[esm@logic.net ~]$ _

So, the day after we get the last of the fuel work finished, I get the Laser on a long on-ramp, and decide to mash the gas. Run second out to 7500 RPM, keep the gas planted, hit the clutch, hear the NLTS popping, smack it into third, drop the clutch, and get sucked back into the seat as it pulls forward again. Run the gear out to the top of third (pay no attention to how fast that means I was going), keep the gas planted while pushing down the clutch, hear that comforting "pop-pop-pop" of the lowered NLTS rev limiter, pull down to fourth, and pop the clutch out again, to the sound of the poor engine revving itself to the moon.

I caught second gear by mistake. Whoops.

Now technically, I shifted at 7500 RPM. However, thanks to the wonder of NLTS, my mid-shift RPM would have dropped to about 6000 RPM. With a third gear ratio of 1.000 (how convenient!) and a second gear ratio of 1.581, the engine was mechanically forced to spin at about 9486 RPM for a second, before I managed to get the clutch back in. (For more information on DSM gear ratios, see Tom Stangl's excellent VFAQ entry on the subject.)

Could have been worse; a second to first mis-shift would have netted over 10,000 RPM, which almost certainly would have caused a bit of valve float and head damage. However, thanks to the upgraded springs and retainers in the well-built head from Mitch, along with stock cams for a mild ramp profile, there doesn't appear to be any damage at all; timing is dead on, no untoward noise, and the car drove and pulled exactly like it should. However, later that night, we heard a bit of clattering from the bell-housing area, which we initially thought might have been a flywheel bolt backing out (a common problem with mis-shifts and other high-RPM misadventures).

So, after having just gotten the car back on the road, out comes the transmission; checked the flywheel bolts, and all are holding tight, so we have no idea what might have been causing that noise. The upshot is that we had a chance to check the condition of the clutch after a bit over 20,000 very hard miles (Erica taught herself to drive a stick on this clutch, and I've put a ton of drag passes and autocross events on it). The disc, surprisingly, was in amazing shape; the pressure plate and flywheel friction surface were showing a bit of heat-spotting, though. One interesting thing that I never noticed on the 2600 we put in the Eclipse: the hub and center section of the disc had blued from the heat.

Anyway, we just need to lift the transmission back into the, car, slap everything back together, and hope that whatever was rattling was taken care of during the disassembly. Whee.

It seems like I should give a quick status update for the Laser, since we've been pretty busy with it over the last couple of weeks. We've been playing catch-up; all the stuff that's been taking up room on the shelf with the plan to "eventually" put it on the Laser is now off the shelf and on the car. We finally got the rear Konis installed last week, and replaced the rear pads and rotors while we were at it; that required me finally getting off my ass and drilling out the seized lugnut on the driver's-side back wheel, and pressing a new one in. One new wheel stud, two new rotors, two new sets of pads, and a new set of lugnuts later, and the car was back up and running, with the rear shocks set at 3/4 stiff.

But, since I can't leave well enough alone, I found a good deal on a Buschur-modified SX fuel pressure regulator (basically, it's an SX FPR, but with a new machined base that bolts directly to the stock fuel rail, making installation a snap). I got that installed in an evening, along with a fuel pressure gauge, and after getting hose-off pressure dialed in at 37.5 psi, the car has never idled so well. I suspect some of the problems we've been having with idle quality may have been related to a very small leak I noticed around the OEM fuel pressure regulator, and possibly just an over-the-hill OEM FPR.

Finally, this weekend, I ripped the OEM fuel pump out, and installed the "Supra" Denso pump that's been sitting on my shelf forever, since I had originally planned on installing it in the 2g (and the plans there have changed somewhat dramatically, so we decided to hand it down to the 1g). In the process, I managed to snap off the two wires for the level sender and the idiot light right at the connector on the sending unit, which required me to whip up a rather ugly, but sealed, replacement for them. Wiring around fuel is something I've decided I don't like very much. ;-) I also took the time to run a 30A-fused circuit from the battery through a relay to the pump, to make sure it gets all the voltage it needs to perform properly.

All that's left is to get some of the interior back in the car (I can't stand sloppy wiring installs, so out came the interior panels to run the new wiring tucked in neatly) and swap out the front lugs for the new ones that hopefully won't crack quite as easily as the last pair did. For anyone who reads this: if you absolutely must buy Gorilla "tuner" lugs for whatever reason, replace them as soon as they start showing any sign of rust, or you're going to find yourself in the same situation as me. Better would be to find a set of lugs that are tightened with a proper socket, rather than a hex key inside a thin-walled lug, that will crack eventually after enough removals and corrosion.

Now, I just need to talk Erica into a bigger turbo. ;-)

So if you've been following these Laser blog postings at all, you might notice that there's a very small increase in the milage on the car since February. Sometime a few months back, we started having yet more transfer case issues: specifically, the yoke was leaking. We went a few rounds with the JBWeld, and finally got that sealed up. However, in my infinite wisdom, I decided to swap on the 2g downpipe that I had lying around from my car, to give the Laser a bit more go, thinking that the cat that had been modified to fit my old catback would mate up just fine to the stock exhaust on the Laser. Wrong. After going a few rounds with trying to weld up a new flange to the stock catback, I finally gave up and we ordered a shiny new 3" Megan Racing catback off of eBay, and picked up a new VRS catalytic converter from DSMotorsport.

A few installation notes: first, the Megan catback only came with gaskets for assembly, not for installation (apparently, you get the gasket for mating to the cat-eliminator downpipe they sell when you buy the downpipe), and the VRS cat was missing the promised gaskets as well. DSMotorsport sent out a couple to replace the missing ones in record time, kudos to them. Next, if you're planning on mating an RNR downpipe for a 2g to a VRS cat, be prepared to drill a couple of extra holes in the exit flange; RNR used a much larger flange, which actually worked out pretty well, because the downpipe could still be mounted on a 2g now. Finally, the tip of the Megan catback sits very close to the rear bumper cover; we're considering getting some longer rear exhaust hangars, since large bumps seem to give it a pretty decent rattle. (Actually getting around to installing the rear shocks would probably help too, or installing polyeurethane exhaust hangars instead of the 100,000 mile 13-year-old stock hangars.)

The catback came with an insert to reduce the noise, and it works like a champ; with the insert in place, the car sounds like stock. Take it out, and it's a typical fairly loud 3" DSM exhaust. Overall, fitment was just about perfect, the welds looked good, and there's only one bend in the entire thing. I'm pretty happy with it so far.

One final difference seen, as a side note: the car is currently running 17psi of boost, which has always meant it spiked to 20psi, then quickly settled back down to 17psi and stayed there. Since adding the exhaust, it's not nearly as stable as it used to be; we'll initially spike to 20psi, drop down to 17, then fluctuate the remainder of the pull between 17 and 20 psi. No significant creep, but definitely the early signs of it setting in. After seeing what a difference a new wastegate actuator made on a friend's car, I'm suspecting that flutter is likely due to a weak OEM spring coupled with 13 years of duty, but it's really not a problem right now, so I'm leaving it as a mental note to look into later.

So we wimped out, and just packed the old carrier bearings with silicone and popped the new-to-us transfer case on the car. First impressions are extremely good; rather than bouncing, we get a ton of wheelspin at launch (which probably has a bit to do with both the stiffer front suspension and the new motor mounts). We also don't get any driveshaft thump, so the main problem we were after is taken care of. With any luck, that was the only remaining problem causing us to eat through transfer cases, and we'll be good for a while.

Before taking it back out, I set the front suspension to a half-turn from full hard (these are Koni yellows), and it's definitely too hard for the street, although it sticks very nicely up front. ;-) I'll need to back that down a bit (when we drove to Norwalk last year for the Shootout, it was set to almost full soft). I also need to get the rears on the car, but we need to decide what to set them for, since they're not adjustable once they're on the car. Foo.

So, when we last saw the Laser on the road, we screwed another transfer case due to what we believe was faulty carrier bearings. So, five months later, we finally ordered the parts we need to do the carrier bearing replacement, and last night I finally dropped the exhaust and driveshaft. What a PITA; I didn't originally think I'd need to drop the exhaust, but the only way to get the transfer case and driveshaft down was by undoing almost every attachment on it, so it just ended up being easier to pull the whole thing. (Now to convince Erica to let me put a real exhaust on the car, rather than that POS back on.) Next up: see what's needed to get the bearings off, and the new ones on; it looks like we're basically going to have to take the entire driveshaft apart, so I'll have to keep my eyes open for parts that need replacement.

One fun thing I discovered when separating the shaft from the rearend: only three bolts holding the shaft to the rear differential, instead of four. Goddamnit, I keep finding stuff like that on this car; someone really enjoyed ghetto-rigging things on here. :-P Good thing I never launch the car hard or anything, right? Grr.

So, the new head from Mitch did wonderfully on the trip to Ohio and back. We actually got the car back together literally the day before making the drive; the head was back on the weekend before, and we buttoned up the car and did the first test drive of it two days before heading to Norwalk. I actually did a lot of last minute work, including wiring up the boost gauge (which subsequently failed) and new radio, on Thursday before hitting the road Friday.

The work done during this downtime was pretty extensive, and mostly engine-related. New timing belt, tensioner, tensioner pulley, mount and idler pulley, water pump, front case (reusing the old gears), and all related gaskets, along with eliminating the balance shafts, installing the new head (mild porting, stainless steel valves, upgraded springs, and new lifters, with the old cams and gears for now), rebuilding the throttle body, and fixing up quite a few boost leaks in the upper intercooler piping. We also swapped in a set of new Koni Sport (Koni Yellows) shocks up front, replaced the factory bumpstops, replaced all four motor mounts, installed the stainless steel clutch line, and got the new radio and boost gauge installed (along with properly mounting the S-AFC). I can't believe how well the car ran after all the work we did to it; a little initial lifter clattering, which then died down to a perfectly smooth purr. The biggest problem was that I initially screwed up the orientation of the driver's side upper spring hat, which caused some rather frightening squeaking up there, but once it was rotated correctly, all was good again, and handling was dramatically improved with the new shocks.

Now that we're back from Ohio, we have a transfer case to replace. we suspect that the seals in the new transfer case blew because of the dead carrier bearings on the driveshaft, so we're going to replace those at the same time ($58 each from Talahasee Mitsubishi, so not too bad; we're still deciding if we want to replace the yoke or not). So, once again, the car is out of commission, but it was fun while it was running. :-)

The neverending saga of our Laser. :-P The transfer case was replaced under the recall, and on the drive home the rear-end felt like it bound up again. Got back over to the dealership, they said, "Our tranny guy thinks it's coming from the tranny, you wanna pay us to look?" We politely declined their gracious offer to look into damaged caused by a recall item on our dime, and very carefully drove the car home without a recurrance of the problem. Checked the rear diff (as that would seem to be the obvious culprit), and it was fine. So, we pulled the center differential; to those who don't know, this means disassembling the outermost part of the transmission, although you can do it while it's still on the car. After pulling it, we found a cool thing: a Speed Design 4-spider center diff instead of the stock 2-spider diff we thought we had. It was also in perfect shape, so after a few screwups on my part, the tranny is back together, and the car appears to be running perfectly. I'm speculating that the problem was due to the new transfer case binding up on burrs or other crap resulting from the machining process, since I really don't have much else to look into, and the problem isn't popping up again.

So, we went up to GLD on Oct. 31 (two Sundays ago), and had a pretty good day at the track; with the new injectors, we knocked a tiny amount of time off my previous best, although there was still quite a bit of knock that I just didn't have the patience to get to tuning around (so I suspect we ought to be able to find a little more time out of the car).

Kris, a friend of ours, drove up with us; he's been seeing no end of problems with his GSX, having finally gotten the car back into running order with his new clutch, flywheel, and repairs (his lower ball joint, covered by a Mitsubishi recall, separated while he was pulling into the parking lot at work, and caused quite a bit of damage). So, after talking with us and Mike (another fellow we met up with on the way up there), and getting his strategy straight, he lined up to race. I was on my way back on the side access road, and got to see him launch: a lurch, and then a VERY slow pull away from the starting line. Afterward, we took a few rides with him, and it was pretty obvious that he'd toasted his center differential; low-speed cornering behaved like he had a welded diff. So, that was it for him for the day.

We made it through the whole day without much of an incident, although a few launches were pretty hard on the clutch (unlike others there, I didn't seem to be having any traction problems; on the contrary, I found I had to slip the clutch quite a bit to avoid bogging, even with a 6000 RPM launch). The problem was on the drive home: we made it about 15 miles from home, and we started hearing a whirring noise, like a minor grinding. We also felt the car jerk once, like fuel cut; the fuel was low, so I initially attributed this to fuel sloshing around. We pulled off on the nearest exit ramp because we were a little worried about the whirring noise (which was coming and going quite a bit); when we reached the top of the ramp, the whirring got VERY loud, and then the car suddenly slammed to a stop, with the rear wheels locked up. Turns out the transfer case locked up tight; it's a recall item that has never been serviced on this car, and when I checked the fluid level a few days later, it was confirmed: the fluid has completely drained from the transfer case.

So, we dropped the car off with a local Dodge dealership for the recall work. When they got it into the shop, they insisted that they couldn't work on it because of fuel leak. We told them to roll it out to the parking lot, and we'd look at it (they helpfully suggested that they could do some initial diagnostics for a minimum of $180). Got there last night, popped the hood and turned over the car...and SQUIRT! The o-ring on the fuel rail inlet was completely destroyed, and fuel was leaking at a pretty good clip. We ran home, snagged the o-ring and a couple of bolts (did I mention I over-tightened the original bolts in an attempt to get it to seal properly, and broke one of them off?) from the Eclipse, since I won't be needing them once the new fuel system goes together, and ran back to the dealership and did the swap there in the parking lot. Fuel leak fixed, and for a lot less than $180. They're supposed to be replacing the transfer case today, and we should be back on the road tonight, if all goes well and they don't find another problem with the car.

Well, the 750cc injectors we ordered from RnR Racing finally arrived. What we actually received were a set of very poorly packaged PTE/Delphi 780cc injectors. (Which are really just machined versions of GM Rochester injectors, and which flow-test at about 748cc/min; how's that for a mouthful?) RnR listed the injectors at a sale price of $300, so we figured it was a good deal. Not really; they weren't in stock (why would you put an item you don't have in stock on sale?), and we ended up waiting three weeks for them. When we said "cancel the order", Ryan at RnR emailed us a tracking number instead, insisting that the injectors went out that morning. Three days later, UPS picked the box up from RnR. *sigh* I can't say enough bad things about this; he lied when we asked for a ship date (twice), and then he lied about having actually shipped it (and bought a shipping label for a package he didn't even have available for sending to us!). This is shady business, and I'll have no part in it again. The sad thing is, I defended his long lead times on his exhausts (I bought his downpipe for the Eclipse), mainly because of the fine craftsmanship of the unit I received. That's it; no more business with this guy.

Anyway, to the injectors: after a little searching around the dsm-ecu mailing list and DSMLink forums, I came up with a deadtime adjustment of about 315us. So, we flashed a new chip for the Laser accounting for a 750cc flow rate, and 315us of deadtime, and made a couple of additional changes: octane reset (every time the car starts, the ECU now resets it's rough idea of the "octane" of the fuel we're running), and kpt4321's modified fuel and timing maps. Installed the injectors, popped in the chip, and the car idled like stock. You'd never know we put bigger injectors in there. Took it out for a quick trial run, and hit 63.7% duty cycle at 7500 RPM where previously we'd be topping out at 103% at 6000 RPM. Niiiiice.

Downside: we have a leaking upper o-ring on the #3 injector. *sigh* No upgrade ever goes perfectly, does it? So, we'll have to pull the fuel rail again tonight, check to see if the ring is just seated poorly, or replace it if necessary with one from the stock 450s. But overall, I'm pretty happy with the results; next stop: rewiring the fuel pump to make sure the fuel flow we need is there.

Calling the bit of thin metal line that runs from the power steering fluid reservoir to the line back to the power steering rack a "cooler" is a bit of a stretch. And a bit of a stretch appears to be all it took to put a rather large hole in that piece of line; about 30 minutes from home, I lost power assist, and after armwrestling the car into a parking lot, I found power steering fluid all over the recently-cleaned engine bay of the Laser. I finally got a chance to really investigate what happened yesterday, and it turns out that it's just a simple leak in that line. We'll probably just eliminate the "cooler" for now, and install a proper tube and fin cooler on it when we have a chance. After filling everything up with fluid, there doesn't appear to be any permanent damage to the power steering pump; it chattered like crazy when the fluid was low, but it was happy to do it's thing with a full reservoir.

Well, the planned FMIC installation didn't happen. We tore down the front of the Laser, and discovered a few things: first, the RnR Race FMIC assumes you don't have air conditioning, and don't mind re-routing the power steering lines elsewhere (I don't mind re-routing those lines, but there's no way we're eliminating A/C). Second, the piping supplied is in a pretty lousy configuration; even if we went ahead with the install, the blow-off valve would be in a...er..."interesting" location. On top of that, the 1g BOV flange that was promised turned out to be a Greddy flange, which means we couldn't use her blow-off valve without welding on a new flange. So, we're skipping it; I'll probably throw it on DSMtrader or eBay.

We did, however, manage to get the 2g MAF from my car and the new intake pipe and 2g K&N filter installed. Works like a champ, thanks to a little soldering and a new firmware image for the ECU; I made a quick change to compensate for the 2g MAF, then made a few minor corrections on the AFC after running it for a bit. Runs like stock, with one exception: there's a ton of turbo lag now. I suspect the coupler we're using on the intake is bumping against the wastegate actuator; I'll have to take a look at that tonight.

Well, after burning my fingers a little bit, I finally got the S-AFC wired up in Erica's car. While we were in there messing around with the ECU wiring, I noticed a cool thing: she has an EPROM ECU! (Basically, we can reprogram it; there's a lot of information about reprogramming these cars available.) I had a friend of mine, Steve Piette, pull the stock EPROM chip and install it with a ZIF socket, and replace the capacitors on the ECU for good measure (the previous owner had the caps replaced, but with stock temperature caps, and they didn't bother cleaning up the leakage that had happened before, so Steve needed to make a few minor repairs). As soon as a few blank flash chips I'm going to try using in the ECU arrive, I'll probably get a first chip with some basic changes (stutterbox, 2g MAS compensation, etc) created and see how it goes. On top of that, Erica got the EGR blockoff installed, and I swapped both front axles before heading to the Shootout. In the process, I think I may have seriously b0rked the alignment; we're seeing terrible tire wear on the outside edge of both front tires after that trip to Ohio.

This weekend, we'll probably have the time to finish the installation of the FMIC, intake, and 2g MAS. Which means I probably need to get off my butt and get the wiring harness for the MAS made. Still needed: injectors and exhaust; we're actively hunting for 700+cc injectors for her and a 3" turbo-back exhaust of some variety.

There's an EGR blockoff plate, APEX'i S-AFC and turbo timer, a Dejon Tool 2g-MAS-in-a-1g intake pipe, RnR "race" FMIC, and set of axles on the way for the Laser, thanks in large part to a VERY good deal I found on DSMtrader (intake, S-AFC, and FMIC). Depending on when all of this arrives, there's a small possibility that some of it might be on the car by the time we head down for the DSM Shootout, but I suspect only the axles (going on this weekend), EGR blockoff, and turbo timer will get here in time. If they even arrive, I'm half tempted to throw them in the trunk, head to the shootout, and do the installs in the Best Western Norwalk parking lot; if previous years' events are any indication, I'll have plenty of company. Axles, transmissions, trasfer cases...if it's attached to the drivetrain, it usually breaks at the Shootout.

After a bit of work, the Laser now sports a few new accessories scavenged from the Eclipse: my home-made boost controller (set at about 15psi), and an AutoMeter Phantom boost gauge set in the LoTek triple-pod a-pillar I got Erica for Christmas. What an enormous difference...with just one simple change, the car pulls noticably harder.

We also noticed a couple of problems over the weekend. First, after a few test launches to get a feel for what RPM the car likes to launch at (for the record, 5000 bogs a little bit, and 5500 is just about perfect; about what I expected with the taller first gear and lightweight flywheel), the usual 1g DSM driveshaft thump showed up, so a driveshaft and U-joint rebuild is going to be necessary very soon. The other problem showed up in all the rain we got: the steering wheel would jerk uncontrollably when hitting road debris or puddles. I expect a little bit of jerking, but this was dangerously harsh, which makes me suspect the steering damper or some of the power steering components are toast, so a little more investigation is called for.

The Laser got a little bit of necessary preventative maintenance done today; oil change (finally!), replaced the lugs (the old ones had rusted pretty badly, and one was missing on the driver's-side front wheel), and tried (failed) to replace the lower intercooler piping with the stock lower pipe from the Eclipse, in an effort to try and replace the turbo compressor outlet elbow with a larger piece I picked up for a song. I was also hoping I'd be able to scavenge up some upper intercooler piping that would fit over the 2g throttle body elbow that I pulled off the Eclipse, but no such luck. Hopefully I can get the boost controller and gauges moved over from the Eclipse to the Laser on Monday, which is probably the best I'll be able to do before taking it to the track on Tuesday after work (should be meeting up with a friend of mine from work with his modded RSX-S).

I've been remiss in updating this. The car is home, everything has been taken care of with Mitch, Joe, and Jon, and the car is running like a champ. Actually, I've autocrossed with it twice now; there's a couple of rough edges (brakes, specifically), but the tranny is performing as it should. We've also installed the K&N FIPK kit (it's actually for a non-turbo, but we got a really good deal on it, and it was easy enough to adapt to Erica's car), and it's running with the wheels and tires from the Eclipse.

Sunday was Laser-day. Thanks to a friend of mine back in Canada (Hi, Rudi!), we managed to obtain a set of "Canadian" seatbelts for the Laser. The stock seatbelts are the automatic strangulators that the early '90s foisted on the American automotive market; I couldn't get used to them, kept getting caught on the automatic belt, and kept forgetting the lap belt. So, we now have a (much lighter) set of manual belts on the front seats, thanks to the handy VFAQ put together by Tom Stangl, Kyle Zingg, and John Evert. I haven't weighed the automatic parts that we pulled, but they've got to be in the neighborhood of 20lbs or so.

We also installed a set of shifter bushings from Mach V. Install was pretty much the same as it was for the Eclipse, but it made a huge difference in the tactile feel of the shifter; shifts have a distinct "ka-chunk" sound to them now, and transmission activity can be felt clearly. Definitely worth the money for what you get out of it.

Still to-do: I'm pondering pulling the boost controller and gauges from my car and installing them in the Laser, to get Erica up to at least 15psi safely. We also have a new turbo compressor outlet elbow that needs to go on, a 2g O2 housing (from my car), and a 2g throttle body elbow (also from my car) ready to go on, as soon as we whip up some replacement intercooler piping. Hopefully we can get most of this done before June 1, since we're planning on making a trip to Rt. 66 that night to see how it does (and hopefully beat a friend of mine from work in a modified RSX-S *grin*).

So, the car is still sitting at the shop. Joe at Elite and Mitch from Engintecs have been great through this whole thing; Joe and his guys have been more than happy to jump up and tackle jobs that I'd never expect them to take (specifically, pulling and replacing the entire clutch and brake pedal assembly), and Mitch has been a life-saver coordinating things, helping Joe's guys out when they weren't sure where something on a DSM went, and doing fabrication when the bushings ordered from another shop were out of spec. Jon and Ming at TRE have, so far, been taking pretty good care of us as part of the whole transmission rebuild, although I'm a little put off by their customer service and the difficulty we've had getting ahold of them in a timely manner.

Here's a quick run-down of the entire experience. We flipped a coin, and decided on TRE for our transmission rebuild (rather than John Shepherd). We contacted Mitch to see if he could recommend a shop that would pull the transmission for a reasonable rate (most of the local shops I'd talked to were asking an outrageous amount for work that I've done myself before; I know damn well it doesn't take 8 hours to pull a DSM tranny), and he suggested Elite, who happened to be in the same building he's in. In the mean time, we'd been ordering a number of pretty nice replacement parts for the car to go on at the same time. That's where the first problems popped up.

We ordered the ACT 2600 with street disc (XTSS) from Pro Street, and as always, it was shipped promptly and got here in fine shape. We'd also ordered a Fidanza aluminum flywheel from Slowboy, and a billet clutch fork from Taboo. Slowboy mixed up our order and shipped an ACT flywheel instead, which cost us a couple of weeks waiting for the return and reship. Taboo apparently had a CNC mill failure, and couldn't produce a clutch fork for us until a good week or two more, so I ended up picking up another one from a local DSM owner instead (the one from Taboo arrived the next day, of course). Neither shop was incredibly good about responding to emails (or, in the case of Slowboy, voice mails; in Taboo's case, you'll note that there ISN'T any other way to contact Martin over there other than through email). Other incidentals included 3 quarts of Penzoil Synchromesh and a new clutch fork fulcrum ball from RRE.

So, having finally gotten all the parts together, we dropped them and the car off with Elite to have the transmission pulled. Mitch was heading over to Kalamazoo, MI to talk with Jon at TRE anyway, so he volunteered to take the tranny with him (saving us $75 in shipping or so, woo!). TRE took it, and did their magic with it for a couple of weeks. They proved to be a bit difficult to get ahold of; they seem to have intermittant problems with their phone line giving a busy signal over entire days or weekends, and so when Mitch again volunteered to go out there to pick up the transmission when it was done (he was going to be in Michigan anyway, but it would have been quite a bit out of his way), we couldn't reach Jon to ensure that the tranny would be there when he arrived. *sigh* So, we said to hell with it, and had him ship it back to the shop, which he did...to the wrong address. A couple of days of confusion later, the tranny arrives at Elite, and they install the newly built transmission, clutch, flywheel, fork, pivot ball, and a 1/16" shim behind the ball to get the engagement point a little bit closer to where it should be.

After about an hour of futzing with the clutch master cylinder adjustment rod, Mitch comes up with a few conclusions: first, the master and slave cylinders are shot (which doesn't come as much of a surprise). Second, the clutch pedal assembly is shot (which did come as a surprise). Joe does the slave and master replacement (and got me a heck of a deal on the parts, I might add), and I order a set of bushings from Taboo. Again, I hear nothing from him; after I prod him a bit with an email, Martin from Taboo tells me that he's having problems getting the oil-infused bronze he uses in some of the bushings, and the batch he has now isn't suitable for delivery because he learned that the measurements on them didn't fit most of the cars he'd shipped them out to. So, a week and a half goes by, and we finally get a set of bushings from him (without word that they'd been shipped, of course).

The bushings didn't fit. The brake pedal bushings fit like a glove, but the clutch pedal bushings were out of spec by quite a bit. Mitch managed to fabricate something up that worked, and Joe's folks put everything back together. So, finally, the car is back in one piece, and drivable. Joe takes it out for a spin, notes that it pulls pretty good for a basically stock engine (although not even close on the drivetrain at this point), and when he pulls back into the yard, notices (of course) a leak coming from between the transmission and the transfer case.

They popped the transfer case away a bit, and saw that there was a good bit of fluid leaking from the output shaft seal on the transmission. The BRAND NEW SEAL on the FRESHLY REBUILT TRANSMISSION. *sigh*

So, that's where the story ends for now. Jon, Mitch, and Joe are going back and forth to see who's going to foot the bill for the work that obviously needs to be done now, and barring anything else happening, the Laser should be back on the road in a few days.