Seeking wife's first car . . .

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drege
Top Notch Member
Posts: 324
Joined: Thu Sep 11, 2014 10:29 pm
My tercel:: Hadatercel
Location: Oakland, ca

Re: Seeking wife's first car . . .

Post by drege »

Been driving the little FX now for a while as the wife's not comfortable enough to drive in traffic yet, gives Kodama a little break - kep some miles off her.
After I put hte headlight in I struggled with getting them aimed properly with the weakened and tweaked core support, just this evening I think I got it acceptable, but I've noticed something weird, any attempts to activate the high beams makes the face of the FX go dark; like no low beams as well as no high beamsall the wiring is there on the back of the 9004 bulbs all fuses seem good, is there a high beam relay/fuse I should be looking for? - I don't really do too much to the car as its hers ultimately and with the exception of body work and electrical I want her to get into a rythem of poking about in its innerds.

Also it starts hard when warmed up, I've not even taken the air cleaner cover off so for all I know there's dead mice in there clogging it up, but being the 4AC-FE its prone to the same perils of air/fuel/spark failure conditions as the tercel, right?
So far all she's done is pulled the plugs and cleaned them and checked the gap, she was supposed to pull the dist.cap and clean the battery terminals, inspect the air filter but she slacked it off.

Its such a great little around town car, the tercel is cool, but the clutch just gets so much abuse in this urban environment I'm unhappy to drive it, the poor thing deserves better than we can provide for it!
It takes more fossil fuel resources to produce new vehicles than it would take to maintain and fuel any 70's or 80's vehicle for a million miles.
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Gottolovem
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Posts: 1637
Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2012 4:28 pm
My tercel:: 1985 SR5 with snow plow,1987 auto 1984 parts car,1987 FX-16 GTS
Location: Reno

Re: Seeking wife's first car . . .

Post by Gottolovem »

Yea that 4a will behave the same as the tercel 3a same motor diffrent displacement.
I will take a look at my FSM for the fx when i get back to work tue.
Could be a short to ground that you will need to track down and the fsm won't help.
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Petros
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Posts: 11930
Joined: Sun Jan 28, 2007 6:31 pm
My tercel:: '84 Tercel4wd w/extensive mods
Location: Arlington WA USA

Re: Seeking wife's first car . . .

Post by Petros »

A marginal coil or igniter could act that way, cold starts good but after it heats up it cuts out, even though it seems to run fine when running. The other thing it could be is the crappy federal ethanol fuel mix vaporizing in the lines right over the exhaust manifold. should start okay when cold, or just moments after shut down (not enough time to heat the fuel up enough), or 20 or more min after shut down (when it has cooled enough). the current fuel was not really meant for carburated engines. See if you can find ethanol free gasoline and give it a try to see if it goes away. check out pure-gas.org to find one.
'87 Tercel 4wd SR5 (current engine swap project)
'84 Tercel 4wd (daily driver, with on going mods)
'92 Mazda MPV 4wd (wife's daily driver)
'85 Tercel 4wd DLX auto(daughter's daily driver)
'01 Honda Civic (other daughter's daily driver)
drege
Top Notch Member
Posts: 324
Joined: Thu Sep 11, 2014 10:29 pm
My tercel:: Hadatercel
Location: Oakland, ca

Re: Seeking wife's first car . . .

Post by drege »

Well we got everything all buttoned up finally, shes hard to get motivated to do car stuff.
Put in new o2, fuel filter, air filter, oil and filter and the rear struts - I determined the rear brake shoes were within service life so we'll just keep em around in the box for when they are needed.
The ba-dum, ba-dump is gone from the rear end as can be expected, it seems to ride a little higher in the rear now, but thats ok with me bled the brakes but it still idles low and hesitates intermittently, I'm exhausted and I still have a long list of things to check out on my tercel - guess it'll have to wait till the weekend or something; I've been running hard for 12 days now and we did this all on my vacation.

EDIT: oh yea, I forgot to mention, we'd only paid for one shock cause the guy at oriley's didn't hear me when I said "both rear struts" so after we paid for one he put the order in for the second one and said "I'll have you pay for the other one when it gets in" well, he wasn't there when we picked the parts up and we weren't charged for the other one - so effectively we got 2 for the price of one ($71)
It takes more fossil fuel resources to produce new vehicles than it would take to maintain and fuel any 70's or 80's vehicle for a million miles.
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drege
Top Notch Member
Posts: 324
Joined: Thu Sep 11, 2014 10:29 pm
My tercel:: Hadatercel
Location: Oakland, ca

Re: Seeking wife's first car . . .

Post by drege »

Checked timing, 5° BTDC, also rotated the fronts to the back to learn if wobble/shudder at highway speed was front end/spindle or wheels, 1/4" high knot in tread was the culprit, any suggestions for a fast cheap tach to get the idle dialed in? like a small permanent gauge that wires in easy?
It takes more fossil fuel resources to produce new vehicles than it would take to maintain and fuel any 70's or 80's vehicle for a million miles.
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