Mod Party - 03.04.2000
Well, a few of us decided to get together and do a mass mod install. Heck, we made a day of it and had a blast!
The attendees/victims:
Okay, so I arrive a bit late to Lino's and find Dave, Lalo, and Lino waiting for me. Chris shows up a bit later, then Adam, and lastly Tony. Chris stopped by on his way to an autocross at the new Irwindale Speedway. He did so well at the event that he won his class! Great job Chris. Chris' car is definitely ready to rock! He's invested quite a tidy sum in stiffening up his car's suspension, giving it some nice rubber to grip the road, and in honing his autocrossing skills with his new toy!
Anyhow, we were there to install a few things on my car (PRD short shifter, Addco rear anti-sway bar), install new plugs and wires on Lalo's ride as well as install his centering rings for his Cobra wheels, perform a foglight mod on Adam's car, and lastly, install a rear 02 in Dave's PSE.
We started things off by installing the sway bar in my car. It wasn't anywhere near as difficult as I thought it would be. I've heard some horror stories, including one by member Alex Swinney, who is having some major difficulties with his end links. Mine came off with a bit of elbow grease and a 14mm socket. More details on this install will be appended to the sway bar installation page in the 'Maint/Mod' section.
Next, I did the foglight mod on Adam's 93GT. It was really easy to do, but Adam kept complaining about the 'ghetto-style' mods that we done to his car. It wasn't that bad, but it was obvious that the previous owner didn't know what they were doing. Adam had installed John Schumacher's wire-mesh grille inserts. Now I personally don't like this mod, but it didn't look too bad on Adam's car. During this time Tony was performing the mod on his 95GT, brought to us all the way from MA!
Lalo's car was next. Lino and Lalo started out gapping and removing the old spark plugs from Lalo's 94GT. Lalo had been expressing concern that his gas mileage was lower than normal and the car didn't feel so peppy. Well, after convincing him to change the wires and plugs, he decided it was a good idea and I headed to my local Pep Boys for the goods. Got him the off-the-shelf wires, which are good enough for right now, and some Bosch platinum spark plugs.
After watching them gapping the plugs, I began removing the spark plug wires. Now Lalo has near 75k miles in his car and wouldn't you know, he was still running the original wires AND plugs. I guess we found the culprit for his lack of performance, didn't we? While I was removing the wires, Lalo and Lino finished gapping the plugs, so I installed them. Definitely not difficult, but both of them were wondering how I was going to retrieve the plugs from the rear head. Not to worry, I had my handy-dandy magnetic tool retriever, courtesy of Sears. Worked like a charm! So, I finished installing the plugs, then began running the wires. It wasn't too bad, but everyone was a little worried about lining them up to the distributor. The PGT's distributor has numbers marked on the cap, so everyone relaxed a little. Finished the wires and had Lalo start his car! He loved the feel.
Now that this was finished, the next item was installing Lalo's hub centering rings. Lalo had purchased Chris Ashton's stock Cobra wheels, since Chris had bought some new Cobra R wheels for his 98 Cobra. What Lalo didn't know about his wheels was that they weren't hubcentric for the Probe, so he had to buy some hub centering rings from a place in Santa Fe Springs. Lino and I helped out with this mod. Wasn't hard at all, just had to remove the wheel, insert the plastic ring into the hub and remount. Lalo felt it was important to get these rings immediately since he felt some severe wobbling on his PGT while driving at high speeds.
***update***
The sad thing about this is that shortly after the install, Lalo had his front left wheel come off, causing some major damage to his car. What happened was that the tire shop (Discount Tire Centers) didn't tell him about the hub centering problem with aftermarket wheels, and mounted them anyway. He is very lucky to be alive! Anyhow, he is getting his car fixed courtesy of Discount Tire, since they were at fault for failing to notify him about the potential problem with his wheels and for not suggestion corrective action.
After finishing with Lalo's wheels, we then installed Dave's new o2 sensor. Dave picked one up from some hole-in-the-wall auto shop and installed it. Installation was pretty cut and dry, removed old o2, spliced wires into old connector, installed new sensor. Dave was a little concerned that his 96PSE had four o2's, like the GT's, but he had only the two.
The last thing we did that day was install my PRD short shifter. I had purchased this item from PA prober Mike Longley, along with the sway bar and Eibach Pro Kit springs. Got it for a song too, which made me happy. Anyhow, we got started. We had to lift the car (again!) so that we could access the linkage underneath the car. Adam and I were busy removing the console, shift knob, boot, and finally the shifter itself. Didn't take too long, oh wait....yes, it did take a while. Adam kept getting the stuff backwards when trying to install the short shifter. Memo to audience: NEVER HAVE ANYONE WHO HAS BEEN DRINKING WORK ON YOUR CAR! (sorry Adam, but you had to know that was coming) More info on the shifter install can be seen in 'Maint/Mod' section.
We had a blast! In fact, we had such a good time that we wound up doing the exact same thing two weeks later! How's that for group support?
write-up by D. Tolentino