1700 miles.
Still deciding if having an EQ is worth the cost of the new radio.
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Sunday, September 13, 2015
Feels good... Should have started sooner
It really does feel good to be getting things done on the car again. Extremely satisfying when my projects turn out to work!
Got my service cart last week. Works great and is now full of tools and parts.
As for all my routine service on the car, done!
The power steering fluid leak appears to be on the fitting for the output side of the rack-and-pinion hose. It seems that it's leaking because I was not able to tighten the fitting around the hose enough. Since these are high pressure SS braided Teflon hoses, the fittings do not swivel. In order to get the fittings aligned properly I had to install the final fitting with the hose installed. I could probably mark the alignment, take the hose off, and tighten it outside the car but I'd lose all the fluid I just put in (Royal Purple is freaking expensive). As I tighten the fitting around the hose, it twists and ends up causing the hose bend strangely. So I just tightened it up and fixed the twist by changing how the hose was routed.
The stainless steel flex radiator hose was kind of a pain to get on, but in the end, a little easier than I'd assumed. First, I used a flapper wheel to enlarge the opening of the hose end covers. They wouldn't fit over the lip of the water pump or radiator ports. Then I trimmed the tubing to the right length. Finally, I soaked the couplers in boiling water for a while to make them softer. I ended up having to put a little dish soap around the outside of the ports, but with lots of awkward angle pushing and some cut up hands, I got the couplers, covers, and tubing in place.
You're probably wondering if it was worth removing a perfectly good hose and putting in this expensive stainless steel one that was a pain to put in. To be honest, I'm not sure. It gained me extra clearance between the spreader bar and hose as well as between the hose and serpentine belt. There's also less of a chance of rupturing the hose. Only the couplers are susceptible to rupture and they are covered with aluminum hose ends. One top of that this new hose does look cooler than a normal hose.
The cleaning of the chassis grounds and getting new body grounding straps had a great result. The car now starts immediately with a single pump of the gas pedal. It freaking scared me the first time I turned the engine over. I was expecting to hold the key for a while and pump the pedal. This also appears to have fixed my rough idle. I was having to double foot it previously to keep my RPMs up, but not any more!
As for the pulley squeal... gone! My diagnostic using the water lubricant trick was correct in showing it was the power steering pulley. A shop used some tools and said it was an idler... I thought they were wrong, but replaced the idler anyway and the problem did not go away. I pushed the pulley on the power steering pump just a little more and all the belt squeal was gone. The car is no longer embarrassing to drive...
The final thing I looked at was the blinkers. They would not work with the headlights on. I had posted to some forums about this and the responses thought I had bad grounds, so I tested all of them. Every ground I tested was good. So then I examined the wiring schematic some more. I noticed one of my parking lights wasn't coming on. Took a look at that and discovered a bent pin in the connector. Then I decided to give regular bulbs a try to see what would happen. I couldn't explain the problem from the wiring, but I had swapped in LEDs and an electronic flasher. Sure enough, the blinkers started working. After trying different combinations of LEDs and standard lights I'm now running with a standard flasher and normal front and rear bulbs. All my side markers are LED. I ordered a couple different flasher modules to see if I could get the LEDs to work right without adding load resistors (last resort). I also tried a different style LED tail light, and the interesting thing was that it flashed at a different rate than the old LEDs even though it was connected to the same circuits.
My son really want to help daddy "fix blue car". So I let him get tools off the cart, get paper towels, and handle the empty oils bottles. He liked it. This afternoon I took him out to the grocery store in it as a quick test. It was the first time after all these changes that the car had moved. We had no problems at all! No signs of leaking, no overheating, no smoke, nothing... I should have done this stuff at beginning of summer!
Got my service cart last week. Works great and is now full of tools and parts.
As for all my routine service on the car, done!
- Power steering fluid change and leak fix, check!
- Removal of the transmission cooler filter, check!
- Flush coolant, check!
- Install stainless steel flex lower radiator hose, check!
- Clean all chassis ground contact and install new grounding straps, check!
- Change engine oil and filter, check!
- Fix power steering pulley alignment, check
The power steering fluid leak appears to be on the fitting for the output side of the rack-and-pinion hose. It seems that it's leaking because I was not able to tighten the fitting around the hose enough. Since these are high pressure SS braided Teflon hoses, the fittings do not swivel. In order to get the fittings aligned properly I had to install the final fitting with the hose installed. I could probably mark the alignment, take the hose off, and tighten it outside the car but I'd lose all the fluid I just put in (Royal Purple is freaking expensive). As I tighten the fitting around the hose, it twists and ends up causing the hose bend strangely. So I just tightened it up and fixed the twist by changing how the hose was routed.
The stainless steel flex radiator hose was kind of a pain to get on, but in the end, a little easier than I'd assumed. First, I used a flapper wheel to enlarge the opening of the hose end covers. They wouldn't fit over the lip of the water pump or radiator ports. Then I trimmed the tubing to the right length. Finally, I soaked the couplers in boiling water for a while to make them softer. I ended up having to put a little dish soap around the outside of the ports, but with lots of awkward angle pushing and some cut up hands, I got the couplers, covers, and tubing in place.
The cleaning of the chassis grounds and getting new body grounding straps had a great result. The car now starts immediately with a single pump of the gas pedal. It freaking scared me the first time I turned the engine over. I was expecting to hold the key for a while and pump the pedal. This also appears to have fixed my rough idle. I was having to double foot it previously to keep my RPMs up, but not any more!
As for the pulley squeal... gone! My diagnostic using the water lubricant trick was correct in showing it was the power steering pulley. A shop used some tools and said it was an idler... I thought they were wrong, but replaced the idler anyway and the problem did not go away. I pushed the pulley on the power steering pump just a little more and all the belt squeal was gone. The car is no longer embarrassing to drive...
The final thing I looked at was the blinkers. They would not work with the headlights on. I had posted to some forums about this and the responses thought I had bad grounds, so I tested all of them. Every ground I tested was good. So then I examined the wiring schematic some more. I noticed one of my parking lights wasn't coming on. Took a look at that and discovered a bent pin in the connector. Then I decided to give regular bulbs a try to see what would happen. I couldn't explain the problem from the wiring, but I had swapped in LEDs and an electronic flasher. Sure enough, the blinkers started working. After trying different combinations of LEDs and standard lights I'm now running with a standard flasher and normal front and rear bulbs. All my side markers are LED. I ordered a couple different flasher modules to see if I could get the LEDs to work right without adding load resistors (last resort). I also tried a different style LED tail light, and the interesting thing was that it flashed at a different rate than the old LEDs even though it was connected to the same circuits.
My son really want to help daddy "fix blue car". So I let him get tools off the cart, get paper towels, and handle the empty oils bottles. He liked it. This afternoon I took him out to the grocery store in it as a quick test. It was the first time after all these changes that the car had moved. We had no problems at all! No signs of leaking, no overheating, no smoke, nothing... I should have done this stuff at beginning of summer!
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
Working on the Car Again
So it's been months (possibly over a year) since I've gotten to do anything on the car. Other things just seem to take precedence when you've got a 2 year old, 5 month old, and a brand new house...
If you saw my last post you know my dog died earlier this year, but I didn't post that our second dog died as well. He never hung out in the garage with us (big chicken), but he was a great dog. He was a Great Pyrenees about a year younger than our Bernese and he died about 2 months after our first one did.
Anyway, enough with life stuff... I finally finished the garage enough so that I could start using it! I still lack a workbench and one overhead light, but it's very usable in its current state. There was one thing I forgot while I was designing the garage... If I'm working on the car in 2nd stalls, having all the tools in the shop about 20 feet away gets old! I'm constantly walking back and forth. Easy problem though. I ordered a service cart that should be here next week.
The car has barely been driven this year. I took it out a couple times in the spring and then it just sat waiting for me to do the first oil change and do a complete fluid flush. I also stopped driving it because I'm having an awful belt squeal that I need to fix.
Sorry, this is a boring post. No pictures... Didn't have time.
So I geared up at the beginning of the summer to do the repairs...
Got new beefy grounding straps (cause for some reason when I did the wiring harnesses I left out the grounding straps, what's that about?).
Electrical contact cleaner to address the radio noise and the blinkers not working when the headlights are on.
A couple door/alarm sensors because I broke one trying to mess with it.
Puller pusher and jaw puller (should have bought this from the get-go).
Digital ignition mounting plate.
And of course a new oil filter and coolant.
I haven't ever installed the new ignition system because I wasn't sure how to mount the digital ignition box in the engine compartment. Hoping I can work something good up using the Summit mounting bracket.
Since the weather got nice on Sunday and we had the kids at their grandparents for a while this weekend I decided it was time to hit the garage.
Started with a simple inspection...
Found that my power system hoses were leaking! (again) I'm not sure which fitting is leaking because it appeared that multiple places were wet with fluid. So I removed the wettest fittings, tightened the connection to the hose, reconnected everything, and then flushed the system with Royal Purple fluid. I found a little fluid on a hose tonight but it looked like the original fluid so I cleaned everything up and we're going to trying again...
Once I had that done, I removed the inline transmission fluid filter. According to BTO, it only had to be on there for so many miles and I was well over that mileage, so I took it off. It was kind of an eye sore and made one of my lines go out of place. To my surprise I didn't lose much fluid in the removal. Still have to recheck once the car is level and running for a little bit.
Next I addressed the power steering pulley. It appeared to be less than a 1/16" off, so I put my new pusher on and tried to align it again. We'll see once I can start the engine again if I got it right this time. I'll probably need to get a new serpentine belt because this one has worn from rubbing the pulley edge.
Moving on, I drained the coolant. I know this isn't REALLY necessary, but since it was a brand new engine I think it doesn't hurt to make sure there was no metal flecks in there. Plus I wanted to swap in a flex stainless steel hose for the lower radiator hose. The flex hose is smaller and there's less area for failure. Unfortunately the end covers wouldn't fit over the ports on the water pump and radiator so I'm going to have to mod them a little. That's sitting to the side for the time being...
So, my last task of the night. Clean up the chassis grounding... I went through every ground in the engine compartment and nose of the car with steal wool, a steel brush, and contact cleaner. I then checked the resistance from each contact to the chassis to make sure it was pretty much non-existent. Once that was done, I replaced the grounding straps in the back under the antenna and in the engine compartment near the proportioning valve. The new straps are considerably larger than the old ones. Makes me feel a little better. So I checked the turn signals... They STILL don't work with the headlights on! It has to be the ground in the passenger compartment. Those are a pain to get to so we'll save that until all my engine servicing is complete.
So what's left to do before driving it again this year?
Install SS lower radiator hose and refill coolant.
Verify power steering leak is gone and fix if necessary.
Change the oil.
Change serpentine belt if it's still noisy.
Replace in-line fuel filter.
I'd also like to get the blinker working with the headlights in case it gets dark while I'm out...
Ok, a couple pictures of the garage before I cleaned up all the boxes and other crap...
If you saw my last post you know my dog died earlier this year, but I didn't post that our second dog died as well. He never hung out in the garage with us (big chicken), but he was a great dog. He was a Great Pyrenees about a year younger than our Bernese and he died about 2 months after our first one did.
Anyway, enough with life stuff... I finally finished the garage enough so that I could start using it! I still lack a workbench and one overhead light, but it's very usable in its current state. There was one thing I forgot while I was designing the garage... If I'm working on the car in 2nd stalls, having all the tools in the shop about 20 feet away gets old! I'm constantly walking back and forth. Easy problem though. I ordered a service cart that should be here next week.
The car has barely been driven this year. I took it out a couple times in the spring and then it just sat waiting for me to do the first oil change and do a complete fluid flush. I also stopped driving it because I'm having an awful belt squeal that I need to fix.
Sorry, this is a boring post. No pictures... Didn't have time.
So I geared up at the beginning of the summer to do the repairs...
Got new beefy grounding straps (cause for some reason when I did the wiring harnesses I left out the grounding straps, what's that about?).
Electrical contact cleaner to address the radio noise and the blinkers not working when the headlights are on.
A couple door/alarm sensors because I broke one trying to mess with it.
Puller pusher and jaw puller (should have bought this from the get-go).
Digital ignition mounting plate.
And of course a new oil filter and coolant.
I haven't ever installed the new ignition system because I wasn't sure how to mount the digital ignition box in the engine compartment. Hoping I can work something good up using the Summit mounting bracket.
Since the weather got nice on Sunday and we had the kids at their grandparents for a while this weekend I decided it was time to hit the garage.
Started with a simple inspection...
Found that my power system hoses were leaking! (again) I'm not sure which fitting is leaking because it appeared that multiple places were wet with fluid. So I removed the wettest fittings, tightened the connection to the hose, reconnected everything, and then flushed the system with Royal Purple fluid. I found a little fluid on a hose tonight but it looked like the original fluid so I cleaned everything up and we're going to trying again...
Once I had that done, I removed the inline transmission fluid filter. According to BTO, it only had to be on there for so many miles and I was well over that mileage, so I took it off. It was kind of an eye sore and made one of my lines go out of place. To my surprise I didn't lose much fluid in the removal. Still have to recheck once the car is level and running for a little bit.
Next I addressed the power steering pulley. It appeared to be less than a 1/16" off, so I put my new pusher on and tried to align it again. We'll see once I can start the engine again if I got it right this time. I'll probably need to get a new serpentine belt because this one has worn from rubbing the pulley edge.
Moving on, I drained the coolant. I know this isn't REALLY necessary, but since it was a brand new engine I think it doesn't hurt to make sure there was no metal flecks in there. Plus I wanted to swap in a flex stainless steel hose for the lower radiator hose. The flex hose is smaller and there's less area for failure. Unfortunately the end covers wouldn't fit over the ports on the water pump and radiator so I'm going to have to mod them a little. That's sitting to the side for the time being...
So, my last task of the night. Clean up the chassis grounding... I went through every ground in the engine compartment and nose of the car with steal wool, a steel brush, and contact cleaner. I then checked the resistance from each contact to the chassis to make sure it was pretty much non-existent. Once that was done, I replaced the grounding straps in the back under the antenna and in the engine compartment near the proportioning valve. The new straps are considerably larger than the old ones. Makes me feel a little better. So I checked the turn signals... They STILL don't work with the headlights on! It has to be the ground in the passenger compartment. Those are a pain to get to so we'll save that until all my engine servicing is complete.
So what's left to do before driving it again this year?
Install SS lower radiator hose and refill coolant.
Verify power steering leak is gone and fix if necessary.
Change the oil.
Change serpentine belt if it's still noisy.
Replace in-line fuel filter.
I'd also like to get the blinker working with the headlights in case it gets dark while I'm out...
Ok, a couple pictures of the garage before I cleaned up all the boxes and other crap...
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