Monthly Archive for October, 2008

Evapo-Rust Mini Review

So I had these bolts and eccentric washers that I took off my car and replaced and really I didn’t even need to. The old ones were coated in surface rust so I decided to try some stuff to take it off.

I had read a few raving reviews about Evapo-Rust and seen some videos so I decided to give it a shot. The stuff looks like anti-freeze but it feels slippery like dish-soap on your fingers. It’s pretty expensive too this bottle cost just under $9 and it was barely enough to do the hardware I was cleaning. Though it’s supposedly reusable so I dumped it back in the bottle once I was done.

Here’s a picture of my hardware beforeI did anything.

 Evaorust Test Evaporust Test

Notice there is both surface rust as wella as this thick black stuff. That thick black stuff is rubberized undercoating because the previous owner of the car had it coated to prevent rusting and it got on some of the bolts. It looks really nasty but it doesn’t harm anything. Apparently Evapo-Rust doesn’t harm plastic or rubber so I went into this assuming that it would leave theundercoating stuff (which kind of sucks becaus it looks ugly).

I dumped the whole bottle of of the stuff in the bottom of a cut-up water jug and just dumped all my hardware in there. Supposidly it does it’s work in a matter of minutes but I was on my way out so i just left it for the night.

Evaporust Test

The next morning after rincing off the hardware it looked like this:

Evaporust Test  Evaporust Test

 Some patches of rust still remained but it was mostly cosmetic as the parts were all smooth to the touch. As suspected the undercoated parts were still narly. I decided to try a 2nd application to see if it could get rid of the rest of the crap to make them completely clean.

 Evaporust Test Evaporust Test

 I’m pretty happy with the outcome, if I want to remove the undercoated parts I’ll have to use paint stripper or a wire brush but on a whole the Evapo-Rust did it’s job. $9 might be a bit much but considering that all of this hardware NEW from Nissan cost nearly $100 to replace, I’m fairly certain that next time I take off some bolts I’ll clean them with this stuff before deciding to replace them. At least now the parts are clean enough that I’ll be able more easily sell them and recoup some of the money I spent on the new parts.

Saturn to 360 Adapter Revival?

cracksolth left a few comments on the page for my Saturn to 360 adapter, as a result I started looking back into it. I contacted the guys from Acid mods (great guys BTW) to see if they were doing anything different that would help me streamline the design. In terms of communicating with the older “Matrix” style 360 controllers I didn’t really learn much that I hadn’t already discovered; however I did learn that the newer Common Ground style controllers are getting easier to find by the day and that most of the new colored controllers all use that style of innards.

They even supplied me with this handy graphic to determine the difference between a Matrix and a CG controller without having to crack it open.

Difference between Matrix and CG style controllers

As a result I’ve decided to abandon the Matrix style controllers for the time being and just track down a CG style controller to work with since that will allow me to dramatically reduce the pin count.

I’m going to do some playing around and if I like the results I might re-open this project…

My goals this time is to get it to a point of making a “kit” or perhaps even making it easy enough that I can lower the costs involved as well as the ease of install so that more people can get their hands on this. If this is something you’ve been waiting for then you’ve only got cracksolth to thank.

Shoot me an email or post a comment if you have ideas for features you’d like to see.

Refinish Restorer

After getting harassed by a co-worker for having ugly faded plastic cladding on my Vehicross, I finally got around to trying out the Refinish Restorer product I imported from Germany. I am so incredibly happy with the results, you have no idea.

BEFORE – AFTER

1999 Isuzu VehiCROSS Clear turn Signals, Nitto Terra Grapplers Vehicross with Refinish Restorer

Subtle Changes in Appearance

I recently added some clear turn signal covers to the Vehicross (along with orange bulbs so they light up the proper color) .

 1999 Isuzu VehiCROSS Clear turn Signals, Nitto Terra Grapplers

I also picked up a Silvia Grill for the 240sx. I had looked at these when I first got the car and could only find them beat up and in really odd colors for $200 ish prices after shipping… I saw this one, in great shape and with original paint in my color for about 1/4th that so I snatched it up.

 1995 Nissan 240sx SE JDM Zenki S14 Silvia Grill

I think both of these do quite a bit to clean up the looks of the cars a bit… and wow, both of my cars need a bath.