Ariel's Story - A tale of a Utah Corolla by ariel_86

11 minute(s) of a 178 minute read

9-7-2014

Taking the money from the sell of Sebring, I intended to get the Corolla back into DD status. First order of business was a tune up and ripping off the useless emissions crap.

Yeah, I needed new plugs.

I also relocated the air filter outside of the engine bay, giving it more fresh, cool air.

I still had the stock fender liners for up front, so I reinstalled them to help prevent sucking up rain.

I found someone selling a complete front bumper set, so I paid for that and waited for it to ship from Reno. How the car sat in the meantime.

I moved from Davis County down to Kearns at the beginning of the year. It was closer to school and I was able to transfer to an O’Reilly down there so everything was close by. Living with a friend that’s into cars and drifting is also a nice perk.

I finally got the bumper set from Reno after some snafu with shipping it via Greyhound. Great price, but kinda lacking on the customer service front. Ariel looked a lot better without a beat up front bumper.

All was not well with Ariel though. While she did run, she was gutless below 4000 rpm (more so than usual), didn’t idle correctly, and killed both the battery and the alternator. I put in a voltmeter to try to get an idea what was going on with the charging system.

I also went ahead and installed my shinny new ebay radiator and electric fans w/shroud.

A little bit of trimming was required to make it fit.

By the end of the month, Ariel just did not want to cooperate. She died on me again while driving and wouldn’t start. Battery checked out, alternator checked out, starter checked out, but I was fed up. I parked her and called my dad for a favor. A little bit of talking and looking, I soon had myself another reliable DD.

1998 Honda Accord LX 2.3L F23A3 SOHC VTEC 5Spd with 259,000+ miles. Paid less than $2000 for her from Ken Garff Orem. She has a few rough spots and ain’t pretty, but she’s a solid car. Most of her miles seem to be commuter miles from Utah County to Salt Lake.

With a little bit of maintenance and some cleaning, she is working flawlessly. With a new car to drive, I put Ariel on the back burner. We needed some time apart.

Enough time had passed and the weather was much better, so I decided to give Ariel some loving again. I hoped that I’d be able to get her running again, maybe even reliably.

After bouncing some ideas off my roommate and some other friends, I decided to take a look at my injectors. The engine in the car is not the original, but I was using the original ECU. Maybe I’m using the wrong injectors for the engine or ECU? It was worth a shot.

Turns out I did have some high impedance injectors, 250 cc/min, that are correct for the engine. The ECU and harness was wired up to use low impedance, 190 cc/min injectors with a resistor box. I was running the resistor box with the high impedance injectors. This may be part of the problem.

These green 250cc injectors use a different connector than anything else on the engine wiring harness. If I was going to replace the injectors, I’d have to also replace the connectors. After some research, I got lucky at the junkyard and pulled two sets of injectors from a 1985 and 1986 Camry. These beige injectors are low impedance and rated at 185 cc/min, close enough to 190 for my car.

They even fit in the fuel rail!

I remembered to get the connectors, too.

With some “fresh, new” injectors that would require some re-wiring, I decided to get ambitious.

What have I done?!

This will be easy, right?

Trying to lay the wires where they need to go.

Time for tape and loom!

The ultimate wire tuck…

Test fit twice, tape & loom once!

I won’t need these anymore.

Almost done!

At least the wiring looks a little more proper. Also added in some license plates for heat shields around the brake master cylinder and the wiring for my gauges going through the firewall (note the slightly melted loom from the picture above).

She seemed to appreciate the love and care and wouldn’t die out on me like before. The TPS needed adjustment, but she ran as long as I jumpstarted her. The battery still seemed to be draining and the alternator didn’t seem to charge the battery very well. Oh well. She ran and there was a drift event coming up that I was going to drive in.

In the whirlwind to get my car and my roommate’s car ready for the drift event, I hurriedly reassembled the corolla to give Jordan more room to work on his car. I also had to work out the logistics of helping a friend get his car to the event for Friday, July 11, and my car to the event on Saturday, July 12. Friday went smoothly for almost everyone, so late Friday night, I unloaded my friends car and loaded mine onto the trailer.

Saturday morning at the track, my car was running weird. To be honest, it sounded like a Subaru. It lacked any sort of power or throttle response. I had to keep slipping the clutch because it didn’t want to drive in gear with a load on the engine. I could not drift the car like I wanted. I was stumped and getting very frustrated with Ariel again.

With the lunch break approaching, someone else offered to look at it with me/for me. I welcomed a set of fresh eyes and we approached the car. As he listened to it idle, he said it sounded like it was missing in at least one, maybe two cylinders. He told me to pull the wires off, one at a time, and see if we could tell where it was missing. 

I pulled number one and the car almost died. That wasn’t the problem.

I pulled number two and the car actually sounded a little better than before.

Then I realized what was wrong; I messed up the firing order. I had the wires for 2 and 4 switched. I can’t be sure when I had switched them, but I know I had took off and put back on the wires half a dozen times at the track that morning. And twice that many times as I worked to clean up the wiring and swap the injectors. I felt like an idiot; just plain stupid and mad at myself. I was grateful for the help but was deeply embarrassed about my mistake and inability to see it.

I went karting with a couple of friends to work off the embarrassment and frustration. I’m kinda surprised I didn’t get black flagged with how often I cut corners, dropped into the dirt, and bumped a few people.

Feeling less emotional and ready to have some fun, I took the Corolla to the donut box to warm her up. There, a new problem arose. As I bounced off the rev limiter and smoked some tires, I noticed the charge light come one and the voltmeter pegged at 18+ volts. If I let the rpms drop back to idle, the light turned off and the voltmeter read 13-14 volts. Odd.

Those tires don’t stand a chance!

I told myself to keep an eye on it and decided to try a run on course to see if it was a weird fluke or not. Sure enough, when the rpms were high (greater than 4000 rpm), the charge light would come on and the voltmeter would read 18+ volts. I exited the course and parked the car. I looked over all the connections for the battery and alternator, but nothing looked out of place. I told a few friends what was happening, but they weren’t sure why it was acting like I was overdriving the alternator. I had stock pulleys on the crank, water pump, and alternator and no one had an underdrive pulley I could use. We were all stumped. Instead of sitting around confused, I decided I would try to enjoy my car out on track, while keeping an eye on things to see if I could determine what was wrong.

Halfway into my third run in the car, second run on the course, the charge light came one an stayed on. The voltmeter was no longer pegged at 18+ volts at high rpms. I cut the run short and coasted into the pits. Jumping out of the car, I looked over the wiring to the alternator again. Nothing looked burned or smelled funny. Nothing looked out of the ordinary at all. I started the car again and the charge light stayed on the voltmeter read 12.5 V and draining. Crap, the voltage regulator must’ve died in the alternator. That’s the end of the day for me.

Hopefully anyone that passed behind me on the trek home appreciated my bouncy Jesus and hula girl on the trunk of the Corolla. They sure made me giggle everytime they danced.