Ah yes, the engine bay. This engine is pissing me off. Right now the car doesn't drive at all because I need to rebuild the clutch slave cylinder and install it, bleed the clutch system, yadda yadda. Easy, right? No. None of the parts stores had rebuild kits for the laser rs awd. Then I had the bright idea to call around for a 1992 Eclipse GSX rebuild kit, instead. Discount auto parts had it. I went, ordered it, picked it up the next day. I pulled it out of the box to color match it, I have a red piston slave cylinder. Of course the stupid aftermarket company doesn't color code it, it's silver. So I take it to my parents' place and go to put it all together. It's too big. I have to find out exactly what the hell car I have to order this part for to get the right one, take it back, and wait another day or two to get the other one in, and hope it's right.
None of that matters anyway, it has nothing to do with the engine problems. So the slave cylinder loses it's seal the friday before last, the car is flatbedded to the street in front of my parents' house, it's been sitting there since. I've been starting it up when I go over to their house every 2 or so days, letting it idle and warm up, revving the engine a little bit, seeing how the idle surge reacts to ac, no ac, etc, just boredom. Other than that, no driving. Well, first thing that is bad, I get a compression tester and test the compression. Perfect in cyls 234, 105 in cyl 1. Put some oil in there, goes up to 120. Shoot.
It's been making this ticking sound for a little bit, not like the lifter tick that seems to have gone away for the most part. This one doesn't go away when the car warms up like the lifter tick used to. It sounds like it's coming from down in the block. I'm hoping that I'm wrong and it's just lifter tick, but I want to have it checked out to make sure it's not a rod bearing or something. So there's that.
The valve cover leaks some oil as you can see from the oil in the spark plug area. That oil is only the stuff I couldn't mop up with a paper towel before taking the pic, there is usually a nice little pool of it in there.
New problem, I went to start up the car just for the heck of it when I was at my parents' last night, I installed some of those "extra white" bulbs, I don't remember what ge called them but they're supposed to be much whiter and brighter. They did seem to make a difference, which is good at 15 dollars a pop and half the lifetime. I was standing back checking out the light when I suddenly smoke started blowing through the light. "What the hell?" It smelled like oil. I went back today and started the car, let it sit in the street idling for a good 5-10 minutes and came out. Every puff of exhaust could be SEEN. Light blueish smoke. Got into the car and slowly revved the engine to 3k, looked back, a lot more smoke. Checked the oil, down about a 1/4, oil topped off not 100 miles ago- but the oil was FULL less than 25 miles of driving ago when I last filled the tank. Sucks.
So yeah, as soon as the slave cylinder is fixed, I've got to deal with:
multiple engine problems
leaking transfer case
horrid belt squeal, which I blame on improper tensioning by the non-dsm-knowing shop I had the timing belt done at back when I had just bought the car. I think it's the alternator belt, as the voltage from the alternator spikes wildly to 17.5 when it squeals or feels like squealing but isn't yet. The belts have already been retensioned once because of this problem.
Hopefully this fixes the alternator voltage problem, if not, need to deal with that.
and a million less immediately important things.