2002 Update

Originally from June 5th 2009

This last week I have been able to drive the 02 everyday to work. What a great feeling, so much more fun than the Sunfire. The engine still ran a little rough, but so far have over 140 miles on this tank of gas and it still has some to go. I know, that isn't great but I'm still tuning it.

Speaking of better mileage, I managed to figure the fuel problem with the Sunfire too. Apparently is was a heavy foot. Letting up and almost never going over 3000RPM allowed me to go from 240 miles per tank to 315 per tank. But the car is boring to drive and hot with no A/C.

So back to the 02, it was having a charging problem, I thought. Turned out something was draining the battery fairly quickly. I figured it must have been one of the add-ons that I had put on so I started by putting a voltmeter on the battery and then disconnected the electric fuel pump. Volts were still dropping. Disconnected the electric fan, still dropping. Disconnected the coil to carb solenoid line and it was still dropping. So I went into the cabin and disconnected the switch for the electric fuel pump. Volt dropping slow down and eventually stopped. I still can't let the car sit for more than a couple of week without starting it since the drainage problem damaged the battery over the winter when the car just sat in the garage. The switch had a light that burned out soon after installing it and I didn't think much of it, I wasn't really using the electric pump any way after replacing the mechanical one with another that I had. Apparently that light had shorted it out and caused the drain.

The 5 speed is great, but the rear cross mount and the exhaust pipe rub each other. Not bad, but can be annoying.

Earlier tonight I tuned the car a little more and improved the throttle response and acceleration and the engine sound. Hopefully it improved power and fuel economy also. I back out the idle mixture screw half a turn and turned the distributor just a little more clockwise (I can never remember if that is retarding it or advancing it).