Guinness

What Did You Do To Your Smart Today?

5,057 posts in this topic

Having now moved to a house that is about 1 km from work, I've only driven my car twice this week, for a total of maybe 40 km. Now I've got to remember to go for a drive every once in a while to make sure things don't start to seize up! I just came in now after giving the car a full washing, in anticipation of the BBQ at Troy's tomorrow.

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Not to the smart, but for it, I finally installed a garage door opener on the smart's (my) side of the garage last night! Been in this house for 18 years an have only ever had an opener on the Honda's (wife's) side, until now.

This one's a beaut, a Liftmaster 8500 Elite Series jackshaft opener (ie: it clamps onto the torsion bar, leaving the ceiling above the door clear). It is dead quiet except for the first and last couple of seconds of each movement when it slows down (sounds like the DC motor doesn't like being regulated). It is also internet-connected through Liftmaster's Internet Gateway, so I can control it through a smartphone or iPad app. Lots of other nifty features, too.

Now I just need to rewire my smart's built-in garage opener button to the new remote.

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Got the finishing touches on adding paddle shifters to my Passion Cabrio this morning. .............. Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. ........ Luv it! Thanks Uncle Glenn! :)

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Francesco, just read you write up about building your garage door switch. Awesome idea, I will be making one soon. Maybe an idea for you is to use one way on the switch for one door and the opposite for the other door, roof up for left door and roof down for right door. I also like the sounds of your opener for my next garage, more room for a car lift ;) I recently worked on a fellow member's smart, not my own. But replaced front springs, front pads and rotors. Also rebuilt the driver's side mirror to adress an issue with it not sitting right, wish we had taken pictures. I'm very grateful to the members who trust me to work on their cars, and happy to meet fellow smart enthusiasts....plus I just love working on cars so it gives me something to do on my day off.

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Yup, I've long thought about that, Andrew. :) But this new opener has something called "MyQ" which can control external accessories like light switches so I may use the down switch for that.

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Picked up OEM oil filter cartridge at dealer ($9), had 3 liters of 0-40 Mobile1 from CT's last sale ($9'ish each).Took everything to a local garage that did the oil change and a quick underbody inspection for $20.Quick, no mess, less swearing and no used oil to dispose of.btw..... to be able to do this I swapped the original oil pan for one with a drain plug last fall.

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Gave the BRABUS it's last bath (first time in a car wash ewwwww pressure washers), it's on route to Florida as we speak :(post-12052-1405562693_thumb.jpg

Edited by dmoonen

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Not sure yet going to wait for till the fall till I choose a new toy, summer is crazy for work I'm in and out of the country every week so play time is limited. Currently the Vw is becoming a Vdub and I have a stage three kit for my b5 RS4 engine in my TT roadster waiting to be put in which is plenty enough for the time being :) Will miss the gal I will say

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Pulled the OE stereo and fixed a wire yanked from a subwoofer connector. Happened the last time I pulled the stereo.Nice to have my under-seat massage back.Sounds good too.

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The new Philips Xtreme Vision LEDs are really quite promising. Instead of a slew of fake "Cree" SMDs glued to a cheesy aluminum tube, it uses two genuine Luxeon SMDs on either side of an angled white heat sink. First I installed amber 7507s (PY21Ws) in all four turn signals; they come packaged with Philips-branded "CANbus correctors" (big resistors). The fronts are very visible in broad daylight, though the spread is somewhat lacking because the diffuser lenses are gone. In the rear, the smoked European pulse turn signals are huge and bright, subjectively quite a bit brighter than any filament PY21Ws I've used (or their Chinese LED replacements). Same goes for the red P21W in the rear fog lamp and white P21W in the (single) reverse lamp. They are amazingly bright and noticeable.The only letdown appears to be the red P21/5W lamps for the brake lamps. As tail lamps, they are much brighter than a 5W tungsten filament, and when the pedal is depressed they get only marginally brighter, almost unnoticeably. The Chinese P21/5W LEDs I've been using for the past couple of years work better in this regard. I am wondering if I'm missing something somewhere. I don't believe rotating hem 180° makes any difference.

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Installed a realhorn finally and put a new oil pan heater on & discovered the old 50 watt pad left on my transmission housing was still good so hooked that in as well, found a rusting section of brakeline that got some rust treatment too.

Edited by strawboss

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I just checked, they are true P21/5W so the pins are not equidistant from the base and the lamps can't be rotated 180°. Unless someone figures this out, I guess they are going back. I had the same issue with an earlier set of Chinese "Cree" LEDs.

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Got the engine out of the cradle and up in the air, stripping down the cradle getting it prepped for media blasting and powder coating.

Edited by sbungay

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Got an oil change on the Canada1 on Wednesday.Found oil running out under car when I got home. Oil all over lower engine and muffler.Turns out the oil filler cap not on tight. Hell of a mess to clean up.Real glad it wasn't anything serious.Boy, does something like this get the old heart pumpin' hard.

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Had a good laugh, when my other half was shopping in the Eton Center buying girlie stuff and spending my money I decided to go to Canadian Tire to pick up some air filters and oil filters for my vehicles. . "Sorry sir we dont carry any filters for cars but we have cleaning products". Basicly without auto parts its basicly Wallmart with more tools :suicide_anim:

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Put the engine cradle up on stands, removed the wheels, removed the shocks, removed the park brake cables from their bracket on the cradle. Only the centre rear mount and anti-roll bar connections are holding it to the de Dion tube. those are soaking in penetrating oil and should be disconnected tomorrow.

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Today I had the crack in my exhaust manifold welded. I only noticed it a couple weeks ago. The turbo sounded a bit funny. Way better now, and way better than trying to change it out. Also changed the front brake pads. My outsides had about 50% left, but the insides were gone. So much that the clip started scraping, prompting me to change them out. The bottom bolt on the caliper was very odd too. A 5 sided head! Never saw one before, and clearly had no tool to remove it, so used vicegrips and replaced it with one of the bolts that came with the pads. Set was just shy of $80 from Weber Motors in Edmonton. One piece at a time. It'll be a new car soon.

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Yeah, sure feels that way sometimes!Mine has developed a new noise from the rear end, no idea what it is. At first I thought it was loose rear panels, perhaps at the drop hangers and the exhaust valance. But the noise seems only to occur when the wheels/axles are under torsional loads, at low speeds (like when pulling away from a stop) and when shifting up in the lowest gears. Any ideas? CV joint? If I stand on the brake with my left and apply the accelerator with my right, no noise. It got progressively louder over the course of two 15 km commutes.

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The bottom bolt on the caliper was very odd too. A 5 sided head! Never saw one before, and clearly had no tool to remove it, so used vicegrips and replaced it with one of the bolts that came with the pads.

There is no need to remove that bottom bolt. Remove the top one with a 13mm long socket and the bracket holding the pads will swing back allowing you to remove the pads.Evilution has an excellent guide.The bottom bolt sets the alignment of the caliper to the rotor.

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Crap, I didn't know that, I would have left the darn thing in. It did kinda look that way when I took it off. I used the replacement screw that came in the set in the bottom of the caliper, I don't think it will set off the alignment of the caliper too much. It was off to begin with from what I could tell. One pad was worn way more than the other.

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latches replaced under recall at MB Markham. this is the second replacement set. now at 190000 km.

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Tracked down that groaning noise in the rear end as it had gotten scary-loud. Turned out that the LH lower track bar ("X-frame") bolt had worked itself just a tiny bit loose. I was all set to tear down the entire rear suspension on the LH side, but as soon as I started jacking the De Dion tube on that side to release tension there, I heard the groaning and was able to pinpoint it. I removed the bolt, and slathered some Permatex purple ceramic lube on all the mating surfaces and inside the bushing. Did it back up tight to 65 Nm, no more noise!

Installed my pretty new De Dion tube end caps, painted Sunburst (aka Bilstein) Yellow. These are way nicer than any of the alloy caps.

Prepped, primed, painted and cleared my old fuel door (tridion silver again). Once I buff it out with some gentle compound, it will replace the diesel-etched, painted one I installed a couple of years ago.

Hopefully I can get the interior cleaned, the exterior washed, barred, polished and waxed, the oil, oil and air filters changed, and the injectors swapped out before the drive to Trenton Saturday morning.

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