The Merkur Club of America Forums

Totally. In my head I feel like the XR4Ti suffered in the same way the FIero did. The establishment wanted to protect their brands so they hamstrung development, and then when improvements were planned for 2nd gen models that would have cannibalized other lines they never saw the light of day. If th...

Oh, so that DOHC will be in the '87s, will it?

IMO the XR was missing too many things from the factory to ever lift one year above the other. They all need some help. And we have plenty of options and methods to do it. The last time I saw a stock XR4ti was in the '90s. Every car I've seen since then is an amalgamation of improvements and customi...

This is brilliant - thank you so much for posting this.

Does dropping the crossmember affect alignment in any appreciable way? Do you think slotting it and moving it forward be an option, or would that impact be worse?

I redid it one more time this morning, and had virtually the same experience as last time. My takeaway is that the factory manual has the best approach. I: 1. Tightened the adjusters down in 5-tooth increments until the diff was supported and not wobbling around 2. Added 6 teeth (2 teeth at a time) ...

I have a faux Saab 900 SPG, and if I ever get caught for having a missing front plate, I'm getting vanity plates that say SeudoPG.

I took the thing apart again, this time to follow the FSM procedure. I backed off the adjusters til the valleys of the teeth were flush with the housing, then marked one tooth on each side. I turned each adjuster 5 teeth at a time (1/4 turn) until the carrier stopped rocking around between the cones...

I didn't look up the specs for the pinion bearing as it wasn't removed... but there definitely aren't specs for the carrier bearings, just three steps: 1. Screw adjusters til they carriers "lightly contact the bearings" 2. Check backlash 3. Screw adjusters in equal amounts until backlash is correct ...

This whole marking compound led me down a rabbit hole of setting up diffs, which has overall been positive but left me in a quandry... The mc2 instructions vary from the FSM in a couple ways, but the gist is that I'm hung up on setting preload. Although mc2's instructions vary slightly from the FSM,...

Some of my favorite seats: Saab 9000 Aero - they're a little large for me, but very comfortable 1st gen Taurus SHO - they don't age well, but when new they were very comfortable, albeit bulky 7th gen Celica seats - remarkable for a factory seat in a relatively inexpensive car 2002 Saab 9-3 Anniversa...

Ya gear marking compound. I wonder if this process is done from the factory? On the ford tech makuloco videos the dude drains the differential or gear oil from newer ford vehicles. Even though they are low mileage and never off-roaded it looks whiteish like it was contaminated with water. He says i...

No, like I said the pinion wasn't touched.

Makes sense. The pinion wasn't changed, but seems like a worthwhile thing to look at!

Ah, gotcha. That feels less precise than using a dial gauge, but my experience is quite limited.

You lost me with that...