No worries my man, again your input has been helpful and you have the right view on project time management. Thanks, I have my fingers crossed on the compression test too. Reason I haven't done it yet is because I want to fix the parasitic load problem first so I can be sure the battery is fully charged while I'm doing the compression test. I'm waiting on my new lightweight battery and multimeter so I can knock that job out first..hell I no longer have my battery charger either so I need to pick one of those up too. Lots of small stuff!

 

Boy oh boy...can I relate to "Lots of small stuff". They seem to always be the issues that can cause me the most grief. Kinda like your soldering process coming up. Not a big deal...but sometimes having barely any wire can make a small job turn into a two hour process..because you have to open up the harness to get enough wire to solder it..

DUB

 

Yes sir I know exactly what that's like, impatience and poor technique turned a simple boost gauge install on my WRX into a multi hour job just for that reason. I'm trying my hardest to avoid that issue this time around with lots o' practice before doing the injector and map connectors.

 

So use a butt connector. Quick and easy. When it comes loose, you spend even more hours chasing it. No thanks. I only use the cheap butt connectors (no heat shrink tubing) for testing purposes. Once the thing works, I toss the connectors for solder and heat shrink. BTDT and been screwed by butt connectors.

Besides, butt connectors make me think of a giant ***** that two people use.

 

Hahaha thanks for the visual there. That's actually a good point about using butt connectors for testing, I'll keep that in mind.

 

So I'm going to put in new plugs when I have them off for the compression test (pending good results of course), does anyone have tips for removing rusty plugs without totally f'ing stuff up? Besides penetrating oil and what not...would it help to chase the threads after they're out? I'm probably going to go with the ac delco plugs per my research around here.

 

BTW, you can use them if you cannot use a soldering gun. Just make sure they are the heat shrink variety which clamps down on the wires and keeps them in place lest they slip out.

 

They are not the pencil style glow plugs so I don't hear too often of it being seized up in the head. Maybe an impact wrench at the LOWEST possible setting so the rattling breaks something loose?

They should all be out fairly decently. Put anti-seize on them and take them out yearly.

 

I am not going to get in the middle of the SH*T storm but in fairness to all,[B] I would definitely listen to Dub. He does this for a living and is a very knowledgeable and gracious gentleman who is willing to share his knowledge in order to help us who know a little. He takes his time to share with us what he knows will work and does work. AND he is not full of himself-many times I have asked him questions and he gives me the straight scoop so I have a great deal of trust in what he says.
Tommy

 

My stock 91 was similar when I bought it. Thorough clean of the throttle body and IAC made a good improvement. Then a set of Bosch III's finished off the job.

 

For the record. When I am doing intense wiring and testing it...I use house wire nuts. They are quick, fast and hold well for testing purposes...and are re-usable. Then when ALL IS GOOD. Depending on the connection. I will use special butt-connectors ( often times modifying them) and solder them...and then slide on some heat shrink tubing I get from WAYTEK. NO problems ever... due to knowing how to use the shrink wrap to reinforce the wire AFTER the butt connector OR solder joint and knowing how to solder. NOT IMPLYING that you (aklim) do not know what you are doing...lets just get that straight.

You should NOT have a problem in removing the plugs. I have NEVER had to use any type of penetrating oil...and TRUST ME (if you care to do so) ..I have removed some spark plugs that looked REALLY bad with rust on the outside....which means nothing on the threads due to the taper seat. I have actually run across more plugs that looked good visually from the outside but where a 'son of a gun' to get out.

Now I have had some that did not want to come out with my fingers when I got them to break loose...and that is usually due to the carbon and crap on the thread inside the combustion chamber. And using penetrating oil is POINTLESS. The odds that it will wick to the inner threads is highly unlikely....because the car would have to be jacked up on the side severely..WHICH I DO NOT RECOMMEND....lets get that COMPLETELY UNDERSTOOD. IF...repeating IF.... I run into a problem plug...I thread it out and then back in and then back out a little bit more then back IN ALL THE WAY IN (if possible) and then out again and keep repeating the process until it comes out. Sometimes if the engine is slightly warm that may help also versus it being COLD. I am not saying a HOT engine...just a bit warm to allow the metals to expand a little bit....and will still allow you to get down to the plugs with your hands without leaving skin melted to your exhaust behind.

Also...If I apply any 'anti-seize compound' to the threads of the new spark plug that has been checked for perfect EVEN GAP at the correct measurement....I would then use a very small dab of NICKEL SEIZE...if not that...then my next choice would be the COPPER SEIZE.

I have NEVER had to chase out the threads for the plugs. In almost 30 years doing this...NOT ONCE. AND I am not implying that I am LAZY and I am forcing the new plugs in. BUT do what you feel you need to do. The only thing I might be concerned about is getting very small shards of metal from the chasing process IN THE CYLINDER...and they get caught in a ring land and scratch your cylinder wall. Because it is obvious...you can not tell if you are or are not creating metal chard's....and IF you do ( for example)...you can not confirm that they ALL got blown out the exhaust.

Thanks Tommy.

I think 'S' storm has moved on.

All I am trying to do as like I wrote....IS HELP....and I can only help if I know what is going on.

DUB

 

My preferences is to solder. I had a shop that did work when my leg was broken. They used butt connection and no shrink wrap. Years later, I chased a bad IAC. Could not find the problem. One of the 4 wires came loose in the wire loom and we took a lot of beer to find it by accident. Your way would NOT have issues. Just a cheap connection, probably.

 

Thanks for the info on all that DUB, good stuff to know. I guess I'm just anticipating every possible problem that could come up with all this work I have coming hopefully I wont have a problem with the plugs.

For the record I definitely never doubted your intelligence or experience. Let's just chalk up what happened to a misinterpretation of tone on my part, maybe I'm too used to a different breed of forum user haha.

Speaking of anticipating problems, I'm eating my words on the parasitic draw test which I hoped I'd find easily. My multimeter was set up as follows (battery out of the car): Positive battery connected to positive vehicle lead, multimeter positive lead connected to vehicle negative lead, multimeter negative lead connected to battery negative lead.

I took the precaution of letting the headlight motors run before setting up completely so I wouldnt blow the fuse on my meter. After that I hooked things up and I read a parasitic draw of over 1.5A! That seems tremendous. I tried the simple procedure of pulling the fuses on the main box on the passenger side with no luck. I know there are other fuses I can try as well, I'll try that first.

Couple things to note here, this has definitely been a persistent problem over the years per what the previous owner and carfax told me. A couple other things tip me off to someone chasing the problem in the past: one of the under hood lights is disconnected and the passenger door sensor is missing.

I wouldnt rule out a bad ground somewhere being a possible cause, there car has a bit of surface rust. The positive battery lead is also fairly corroded. From my research I've read that the factory Bose system can cause parasitic drain issues as well. I'm sure there's a million other potential causes that I havent thought of or read about. Any input?

 

Also forgot to mention that the car has an aftermarket head unit, and I know that could be a potential cause as well.

 

Disconnect it and retest

 

That's my next step for sure. There are fuses located in that area under the dash/center console trim as well, right?

 

Take the unit out. Not too difficult, I would think.

 

I don't think so.

As for the Hypertech chip, I'm confused. I thought they installed the chip on an adapter board that got plugged into the ecm. Then you Memcal plugged into that. Your stock chip is still there. They didn't desolder it.

As for injectors, if you go with a larger injector for "future" how will you tune the car for the "now"?

MS3, very nice. I love the megasquirts.

 

I can't post pics while I'm at work but this is the adapter style I'm talkin about.

 

So after taking the center console apart to get the aftermarket radio out, I discovered that this car is a bit of an electrical hell hole unfortunately. Check the pics: note the weird stray wires that run into the center console and are just cut at the end (red and black twisted pair, and the larger black cable), the audio cable that is spliced into the rear hatch release wires, as well as the stray connectors in back of the radio area which themselves have wires cut (there was even a very loosely installed wire nut type thing holding two of the cut wires together, even though neither of them were stripped back). Very odd indeed.






Regardless I still re-ran the test after I had the radio out. Results were the same as before, 1.5A parasitic draw.

Another thing I noticed was a little LED light wedged between the dash and the driver A-pillar...something like a security system LED? I dunno...

Electrical issues definitely arent my strong suit but I want to get better at fixing them. However all the shoddy work done to the car makes me want to just gut the whole interior right now... Those mystery wires are really gonna bother me until I figure them out. I really wanted to just get it running right first so I could drive it around a bit. Decisions decisions...