All posts tagged projectcars

Blackbird Fabworx Rollbar in Miata

In September of 2019, with great fanfare and urgency, I purchased the Blackbird Fabworx rollbar for my NB Miata MX-5.

Now, after more than 3 years of the rollbar sitting around in my garage, I finally gave up on installing it and went to T&Z Auto Service in South River, NJ run by Mr. David Deerson and paid him to install it professionally.

His pricing was acceptable and now I finally have a beautiful rollbar in the car and am ready to go to the track for an HPDE event. Below are some pictures.

A 2-ton Shop Crane for $160

It is winter here, and while getting bored I was looking for shop cranes, engine hoists or cherry pickers for my garage to purchase just in case I may need it in the future. Someone 15 miles away was selling one for $160 with light surface rust. So I went to check it out.

…and I purchased it.

Drive Belts & Pulleys Replacement on the Infiniti G35 Coupe

Since the day I purchased the Infiniti G35 Coupe, there was a belt squeal on cold starts that would go away after a minute of the engine getting warm and would not appear until the next cold start. After some research, I found that it was due to the main drive belt not being tight enough.

The previous owner had replaced the alternator before my purchase, but had used his uncalibrated thumb to test for the belt tension. I wanted to make sure that the belts were new and proactively decided to replace the idler pulleys as well. This post talks about how to do that. If you just want to check and adjust the belt tension, you can skip to the last section.

This job is actually relatively easy, and can be done within an hour or two if you have the parts available. However, my car has some rust and the adjustment bolts needed replacement, which delayed the process for me.

Lower Oil Pan Replacement on the Infiniti G35 Coupe

I did another oil change on the Infiniti G35 Coupe but the oil leak that was happening from the oil pan drain bolt did not stop, despite replacing it with a new washer. So it was time to replace the lower oil pan so that the oil leak would stop.

This job is actually very easy, and can be done within an hour if you have the parts available.

Fix CEL codes P1128 and P1130 Boxster by cleaning MAF Sensor

The Porsche Boxster S started showing a check engine light (CEL) in May. I used an OBD2 code reader and saw that the codes were P1128 and P1130.

Luckily for me, there was an article in the May-June Porsche Club of America magazine (Figure 1) that mentioned this exact issue in their tech Q&A section.

Turns out it is related to the intake, and the easiest test is to clean and/or replace the mass air flow (MAF) sensor. Since a new MAF sensor is about $150-$270, I decided to clean it first to see if that fixed the issue.

However, based on other research it could also be an evap leak but this post is about the MAF sensor cleaning.