2003 Chrysler Crossfire - Update 12/11

A good update. Nicely done!

I do wonder if you have any transport at the moment .

without an ever so slightly larger radius on the end of that crush tube I can see 2 things happening, the tube getting jammed on the spigot, and also the bush being able to move up and down the tube as its not being clamped against the body.

Ha! Very fun!

If you are stuck for a car, let me know. I shockingly have 3 in use, albeit two are taxed.

Massive progress!

Thanks

I've been doing a fair bit of reading about the M113 V8 swap, quite a few have been done in the US. If I did go that route, I'd likely end up with either the 5.0 from the S500, CL500 etc. or the 5.4 from the S55, CL55 etc. which would boost power from the V6's 215bhp to around 300 or 350 bhp respectively.

The 5.0 engines seem to be available from as little as £400 whereas the 5.4s are a bit more scarce and are nearer £1500 or more, so I'd proabbly lean towards the 5.0. That said I would likely have to find myself a runaround in the meantime as putting the car out of action for months again probably wouldn't go down too well here

I've also been looking at brake upgrades, should the need arise, it looks like there are a few options from within the Mercedes parts bin that I could take advantage of


A quick update on yesterday's progress while I wait for a rain shower to pass. Basically spent the day going round the suspension each side torquing up the various bolts, fairly tedious as there are quite a lot of them!

Torque wrench used where it would actually fit, others had to be done by feel with my calibrated arm haha, also found the solution for getting to some of the 12 point head fixings in tighter spots



I could have done with taping it in place really but the bit in a 10mm long spanner worked perfectly.

I finished up the day by getting the brakes back on both sides, with new hoses and chucked some fluid in to try and let some air bubble out overnight as the lines had gone dry



Oh and while trying to refit the fuel pump to the bracket on the subframe, one of the metal hooks for the rubbers nearly came off in my hand. There are a couple of brand new replacements on ebay in eastern europe and while they're a bit pricey, I think I'll get one for peace of mind.

Jobs remaining at the rear end are reattaching the propshaft, reconnect the handbrake cables, bleed the brakes, refit the rear section of exhaust, screw in the ABS sensors when new fixings arrive and remount the fuel pump, then I think I should be OK to tackle the front suspension

Gr9 progress!

Cheers guys 😁

I forgot to mention in my last update that when I went to fire it up for the first time there was a bit of smoke from under the bonnet where oil had been leaking...

Guess I'll be doing the rocker cover gaskets sooner than later 🙃

Must be fun with a charger in the way as well 😅

Ah are those breather chambers the separate bits bolted onto the covers? I'd been wondering why the gasket sets don't seem to have anything for those. I think I've got oil leaking from both to be honest, I need to hit the engine bay with some degreaser so I can see what I'm working with

Right, this could be quite a wordy update, so I'll do a shortened version at the end also

So from last update, the car was back on the ground with the rear bushes done and the Eibach springs on all round. I used it for commuting to work and immediately found a couple of issues. Firstly, the rear spoiler had just decided to stop working. It wouldn't raise on it's own, and wouldn't raise manually, with a flashing light on the switch. There were a few potential causes for this so I left it for the time being.

The main issue is the thing is bloody horrible to drive Now clearly I hadn't had time to sort the rear alignment and had just eyeballed it, but it didn't look particularly miles out. It's worth also mentioning that the oem wheels have ancient Chinese budget tyres and that just didn't mix with the cold, greasy weather we've been having of late. The steering also has a noticeable amount of free play around the mid point of travel, which makes sense given how I haven't done anything to the front yet.

Anyway, commuting survived and then had a trip to Suffolk to see family. Was taking it easy around 65mph as although the spoiler doesn't do much, I was still trying to build confidence in the car. Found that the exhaust booms a fair bit more around this speed than at say 70, but oh well. When pulling into Cambridge Services, heard an odd noise behind me and noticed the spoiler was going down! So it had clearly fixed itself and deployed at some point in the journey and I hadn't noticed.

While the car was off the road, the battery had gone flat and I'd recharged it, so I'm assuming the odd behaviour of the spoiler was something to do with that.

Got back to the midlands without too much drama, did some more commuting and other bits, then an evening this week I was heading to my gf's and the back end stepped out randomly. With the rubbish tyres it's very easy to get some slip and the TCS light flashing away with ham fisted driving but I was accelerating normally at this point and it really caught me out. It also felt like the car behaved oddly around another bend a bit further up the road.

It's likely this is still related to the tracking not being done etc. but it then dawned on me that between needing to use the car, it was going to take me ages to get round to finishing up the jobs on it, and it would be a pretty miserable thing to drive in the meantime.

So I started looking for something of a "stop gap" daily, to give me time to do the Crossfire properly. I had been half looking for something like this since about 2/3 weeks into doing the rear suspension, but any cheap car for sale these days looks like it would come with more problems than the Crossfire has anyway

On Wednesday evening I spotted something that might have potential, it was ending the next morning, so I chucked a bid on while sat at work and that's how I now own a Nissan Almera



Now I fully appreciate this is not an exciting car, it's a 1.5 base model S (although it does have electric windows and air con) but for the money I paid, I think it's an absolute bargain. 2 previous owners from new, first one was Enterprise rent a car for a year, though I'm not sure it was actually a rental car; then the second owner has had it for 21 years until I picked it up today.

It's got properly full service history, every receipt, MOT going back to year dot



Was even serviced at a main Nissan dealer until about 10 years ago. Some of the interior plastics are showing their age a little but it should be an ideal runaround while I sort the Crossfire, and if nothing else, it currently drives better

The Chrysler is back on the drive and SORN'd, I've parked it round the other way so I can focus on the front end. That's suspension, headlight refurbing, cam cover gaskets (which I have now) and the drivers side engine mount which I couldn't get to previously.

So yeah TL;DR Crossfire drives like poo, bought clean Almera to daily, will now fix Crossfire