Rick Bosak's Journal

I love driving in the fall with the top down windows up and the heater on full. Of course in the summer I don’t want any more heat in the cockpit. I do have a valve to shut off water to the coil but to stop the air flow I have been putting a piece of rubber sheet between the blower and the coil. That required a screw driver and 15 contortion minutes. So I drew up some plans and sent them off to SendCutSend to make three aluminum parts for a little sliding door that will open or close off the airflow. This door sits under the blower which is located over the coil in the firewall. I now just insert or remove the sliding door. Easy peasy. Now I’m ready for heat or not as the weather changes. If you need fabrication parts I highly recommend SendCutSend. My three parts were a little over $30 delivered.

The engine in my Sprite started life in Toyota Corollas as a rear wheel drive engine. In the late 80s Toyota got into front wheel drive cars but kept the block of their tried and true 1600 4 cylinder and just rotated it to an East West FWD application. They just changed the coolant hook-ups. My 94 engine was this East West configuration. This meant that when I rotated it back to a North South RWD orientation that my coolant lines ended up at the fire wall. I hated running my coolant lines all the way from the firewall then over the header to get to the radiator. Enter the Tuners and Drifters who loved this 20 valve 4 cylinder engine like me they saw no sense in running coolant lines over the header. So a kit was created to move the lines back to the original RWD location on the block right by the water pump up front by the radiator. I finally bought the kit from SQ Engineering and installed it. This opened up my header and got the coolant pipes away from the heat. I decided to install the kit without pulling the engine. This was tough as there is no room for hands and wrenches in my engine bay. I also needed to create custom coolant hoses with the right bends and lengths by using parts from ten hoses I pulled from the local salvage yard. After five days and a lot of swear words it is done. One benefit was that now I have enough room by the fire wall to install a shut-off valve for my heater core. That will help in the summer. I also discovered that my original thermostat was stuck partially open which explained why it always took longer than it should to get down off of fast idle in the mornings. I'm glad its done now on to further refinements. There is a kit now to install an Accord starter onto the T50 transmision....

I have a Smiths oil pressure gauge that replaced the original dual water/oil gauge that came in the Sprite. After 4 summers of driving the oil pressure needle pegged at the high end above the 100 psi limit. Other than a blocked relief valve in the oil pump (not likely) the obvious problem was probably the sender unit. It was a VDO I bought from Summit. With just ignition on it is still pegged over the top limit. I'm hoping a new one from Smiths will last longer SMIPTR1810-1-10 Smiths B/M Pressure Sender 1/8 x 27 NPT. It had to come all the way from the UK but it's installed and reading correctly. I had to lay under the Sprite to install as it is right under the header. My old bod don't like crawling around under a car so much now that I'm past 70. But the test drive was worth it. I had a very big smile going through the gears.

I'm sure some of you gals and guys know about this website/resource but for those that don't. https://sendcutsend.com/ is a great place to get small parts built for you. If you don't have all the tools or even need something fast. I had them cut and bend a cover for my in-tank fuel pump to cover the hole in my boot. Done in a week, free shipping too. I gave them plans i created in Adobe Illustrator since I don't want to buy a 3D modeling software. They also let you build simple parts on their system if you don't have any software at all. They even send candy along with the part. Handy place. I could have hacked this out with my angle grinder, etc. but it wouldn't have looked nearly as good.

I originally mounted my fuel pump to the side of the fuel tank. There were two problems with this. One is that the tank proved to be a great echo chamber and the pump whine/howl was very obvious and annoying. The second issue was more serious. Since the 8 gallon tank has no baffles the engine would experience fuel starvation if the tank was less than half full during a sweeping right hand curve. An in-tank pump comes with it's own baffle/pot that collects the return line fuel to solve this problem.
The installation was complicated by the fact that the tank is too shallow to accommodate the height of the pump. I made a half inch aluminum riser to give me some more head room in the tank but then this required that I cut a maching hole in the boot floor.

I've wanted to get some shots of the car in motion but kind of hard when you're driving it. So I had my son Sam run past me. Sounds even better when you are in the car. What a great day for a drive.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/2EBMwksD23Kk7K4J7

https://photos.app.goo.gl/873c1gqiiX5SShaw7