Geraghty Anne's Winter Project 2016

This page is dedicated to my winter car project during Christmas Break from my freshman year at Georgia Institute of Technology, where I'm studying Mechanical Engineering and participating heavily with the GT Motorsports Formula SAE team.

For those of you who already know me, you know that I bought two Miatas when I was 15 and built a complete car from the ground up by marrying both cars. So much has happened since then, but one thing is for certain, my passion for cars and engineering has only grown stronger.

After I completed my first Miata build, my parents bought me a 2015 Subaru BRZ when I was 16 to get myself to and from high school. When I entered my freshman year at Georgia Tech, my parents felt that it was best if I went without a car, and for the first 6 weeks of school, before I made the Formula SAE team, having no car was fine. However, once I made the team and started attending shop nights from 6 pm until 2-4 am, OFF CAMPUS, it quickly became apparent that me having a car on campus would be prudent considering Georgia Tech is in down town Atlanta.

Date

Description

Links

10/1/2016

So my dad was in town on business this whole week, and we were able to hook up this weekend. Today, Saturday, October 1st, 2016, we went car shopping all over Atlanta looking for used Miatas. The first one I found was black, and was significantly over priced, and the owner wouldn't budge on price, so we passed. From there, we had lunch, and then made arrangements to meet another seller at a local mall, who had a 1995 White Miata with 221k miles on it. When the car drove up, I knew this was the one!! The owner wouldn't move off of his asking price of $2,200, but the top was freshly installed within the prior 30 days, and the car started and ran fine...well, except for quite a bit of smoke when it was cold. Regardless, I drove it and was hooked. Meet Baymax!

The picture to the right is what Baymax looked like the day I bought him. He looked great from the front, but the rear bumper and trunk lid were in pretty bad shape due to a hack paint job and body work from a prior accident. He drives great, but smokes like crazy when he first starts because his piston rings are worn out, hence he burns oil. But what the heck, he's a cheap college car. Perfect for my needs. No way in the world I want either of my other two cars on this campus.

My mom and dad found a replacement engine with about 110k on the clock for $400. Dad and I are going to tear it down, clean it up over Thanksgiving break so we can swap it out over my Christmas break.

11/24/2016

So dad and I started tearing into the replacment engine today and we have determined that we're going to have to pull the head as it's leaking oil too badly. We've ordered just about every gasket you can possibly think of to replace on this little guy. We'll be replacing the head, oil, valve cover, cam shaft, crank shaft, thermostat and water pump gaskets. It should run pretty nicely when we're done with it. For now, I spent the day hosing down and degreasing this messy hunk of oil.

After numerous cans of engine degreaser, plenty of fresh water, and a lot of elbow grease, the engine looks ready for a fresh coat of paint. Before I can paint it, I needed to plug all of the holes and mask off everything I didn't want to get painted. This is time consuming, but necessary.

We're definitely going to change the timing belt and all of the o-rings, so I pulled the valve cover and had to clean all of the nasty RTV from it that was used on the last install. What a mess.

12/1/2016

Even though I had to get back to school, my mom and dad are still busy trying to prepare the engine for our Christmas swap. More progress today. Timing belt and gears are removed, head is removed, and the internals look really good for an engine with 108K miles on the clock. The thermostat housing has a lot of calcium buildup in it, so that's going to have to be pulled and cleand up prior to reinstallation. They were able to get the head pulled, deck-sanded the mating surface. They also pulled the oil pan, completely cleaned it, and then put everything back together with fresh gaskets and an even better paint job.

12/20/2016

Hurray, Christmas break is here. I'm home from now until I have to drive back on January 5th. My boyfriend will be flying in and helping for a few days, and then driving back with me as an extra set of eyes and hands in case anything goes wrong.

When I built my first Miata when I was 15, we did everything on jack stands. Now my dad has a LIFT!!! This makes things SO MUCH EASIER. We made massive progress today and have opted to separate the body from the frame to do the engine swap. This will give me plenty of time and space to really clean parts of the chassis that would otherwise be unreachable. Unfortunately we snapped the clutch line when we raised the body, but that's a pretty easy fix. We'll go downtown tomorrow to a place that builds them to order. Should only be $50 or so. I have a tendancy to get dirty when I work on cars. LOL

12/22/2016

Ouch, I pulled my back out yesterday lifting Christmas boxes and am in pretty bad shape, so today I'm in a supervisory role. We did get both cam gaskets ans well as the crank gasket installed. The crank gasket was a pain in the butt. We bought several pick tools to pull the old one out, but they all kept breaking. Once I got it out, I installed the new one, along with the Woodruff key. We also installed the new water pump and gaskets. Tomorrow is the timing belt and the thermostat housing. I'm hoping to fire this thing up Christmas day, but I do need to get an o-ring for the cam angle sensor. I can't believe I didn't buy that one. My dad bought me new tires and those came today as well. He said he's going to splurge for new shocks took, as it's way to easy to do now and they need to be done.

12/24/2016

We made a bunch more progress today. I started moving accessories from the old engine to the new one. I walso pressure washed the engine bay and the underside of the body, and painting pretty much everything. Looking fresh now! Unfortunately, we're still missing the cam angle sensor o-ring, so we can't fire the engine yet. I also need to get the header gasket, but that doesn't prevent us from firing.

12/25/2016

Merry Christmas!!! What a perfect excuse to go work on the car some more. I cannot believe how easy the engine swap has been by pulling the body from the chassis. It was SO much easier than the car I built when I was 15. We just rolled the chassis out into the driveway and went to town.

12/25/2016

So we got everything swapped and got the chassis back into the garage for the night. We're missing the following:

• Cam Angle Sensor O-ring
• Intake gasket
• Header to exhaust gasket
• Need new clutch slave cylinder
• Need new starter...because it's easy to install now. :)

12/26/2016

We're waiting for 2 gaskets and 1 o-ring to get here on Wednesday, so not too much to do today. Got the alternator adjustment bracket installed, installed a new clutch slave cylinder and also got a new starter. New parts are simply too inexpensive to not replace now while they are so accessible. Starter was only $65 and the slave cylinder was $25.

12/27/2016

Today we had the new tires mounted on the rims. We also pulled all of the calipers and cleand and painted them as well. I also pulled all 4 struts/springs and my dad took them to the GM tech who's doing an alingment on his race car. It's always nice to have people who have your back. My dad does a lot of business with these guys on his race car and he's pressing the shocks in for free.

12/28/2016

More progress today. Getting very close to reassembling the chassing and the body. Time is now of the essence. We have now spent $4,000 in parts and improvements on this car, and I still need to be able to drive back to school in about a week. It's getting down to crunch time.

12/29/2016

Significant progress today. We're basically ready to marry the body back to the chassis. We painted the rear sub frame just because it looked like garbage, as well as the muffler and visible pipes. Cleaned the exhaust tip, but more importantly, the intake is now installed and all hoses and accouterments have been reinstalled. GWiz did most of the work for the shifter turret rebuild, but we're confirming the amount of oil to put back in it before we close it up.

We also got the cam angle sensor (with the new o-ring) reinstalled. The toughest thing we had to do today was get the exhaust to mate with the headers with the new gasket. Maneuvering the exhaust to allow the bolts to mate was tricky.

All tucked in for the night for the 2 subsystems to be re-married tomorrow with fresh eyes, minds, and fresh daylight.

12/30/2016

Gosh darn it, we are so close. Worked another 10 hours today (including trip to Estero to get 1 more quart of Motorcraft Manual Transmission Fluid and a quick stop for a hot lunch, but we got the body mated!!!

We found that lowering the body in stages and connecting whatever harnesses could be connected at each stage was the best way to go. We also determined that as we got close, there was NO WAY IN HELL that the chassis sitting on jack stands could ever be properly aligned, so we put jacks at each end and pushed the chassis up to the body. This approach gave us flexibility to move left/right and forward/backward to get all of the sub frame mounts aligned.

Things left to do:

• Reconnect the steering
• Mount the A/C compressor
• Connect the rear shock top mounts
• Install the "real" valve cover
• Connect the distributor
• Install the plastic intake plenum
• Connect the throttle cable
• Install the PCV valve and tube that connects the intake and the valve cover
• Add oil
• Add coolant
• Drain transmission
• Add manual transmission fluid
• Drain Differential
• Add Diff fluid
• Touch up paint on underside of car.
• Alignment

I'm sure there's more, but that's all that comes to mind. Was hoping to fire the thing today, but ran out of time. The steering column is being a pain in the butt for sure.

12/31/2016

It started on the first try!!!!

Timing is off, so we're resetting that now. Had a knock. Will post pics and video later.

Pretty cool to take an engine down to the bare block, put it all back together, put the whole car back together, and then have it start on the first try!!! 10 years ago when my dad started racing, he could change oil. That was the extent of his experience. Now we have both built 3 cars together to date. What an enlightening experience for sure.

I even solved the no working horn and bad speakers. I replaced the horn relay with one left over from the Skittles build, and spliced it in, now the horn works.

1/2/2017

So we reset the timing on the engine, and still had the knock today, so I towed Baymax to the shop where I interned for two summers to get a second opinion. We all agreed that it seemed like the noise was coming from the top end (valve train), and that it was likely just the hydraulic lifters needing to be filled up with oil. Granted, I already knew what that sounded like when I started up Skittles for the first time, and this time it was not the same noise. Regardless, Gil (my old boss) told me to drive it like I stole it. So when we got the car back home, that's exactly what I did. Back and forth on my street and then BOOM! Baymax blew up. Threw a connecting rod out of the side of the engine. So much for used engines. I guess buyer beware. So today is Monday, January 2nd, at 3pm, and I have to leave for school this coming Thursday, first light.....what are we going to do???

So in natural crisis mode, we put our heads together and figured we better find another Miata fast. We scanned Craigslist.org for Miatas and found one on the other coast of Florida. Unfortunately, today is a bank holiday, and the owner of the car wants $2,500 cash. We got creative, got about 7 different people to pool their available cash, and we set out for Fort Lauderdale. Even then, we didn't have the full $2,500. We met with the car owner, compression tested the cylinders, I test drove it, and it drove great. The engine is perfect, but the rest of the car is crap. Owner putting a high price on custom wheels...3 of them, on high end Optima battery (that's 10 years old), and they won't move on price. Regardless, we got creative, got the rest of the cash and bought "Vader" for $2,500. I stopped for dinner on the other coast with my dad and boyfriend around 8:30 pm tonight. We won't get home until midnight.

I will NOT let this crisis prevent me from driving back to Georgia Tech on Thursday! Today I definitely learned from my dad that there are no problems, only solutions. Think creatively and solve the problem at hand. I think we may have done just that. The next few days are going to be frantic for sure.

1/3/2017

15 hours straight, no meals or breaks. We have thus pulled both engines, married the pieces from each that are going into Baymax, and we have seated the new engine in the cradle and mated successfully to the transmission. We forgot to put the metal cups underneath the engine mounts, which we've now reconciled. We have 1 side bolted back to the block, but we've now paused for dinner. I'm sure will keep it up once we eat.

The block, oil pan, and head from the Baymax's "new" engine are all toast. I think the intake is fine, but I chose to install the one from Vader because it's proven. It's down to basically connecting up all of the wiring harnesses, coolant and vacuum lines. After that, refill fluids and fire it up

1/4/2017

It started on the first try!!!

We're going to at least paint the intake silver (in the car). I chose to use the one that came with Vader to eliminate all doubt. I'm very pleased and very tired from this journey. Wow....we pulled it off.

1/5/2017

Thank God! We're leaving on time today. We have a 9 hour drive back to Georgia Tech. Christian and I will be splitting driving duties.

10:36 am - North of Tampa already, still running smoothly.

12:53 pm - Lunch in Gainesville...keeps on ticking!!!

5:35 pm - We are near Macon, GA and have two minor issues, both of which are solvable. Still have a minor brake fluid leak, and one of the heater core brass lines through the firewall is leaking, so losing some coolant, but not catastrophic. It causes the temp needle to fluctuate, which also indicates air in the system. I already figured that out on my own.

We are stopping for 30 minutes to let cool off, top off both fluids, and finish the journey. We should have no issues making the rest of the trip. We are just being smart engineers who understand how the subsystems work and what needs to be done. Very glad my dad sent a grocery bag full of common tools needed by a Miata.

8:06 pm - We made it!!! What a draining day. 11.5 hour trip that should have taken 9 hours.