Category: Blog

Easy Fix for 1994 Toyota Corolla Random Stalling

by Don, posted in Blog
1994 Toyota Corolla

This is a quick recap of what restored my 1994 Toyota Corolla back to its reliable self. This is a share of an experience, not advice or a diagnosis- always do your research and decide for yourself whether you can do this repair or need to seek help from an automotive professional. Maybe this post will help you out of a jam if you are experiencing the same symptoms. Hopefully this won’t be too wordy for you, if so skip to the end to see what the fix was. I’ve included some pictures so you can compare your engine to mine.

So Good Before The Problem

I’ve had a great experience commuting to work in this ultra-reliable car. It starts right up no matter what the outside temperature is, and is as fun to drive as a five-speed go kart. With over 200,000 miles, it still gets around 34 miles to the gallon. It’s not the most comfortable ride and there are plenty of quirky things in its 25th year of service long after it rolled off of the assembly line, but I was convinced that I could drive this car anywhere and forever.


Then Came The Problem

There I was, in bumper-to-bumper traffic, two miles from the nearest exit, and the car just stopped running. In the milliseconds while the RPMs dropped to zero, I had perceived that it had shut down like the key was switched off rather than starved for fuel or something similar. I turned the key to quickly restart the car, but with no luck…after a few more attempts of longer-than-usual cranking it started again. I moved with the traffic a few feet, then the car shut off again. And again… Luck being on my side, I was able to restart the car repeatedly the whole way to the exit ramp. It took what seemed like two dozen more restarts then the car seemed to snap out of it and stayed running without a hitch for the last 20 miles home.


7A-FE Engine

My ‘Rolla has the 7A-FE 4-cylinder engine. There’s a lot of information on the internet about this engine, including what manufacturers used it and in which years and models. I learned a lot about this engine from surfing dozens of posts, including that this workhorse engine had multiple revisions of electrical controls. WHICH VERSION DID I HAVE??? I couldn’t be sure. Information overload set in.

7A-FE engine. Used in a LOT of cars.

Early Attempts to Repair

Rather than going into boring details of the things I tried that didn’t fix the problem, I’ll just say that fuel pressure was good and the ignition relay, fuel cutout relay, and fuel pump were not the problem. I could drive it reliably for shorter distances. I almost made it all the way to work but it shut off a mile from the freeway entrance. I was able to make it home after one restart. Tow-truck avoided again.

Time for a New Used Car – Almost

Up to this point, I had invested a lot of time and concluded that I was chasing a fluke problem that I might never find. Even though I really liked the car and appreciated how little it cost me to operate and maintain, I decided that I was not going to invest any more time chasing a ghost problem, rebuilding the electrical system piece by piece without schematics that I knew were exactly for this car and engine combination. Enough was enough, it was time to look for another car. I went to several used car lots, and took a test drive of a neighbors car for sale. It seemed like I’d end up with a ‘new’ used car and be exposed to all of the unknown problems that would only show over time.

One Last Attempt – Throw a Little More Money at the Problem

Being both stubborn and optimistic – and because ‘I wake up stoked most of the time’ like it says on my home page – I decided one morning that one last repair attempt was in order. I had suspected that maybe something in the distributor or an external crank or cam sensor was the problem. I learned that Ebay has tons of complete NEW distributors listed for around 50 dollars, US. I also found a new crankshaft sensor listed on one of the online superstore sites for less than 20 dollars. I ordered both parts even though I was not sure which part might be the fix.

Corolla 7A-FE distributor. Note the two connectors. The one on the right has 6 pins, not 4 like some engine revisions.
  • Side view.
  • Close-up.
  • Close-up of the connectors showing the 6-pin variety of the closest one in the pic.

7A-FE Crank Sensor – Not on This One

While waiting for delivery of the parts, I received an email alert that the crank sensor was out of stock. No replacements were available at a price I was willing to pay right then, so I cancelled the order and accepted that I’d just try to put in a distributor first and see if that part alone would be the answer to the stalling problem. As happens a lot on web searches for car repair posts, some people said that there was not a separate crank sensor on the 7A-FE engine but most said there was one. Even though I ordered a crank sensor before confirming my engine had one, now that it was no longer on the way, for closure I looked all over the engine and confirmed for myself that this particular Corolla did not have a crank sensor. It worked out that the sensor that I ordered was out of stock.

What Was Apparently Happening

The best I can tell, one of the rotation sensors in the distributor was on the verge of failing, but not quite there. After about 45 minutes of driving, the heat from the engine would soak into the distributor and the sensor would heat up and stop functioning, likely because of increasing resistance.

Summary – So What Exactly Was the Point of This Blog Again ??!!

A failing electrical component in the distributor was the reason that the car stalled after warming up to operating temperature. For 50 dollars I received a new, complete distributor: housing, igniter, cap, rotor, coil and two sensors. It was incredibly cheaper than buying individual rebuild parts. It was also much easier, because just two bolts hold the distributor assembly in on the side of the engine.

There are several configurations of the distributor – some with 6 pins in the connector and some with 4. Count your pins before you order and confirm that the replacement not only matches by the year/model fitment description but also matches the connector configuration.

Some 7A-FE engines have a crank sensor near the vibration damper or in other location nearby. Some engine versions don’t have a crank sensor. Mine does not. I hope this report helps somebody, good luck with your own diagnosis and repair!


Some More About Olympic Skateboarding

by Don, posted in Blog

I wrote in a previous blog that I’d like to follow the subject of Olympic skateboarding as it moves forward to becoming an actual event.  Here’s a start in an attempt to unravel the details.

Who’s In Charge Right Now?

My current understanding is that the body in charge of the team skater selection process is the World Skate Organization.  You can follow this link to their site for all the details.

How Many Competitors Will Be In the Olympic Skateboarding Events?

According to the World Skate Organization site, we are told that the 2020 Olympic Skateboarding events will include a total of 80 skaters from all over the world. Yes, of course they are Olympic ‘athletes’, but let’s start calling them ‘skaters’ since that’s more than likely how they would refer to themselves. I need to dig further and update you on the number of skaters that each country will be allotted from the total of 80.

What Kind of Events Will There Be?

It looks like the events will be split into Street and Park events, with categories for men and women.  Doing the math, that’s 20 skaters per event per category. It also seems that there will be 4 events total rather than a heat elimination format. (As a side note, I’m interested to see if the plan will evolve into skater crossover across event formats. We can follow this going forward when we see what happens.)

How Will Skaters Get Selected for the Team?

I have not had the chance to fully digest the criteria document on the World Skate Organization site, but it seems at first glance that skaters will earn Olympic points based on performance in competitions occurring throughout the world through during the qualification period. The period opened this month and will continue through May of 2020, about two months before the Olympics start in July 2020. Rankings will be updated on Tuesdays. That’s good news for us because it will give us something to look forward to and discuss on a regular basis.

Skateboarding 101 – Definitions of Our First Two Terms

As we begin following the new skateboarding event I think that we should learn some of the definitions in the unique language that skateboarding has. Admittedly, I’m probably going to mess some of these up, so feel free to correct me in the comments. And as a reminder of the soul of this blog, please keep a positive vibe.

Street

Street skating is pretty much what you’d expect from the name – obstacles that are encountered out in the street – curbs, rails, steps, and a myriad of other obstacles that have to be skated on or over. We can envision a course where those types of obstacles are intentionally constructed on a course – without the cracks and potholes that can put you down hard in something called a slam! (We’re already adding more and more terms that we can define in a future blog.) Under pressure of a relatively short timer, the skaters will be judged on a point-based system rewarding difficulty, execution and originality of the trick that they attempt. There’s a whooooooole lot more that goes into the judging, such as the number of tricks completed, how they flow together, and much more. But we’ll stop here for now with this base definition of street skating. In the future, we also need to discuss the format of the events in terms of the number of skaters on the course at one time, and a lot more things like that.

Park

Park skating is different from street skating in that the features such as quarter pipes, vert walls, ramps (we’ll call them transitions), and other challenges are intentionally designed rather than having the randomness of the ‘repurposed’ obstacles that street skating offers. Park events and street events will similarly be timed and judged for each skater.

A Good Place to Stop for Now

Hopefully the description above is accurate and makes some sense, and at the very least taught you a little something about skateboarding. I still owe you a blog about why I like skateboarding, maybe that will happen soon. For now, I’ll leave you with this photo from a sesh this past weekend at the local indoor skate park. Quizzing myself to use ‘street’, ‘park’, and some of the other terms above in the same sentence, this would be my entry: “See the geezer attempting a kickturn on the transition at the indoor spot which has both street and park features.”

Notice that this spot has both street and park features.



At Least 7 Family Activities of an East Coast Car Trip

by Don, posted in Blog

That You Can Do With Just One Overnight Stay

Blog Post Background

If you read the homepage landing site you may remember that I’ve started a blog to capture moments and experiences then share them with family and friends and to whoever may find my site. I’m still in the super early stages of learning how to blog (and finding out if it’s even for me), so the format below is still going to be rough compared to other sites that you may visit on a regular basis.  I am trying though! For example just today I listened to a bunch of podcasts on blogging and took away ever so much more knowledge to update this post just a little. Always a self-critic I’m telling myself that tweaking this post is making it longer, which might just discourage anyone from staying on this page. (That is a fresh takeaway from a blogging podcast.)

Hopefully Something That You Can Use

If you continue reading this post you may be inspired to plan your own whirlwind car trip. Or, maybe you’ll learn how to improve your own blog by seeing clear examples of ‘how-not-to-do-it’ that I can’t even see yet. (If you do see something that you’d like to feed back to teach me how to make better posts please send me a comment and I’ll be grateful.  I think I said in another post that there are waaaaaaay too many comments on the ‘net with bad vibes, so try to keep your vibe positive if you can.)

One Last Thing Before You Read Any Further

Car trips are not for everybody. If they aren’t, you already know why. A car trip with family members is pretty demanding – you all have to get up early, actually get out of the house, load up, share limited baggage space in the car, start moving, actually make some progress before somebody has to stop, get where you are going, find parking, pay for parking…and the list goes on. And that does not even mention checking the car over for the trip. If it’s an older car like ours, you travel with the cloud of doubt whether you’ll even make it and how much would it cost you if you break down. But that’s not why we make our car trips.  It’s because they are so much fun!?

Finally, About This Weekend Trip

So, the weekend was another blur of trying to do what some might think is way too much in one weekend but it seems to be kind of normal for us. Maybe next weekend will be slower…nah, we already know that some of us have to be at an event at 6:15 on all of our day off.

No Sleep Until Philly?

We started by hitting the road at 5:15 AM to head to Philly. The first stop was the Reading Terminal Market. Describing the Terminal market could take a whole lot of pages on its own, but today’s entry is going to be short – because the weekend was kind of tiring, especially coming off of the busy Christmas holidays then the first couple of days back to work.

One of the Long Aisles of Vendors in the Reading Terminal Market

Back to the story…we each bought to our liking different types of food from the market based on our own tastes – a side of falafel for me, veggie gyro for one daughter, shrimp po-boy for the other, and a Philly cheese steak sandwich for the Mrs. (Although I can hardly see how she thought it was a real cheese steak by omitting the peppers, onions, and no mustard. To each their own, right?)

The Liberty Bell

Next it was off a few blocks to the Liberty Bell….errrnnnt, no such luck other than to look through the window because of the shutdown. You kind of realize right then and there that it’s a National Park even though it’s smack in the middle of one of the busiest cities in the country.

Liberty Bell, Philadelphia

On to PHL for a dropoff and some teary goodbye-for-nows…getting there early to beat the lines, we had some time and all played a few rounds of cards for some last-minute QT.

Weehawken

Just a ‘short’ two-hour drive from the airport, we headed to a very nice restaurant that sits across the Hudson River from Manhattan. I’d been there twice before on business, each time thinking of how much I’d like to bring the family there to share in the experience. That happens a lot – I go to a nice or unique place when on a business trip and I think the whole time about how much I’d like to bring the family back there in the future. The menu was great and although significantly over our budget for dining out, the setting on the river with the nighttime sky illuminated beyond description made it worth every dollar to me. I’d need a good reason to make the long trip there again, but it’s not off of my bucket list to go back again and again when the opportunity arises.

Spectacular View of Manhattan from Across the Hudson River

Alexander Hamilton!

OK, now that dinner was over, we were close enough to the historical site where our founding father Alexander Hamilton met his fate. A year ago, I knew little about his history, but have been ‘schooled’ on the theatrical rendition from listening and being entertained over and over by my daughter who performs the songs on every long car trip just like this one. No need for a script to be an understudy – she has it memorized and can sing the songs word for word whether you are ready for it or not.


Famous Site Where Alexander Hamilton was Fatally Wounded in a Duel

Times Square New York City!!

It was now around 8:30 PM. Sometimes I say things I’d like to do tongue in cheek knowing full well I’m going to do it. So, my wife only asked once if I was really up to driving us through the Lincoln Tunnels over to Manhattan for a lap through Times Square at night. See, on the other business trips my colleague who used to live there offered me the same chance to see Times Square at night. If you asked me two years ago about whether I would like to go to NYC…at night or other time…I’d have said I had no interest. But no more – the visual from all the lights in Time Square is more than I can describe in this sitting, but I can surely say in a sentence that it’s worth seeing. The family thought so, too. Back to the experience of driving in NYC, this night it really was not as busy as we had expected. It seemed to help to ‘drive like you live there’, meaning that you just got your edge on and went with the flow.

Just a Typical Busy Night in Manhattan, New York City
You Have to See The Lights of Times Square for Yourself to Really Appreciate the Picture

Asbury Park

Having done all what we had set out to do for the day, it was time to head toward the coast to our hotel about an hour and a half away in Asbury Park, New Jersey. A little bit of tea, being shamed into a short sesh on the treadmill, then off to sleep.

The next morning we drove to a nearby beach with the intention of me getting in the Atlantic for a brief sesh. One thing you may not realize is that you just don’t name the spot no matter what. I.e. the spot goes un-named to protect the locals. (I wonder if anybody will get that reference. It’s not exactly that phrase.)

The waves were just right for this old geezer who in his own mind is just an older grommet who’s going to break through the wall any time now. The sets were at a decent period (can’t remember exactly what they were, maybe 9 to 10 seconds, shoulder to head high and offshore winds. I said the WAVES were good for me at my level. Sooo, the water TEMPERATURE was around 45 DEGF. Being a grom on a budget, I only own one wetsuit so far….a 4/3. My gloves and booties are 5mm, not sure about the lid. I assumed that the other half dozen guys in the water were all in 5-6mm suits and were as warm as if they were sitting in front of a fireplace. I knew that I was set up for water in the high 50’s, but made the call that I would go in for just the limited amount of time that I could stand it, then dash back to the car where my wife and daughter had so thoughtfully managed to keep the heater warm. (Meaning, they stayed in the warm car while I played.) For me, that time ended somewhere around 45 minutes. As with skateboarding, my expectation is not to leave the current sesh incredibly skilled, but to leave better than when I started. And that was the case today, it was a super fun session. I have so far to get from where I am that I have so much room to improve that just about any session feels rewarding, not even mentioning that feeling of just having gone out in the water. It’s living that feeling that “a bad day at the beach beats a good day…(almost anywhere)”

I had a few good rides, for me anyway, a couple of scoops of the ice-cream headache from the cold water under the squid lid, and some little reminders that leg cramps can sneak up at you almost anytime, but other than that not too much negative feedback. Then within a minute my body switched into the next gear of the cold water response and I knew it was time to go in. The last 20 yards to the shore were a little intimidating because I knew that I was slowing down and the brain was getting a little less heat to make good computations. At some point, the leg of my wetsuit pulled up and my boot was getting regular refills of that cold Atlantic salt water. I only mention this to say that it was time to go and much time longer was not the right answer. (As I’ve said before, I’m not an expert or anything close. This is not instruction or advice, use your own judgement on the right gear for the conditions and situation.)

Back to the car, I changed back into dry clothes under the cloak of my very functional terry-cloth changing towel hoodie (that my ever-loving wife says makes me look like I’m a toddler in a beach hoodie.) I’m open to reviewing surf changing hoodies, wetsuits, gloves, or any other gear to share my user experience.  If you’re a vendor or manufacturer, reach out to me.  Maybe we can work something out.

Geezer Grommet After a Cold Sesh in the Atlantic

Dried off and in dry clothing, I rousted the family out of the warm car for a short walk on the boardwalk before heading home. I’ll end this post before it gets even longer, saying that the weekend was great – a mixture of family QT, goodbyes, sightseeing, surfing, and cruising.
AND PEGGY.

Has the world realized that surfing and skateboarding are going to be in the 2020 Olympics?

by Don, posted in Blog

Olympic Surfing – There’s already been a bit of early discussion on some of the podcasts that I listen to about the upcoming Olympic surfing events – venue, team members, etc. I’m going to tune in to those discussions when they come around again on the surfing media.

Olympic Skateboarding – I have a pretty avid interest in skateboarding and am going to blog here on the Olympic skateboarding topic and see where it goes. Just the thought of skateboarding in the Olympics kind of blows my mind for a lot of reasons and I’d like to capture some of them over time between now and when the events occur. Admittedly, I’m still a rookie blogger [Hello World?] so bear with me as I roll out the site. I’m going to post this as the starter thread. Keeping with personal blogging goals of sharing interests with family and friends on a public site in a good vibe, I’m going to keep the blog and any comments on the positive side.

My friends say that I talk a lot, so maybe if the blog takes off at all I can get a podcast going. Interviewing people associated with skateboarding and the Olympic events seems really interesting to me, especially the back-stories.

That’s all for now…

Running a draft of the blog past my daughter for proofing she asked “Olympic skateboarding – is that a thing?” I assured her that it is, and that illustrates the reason for choosing it as a topic for blogging.

Memory Saved 12/30/18

by Don, posted in Blog

Keeping with my goal of blogging to save family memories, here’s a recollection of the weekend.

We drove to the local ski resort for a day of snowtubing with our visiting relatives. I would normally sit out a tubing session and possibly catch a catnap awhile the family does their thing , but this time I went at it with a different enthusiasm to really share in the outing to it’s fullest. The temperature was warm for December causing the runs to be a little icy and actually a lot of fun. Trying to up the game just a little, running dive starts were in order for more speed. After our sesh was over we all headed to the lodge for our tradition of pizza and swimming for the kids in the indoor pool. Also keeping true to the routine I caught a decent nap in the pool lounge chair after the pizza. All in all I had a really good day with family. That’s what I’ll remember.