Greetings and Salutations!
So again it’s been a couple of busy days. I spoke of our trip up to Mom and Dads place on Sunday. Now of note, I forgot to mention the car issue reared it’s ugly head again. Now you may/may not remember/don’t give a shit but the car when the temp dropped precipitously (heh… I used a multisyllabic word… double heh… I done dood it again!) anyway, when it got cold AF ’round here, the throttle body (per AutoZone’s code reader) told me the throttle pedal and the throttle itself were out of synch.
The problem went away however when the car warmed up.
Huzzah!
I figured the cold caused the gunk inside to freeze up and slow the throttle throat plate where it coded out. Cool… literally.
What I didn’t realize, but do know is that there was still some issues. Now late Sunday coming home, if you’ve ever driven in the Tampa Area, it’s gotten really ‘Mad Max-ish” as of late… 80mph seems to be the minimum speed. I was trying to just go a sedate 78+/- but at one point I was forced to ‘gun it’ and Whoops!
Engine light again and the engine itself didn’t sound so hot… not a lot of power. I found out later the ‘safe setting’ is disallowed by the computer over 50mph. It means the car desperately wanted to go into ‘safe mode’ but it couldn’t do it as “highway” and all that. We made for home ASAP.
Made it too.
And so Tuesday Night I got a package in the mail from Faithful Terrapod. He’s been a great supporter, and a pack rat nonpareil that I can tell. He’s sent me some really cool excess stuff that he had laying around. In this case, most appropo, a code reader was in the care package (bows and scrapes while screaming “I’m not worthy!!! seriously T, many thanks!).
So because of this, I was able to find out that not only the throttle body had ‘errored’ again, but there were 3 out of the 4 cylinders misfiring!
Mind you back in October? I had a ‘supposed’ new engine thrown in b/c the one we had BTFU while under warranty.
Now since then, I’ve been s-l-o-w-l-y realizing we got scammed by the dealership. They fixed the engine no doubt. New rods at the minimum. The problem is that according to the paperwork that they gave me and that I discovered regarding this particular issue they’re supposed to ‘pull’ the whole fucking engine and replace the entire thing with ‘new’.
Reason being that Hyundai HQ wants the whole engine for analysis apparently. Makes sense as the Koreans are damned near as anal about failures as the Japanese, so OK… new engine. Great.
The problem is, as I’ve discovered, the Dealershit (intentional spelling) fixed the issue (I’m thinking new block and rods and crank) and instead of putting in the whole new shiny engine in, the fuckers stripped my old engine and put the already-high mileage parts back the fuck on the new block.
Hmmn.
A situation that requires Gretchen’s deft touch methinks…
So in the meantime, I need this thing running. I ordered the new ignition points/plugs (a kit for like $68 on the ‘zon) and a new plug socket, as I couldn’t find the old one to save my life… Of course during the repair process today the OLD fucking plug socket turned up, so now I have 2… or maybe even 3 by this time as this seems to be a pattern with my tools. Shit goes MIA when I need it, and ONLY re-appears AFTER I’ve dropped shekels on a new tool… They showed up today, so I called Glorious People’s Tractor Factory #231, and told Commissar that I’d punch early today, and I’d make up the time over the weekend so I could repair the car.
And yep. Three points of interest. One was when I popped the hood, apparently what appears to be a field mouse took up residence under the engine cover. I had to vacuum out a TON of cracked open and stashed acorns and whatnot, as well as some shredded cotton bunting of some form. The wires, thankfully, were intact. Two was that the points were nasty and old. These were not new by any means. (Hence the Dealershit fuckery) And then Third: the plugs? Damned near burned the fuck out… like the OEM plugs that came with the car 102000 miles ago when we got it new… (MOAR Dealershit fuckery)
Yeah… for a 2020 it’s been brutalized hard what with all the trips to East Tennessee and shit… still… besides it ‘swallowing a rod’ from a ‘known defect’ I really can’t complain. I change the oil/filter religiously as DeadDad taught me, and maintain the other fluid levels as needed, and as we found out, I can turn wrenches when needed.
So disconnected the battery, got everything cleaned up and out, old parts out, new shit it, and wow… A serious difference. I had gotten used to a wee bit of roughness that I had attributed to the mileage. And yeah, despite the new ‘engine’ my mind sees the odometer, and forgets the ‘transplant’ and that it should not be rough running by any means… In this case, it appears to be back. Smooooth runnings mon!!! The only thing left is the throttle body, and per the advice of ReadiFreddie, (the other GranDa) I got a full gas treatment/fuel system cleaner that –supposedly– will take care of the throttle body.
I really hope it works. I was going to take it apart and scrub it with a specific cleaner, but maaaaaaan… today showed me that’d be a full fucking day of taking a LOT of pieces/parts off, and I already got enough on my plate.
And as far as the Dealershit?
Gretchen is up Hyundai’s Corporate asses like a raped fucking Ape for this one man…. Like hip-wader deep up the anus.
She’s pissed off.
Hell hath no fury like an under-medicated Hair Diva
(She’s been out of her pain meds for a week)
See… the Dealershit already scammed us out of $600 to get the car back after the transplant. They also damaged some shit, (like the hood latch) and tried to charge us for damage caused by their probably drunken incompetent wrench turners. It was $1000, but Gretchen went ‘beast-bitch mode’ then on them and got it down to where we could afford it sort-of-kind-of.
Now?
This?
OMG… the poor fuckers on the other end of the phone are reeeeeally hating life when she gets on with them. She starts out all south’en and sweet, and then goes full on psycho-house on them.
Have to see what she gets, but I’m confident Hyundai will cave before she will.
So now lets get into the other part headline tonight.
The FrankenMausers new bolt showed up.
AND
It appears to have successfully gauged out.
And I was positively shocked as to how good it looked when it arrived, as this is the actual auction I got it from:
The item in the pic looks pretty grungy. I had ‘sniped’ the thing in the last two minutes with a $75 total bid… it went from $40 to the $55.09 at the end, so I got it for short $$$. The reason I say that is because similar items?
That’s just 2x examples.
So when I get done tomorrow afternoon, the other bolt remaining will be auctioned off for a starting bid of $100, with shipping being like maybe $7.50 on the top end.
I figure it’s sell quick-quick, and whomever gets it MAY just be able to use it in their rifle like I did with this one. An added plus is just how clean I got the non-headspacing bolt. It looks brand new:
In fact both look pretty damned pristine.
We’ll see how it tests.
BTW: The Good One is in the rifle in the pix.
That being said, I mean for all I know it -still- might detonate like a hand grenade. The 7x57mm Mauser is a big honking round:
So the bench rest, 30 feet of 550 cord, and hearing protection is mandatory. If it doesn’t blow, and after 5 rounds, just like the Lee Enfield I’ll shoulder it and see how it shoots.
If it does BTFU (blow the fuck up) well then…
ScouterGreg who donated this to me had said during a conversation that if it failed, to turn it into a lamp… That got me thinking that IF it’s like that, I just may do that. I have enough ‘wall hangers’ already, and a Lamp might be cool.
Cut the barrel and stock down right in front of the rear ladder sight. This as it’s too long to be a floor lamp, and too short for a desk. Chopping it also means it gets a demil, and that’d be great.
Strip the bolt of the internals and drill out the face so the power cable can fit through. Then drill a hole through the underside of the receiver AND the bolt that match to make sure it’s “legally demilled”. Then strip out the trigger and fiddly-bits. Get a small on/off switch to attach the power line to, and feed the power line back through the back of the stock and out the back.
The switch I’d mount where the trigger would normally go naturally…
Get a wooden mount or make something similar:
Then once it’s ready, run the power line up and through to the top, where you connect it to the lamp kit:
So that might be cool amiright?
What I do with it then?
No clue.
Maybe raffle it?
Your Thoughts in the comments
More Later
Big Country
7×57 is actually a pretty mild round. I think you will be pleasantly surprised
Much more pleasant than 7.62×63, or .30cal or .30-06 or whatever the cool kids call it.
About on par with 6.5×55 Swede.
I think it’s a better all around cartridge than the 7.92 (8mm) Mauser. With it’s better ballistic coefficient and sectional density, it’s certainly a flatter shooting round.
BCE:
You thinking about re-upping for the possible Gitmo yet to be requested gig for WETback security???
Night Driver…
Duuuuuuude… YOU of all people read my mind…
I’ll work for free if I get to wear a black hood and pull the trap door lever.
Ford has the wire wrap that squirrels love.
Point A Point B beater is mandatory for glorious tractor factory.
Do 80 or get ran over in Red State but it’s a fun game out on das Interstate.
Speaking of Ford got a free engine rebuild at 100k with the right amount of daily cajoling and threatening of class action lawsuit!
Tiny personal victories add up.
Looking forward to seeing what the Mauser does and if the barrel is in better condition than the Enfield.
Is your car still using a distributor or did they go to the individual coil packs? If the former, how are the cap, rotor, and wires? If individuals, are they original? New wires makes a heck of a difference. New coils also.
I’ve got a 2014 F150 with the little turbo 6 in it. Good engine but it is sensitive to keeping the turbos/intake valves and the mass airflow sensor clean. Enough so that CRC came out with a cleaner spray for the turbos and valves. There’s also an airflow sensor cleaner and they’re pretty specific in saying don’t use carb/throttle body cleaner on the MAF. Mine seems to want attention every 50 k or so. It wouldn’t be running badly, just a touch off and a trifle rough They tend to get contaminated with time. Pull the thing – it’s usually pretty accessible- spray it thoroughly – and put it back when dry
Good luck
Coelacanth
Thats the same model, year and engine i have. i get a o2 sensor low voltage code.
Ford has never figured it out, they swap the sensor, call it good but it cones back within a week.
Uh, engines haven’t had points since 76.
Sorry… stuck in the 80s… Ignition COILS
My bad…
I keep my spare spark plug socket in my guitar case. I use it as a slide, like Lowell George (of Little Feat) used to did.
Eh, if Frankenmauser gauges out & the barrel is clear it’ll be fine. If it does BTFU, highly unlikely as it is, it’s still worth something to the ‘community’ as parts. Remember, they aren’t making any more…
Many Dirty Chaebol Wagons aren’t made to the specs of even the worst Japanese trash (looking at you, Daihatsu).
You can total a Hyundai Sonata just by letting the oil run low, not completely out, just low.
Look up the “Theta” engine and prepare to have your own boilover, there’s a few mechanic vids on YT if you really want to watch and learn.
Korean GDI crap engines spew oil through the PCV and if you don’t have a catch can on yours regardless of dealer protests, you can royally fuck a Hyundai (or Kia) engine in as little as 60k miles.
As for any “long endurance” oil in any Korean GDI, what would be 20k in any other sensibly designed engine is 4k in one of these, and nasty gritty mass consumer grade oil (Castrol, Valvoline etc.) could mean oil changes every 2 to 2.5k if the engine is at the pre-doomed “burning oil stage”.
So you wind up running higher viscosity rating oil as well because they gamed the EPA with thin oil for emissions at the cost of prematurely fucking the engine.
So the oil cap says 5W20 on it?
Go to Amazon and buy a new unmarked oil cap, then try 5W30 in it, and if that doesn’t fix the oil burn and/or “magic” loss of up to 1 quart of oil every 1k miles, try 10W30 next.
Then throw the old oil cap away.
It’s good to run Royal Purple in one as well because that can last up to the 4k end so you don’t have to change oil as much, and as for the Hyundai oil filter, for DIY changes the K&Ns work about as well.
As for catch cans, there are several on Amazon that would work but the only ones that fit well around some of the smaller engines are 300 to 400 ml.
You will also need proper 30R6/7 pressure rated hose which rarely comes in the kits, plus plan on a range of brass hose size adapters because (surprise, bitch!) the PCV end and the intake recirc end are probably different sizes.
Add to this a fuckload of different sized spring clips in metric sizes, of course.
Keeping the oil out of the recirc intake keeps it off the plugs, and sub $70 for four isn’t actually too bad.
With me so far?
The wheels often have “hidden” torque ranges, and that impact wrench monkey at Walmart knows nearly nothing about those.
On some Korean rattlewagons, the low end can be in the 50s ft-lb range with the highs in the 70s or 80s, so when Dumbfuck the Impact Wrench Monkey tightens yours to over 120 ft-lb, what happens?
The tires mistrack on the roads and you can’t exceed certain speeds without seriously dangerous wobble.
So you wind up replacing tires in as little as 7k miles (thanks, Yokohama for those shit “orange oil” tires) or typically more like 12-15k with 80k rated tires, at least until you figure that shit out.
And the worst of it?
These vehicles are all built like they were designed by Korean academics and status hustlers who design by committee, engineer as little as possible, outsource what they can’t make right, and then throw everything into CAD for a few sessions of “Integration Hell”.
And since they are (erroneously) positioned as “low maintenance”, people don’t keep the habit of checking oil and fluid loss, crap in the engine air filter, and so on, which are even more critical with a GDI.
The transmission being a sealed unit on a lot of these so you can’t keep an eye out for burning ATF is just shit icing on a crap cake.
Want less misery, buy nearly anything else.
Just not a Chevy Traverse, they burn even more oil than these Chaebol fuckjobs.
DANNNG! Guess I lucked out with our 2003 Elantra, 280k so far with only (plenty) of standard maint (struts, jack shafts, breaks, timing belt/water pump, etc.). Last year, after a high speed run to Nashville and back, it got real weak/sluggish, took it to our regular mech, they diagnosed it as melted cat. Cat delete repair with cheat sensor and it’s quicker than new (try that in Commiefornia), with marginally better gas mileage!
Does P0442 sound familiar?
That burnt oil in the PCV in some circumstances can blow back the other way and then “contaminate” the cats (two on some Hyundai/Kia models).
In reality there’s just oil on at least one sensor (probably the front cat), and if you change out the PCV (and blow clean the catch can hose if you have that) …
… “magically” the P0442 goes away if you’re lucky!
Or you might have a sensor to replace, which is a pain to get to but usually doable without a repair shop visit.
So it’s also another way you can get scammed by a Dealershit when they show you a “melted” cat off someone else’s repair job after they’ve “started work” on yours.
BTW in FL it is legal to install a “cat bypass” that feeds the cat sensor(s) pulses to make them think the cat is still installed and working, an outfit in Orlando makes a bypass kit for Hyundai/Kia models.
So I wasn’t fixing that anyway. 🙂
If your Elantra has hydraulic steering, be glad because the motor driven power steering (MDPS) system is its own special Hell, and sometimes it’s not even the problem (as in it’s the fucking excessive lug nut torque pulling tires out of alignment, so Dear Readers, check that first).
Oh, yeah, not a single Dealershit got that right, but they were happy to suggest new alignments for extra $$$.
Check out the “Gamma” engines as well, they’re in the Kia Forte and a few others I think, and they are almost as bad as the “Theta” engines.
BTW once the PCV blow by gets to be enough that you have to drain the catch can every fill-up or two, it’s time to unload the Chaebol crapwagon in a trade.
Or just do better than BCE and me, stay away from Korean vehicles in the future, some suck a Lotte. 🙂
thanks CSV!!! excellent information
Thanks for the warnings.
One of the best shooters at the high power rifle competition back in the day had an old 300 Savage. He hacked on the stock and added wood and moved things around constantly. That gun never looked the same twice. We talked about that Lego rifle for about an hour one day. He let slip that the chamber was almost worn out. It was at the max SAAMI spec when he got it. He adjusted his dies to barely resize the shoulder, and used a Lee neck squeezer die when he seated the bullets. It was one of the most accurate rifles on the line back then.
You are basically fire forming brass to your chamber when you shoot factory. I wouldn’t be afraid of it if it passes the case stretch test. Chopping it up into modern art kinda hurts my heart. Demilling a bolt gun sounds…. sad. Get a new barrel for a similar case head size (45 ACP??) and start the mad scientist laboratory up.
A few years ago when my mom as getting old something moved into her cars engine compartment, rat, squirrel, large mouse, im not sure. Drug all kinds of shit in there, twigs, leaves and thousands of nut shells. Car never did run right after that, im sure the little fucker had chewed on this and that and kinda sorta fucked something up.
Cabinet scrapers are a game changer for repair of stocks and old tools. If you give me your shipping address I will order a new set of cabinet scrapers shipped to you.
Auto dealer service departments are a no-go for me. They are profit centers, not service centers.
If you have a car/truck nearing the end of factory warranty, take it to dealer and just say your heard a “noise” and the car ran funny and the ac didn’t cool like it did before.
Let them give it the once over before you have to open your wallet.
https://i0.wp.com/www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/image-104.png
I needed to replace the oil pan gasket in my van. It was $700 so I figured I could wait for tax refund. Big mistake as somehow it screwed up the Battery, the alternator, and the serpentine belt. Kicking myself now as total to fix everything ended up $2500. Oh vay!
My check engine light comes on saying it a catalytic sensor error. A shot of Stop Gas treatment and diligent use of premium gas makes it disappear.
Surprised to hear that ANY more or less modern car still runs a throttle body, most of ’em are TPI by now. As for those “Check engine” lights, every good mechanic knows the easy fix for that issue: black electrical tape, that’s all. Cover the dashboard light with it and you’re good to go. 😉
Please note I said “mechanic,” not “technician.” There’s a difference, and it’s YUUUGE.
BC
If you ever happen to visit SW MI, I can show you the end result of …”this seems to be a pattern with my tools. Shit goes MIA when I need it, and ONLY re-appears AFTER I’ve dropped shekels on a new tool”…
I think my barn has enough tools to divvy up for my 3 kids and all of em will have a “complete” set for car repairs. not to mention electrical, electronic, computing and plumbing. Yeah, as you guessed, packratus maximus and jack of all trades (self taught on most).
One bit of advice though it is probably too late, clean all electrical connectors with some brake clean then apply some dielectric grease. If the connectors on the engine were abused (as in stealership in a hurry), they are probably getting moisture and dirt. Unless a coil is failing or the position sensor that triggers the spark maker is failing or not correctly spaced, or bad wires, you should not be getting that many firing errors. This means all wires and plugs/sockets. Good luck, chasing electrical gremlins is not always easy.
I ain’t ever gonna buy a Hyunday ever.
Thanks for the warning!
Thank you, Sir: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/02/just-trump-dismantles-bidens-gun-control-actions-signs/
BTW BCE while on vehicles …
You can get a cheap code tool that works via Amazon for under $15.
Mine is a Bluetooth 4.0 version so it works with every phone I have.
Then get Torque (or Torque Pro) for Android to work with it.
I also use a BlueDriver which is a bit nicer for features, as I can reset the tire sensors for rescan on some models with it, and the code scanner gives me options for such things as Roto-Rootering a P044x emissions code out of the ECU.
But the basic generic BT 4.0 as long as Torque supports it should be good enough.
That scan code is sometimes good enough to know the difference between emissions crap and the Code of Doom that means you need a new engine, plus cheap enough to have one in each vehicle.