Getting rid of that darned diaper

A few days ago, I found out that the 2012 season of E@RTC begins this Saturday. Great, but as of today, there's 70% chance of rain. Somehow I doubt that it will happen.

As I was thinking about detailing my car, my thoughts turned to the ugly, rusted, dented piece of metal surrounding the exhaust under the rear bumper -- the thing affectionately known on US 308s as "the diaper." People call it that because that's exactly what it looks like -- a saggy, low hanging diaper. On US cars, there's a lot to hide back there. There are 2 catalytic converters and the massive OEM thermo-reactive exhaust. The diaper is an equally massive piece of vented sheet metal to cover up everything. Euro-spec cars didn't need the cats and thermo exhaust and therefore had less bulk to cover. They had a svelt rear valance under the bumper and gave the rear of the car a nice clean look. On the other hand, the rear of the US cars all look like a baby that had just taken a big dump.

The Stebro exhaust was a lot smaller and lighter than OEM, plus it was stainless steel and could be polished. I decided to try and replace the diaper with something smaller and more euro looking



Here's my starting point with the diaper removed. The Stebro doesn't hang that low and i'm going to a panel to cover just the top half of the exhaust and fill in the space under the rear bumper.



I mocked up my panel using cardboard. It's secured to the car using the same mounting holes as the diaper. The new panel will come down from the rear bumper to about the centerline of the exhaust tips and wrap around on the sides to blend in to the underside louvered panels behind the rear wheels. This leaves the bottom of the exhaust exposed and will look really nice when I polish the stainless. A little bling in the back, but not too much. I also added a "mail slot" to break up the solid part of the panel. I think this looks pretty good for a mock-up.



A metal panel would have been good, but I'm not exactly experienced nor set up with the right tooling to do this in metal so I decided to do it in fiberglass. I transferred my cardboard template to a piece of wood, then used a router to cut down the openings for the slot and the tailpipe openings. I didn't have any mold release compound, so I used candle wax and smeared it all over the wood. This is a shot after three layers of fiberglass. When it hardened, I was able to pop it off the wood without damage. After some filler to smooth off the surface, I'll trim this piece to fit then start working on the side pieces.

58 degree weekend in February!

January was rough. In the middle of the month, old man winter hit us hard. We had a storm that basically shut down the region. Power outages, trees down huge piles of snow. Fortunately, snow like that usually doesn't stick around very long and I was glad to see it go.



Back to my carb adjustments (still). I tried different screwdrivers to get to the idle adjustment screw for the right front carb, but I couldn't find something to work. My buddy SL had a great idea -- take something like a welding rod and just flatten the end into blade. I didn't have any welding rod, but I did have some 1/4" all-thread rod. A few minutes with a ball peen hammer and file and voila! A long thin screwdriver.



It works amazingly well. As you can see, that screw is waaaaay in there and is barely visible. I had to wait, but this was finally the day to take to the road and dial in the idle mixture.



The 308's been sitting a while and I foolishly disconnected my batter tender. The battery didn't quite have enough juice so I needed to use the booster to start the engine. As it turns out, I made the idle mixture a little too lean and it was really hard to start. After making the mixture a little richer, the engine fired right up.

What a great day for a drive. I didn't really have a destination in mind, so I just drove North with the snow covered North Cascades in the distance. After the engine oil was up to temperature, I was able to put my foot to the firewall and let the engine wail. It did stumble just a bit so I made a stop in a parking lot to richen the mixture a little more. The engine runs great now, although I don't know if all my tinkering actually had any affect. The exhaust is still a bit smelly, but it does seem a little better than before. Winter's almost over so I guess I'll need to put off the other projects like suspension bushings until next Winter. Let the driving season begin!