Also thought I'd throw in what finally kicked me into gear to get this done. A couple of weeks ago, my water pump seals kicked the bucket and I was pissing coolant, quite literally, but my mechanic couldn't get me in til the 23rd so I was forced to park it for the sake of not being able to afford putting a gallon of coolant in my car every other day til the 23rd so while it was parked, I figured I'd make use of the time and get this in motion.

Now, I know a lot of you, especially you, Devil, will proceed to flame me for not taking care of the timing belt/water pump job myself, but fear not, I do have an explanation that has a happier ending than just getting the problem fixed. You see, being a college student, time is less than abundant in my life so I really didn't have the time, albeit the space to start tearing into it (if I had had a garage available to me where stuff would be protected while doing bits of the project over a couple weeks, I would have, but my car parks outside in the snow and rain and with not even a car port or fence to keep parts and tools from walking off in the night) so I was more or less forced to let my mechanic take care of it, which ended up being a really awesome idea because while he was in there doing the standard tb/wp job, he took care of my leaking fan switch, put in a new coolant reservoir, cleaned up the engine bay almost to showroom spec, as well as completely rebuilt my air intake and hooked me up with an ITG pro-filter. Since I got the car, the air intake piping was beyond sub-par; the MAF housing was cracked and the flex pipe from the MAF to the throttle body was cracked around the connectors as well and for a while I've been trying to track down a new MAF housing but kept hitting dead ends when I thought I had found one. Well, I got a new factory one for free, and a new flex pipe for free, and got the throttle body and MAF itself all cleaned up because the K&N I had put in there spewed oil all to high hell throughout the entire intake, its amazing I didn't throw a CEL from how bad the MAF was coated. That said, the engine purrs like brand new, dead serious, I didn't think I would notice that big of a difference but wow.

The best part about this story? After parts and labor on the timing belt, water pump, thermostat, associated tensioners etc, new coolant reservoir, fixed fan switch, ITG filter, new MAF housing and flex pipe and throttle body cleaning and all around engine bay dress up, I walked out only paying $980.00 So, even though it was still a steep price and I couldn't drive my car for two weeks, I did get some decent additional benefits out of it as opposed to just doing the timing belt job myself, so flame away, but I stand by my choice lol

 

Lol that's awesome and no, I wouldn't flame you. I know I jump in people's **** about taking care of things like t-belts but I have been in the same situation without a place to keep a car secure and having to just hope that it'd stay together a little longer. And the ends definitely justify the means here - that's a great price for everything that's been done. Now that she's running well, why don't you swing over to Ohio next month, meet up with ChocalotStarfish, and caravan to NY with him for the meet?

nice hookup on the work bro - I'm really glad it worked out!

 

DO IT!!!! But really I do like it!

 

If I wasn't going to be approaching finals next month, I totally would be up for that road trip. Any meets going down in the summer? I might be able to swing a weekend to weekend trip if something is going on, depends on how my financial situation is at the time. I'm already planning to drive up to Oregon at some point over the summer, but if enough people can convince me to go east... ;P

 

This makes me want to take apart my intake and see what the K&N filter I've had in there for almost a year has been up to....

 

Its worth a shot, I never believed the horror stories about k&n cuz I ran mine well over a year and never
threw a cel but I guess it really did do a number on my intake piping and maf so you might want to give it a look just in case.

 

I definitely will. And you said there was a noticeable difference when you cleaned everything?

 

Oh yea, everything smoothed out; the throttle response is much better, the overall power delivery is smoother and the idle is super smooth, before it sounded rough, it was steady, but just sounded choppy but now it purrs like a brand new car

 

The trim looks great. I'm thinking of doing mine in a light grey to go with my blue / grey interior. Getting the trim off shouldn't be a problem but I'm worried how hard it will be to cover it and make it look good. Was it difficult to cover?

 

Nah, the wrapping process is actually really straight forward, the biggest pain in the *** is getting it around the corners right which kinda takes some trial and error to figure out, but once you get going on it, you see how it needs to be done and its a breeze from there. Just use some spray adhesive, lightly coat the main of it and lay it on the suede and that makes the whole thing look smooth and good, and then flip it over and start bringing it around to the back. I glued the main sections to the back first, leaving about an inch around each corner unglued, and then once I had the corner trimmed in a fan-type manner to where when pulled around it looked good, then glued each corner and it worked out really well.