Diablo repairs

I was trying to make videos and take pics, but I am only 1 person with only so much time so those fall to the way side sometimes. I do have some vids I'll post in this thread. This will be my thread of service on this car.

 

These are all the little things to make the car as perfect as I can. It's been fun so far and I look forward to making this car as drivable as any diablo. Maybe even trackable here and there.

 

The car arrived in good drivable condition June 4th 2018. Overall the body and lines lined up as good if not better than any lambo I have been around. Very pleased about that. Body is in excellent condition with some minor touch up needed in small areas. Very very happy with overall look and appearance of car. Car seems to idle and run very smooth. Sounds great and pleased with that. Interior is amazing. I was expecting some loose panels being not original to car, but it was done so well I can’t hardly believe it. One of the nicer interiors I have ever seen in a lambo.

 

Car has cover, original cat pipes, and a 3” thick binder of service history.

 

Took a couple days before I had time to actually take it further than the garage.

 

Mid week got the car out for a drive and everything seemed ok. Checking things over noticed fuel gauge inop, clunking in front steering, and car seems not to roll very well. Inspected the brakes on arrival and noticed left rear brake very hot. Caliper was seizing up and not releasing.

 

Thursday June 7th put car up on lift for full inspection of car inside and out. Shockingly low surface rust on car but many pieces of hardware had surface rust or were quite rusty. Took off many nuts and bolts and went to nut and bolt shop down the road from me. Replaced many fasteners, nuts, etc. with stainless button heads and Allen heads. Took rear left wheel off. Inspected rear calipers, rotors, and hand brake calipers and pads. Left rear caliper needs rebuild. Decided to order new bbk Brembo kit for rear from Reid performance. (whiteout) In the mean time I took out the rear pads, took off brake line and blocked off line so car was still driveable. Rear handbrake pads were worn. Hand cut my own pads from a set of leftover pagid yellow 29’s I had. The stock pads are $400 and garbage anyways. Hand cut pads worked great. Made adjustment on hand brake for it to work properly. Noticed front brake ducting is old and torn. Ordered new brake ducting.

 

Friday June 8th took wife out on date in car. Noticed some of the interior lights weren’t working properly in dash. A/C works, but blower isn’t the best. Transmission seems to whine a little more than normal, and center tunnel gets pretty hot. Engine water temp likes to hit 100 easily and oil temp hits 120. Both of those temps are acceptable, but not happy with them. Also not happy with the steering clunk. Oil temps get hot and also oil pressure very hi.

Pulled out the service history book and noticed the car had the engine out at one time. Asked previous owner about it and he said he knew about the engine out, but wasn’t sure what had been done. Previous owner before him was suzukidave. I got a hold of Suzuki dave and had a great 40 min conversation about the engine rebuild. Car has and excellent rebuild with racing bearings, passenger side head redone, machined oil pump, and nitrite coated and polished crank. Many man hours went into rebuild. He noted oil pressure hi from rebuild but always been that way. Noted water temps were always cool, but oil temp would get hot.

Monday June 11th. Put car up on lift. Replaced the brake ducts. Installed a naca duct under car with hose directly to the transmission tunnel for cooling. Re adjusted the shifter gate. It was pressing on shifter causing gear whine. Got it centered and now gear whine almost obsolete. Sounds normal and quieter than the 6.0 I had. Inspected the steering rack. Noticed steering rack was missing some bushings. It is just old and worn out. Made my own bushings and put clamp around it. Works great but ordered a new steering rack anyways from Glen and AMH exotics.

Took front interior dash apart, had burned out light bulbs. Replaced bulbs and works great. Some front running lights need new bulbs but not to worried about that right now. Tested the fuel gauge and it works properly. Must be sending unit.

 

Sending unit is under the overfill coolant reservoir. Since car was running hot I purchased a new Napa thermostat napa part # 148. I drilled out the top weep hold. Took off inner rear fenders and rear decklid for access to drain plug on rads. Pulled plugs and drained coolant. Ordered Evan waterless coolant from local vendor. Once coolant was completely drained I pushed air through the system to get rest of coolant out. Removed the crossover pipe and took out thermostat. Installed new thermostat. (tested both thermostats and new one opens about 10 degrees earlier.) I sprayed the rads down with simple green and washed the dirt off rads fins to help with cooling.

To get to the fuel sender I removed the coolant overflow res. Sending unit hard to get to in tight space. Removed fuel filter hold down and I had more access. Removed the sending wire and ground wire. Had light surface rust and looked a little old. I sprayed electrical cleaner and cleaned terminals with wire brush. Sprayed again and put back together. Fuel gauge now operable.

Monday June 25th. BBK showed up. Put car on lift, removed old calipers, pads, rotors, and old brake lines. Installed new stainless brake lines, rotors, and calipers. Used 6 bottles of brake clean and cleaned up all area around and under rotors and suspension. Filled brake res with motul 660 and Bled brakes. Re adjusted hand brake because new rotors weren’t worn like old rotors.

Took battery cover off and sprayed oil cooler down with simple green and washed off cooler fins. Noticed I can install and oil cooler fan like on race car very easily. Ordered 8” fan. Will install to interior button that isn’t used on a negative switch relay when fan arrives. (I like everything to run cool and not have to worry about heating issues in traffic etc. fan should help with this)

 

Battery is newer interstate. Terminals were clean and in good condition.

 

Radio works well, but subs didn’t work. Pulled radio out and noticed the remote wire wasn’t hooked up to amplifier. Hooked up remote and sub behind driver works but not passenger. Going to look into installing different smaller updated amp anyways. Worry about this later.

 

I'm not really happy with the tubi exhaust so I ordered the straight pipe kit from Reid performance. Hoping to install this today.

 

Awesome write up man. Thanks for taking the time.... keep us posted on everything.

Awesome write up man. Thanks for taking the time.... keep us posted on everything.

Will do! Thanks man

I forgot to mention in all of that I changed the fluids in all the boxes.

 

The rear diff is of early model diablo years where the factory had 2 fill holes.. i filled the top hole which is actually higher than the breather. haha.. so i was getting a leak out the breather and had to find out the hard way it was just because i used the top fill hole and not the lower fill hole.. strange, but early diablos had quirks like that.

 

the car was running hot like i mentioned.. 100c water easily and 125 oil..

 

So i replaced the thermostat and helped a tiny but not much. I jumped into the engine fans. I tackled the driver side first because it is the side with the a/c condenser as well. I took the fan out and took it apart and cleaned it all up. I installed another fan on the inside of the condenser to push air as the other fan pulls air. As I was putting the driver side fan back in I noticed it was pushing air and not pulling. Probably the problem the whole time. I reversed polarity and voila a lot more air flow. Now with the inner fan and outer fan it moves a shit ton of air! haha.

 

I also installed a fan on the oil cooler. I don't like how the car will bake at lights etc. I hate a car running too hot.

 

I connected them to a switch that is connected to the accessory.. So 3 relays and a switch and works perfect. If the switch is on the fans come on with the accessory of the car. If the switch is off they won't come on at all. Pretty happy with it.

 

Took the car for a drive and it was the first time I was able to drive the car the way I want to without having heating issues. Wahoo!! so stoked it worked out.

 

In all I have put a ton of hours (80 plus) into this car. Almost all the little nuances are figured out and I am trying to go for a good drive with a great group of cars tomorrow!

 

I tried installing whiteout's straight pipes for the 97.5 to murci cars. We figured it would be worth a shot to see if it would work... bummer it did not. So for now I am still with the Tubi.. I don't hate it, but I don't love it.. I'll have a custom fabricator here do something sometime in the future.

 

The steering rack is on it's way to me. So soon I will have that sorted.. I am thinking of replacing all the shocks. They are available for great pricing right now. Originals are still good and seem fine, but would look super clean with new shocks! Once I do that I truly can't think of anything else this car will really need for a long time.

Also forgot to mention. Stereo system. Car had great components in it, but just weren't hooked up properly. The amp wasn't bridged properly so I fixed that.

 

2 8" jl audio 4 ohm speakers wired in parallel to 2 ohms with a 2ohm stable amp. One of the subs didn't even have a wire to it.. Strange. I think whoever murcivu had do the install just flubbed it all.

 

Made proper adjustments on the amp and the head unit and the stereo is night and day. (i used to install professionally for 3 years when i was in my youger 20's)

 

The a/c system works better now with the pushing fan on the condensor, however the blower wasn't pushing air properly. dove into that and got some better air flow. Very happy with all the I have figured out so far.

 

 

Just received the from factory new steering rack for the diablo. Super easy install only took about 2 hours on the lift. That included the time it took to remove the stereo amplifier to get access from the front bonnet. Car feels great with the new rack.

 

 

The odo quit working. So I ordered that plastic gear for the VDO gauge. I overnighted the gear and installed it the next day. Pretty easy install and I repainted the odo bezel while I was at it. Worked perfectly. I only needed the small gear, but I bought both for $50 and replaced both with new since I was doing it. $92 total with overnight fees. $1900 for brand new odo and then I would have to make some sticker and explain the odo change and everything. blah... $92 good as new and don't have to deal with any of that shit. Perfect. I recommend to anyone.

 

Car still running warmer that I would like. I took out the thermostat again and removed the guts. Put back in and car is running much cooler now.

 

*note

I have a laser temp gauge. Throughout ownership I have been testing the functionality of the stock vdo gauge and making sure it reads properly. Just recently the gauge has been seeming 10deg c too hi. I am installing a new gauge in a secondary pickup location and I'll just hide it under the dash. That way I know for sure what the temp is VS maybe the old gauge just isn't quite working properly. Passenger side of dash where the airbag is on newer cars is an empty hole. Suzukidave wired up a switch to turn off a/c compressor and that is where the switch is located now. I have wired up a switch to turn on some secondary fans to the rads and to the oil cooler and put in same location. These secondary fans work excellently. The oil cooler fan draws a ton of heat out of the oil. Super nice to have. Hopefully one day I can have the car running so well I can take it to the track and do some light laps in it for fun. That is the goal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Awesome reading this detailed thread, Chad. Really enjoyed it and impressed at the level of detail on the fixes. I hope you finish the thread off with a few awesome pics once the work is complete!

Awesome reading this detailed thread, Chad. Really enjoyed it and impressed at the level of detail on the fixes. I hope you finish the thread off with a few awesome pics once the work is complete!

Thank you. I have been getting ready for this upcoming race weekend, so don't have much to update. After this weekend I hope I will have some updates!

Keep up the awesome work buddy. So glad it went to you! Thoroughly enjoying your posts.

 

Keep up the awesome work buddy. So glad it went to you! Thoroughly enjoying your posts.

Cooler temps outside have been getting me back in the car a lot lately. Putting miles on the car and thoroughly enjoying the drive. The car really needed someone to drive it. I have put about 1,000 miles on the car and it is really feeling better and better. Each time I drove it I would notice something that I would like to fix/tweak. I have been able to drive the car about 5 times now without feeling like there was anything that needed attention. Pleasure to drive and enjoy. I think onlookers enjoy when I drive it as well. 

1k miles already?  That is so awesome.  How is the gas gauge doing?  Is it more accurate now?  That was one thing I was always unsure of was how much gas was left.

The gas gauge needed to be cleaned up at the connections. It works well now. I think it is a trait of these older diablo's to show empty when there is really some fuel left, just to give you some time to make it to the fuel station. lol. 

+1 for Mega Chad.

Great content, great DIY.

Pics??????.....

On 11/20/2018 at 12:33 PM, megachad said:

The gas gauge needed to be cleaned up at the connections. It works well now. I think it is a trait of these older diablo's to show empty when there is really some fuel left, just to give you some time to make it to the fuel station. lol. 

I've never heard of a Diablo having an accurate fuel gauge. Don't you go fix it now! Blasphemy!

On 12/6/2018 at 12:38 AM, SimonSays said:

I've never heard of a Diablo having an accurate fuel gauge. Don't you go fix it now! Blasphemy!

hahahahaha

On 11/29/2018 at 7:03 AM, Kenny94945 said:

+1 for Mega Chad.

Great content, great DIY.

Thank you 

On 11/29/2018 at 11:17 AM, diabloking said:

Pics??????.....

Here are some pics.  

You sir have delivered admirably!!! That is one sweet Bull.

 

 

Btw...in the future you might want to blank out your license plate.......

On 12/7/2018 at 8:31 PM, diabloking said:

You sir have delivered admirably!!! That is one sweet Bull.

 

 

Btw...in the future you might want to blank out your license plate.......

It's a sweet bull indeed.

Funny thing, I've always wondered why people wanted their plates blacked out. Legally speaking, someone can take a picture of your driving down the street, plate in full view, and publish it, well within their rights. And being a dealer tag, doesn't that make it even more challenging? Presumably, you'd have to have either Nexus Lexis or access to the DMV to make any use of it, no?

Never give a*holes the chance to cause chaos!!!#!

18 hours ago, Destructo said:

It's a sweet bull indeed.

Funny thing, I've always wondered why people wanted their plates blacked out. Legally speaking, someone can take a picture of your driving down the street, plate in full view, and publish it, well within their rights. And being a dealer tag, doesn't that make it even more challenging? Presumably, you'd have to have either Nexus Lexis or access to the DMV to make any use of it, no?

I am of the thoughts that any plate is visible any time. So whatever. I am kind to everyone and generally a very courteous driver. Hope that has some positive karma that goes with it I guess. 

I made the point because there have been incidents on other boards in the past where criminal activity was perpetrated against some car owners

The memories!  Thx for the nostalgia.