Well that lasted long. My Drivers window won't wind down
2006 Exige S
If you find that the gearbox still leaks from the same aluminium crush washer, swap it for a dowty/bonded seal washer. Most of the male/male adaptors have a chamfered face by the hex, so with a crush washer you have to be bang on fitting them centrally, or really careful to not overtighten them, as they can split over time.
Cheers John I'll keep that in mind. I use the dowty's for my sump plug... never thought to try one of those, but it makes sense.JDS wrote: ↑Fri Apr 22, 2022 6:22 pm If you find that the gearbox still leaks from the same aluminium crush washer, swap it for a dowty/bonded seal washer. Most of the male/male adaptors have a chamfered face by the hex, so with a crush washer you have to be bang on fitting them centrally, or really careful to not overtighten them, as they can split over time.
Window fixed tonight, with a bit of encouragement from @MrP80. Switch and fuses ruled out pretty quickly just by swapping out with the working side, then was just a case of tracking down the fault with the multi meter. All of the continuity checks within the door made the right bleeps, but I wasn't getting voltage to the switch from the fusebox. Continuity check from the fusebox to the switch failed, so started making plans to run a "it'll do" wire until the clam could next come off and I could repair the loom properly.
It was pointed out to me that the hinge area of the door was a somewhat common failure point, so with nothing to lose by taking off the grommet/boot thingy the issue was pretty obvious...
I'm not sure how standard this wiring is, it has loom tape on the door side and convoluted tubing on the chassis side - with a 4" gap in sheathing right where the door hinge is.
I had to pull the wiring completely out of the door just to get repair access, which has left a few nice cuts on the forearm collection.
I cleaned some corrosion from the exposed tab ends and crimped it all back together. A quick continuity check to make sure there were no others lurking and we had life.
Tidied it all up, refitted. Job jobbed, working window.
NOW I can chill out and enjoy the car.
This gearbox is fighting me all the way 
Oil leak from the sump plug has definitely resolved with a proper crush washer, but I've bought some dowty seals for the next time I drop the fluid.... which will be this week
I've got another leak, from the NS driveshaft seal. I've cleaned it off a bunch of times now, fully dried the area - gone out for a short drive and then sure enough there's a small weep of oil next time I check it. OS one seems OK, but I've bought both OE replacements and I'll do them at once.
I spoke to the gearbox builder, he said it got brand new ones when he did the box - as he considers them single use. That probably means I've damaged it either while the box was in storage or I've nicked it when installing the driveshaft. Hey ho, lesson learned.
I'll drop, drain and re-use the oil. Spent more on MT90 than I have central heating oil this winter.
Any tips/tricks/things to avoid when doing this seal?
Oil leak from the sump plug has definitely resolved with a proper crush washer, but I've bought some dowty seals for the next time I drop the fluid.... which will be this week
I've got another leak, from the NS driveshaft seal. I've cleaned it off a bunch of times now, fully dried the area - gone out for a short drive and then sure enough there's a small weep of oil next time I check it. OS one seems OK, but I've bought both OE replacements and I'll do them at once.
I spoke to the gearbox builder, he said it got brand new ones when he did the box - as he considers them single use. That probably means I've damaged it either while the box was in storage or I've nicked it when installing the driveshaft. Hey ho, lesson learned.
I'll drop, drain and re-use the oil. Spent more on MT90 than I have central heating oil this winter.
Any tips/tricks/things to avoid when doing this seal?
Oil Seal adventure update.
This is what I was dealing with, camera lighting doesn't show it but it's a nice clear drip running from the driveshaft seal down and collecting on the gear cables.
I waited until I had absolutely everything I thought I might need before dismantling the car, as it was barely dripping and I wanted to be able to drive it - but once I had my parts collection, I set to work with the goal of having the car rebuilt and back on its wheels in the same spannering session... as I'm just sick of walking in the garage and seeing a pile of parts.
Rear suspension needs partially dismantling for this, just to give clearance for the driveshaft to come out of the hub. I'm getting fairly good at this now, so didn't take long.
Seal at first glance looked 'ok', no tears or whatever and it seemed to be installed flush. I removed it with a small pry bar, really should buy a proper seal puller but it came out easy enough.
Once on the bench, I had a bit of good news:
It was an aftermarket seal, not an OE one. I thought that was good news because I just don't trust non OE stuff when it comes to parts like these, so it gave me confidence that simply swapping out would fix the leak. Bit disappointed the gearbox rebuild used non-OE seals, but luckily I provided the parts for everything else - so I know they were all legit Toyota.
I cleaned up the driveshaft and polished the seal interface down a bit with some 7000grit wet and dry.
The discovery of the aftermarket seal made me want to do the OS seal too, even though it wasn't leaking - so off came that suspension and popped that seal out too.
On the build up to doing this job, I was on the scrounge for sockets/pipe offcuts etc that I could use for seal insertion tools but I came up blank. I was poking around eBay looking for some offcuts of the right size and I stumbled across this:
It's apparently a 3D Printed tool for maintaining mountain bike shocks, or something like that. It's just a small length of pipe, with different ID's at each end.... and one end is a perfect fit for the NS seal, and the other end is a perfect fit for the OS seal... it's bloody perfect!
I cleaned everything up and tapped the seals in carefully. So paranoid about jobs like this and getting it wrong, because it usually writes off the seal, and almost always costs loads of effort to redo it after you've found it's still leaking.
Seals in
I replaced the circlip on the NS driveshaft (none required for OS one) and got everything built back up.
As for the oil, it's only 50 miles old so I strained it and re-used it. Actually only re-used about 60% of it, because I had a few half full bottles of MT90 which went back in. I achieved my goal of having the car back on its wheels with all but the floor back on, in a single spannering session.
Annoyingly since paying @seriouslylotus to do my suspension alignment, I've now swapped all four springs with some eyeballed in rideheight, and dismantled/rebuilt half my rear suspension... so chances are, that was at least a little bit off to cock. I drove the car a couple of miles and it didn't feel great at all, so that's chapter #2.
This is what I was dealing with, camera lighting doesn't show it but it's a nice clear drip running from the driveshaft seal down and collecting on the gear cables.
I waited until I had absolutely everything I thought I might need before dismantling the car, as it was barely dripping and I wanted to be able to drive it - but once I had my parts collection, I set to work with the goal of having the car rebuilt and back on its wheels in the same spannering session... as I'm just sick of walking in the garage and seeing a pile of parts.
Rear suspension needs partially dismantling for this, just to give clearance for the driveshaft to come out of the hub. I'm getting fairly good at this now, so didn't take long.
Seal at first glance looked 'ok', no tears or whatever and it seemed to be installed flush. I removed it with a small pry bar, really should buy a proper seal puller but it came out easy enough.
Once on the bench, I had a bit of good news:
It was an aftermarket seal, not an OE one. I thought that was good news because I just don't trust non OE stuff when it comes to parts like these, so it gave me confidence that simply swapping out would fix the leak. Bit disappointed the gearbox rebuild used non-OE seals, but luckily I provided the parts for everything else - so I know they were all legit Toyota.
I cleaned up the driveshaft and polished the seal interface down a bit with some 7000grit wet and dry.
The discovery of the aftermarket seal made me want to do the OS seal too, even though it wasn't leaking - so off came that suspension and popped that seal out too.
On the build up to doing this job, I was on the scrounge for sockets/pipe offcuts etc that I could use for seal insertion tools but I came up blank. I was poking around eBay looking for some offcuts of the right size and I stumbled across this:
It's apparently a 3D Printed tool for maintaining mountain bike shocks, or something like that. It's just a small length of pipe, with different ID's at each end.... and one end is a perfect fit for the NS seal, and the other end is a perfect fit for the OS seal... it's bloody perfect!
I cleaned everything up and tapped the seals in carefully. So paranoid about jobs like this and getting it wrong, because it usually writes off the seal, and almost always costs loads of effort to redo it after you've found it's still leaking.
Seals in
I replaced the circlip on the NS driveshaft (none required for OS one) and got everything built back up.
As for the oil, it's only 50 miles old so I strained it and re-used it. Actually only re-used about 60% of it, because I had a few half full bottles of MT90 which went back in. I achieved my goal of having the car back on its wheels with all but the floor back on, in a single spannering session.
Annoyingly since paying @seriouslylotus to do my suspension alignment, I've now swapped all four springs with some eyeballed in rideheight, and dismantled/rebuilt half my rear suspension... so chances are, that was at least a little bit off to cock. I drove the car a couple of miles and it didn't feel great at all, so that's chapter #2.
Chapter #2, alignment. Bit of a dull update this, but I enjoyed the process.
I love having a go and doing bits myself, but some things are always just worth spending the damn money on. I honestly believe suspension alignment to be one of these things, the theory is simple - but the conditions required to do this accurately are beyond most home garages. If you ever think a 'geo' or alignment from a specialist is expensive, try pricing up just some basic tools to give yourself a good, flat environment and try getting repeatable results from it using some string and a ruler.
Despite that, I've had a go anyway
I'm lucky that my garage floor is 'pretty straight', at least straight enough within the tolerances of a basic spirit level. I intend to get a laser level and check this properly, but job for another day.
I first measured my rideheight, aiming for a ~5mm rake front to rear I found that I had exactly zero rake from when I fitted my springs, and with ballast in my car the rideheight was way too low. I ended up with ~125mm rear and ~120mm front rideheight with 100kg in the driver seat. That's pretty conservative for an S2, but hoping it frees me up to run the damping a bit softer at the front if needed without destroying my headlights from behind. Some proper scales would allow you to DIY this part properly, and it would be one of the easier things to setup at home... but the scales are so expensive, so it's eyeballed arbitrary measurements for now.
With that dealt with, I need to create a reference point for the centre line of the car which is achieved by creating a 'string box' around the car. The goal being that both side lines are exactly parallel with each other, and the centre line of the car. You do this by getting fixed length poles front and back on axle stands, and then keep shuffling them about until the distance between front centrecaps and the string are equal, likewise at the rear.
Measuring has it's challenges, you can throw it off 1-2mm just by having the ruler/caliper at an angle. I tried to avoid this by utilising a spirit level on the caliper, but there are just so many opportunities to fuck it up.
In theory, that's then your reference and you measure the leading edge of the wheel rim and compare with the trailing edge to measure if your wheel is toe'ing in, or out. You can then convert that measurement in millimetres to degrees with a bit of trig, or a conversion chart.
I've flirted with this a few times before, never to make adjustments but to check to see whether I can match the measurements I've had from a recent fancy machine. The honest truth is that I've never succeeded to do that, so I didn't have high hopes for this adjustment - my backup plan was always going to be to beg, borrow and steal another alignment session with Dave if I could get to Hull without shredding my tyres.
I changed my mindset a bit, I wouldn't try to match what £XX,XXX worth of laser kit would tell me, because with the best intentions in the world I would be using different reference points. Measuring against the string for instance, ideally this would run through the exact centre line of my wheels - but when limited to axle stand "clicks" you've got to just get as close as you can, so rather than measuring a 17" diameter rim, I might actually be measuring it where it's 16.5" or whatever. One of my centre caps might stick out slightly more than the others, throwing off my reference box, etc. So many opportunities for this to be wrong, BUT relative to my own settings I should be able to wiggle the setup into the direction I want.
My ballast, and eBay steering wheel clamp:
With all that in mind, I spent a long time setting up my string box and eventually got the following toe measurements:
FL: 1mm toe in
FR: 2mm toe out
Front Axle = 1mm toe out
RL: 3mm toe in
RR: 0mm
Rear Axle = 3mm toe in
The actual spec I was aiming for is:
FL: 0.5mm out
FR: 0.5mm out
Front Axle = 1mm toe out
RL: 1.5mm in
RR: 1.5mm in
Rear Axle = 3mm toe in.
So as you can see, my axle toe settings were exactly where they should be - but everything was just offset to one side. I measured this three times over a 24 hour window, got consistent measurements to within 0.1mm each time.
Onto the adjustments, I worked out some rough maths to figure out how many turns of the track rod = how much movement, just to give me a starting point, then I could adjust from there. On a proper setup, the car is up in the air, the technician can adjust the trackrods "real time" and see the data changing on a screen. For me though it was easy to lift the car, make an adjustment, drop it down and roll it back and forth and then re-measure.
Some time later, I was reliably repeating the following measurements:
FL: 0.44mm out
FR: 0.5mm out
Front Axle = 0.94mm toe out
RL: 1.3mm in
RR: 1.6mm in
Rear Axle = 2.9mm toe in
Happy enough with that, I locked everything off, retried one more time and then put the car to the test.
Did 120miles over the weekend and the car felt great. Road manners were bang on, if I let go of the wheel the car would track straight. Being slightly critical my steering wheel was ever so slightly right hand down though, but so close to level - it was hard to be certain. I wondered how much of that is just me steering into road camber, rather than it actually being off to cock.
Handling wise, the car had it's usual feeling of a slightly light off-centre feel through the wheel, but incrementally weighted up nicely when leaning into a turn. Braking stability was cock on, and on the few occasions I had to explore grip properly, it retained it's usual balance through the understeer/oversteer transition - but it'll take a trackday to judge this fairly.
Before declaring a total success, I wanted to take one more measurement of the car... to see if some proper mileage had settled it at all, and to see if I could get repeatable results.
FL: 1.3mm out
FR: 0.2mm in
RL: 1.0mm in
RR: 1.8mm in
Errr.... disaster? Measuring totally different at first glance I was pretty disheartened. Then I noticed that the total axle differences were matching, at least to within 0.1mm tolerance.
The front difference I think I can explain with steering wheel angle, I said before that it drove very slightly RHD - so perhaps I've now got it locked at slightly LHD compared to before... and the measurements would agree with that.
As for the rears, I can't explain why they're different other than measuring tolerances with an eBay caliper and some fishing line. I'll measure a few more times tonight and average out my measurements to see what I can do. Perhaps I underestimated how much things would settle with mileage, or perhaps the fuel I burned off is responsible.
Question now, the car drove great at the weekend. As good as it ever has, tbh. Do I seek perfection and try to adjust again, straightening out the wheel... or leave it? It was probably less than 5 degrees out...
Oh, and my driveshaft seals are bone dry still
I love having a go and doing bits myself, but some things are always just worth spending the damn money on. I honestly believe suspension alignment to be one of these things, the theory is simple - but the conditions required to do this accurately are beyond most home garages. If you ever think a 'geo' or alignment from a specialist is expensive, try pricing up just some basic tools to give yourself a good, flat environment and try getting repeatable results from it using some string and a ruler.
Despite that, I've had a go anyway
I'm lucky that my garage floor is 'pretty straight', at least straight enough within the tolerances of a basic spirit level. I intend to get a laser level and check this properly, but job for another day.
I first measured my rideheight, aiming for a ~5mm rake front to rear I found that I had exactly zero rake from when I fitted my springs, and with ballast in my car the rideheight was way too low. I ended up with ~125mm rear and ~120mm front rideheight with 100kg in the driver seat. That's pretty conservative for an S2, but hoping it frees me up to run the damping a bit softer at the front if needed without destroying my headlights from behind. Some proper scales would allow you to DIY this part properly, and it would be one of the easier things to setup at home... but the scales are so expensive, so it's eyeballed arbitrary measurements for now.
With that dealt with, I need to create a reference point for the centre line of the car which is achieved by creating a 'string box' around the car. The goal being that both side lines are exactly parallel with each other, and the centre line of the car. You do this by getting fixed length poles front and back on axle stands, and then keep shuffling them about until the distance between front centrecaps and the string are equal, likewise at the rear.
Measuring has it's challenges, you can throw it off 1-2mm just by having the ruler/caliper at an angle. I tried to avoid this by utilising a spirit level on the caliper, but there are just so many opportunities to fuck it up.
In theory, that's then your reference and you measure the leading edge of the wheel rim and compare with the trailing edge to measure if your wheel is toe'ing in, or out. You can then convert that measurement in millimetres to degrees with a bit of trig, or a conversion chart.
I've flirted with this a few times before, never to make adjustments but to check to see whether I can match the measurements I've had from a recent fancy machine. The honest truth is that I've never succeeded to do that, so I didn't have high hopes for this adjustment - my backup plan was always going to be to beg, borrow and steal another alignment session with Dave if I could get to Hull without shredding my tyres.
I changed my mindset a bit, I wouldn't try to match what £XX,XXX worth of laser kit would tell me, because with the best intentions in the world I would be using different reference points. Measuring against the string for instance, ideally this would run through the exact centre line of my wheels - but when limited to axle stand "clicks" you've got to just get as close as you can, so rather than measuring a 17" diameter rim, I might actually be measuring it where it's 16.5" or whatever. One of my centre caps might stick out slightly more than the others, throwing off my reference box, etc. So many opportunities for this to be wrong, BUT relative to my own settings I should be able to wiggle the setup into the direction I want.
My ballast, and eBay steering wheel clamp:
With all that in mind, I spent a long time setting up my string box and eventually got the following toe measurements:
FL: 1mm toe in
FR: 2mm toe out
Front Axle = 1mm toe out
RL: 3mm toe in
RR: 0mm
Rear Axle = 3mm toe in
The actual spec I was aiming for is:
FL: 0.5mm out
FR: 0.5mm out
Front Axle = 1mm toe out
RL: 1.5mm in
RR: 1.5mm in
Rear Axle = 3mm toe in.
So as you can see, my axle toe settings were exactly where they should be - but everything was just offset to one side. I measured this three times over a 24 hour window, got consistent measurements to within 0.1mm each time.
Onto the adjustments, I worked out some rough maths to figure out how many turns of the track rod = how much movement, just to give me a starting point, then I could adjust from there. On a proper setup, the car is up in the air, the technician can adjust the trackrods "real time" and see the data changing on a screen. For me though it was easy to lift the car, make an adjustment, drop it down and roll it back and forth and then re-measure.
Some time later, I was reliably repeating the following measurements:
FL: 0.44mm out
FR: 0.5mm out
Front Axle = 0.94mm toe out
RL: 1.3mm in
RR: 1.6mm in
Rear Axle = 2.9mm toe in
Happy enough with that, I locked everything off, retried one more time and then put the car to the test.
Did 120miles over the weekend and the car felt great. Road manners were bang on, if I let go of the wheel the car would track straight. Being slightly critical my steering wheel was ever so slightly right hand down though, but so close to level - it was hard to be certain. I wondered how much of that is just me steering into road camber, rather than it actually being off to cock.
Handling wise, the car had it's usual feeling of a slightly light off-centre feel through the wheel, but incrementally weighted up nicely when leaning into a turn. Braking stability was cock on, and on the few occasions I had to explore grip properly, it retained it's usual balance through the understeer/oversteer transition - but it'll take a trackday to judge this fairly.
Before declaring a total success, I wanted to take one more measurement of the car... to see if some proper mileage had settled it at all, and to see if I could get repeatable results.
FL: 1.3mm out
FR: 0.2mm in
RL: 1.0mm in
RR: 1.8mm in
Errr.... disaster? Measuring totally different at first glance I was pretty disheartened. Then I noticed that the total axle differences were matching, at least to within 0.1mm tolerance.
The front difference I think I can explain with steering wheel angle, I said before that it drove very slightly RHD - so perhaps I've now got it locked at slightly LHD compared to before... and the measurements would agree with that.
As for the rears, I can't explain why they're different other than measuring tolerances with an eBay caliper and some fishing line. I'll measure a few more times tonight and average out my measurements to see what I can do. Perhaps I underestimated how much things would settle with mileage, or perhaps the fuel I burned off is responsible.
Question now, the car drove great at the weekend. As good as it ever has, tbh. Do I seek perfection and try to adjust again, straightening out the wheel... or leave it? It was probably less than 5 degrees out...
Oh, and my driveshaft seals are bone dry still
Yes, you should seek perfection. Only because it winds me up no end if I dont have a level steering wheel. I find just about nothing else as annoying as this
-
The Hornet
- Posts: 244
- Joined: Wed Nov 13, 2013 4:30 pm
or... get wound up as its never fully straight due to the camber of most of our roads - I gave up worrying.. 
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