Ecotec Timing Chain Guide Bolt

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Timing chain guide bolt cover (circled in red)

The other day, I found an article about the poor design of the Ecotec timing chain guide bolt.  Specifically, how prone the bolt is to backing out.  In extreme cases, the bolt can get tangled in the timing chain and shear off.  Needless to say, having bolt fragments fall into the timing chain of a contact engine, could potentially cause rather expensive damage.

If I am not mistaken, the 2.4L Ecotec powering bowtie6 is the same engine currently installed in the Polaris Slingshot – so if you happen to own a Slingshot, then you might want to read on…

The Fix

Amazon has the replacement bolt made by Dorman – about $20.  Here is what the label on the box looks like:

Dorman Timing Chain Guide Bolt replacement part number 917-954

The factory bolt is tiny and you get to it by removing a “plug” on the front of the engine.  You can see that cover plug in the top photo on this post (i have added a red circle around it).  Once you remove this plug you can insert a long 10mm socket and take the bolt out; be careful though because you don’t want to drop it!  This is what the pair looks like once they come out:

Bolt on the left, cover on the right…

Here is the front of the engine with the bolt cover removed:

Removed the plug…

And this is what the new bolt looks like:

and replaced it with this…

Finally, this is what the new bolt looks like installed:

Replacement bolt securely in place…

Moral of the Story:

When my original bolt came out, it was not exactly “tight”.  I am afraid had I ran it longer it would have eventually backed out.  And this would not have been a happy time.  Some things I have learned from this:

  • Replace the Ecotec timing chain guide bolt – it is cheap and it is easy.
  • If you own a Polaris Slingshot, do yourself a favor and read up about this.  For a mere $20 you will save yourself a lot of grief.
  • I wanted to show more pictures of the new bolt but I am afraid of copyright issues.  Please, if you have read this far check out the Dorman Ecotec timing guide chain bolt page.  There is a wealth of information there; even a video.
  • NOTE:  I don’t get a penny from Dorman about this  I also very seldom endorse folks.  But, I have read enough (and watched a few videos) about this kind of failure and figured it be best to do a PSA about the damage potential running the original bolt.

As always, be safe and hope all is well with you.  If you have any questions, let me know…

Mobil1 Oil in a Cheap Wine Box

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Cheap wine box full of Mobil1

Mobil1 Oil in a cheap wine box?  Yes.  You are reading this correctly.  Let me explain…

Today was oil-change-day for my wife’s Equinox and my Camaro as well.  I headed early this morning to Wally-World to see what was available.

The Equinox takes 5 quarts; the Camaro takes 8 quarts.  So normally I would buy my favorite 5 quart containers but today, i found something new…  Turns out some genius at the Mobil oil marketing department, came up with the brilliant idea of packaging 12 quarts (yes a dozen) of Mobil1 in a cheap wine box.

For those of you that don’t know what I am talking about, head out to the wine section of your favorite  local grocery store and find the “boxed wine” shelf.  That is where you can find the cheap wine packaged in a heavy cardboard box holding a “bag” full of wine.  Even comes with a nifty spigot that helps dispense the product.

I am a bit of a wine snob and this is the ultimate insult for what Galileo called “sunlight trapped in a liquid”.  No matter how humble wine is, it should be respected enough to be properly bottled.  But no.  The cheapest of the cheap has to suffer the indignity of being packaged in a plastic bladder stuffed in a cardboard box.  And now, they have done this to Mobil1.

What made this worse for me was that I didn’t realize the box contained a plastic bag full of oil.  No.  I learned of this when I got home and noticed the box had a “don’t cut this box with a knife” warning.  That is when I realized you have to carefully open a flap on the front of the box, then reach in the box, grab the spigot and gently pull it out.  Then after that, diligently place the spigot it in the proper position.  Made me think of something else you have to carefully grab and gently pull out before you can put it in the right position. 😉

The Good:

All this wonderment for $49 and change.  Not too bad, right?

But the deal goes downhill very, very quick from here.  I did buy a 5 quart bottle and fortunately that jug came with a handy with a way to measure off individual quarts by looking at the tick marks on the side of the plastic container.  So I dispensed the 5 quarts in the container first, and used the empty container to help figure out how much I had to use from there.

The Bad:

And here is where the “deal” goes south even more quickly.

Dispensing expensive synthetic motor oil should not be from a plastic bladder.  You see, that spigot in the picture above is not at the lowest point in the bag.  This means that when you think you have dispensed every drop of goodness…  Think again…

Open the “empty” box and we find this…

Too much Mobil1 to waste…  But how can we get this out?

Yep.  Quite a bit of expensive oil is still in the bag.  Surely you don’t throw this away!  So, I had to get pair of scissors and very carefully open an exit for this bit of oil.  Of course, if you don’t get it just perfect you end up making a mess.  Oh and that is not the only way to make a mess…  The spigot leaks every time you open/close that valve!

Take Aways…

You might ask why I am making such a big deal out of something so trivial.  Especially when there are so many things wrong with the world today.  Well, this is an epic fail on the part of the Mobil oil company.  Just think of the thousands of folks out there that don’t read the directions and cut into the box just to have 12 quarts of oil go everywhere.  Expensive lesson (to the tune of $49) to learn, huh?

The 5 quart plastic jug is the hands-down winner.  You can use it as a measuring device (thanks for the tick marks on the side) and it is easy and convenient to use.  I suppose the ultimate solution would be to save 5 quart jugs and refill them from a “cheap wine box of Mobil1”.

But no.  There is something very wrong about fumbling about trying to pull the spigot out of that box…

Any guess on what kind of ratchet we have here?

Michael Collins

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Today, I read a tweet from Buzz Aldrin (@TheRealBuzz) about the passing of Michael Collins…  Another of my childhood heroes passed on today; he was 90.

Ad Astra, Michael Collins.  God Speed….

2020 Mileage Roundup

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Coming to you on a rainy and dreary New Year’s Day 2021, with the previous mileage roundup for the fleet.  Thanks to the pandemic, 2020 was not the greatest to report outings for any members of the stable.  Good for saving money on fuel and wear-and-tear, but cars are made for driving and this was no fun.

I just realized I did not post totals for 2018 and 2019, so i’ll include them here for good measure.

RedRock

This is sad – my 2014 Camaro didn’t see much of the road this year.  With lockdown in place and working from home, didn’t get a chance to get out much…

2014 Camaro SS – RedRock

QuickSilver

Well I suppose this makes my AP1 S2000 more valuable…  It didn’t get driven at all in 2020.  But, I am not quite ready yet to let her go.  Have you seen what nice S2K’s are going for on BAT these days!  Yikes!!

2003 Honda S2000 – QuickSilver

bowtie6

I feel bad for poor old bowtie6.  Hardly driven in 2020.  The RedTop Optima took quite a hit during lockdown – it suffered loss of charge.  So much so, I had to get a battery tender.  I have written about it here:  NOCO Genius10 Battery Charger Review

1972 Triumph TR6 – bowtie6

Finally, some dashboard pictures:

Good Riddance 2020

With 2021 ahead, lets just hope things turn out better for us all.  With vaccines on the horizon I try to be optimistic about 2021.  Sure would be nice to be able to return to some sort of normalcy.  However, the reality is things are still not well not only here in America but in the rest of the world.

Flipping channels last night, I did get to see folks celebrating the New Year in New Zealand where according to the news, covid does not pose a threat.  I reckon folks there had a more unified and caring approach than the rest of us…  Maybe there is hope…

Happy New Year and be safe…

Improve the Factory Triumph TR6 Courtesy Light

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LED festoon bulb on the bottom, original on the top

In this article, I’ll describe how to improve the factory Triumph TR6 courtesy light.  On the original 1971 Triumph TR6 there is only one courtesy light – I talked about that in the previous article and now, I’ll show you the results of how to improve the courtesy lights with not one, but two.

I used two courtesy light housing mounted on the kick panels on both footwells.  You can see that in the picture above.  Since I changed all lights on bowtie6 with LED’s, I thought about improving the dim bulbs originally fitted to the courtesy lights.  Sure enough, there are replacement festoon bulbs with LED’s.  The difference is dramatic; the LED’s are just so much brighter

36mm festoon bulbs

Just one note of caution:  there are numerous sized festoon bulbs.  The ones that fit the TR6 courtesy light mount are 36mm in size.  As you can see in the picture above, these even come with a heat sink on the back.  They are so bright I had to angle them down a little towards the bottom of the bulb holder.  They work great!

Wiring the lights

I spent a few hours putting all this together today.  And the result is quite impressive.  I’m pleased…

First, the passenger side.  Here you can see the new light on.  I want to show this picture first because it includes part of interior fuse pane.  You can see the bottom 10 amp fuse; that is new.  When we fitted the Ecotec in bowtie6, I ended up re-wiring the whole car.  This fuse panel holds all the circuits inside the cab.  There is another one in the trunk as well as the main panel under the hood.  I had left one fuse slot with a constant “hot” for the courtesy lights.  And this finally got wired up today.  In case you want to see more about this, check out bowtie6‘s Custom Wiring – Inside the Cab (if you look close, you can see this same fuse panel with the missing circuit!).

Here is the driver’s side with the new light turned off.  This picture is misleading as hell though.  I took these pictures with my new iPhone12 and I must say, the camera is simply amazing.  It compensated for the low light big-time.

Here, we have the new light on.  The LED festoon bulb sure is worth it.  And I must say, they are cheap.  They are just a smidge over a $1 each.

I had these Coco mats custom made; missed the heel pad by a few inches – you can see the wear just ahead of the pad

One more showing the bottom of the dash.  “What is that cutout on the dash for?”, you ask…  That is part bowtie6‘s Tilt Steering.

And, what does the passenger’s side look like?  Take a look…

I need to get new Coco mats! The red dots have faded. Then again, they are about 15 years old…

Yeah, its been long overdue, but the result is pretty cool.

Remember I mentioned the new iPhone12?  Just for kicks, I stepped out in the garage, turned off all lights and flipped the light switch to the “on” position and took this picture.  Note the doors are both shut but the lights are on.  Each light has a little switch.  It took me quite some time to figure this out, but the way I wired this up, the lights will operate in either way:

  • With either door open – so opening the passenger and/or driver door will turn the lights on
  • With both doors closed –  by sliding the switch to “on”.  And if you do this, both lights will light up.

Yeah… That’s an HSR sticker on the back glass of the hard top.

Except for making the picture smaller, this picture has not been edited.  It has been a good day.

Stay safe people!