Category Archives: Do It Yourself

If it’s broken, fix it. If it’s stock, make it cooler. All it takes is tools, time and sweat.

How to Install a Vehicle Lift – Saturday Mechanic

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Every car guy goes through this process. You decide that you want to work on your own car. Super. Next you buy or borrow some tools and the parts you need. Then you have to get under the car which involves laying down and shimmying on your concrete/asphalt/gravel/dirt driveway or work area. This is then immediately followed by a question that pops into your head: “I wonder how hard it would be to install a lift here?” Well wonder no more. Popular Mechanic’s Saturday Mechanic, Ben Wojdyla, walks us through the process as they install a new lift in the Popular Mechanic Garage. The series is broken down into 3 parts.

Part 1: How to choose the right lift for your requirements and area constraints like height and floor strength.

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How to Build a Tri-Power or Six Pack – Stacey David

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Tri-Powers and Six Packs were found on some of the most legendary muscle cars of the 60’s and 70’s. When you wanted good gas mileage and driveability, the V8 breathed through the center carburetor. When you wanted more power, the other two carburetors opened up to flow a lot more air and fuel into the engine to make ridiculous power while sounding awesome. Stacey David did this bit for his show, Gearz, on SPEED where he shows how to build your own tri-power or six pack on the cheap using 3 regular carburetors and a conversion kit. Even if you’re not building a tri-power of your own, it’s still pretty fascinating to see how these work.

Part 1: History and Theory of the Tri-Power and the start of the rebuild of the GM Rochester carburetors.

 

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How to Plug a Tire – Saturday Mechanic

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I picked up the RX-8 for the EV conversion (don’t worry, I’ll make a post about the car later) and I’m driving it a little to get a baseline feel for the car. One of the things that I discovered was that the space saver spare tire was not standard equipment and the car that I bought did not have one. Instead, there’s a little box in the trunk with fix-a-flat and an electric compressor. This would be a usable solution except for the car has tire pressure sensors in the tires. Filling them with fix-a-flat would destroy the sensors which are fairly expensive to replace. I happen to come across this video on plugging tires and it seems like something that can reasonably be accomplished on the road side. I think I’ll go find a kit to put in the trunk of the RX-8 just in case.


Source: Car and Driver on YouTube

How To Adjust an Anti-Roll Bar aka Swaybar

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I had to do a rear anti-roll bar adjustment on my AE86 the other day, so I figured I would take pictures and do a write up on it. A lot of people overlook the role of anti-roll bars (also known as swaybars or anti-sway bars) when it comes to tuning chassis balance. You can dial in large changes in grip for the front and rear axles to compensate for the natural tendencies of the chassis you’re working with. I like to use the anti-roll bars to get the front to rear axle balance in the ballpark before fine tuning it with the damper settings on the shocks. If only damper settings are used to control body roll, the shocks will be too stiff on compression. The car’s overall grip ultimately won’t improve because it’ll start crashing over bumps and upsetting the weight of the car on the tires. Trying to tune chassis balance using only the springs and dampers is an incorrect way to implement those parts. That’s why I don’t consider an adjustable suspension setup complete until you have anti-roll bars. Continue reading →

Back in Black With Adam Savage and ArcAttack!

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If this isn’t one of the simultaneously cool and nerdy videos that you’ve ever seen, then you’re just too hard to impress. The motivation behind the Science & Engineering posts on this blog are to show people that learning isn’t always about dry math and boring analysis. Figuring out how things work and then turning around and using it to your advantage can be fun and improve the things that touch your life. Case in point: this video. The band playing the music is called ArcAttack. They built two custom Tesla coils that shoot half million volt arcs up to 12 feet. There’s also a robot drummer and LED light show to go along with the live members of the band. This particular performance was shot at this year’s Bay Area Maker’s Faire where Adam Savage gave a speech before agreeing to get inside the Faraday cage while ArcAttack! performed. Without the pursuit of science and inventing, we would be devoid of awesome things like AC/DC literally being played with lightning.


Source: Brian Boyko on YouTube and ArcAttack!