So Ronda Is In Storage
Unfortunately, I had to send my girl away. It’s sad, I know; however, there’s a reason for this. It’s a reasonable one too: someone in my house just leased a brand new car, and they wanted to keep it in the garage. That would mean the semi-motionless Ronda had to go to a new home. I say “semi-motionless” because the starter is going out, which makes getting the old girl started a tremendous pain. That, combined with her lack of gas and practically dead battery, meant I’d need someone to help me drag her to the storage unit I had rented earlier that day. I got Mat to bring his truck and trailer, and Dave to come over after he got off work, and we got her out of the garage and onto the trailer. Then we almost ripped the lip off the front bumper as we gracefully rolled her into the unit.
And there she sat for a few weeks, mostly because it has been cold, but also because I’ve been terribly unmotivated. Well on President’s Day I found some motivation. I grabbed Joey, and we went down to try and do… something. But first, let’s get caught up with Ronda a bit more.
When last we left Ronda, she was getting lowered and getting a big cooling upgrade. She also had an H in her name. That’s gone now, but she did get something to make up for the loss of a letter: a braking upgrade, in the form of Stoptech drilled rotors and brake pads. There’s a set of 17″ wheels sitting in my garage, just waiting for tires and powdercoating. At the end of last year I jumped on a screaming deal: for $500 I picked up a Tanabe Hyper Medallion exhaust, downpipe and turbo elbow, and a new intercooler and piping. There’s a few reasons for that purchase:
- The current exhaust, while stainless steel with V-Band clamps holding it together, look awful and is rusting in places. It’s also loud and droning. It just needs to go.
- The downpipe hangs low. Really low. It scrapes on everything. While it’s better than scraping the oil pan on everything, it’s incredibly annoying. It also looks pretty cheap, so might as well replace it with something shiny, new and brand name.
- Stock MA70 intercoolers are cool because they’re shoved into the nose of the car. They’re not cool because the damn things, and the OEM piping, don’t do that great a job of keeping the boost in the system. Oh, and there was one coupler that was not meant to see positive pressure.
So with that out of the way, let’s talk about what Joey and I managed to accomplish.
The original plan was to pull the faulty starter, and the battery, and maybe get cracking on some of the fun stuff. We managed to pull the battery out, and we got some bolts off of a bracket holding the intercooler in.
We also pulled off some of the old intercooler piping, and got a shiny new pipe fitted. One with the appropriate couplers! The rest of the piping and the new intercooler are going to have to wait for a warmer day, one when we can get going earlier since my unit doesn’t have power inside of it.
There’s still a lot left, most importantly is the starter. That’s going to be an endeavor. And there’s also the issue of all of those nasty, gray silicone hoses. They’ve gotta go too. And I should probably take care of the leaky targa top… I should probably make a list…
