What's New

This page archives the update history of this site from Jan 1, 1999.

08/12/15
Moved again! Now running on it's own virtual host.

01/08/14
Moved! The operator of geekhack.org has been gratious enough to host my sites. Thank you, iMav!

Wow, 15 years.

01/24/08
The old Oil Filter Study page has been replaced by a new article: Oil Filters Revealed. It has received a major update to bring it inline with the current market, lots of new pictures, and some completely different filters as well. Many weeks of research went into this one.

05/27/06
Finally added the procedure with pictures for the speed/distance sensor hall effect modification. Also added more data to the pinion gear reference page.

10 years since this site was first created!

01/04/05
Added the fusible link page and tweaked the power feed diagnosis page accordingly. Some diagrams will be added as time permits.

12/08/04
Big update in the ECU section. The logic module pages were updated and the power module and SMEC pages are now up. Also fixed some of the diagrams in the idle problems section to make them viewable with the current background.

04/26/04
Updated some diagrams so they render better (this is going to take a long time). Got started on the Performance section.

12/26/03
Ran the updated stuff through a spell checker (finally).

12/19/03
The site has moved to my homepage web server because I could not get access to the pages on AllPar. This may just be a temporary thing, so enjoy the lack of banner and pop-up ads while it lasts. I also finished the cleanup of the ECU section.

12/09/03
I have completed the resurrection of the main pages of this site and am about one third the way through the ECU section. The fault codes page was cleaned up, and a few codes were updated, but there will be more to come. The performance section is largely untouched, so please treat it as such (out of date) and the troubleshooter is even more broken. The performance section will be the next major hurtle and will probably be trimmed way down to include external references to better sites. I have decided to upload the changes I have so far, even though they are incomplete. Some of the old content was just too far off the mark.

10/19/03
Well it is a long time in coming (four years), but I have finally started to get my hands dirty with the major reorganization of this site. I hope to make it a little easier to find things, and fix or remove any information that is wrong or out of date. I have learned a lot since I originally authored these pages and I feel kind of bad that I have let it sit for so long. I won't release these changes until they are largely done, so hopefully that will be sometime early next year. The HTML is a nasty mess too, as I was using Netscape Composer at the time. Yuck.

02/27/02
Moving again! Special thanks to Dr. David A. Zatz for giving me some space on one of his web servers (part of the AllPar family). You will no longer see huge, nasty banner ads and annoying pop-ups (there will be small ads on the top of each page, however). I will move the domain over as soon as I can, and I am in the process of moving my email contact to a yahoo account (minimopar@myrealbox.com). Please note that I have not had access to my xoommail account for well over a year, I apologize to those that have been trying to get a hold of me.

09/17/01
Well, 50megs is now changing their policies and screwing us all over. Expect to see more banners and bandwidth restrictions. Looking for other options that I can afford.

08/02/01
It's been over a year since the last update, and yes I am still alive. I simply don't have time for this site these days, as my life is going through a lot of changes. I haven't given up yet and I hope to bring those last oil filters to the study. I would also like to re-take the pictures in that article, as many are of poor quality. I still have all the cut-open filters in a box.

YAHS! (yet another hosting service). Ever since XOOM was bought by NBCi, the service has been going downhill. I have now moved the site to 50megs.com, which seems to have much better performance. I have also purchased the domain name "minimopar.net", so set your bookmarks to http://www.minimopar.net. Future host changes should not effect your bookmarks.

In addition, I have also started the grueling process of fixing the many diagrams that don't render correctly with this color scheme. Most of the images were created assuming a dark blue background, and they look horrible with the current, inverted color scheme. I have no plans of changing the color scheme again in the future.

06/20/00
The site has moved back to XOOM. The primary reason for this is that Simplenet was bought by Yahoo. In order to make any changes to my site, I have to upgrade to one of Yahoo's packages. They are over twice the cost I was paying at Simplenet. The other reason is that I have had little time to work on this site over the past year. I'm not sure what the future holds, but much of this site needs updating and it doesn't make sense for me to pay for it. XOOM's performance isn't stellar, but it's OK and it's free.

I have made a few tweaks to some of the pages to plug some of the holes. You can also read about the future of the Oil Filter Study.

09/07/99
The Oil Filters Overview page has been updated again. It now includes most of the subjective info from the original Oil filter Study page. I have also fixed the link from the Oil Filter Study page to this one.

09/03/99
Ooops. I messed up on the new pages in the Understanding The ECU section. I took a look at my '86 wiring diagrams last night and found that only the L-body logic modules are the same for 1986 and 1987. Sorry about that...it is now fixed.

09/02/99
I have put the subjective "fun" parts of the original oil filter study back where they belong: in the Oil Filters Overview page. Enjoy. Also, I added several pages to the Understanding The ECU section. They contain module-specific information about the various units such as pin-outs, etc.

08/27/99
The site has received a very thorough clean-up. All <font> tags have been stripped and the pages now have browser-friendly HTML. To achieve a better polish, I have implemented cascading style sheets (CSS) instead. If your browser is CSS-capable, then this site is looking it's best. If your browser is not CSS-capable, then this site still looks good and is very readable. If you find that sometimes the font is not correct, this is because you are using Netscape and Netscape does not inherit styles properly on pages that use tables. There have been numerous version changes since this problem was discovered, but Netscape has not bothered to fix it yet. Hopefully Netscape 5.0 will address this, but until then you can use Internet Explorer or Optera to view the pages without the font troubles. I have also "inverted" the color scheme to make the pages more printer-friendly. You shouldn't have to monkey with color overrides to print these pages any longer.

Some of the pictures and diagrams need to be fixed since the color scheme is now inverted. I apologize for the inconvenience.

I have also put the Oil Filter Study back on the web. I have removed as much subjective content as possible, so we'll see what happens. Enjoy it while you can!!! As of right now, I still plan to finish the study this winter by adding the missing filters.

08/16/99
I received the document from the oil filter retailer, which was from a quality engineer at Champion Laboratories. It was obviously in response to a query the retailer had made to Champion Labs in regards to my web page. The document made some very valid points, which I will take to heart. What really annoys me is that rather than work with me on the issues presented in the letter, they simply chose to demand I take the entire thing down. I am always open to input, but I don't respond favorably to blind threats.

08/11/99
Yesterday I received a rather threatening letter from a corporate lawyer for an automotive parts retailer (not an oil filter manufacturer). Surprisingly, this was not in regards to Allied-Signal manufactured oil filters. It was in regards to Champion Laboratories manufactured filters. I requested that the retailer send me the information from the manufacturer that caused them to demand that the page be removed from my site. Hopefully it will shed some light on the subject. Since the lawyer had no apparent knowledge on the subject, I did not try to reason with her.

05/25/99
Updated the Oil Filter Study page with a warning. Please read it.
Removed some of the out-dated content from the old site on XOOM. I realized that this will quickly lead to confusion.

05/19/99
Moved the Mini-Mopar Resource Site to Simplenet. The reason for the move is mostly due to the dropping performance of XOOM, which has been gaining a lot of popularity. It has also acquired a semi-intrusive banner (though it is MUCH better then GeoCities). I will continue to recommend XOOM as one of the best free web hosts, but it is no longer suitable for this site.
Updated the look of most of the main pages and rearranged the "Home" page. Hope you like it.

05/17/99
Added the Mini-Mopar Troubleshooter Pages.
Updated the German Oil Filter Study page.

05/07/99
Added the Oil Filter Study Mopar and Audi/VW special feature pages.
Updated the Oil Filter Study page by splitting it up a bit.

04/29/99
Added the Idle Problems and Electrical Issues pages.
Updated the Oil Filter Study page with more corrections.

04/26/99
Added the WCB and WCV pages and made progress on the EEPC page.
Updated the Oil Filter Study page with some new info and corrections.

03/22/99
Updated the Oil Filter Study page.

02/24/99
Updated the Diagnosing Your Charging System and the Diagnosing Your Fuel System pages.

02/23/99
Added the PCV oil canister page.
Updated the Oil Filter Study page with more filters and pictures.

02/19/99
Updated the Oil Filter Study page.

02/15/99
Added the Oil Filter Study page.
Updated the Oil Filters page.

02/12/99
Added the Performance Links page.
Updated the Choosing Your gauges with gauge isolator information, the Head Gaskets and Upgrading the Engine's Top End with new headgasket information, and the Upgrading The Fuel System page with more accurate information.

02/09/99
Added the Wheels And Tires page and the Electronic Engine Performance Controllers page.
Updated the About This Author, Diagnosing Your Fuel System, Headgaskets, BOV page, Upgrading the Fuel System page, and the WCB pages.

02/05/99
Added engine oil and oil filters page. See Tech Data.
Updated the Turbocharger Concepts page.

01/22/99
Added this page. All future additions and updates will appear here. The date on the main page will show the latest date on this page.
Updated the body designations page.

01/21/99
Added the Speed/Distance Sensor Upgrades page and the Brake System Upgrades page.
Updated the vacuum diagrams and the About The Author page with some history and philosophies behind this site and added the page about printing.

01/19/99
Added pictures to a few pages.
Updated Turbocharger Concepts page and Upgrading Your Turbocharger page (again) and cleaned up some of the messy HTML in some of the over-head links.

01/15/99
Added the Upgrading Your Turbocharger page (finally).
Updated Turbocharger Concepts page

01/12/99
Added vendor list, Mahle page, Long Rod Engine page, and several fixes in the performance section.

01/11/99
Added the Fuel System Upgrades page to the Performance section and the Build A Fuel Pressure Gauge page.

01/06/99
Added the transaxle specification pages to the tech data page.
Updated a lot of missing and outright wrong information on the performance pages added on 01/04/98. Sorry about that. I was very sick with the flu when I wrote those pages. The new information should be accurate.

01/04/99
Added most of the rest of the Performance Guide pages. The last two still need to be worked on. Also added the engine centering page (click on "Repairs").

Return to the MiniMopar Resources