DIY oil catch tank

After cleaning my intake manifold, I didn't want it to get dirty again so quickly knowing how much a pain in the ass it will be. So, I made a DIY oil catch tank for it. Borrowing the ideas from KHguan’s DIY, I made my own one, but without the intake side as the air is a vacuum, having no oil vapors what.so.EVERRRRRRRR!

Browsing around car accessory shops you can find oil catch tanks to be in the RM80-120 range, 60 for a cheapo one. I got my proton saga petrol filter for RM4 instead.

=D

Other misc parts to buy is a hose clip and some gas hose(usually transparent with weaving but i bought the ones in black cause they look neater.) The top hole in the petrol filter goes into the intake manifold, and the bottom one the valve cover.

Next, choose a spot in your engine bay to mount the tank. I chose this place near the firewall again, so that its not that messy and I won’t have to use cable ties or whatsoever.

Drilling a hole is easy. So, I drilled one in the hose clip to fit the nut. After that, adjust the hose clip to fit the petrol filter, tight but not too tight.

Here’s the thingy mounted in my engine bay. Hopefully the hardware store uncker didn’t con me and the pipes can withstand the heat. The connection at the valve cover was abit loose too, so I added another tiny hose clip to it to prevent it popping out. The filter can either be drained out or changed(only RM4 maaaa! =P) once it gets full. Which will take a few thousand kms I guess.

There we have a decent looking and cheap oil catch tank.

More responsive throttle pedal

My throttle cable has a very squishy feeling when pressing it lightly. Not a problem for most cars, but its very annoying on my car especially on uphill jams. Because my throttle cable is squishy, if i press down on it a lil’ bit, no response from the engine. Press a little more, the engine revs till about 3k. Either I engage clutch at 3k rpm or keep stalling. Which is very embarrassing. =/

I took pics only after i modified it, I put some ABS glue in the place highlighted in blue(can get a can at any hardware shop for around 6 ringgit, used to glue ABS pipes together, when it hardens it turns into ABS plastic.

Originally the place was hollow, so the rubber had some space to squish together. Like i said, the problem only occurred in my car, not a very common problem, this.

The red part is the firewall, green is the accelerator pedal. No screws required to remove the cable, everythign is held together by clippy clips.

This is where the cable connects from inside the engine bay,

Bore-ing and cleaning the intake manifold pt. 2

So, continuing from part 1, making the gasket for the intake manifold. You can use those normal gasket papers available from any car parts shop that sells it. Its quite cheap and it does the job quite well, less than rm10 can get you one BIG sheet of paper. making gaskets are very easy, just trace and cut. =) This is the end product.

Next day, fixing the whole car back together… Manifold and gasket goes in first,

Manifold is in, now connecting all the wires and plugs.

See how rusty my brakes are, haven’t driven the donkey for a few weeks already.

…. and it’s all done! Will be making a DIY oil catch tank to prevent the manifold from getting dirty so fast again.

Bore-ing and cleaning the intake manifold

So one night for no reason at all again, I went to check on my throttle body. I noticed it was kinda different from the normal throttle body sizes form google.

SO I TOOK IT OUT. >:D

and

It was 60mm, from the 4G92 mivec/ 4g63 Evo III engine… What a jolly delightful surprise. =)

Only problem was, the intake manifold hole was too small for it. (54mm)

Soooooo, it was time to take it out for some boring/cleaning. Be sure to label all the pipes and whatever nonsense you are removing, otherwise, when you fakap, you fakap bad like mad.

Letting out all the fuel in the fuel rail…Some of the petrol leaked out, this was all that i managed to catch.

Well, shouldnt put it to waste, right? =)

…And here is the car with the intake manifold taken out. Didnt take very long, about 2-3 hours to remove it, and this is the first time i am trying.

Parts all kept in my bedroom to prevent getting thrown away by my mom.

Next, boring the manifold. Since I didnt have a proper filing bit, I just used a grinder bit with a drill. This was a goddam slow and boring process. =/

But I managed to bore it. quite satisfied with the new size of the intake hole. 58/59mm, leaving it roughly 1mm smaller than the throttle body as i was afraid that i might overbore the manifold.

Now, for the cleaning process. T’was a good decision to remove the whole intake manifold as compared to just boring it on the car itself, as it was all… black.

I asked one random workshop how much it would cost if i sent it to them for cleaning,

RM40.

Nah, I’d rather do it myself. Bought thinner for about 18 bucks, and one of those brushes for toilet bowls for 2 bucks. Make sure the brush is not plastic cause most plastic reacts with thinner, and I doubt that melted plastic in my intake would be very fancy at all. Open up the brush and make it straight, from its bendy shape. Also, cut off a little portion of it and connect it to a wire. There you have your very own 2 pipe cleaners! ;D

I only used like 2/3 of the can of thinner to wash the intake, so for about 20 bucks, you can get it washed yourself, and still have like 1 liter of thinner left for your amusement. How cheap is that. So after cleaning, the manifold naturally will be dirty. I used some engine degreaser to wash it, available at pasar road for rm18 a gallon, will last you for a long long time. If you don’t wanna buy that though, you can still use thinner to wash the outside too. I had enough thinner on my hands for a day though.

See how clean it is now?!?!?!?!??!?! =D

Leaky cover gasket

A rather annoying problem with my car is the leaky valve cover gasket which seeps oil whenever the engine is running. the oil spills all over the side of the engine making it messy and yucky and stupid. Very stupid. =/

So, I went out to buy a new gasket for it, costs about RM40 a piece. The SOHC cover is much much cheaper but whatever.

Starting to work on the car…. it is not necessary to remove the air filter, but i was working on another project at the same time. Labeled each sparkplug the opened the cover. The cover is quite easy to remove, as all the screws can be seen from the top of the car, except for the 2 screws at the side of the head where the timing belt cover is. Once everything is off, just replace the gasket with a new one, add silicon and put back the same way that you took it out.

I got itchy fingered and wanted to wash my gasket head as it was frikken dirty. Washed with some engine degreaser, available at Pasar road.

I got even more itchy fingered and decided I should freshen up the engine’s outlook. So i sprayed the proton words silver and used a file to grind off the top of the DOHC wording. Gaya tuh! =D
  
So now, the top of the engine is not leaking anymore. Which is good.

Stupid side-wanking gearknob. =/

As you can see, for the proton wira/93’ mirages, the manual gearknob is slightly slanted towards the drivers side. i find this pointless and stupid and annoying to look at. And annoying. In this pic the car looks like it’s in 5th, right? No. it’s in neutral. =S

So, I bended it back with a hammer. A big hammer. Taking out the gear console panel thingy was simple as unscrewing it, any simple person would know how to remove it. I also switched out the old long gearknob for a round PINK one! Much nicer to shift now, and neutral actually LOOKS like neutral again. =)

Starting out

Someone gave me the idea of archiving what i'm doing to my car. Since I work on it all the time, it rarely does come out of the house. Interior and exterior was standard expect for imitation O.Z. ultrleggera rims. The dashboard had some kind of dent at the passenger side and it was using some crappy old CD/cassette player. Steering wheel is original Momo, but the leather is just rotten. =P

It's just a crapp dogg old 97' Proton Putra. Also called the 93’ Mitsubishi Mirage/ Dodge Colt. Engine is a fairly stock standard 4G93. I bought it in May this year, without much thought apparently.

I changed the headlights right after I bought it, the original ones were dayummmm outdated and boring. The new ones freshens the car up abit.

It's not really in tip-top condition. It's been through an accident, it's kinda leaky, rusty roof, doesnt have a clean paint job, and cut springs. And I paid about market price for it. =S

I guess the biggest bummer about the car was the accident that I didnt know about until after buying it.

At least the engine runs fine (I think) :)