What Did You Do to Your A-Body Today?

[DarthSTE]

Hi Guys! I'm new to this forum because only in the last month I'm the proud new owner of my dream car - an 89 Pontiac 6000 STE AWD!!! So my long term project is to convert the car into an Electric Vehicle. But for now she will be my winter badass as I park my Pontiac G8 in the winter.

I need to find two things ASAP: one is a new track for the drivers seat. It won't go back or down and I can't move it. The mechanic says I need a new track - I am not 100% convinced - I think its a wiring issue on the power seats. Regardless I need to start looking just in case. Did most A bodies have the same track system for the seats?

Second - passenger door moldings. Mine are crap right now. I had the car painted last week and so we sprayed over the gaps in the 3-line trim. But I need new ones - both front and rear door. Any help would be soooo appreciated!

Thanks - Eric

[CorvairGeek]

Welcome!

[cody1234]

The door hinge itself is welded to the doors outer frame and that hinge is then bolted up to the body. I didn't see what all the damage was as I didn't bother to take the door panel off to take a look inside. But just from eyeballing it................the hinge was cracked and needed replacing badly. The door behind the hinge was cracked as well. The door appeared rust free from the outside. None of the usual rot along the bottom seams near the water drains. The replacement doors that he was finding were in worse condition than the door on his car so he didn't bother purchasing any of those. He doesn't know how to weld................and honestly neither do I. But I do believe I am going to do as tlc1976 has done and get myself one of those little welders and see if I can't teach myself to weld. I agree with him when he said it's a good skill to have when keeping these old cars on the road. That 25 year old metal on my car is gonna show signs of corrosion and metal fatigue soon and I know I had better learn to fix it. I don't want to wind up in the same boat as my friend and having to decide on paying the mortgage or paying the body shop bill. And you know what? A lot of these body shops around here actually refuse to work on these old cars anymore. They don't want to be bothered with them. My friend three of the four body shops he went to turn him away and the last one thru a ridiculous price at him. He got frustrated and angry and junked the car. I am seriously looking to getting myself a welder though. Who knows, maybe if I had known a little something about welding I might have been able to save that car.

I woulda drove it still. Even if it ment getting in the passengers side. Heck i even drove my celebrity when the door latch broke couldnt shut the door. Drove it to work with the door hanging open about the whole way. I ended up tie it up between the post to the back door until i fixed it. And right now ive probably got the only celebrity with a pontiac door on it. I wanna find a decent replacement from a celebrity just so everything matches up right.

[Skip]

I woulda drove it still. Even if it ment getting in the passengers side. Heck i even drove my celebrity when the door latch broke couldnt shut the door. Drove it to work with the door hanging open about the whole way. I ended up tie it up between the post to the back door until i fixed it. And right now ive probably got the only celebrity with a pontiac door on it. I wanna find a decent replacement from a celebrity just so everything matches up right.

Me too. I would have held on to it until I could get it fixed. The rest of the car was in good shape. I would learn to weld and fix it myself. He didn't tell me he was going to junk the car. I had no clue.....til it was too late. I would have taken it off his hands and stored it.

[tlc1976]

Congrats on thinking of learning to weld. What I would absolutely recommend is a welder with both infinite adjustments for both feed and heat, which is what I have. I saw one for sale at Northern Tool a number of years ago. Haven't looked lately. I've seen many new welders with just a handful of presets which for me wouldn't work so well. When welding such thin old metal, the hardest part is getting solid penetration without blowing through. Sometimes you're splitting hairs on the dial to get it just right, and every piece of metal is different. But when you got it, it's amazing how much strength you can put back into the car. Another tip is to not try to weld continuous, but start with extremely quick pulses, then work up to longer pulses, watching the metal pools and keeping a steady hand.

What have I done to my a-body today? Looked at them for the first time in almost 3 weeks. Been in the hospital for a sudden bowel blockage that required surgery. Had surgery for that when I was 8 and 15 as well. Still in pretty rough shape and still got weeks of recovery but I at least came home today. So the hiatal hernia surgery is on the back burner now until I heal up from this. I did have my friend come over and drain the nearly straight water out of the cooling system on the Cruiser, as it's getting closer to full time freezing temps out. It won't be driven in snow ever, and I'll garage it over the winter and hopefully by spring I'll do the engine swap.

[Century7667]

...last week I saw the eerie green glow of the battery maintainer on my Century.

[Drop Top Olds]

Fuel pump failure right after filling up. Now all back together and running right.

[SexySilhouette]

Always on a full tank, it seems.

[Skip]

Congrats on thinking of learning to weld. What I would absolutely recommend is a welder with both infinite adjustments for both feed and heat, which is what I have. I saw one for sale at Northern Tool a number of years ago. Haven't looked lately. I've seen many new welders with just a handful of presets which for me wouldn't work so well. When welding such thin old metal, the hardest part is getting solid penetration without blowing through. Sometimes you're splitting hairs on the dial to get it just right, and every piece of metal is different. But when you got it, it's amazing how much strength you can put back into the car. Another tip is to not try to weld continuous, but start with extremely quick pulses, then work up to longer pulses, watching the metal pools and keeping a steady hand.

What have I done to my a-body today? Looked at them for the first time in almost 3 weeks. Been in the hospital for a sudden bowel blockage that required surgery. Had surgery for that when I was 8 and 15 as well. Still in pretty rough shape and still got weeks of recovery but I at least came home today. So the hiatal hernia surgery is on the back burner now until I heal up from this. I did have my friend come over and drain the nearly straight water out of the cooling system on the Cruiser, as it's getting closer to full time freezing temps out. It won't be driven in snow ever, and I'll garage it over the winter and hopefully by spring I'll do the engine swap.

I hope you feel better real soon. Thinking good thoughts for you pal.

[tlc1976]

Thanks man. It's a slow process but getting a little better every day. Should be able to go back to work in a week, desk job. The Cruiser is in the garage, it got snowed on as we had an unexpected early start to winter, but it thawed enough the other day for me to get 99% of the snow off it and pull it back into the garage. Which is good because it's colder and more snow now. That was enough of a workout for the day. Amazing what I took for granted. Something as simple as pushing a pile of dirt with my shop broom, couldn't do it, had to break it up into a few very tiny piles. I just started driving yesterday, my Jeep of course, so I could get some practice in before I start having to drive to work. Very weird as I hadn't driven in over a month.

[Skip]

Just take it easy. Everything will come back to you in it's own time. Don't push it. A little at a time. My baby is in the garage now too. It snowed a little here the last couple days and I don't like to expose her to winter any more. Fresh fluids in her and the Ctek battery maintainer is hooked up to her. The Dodge Grand Caravan is now in full use.

[Century7667]

Just take it easy. Everything will come back to you in it's own time. Don't push it. A little at a time. My baby is in the garage now too. It snowed a little here the last couple days and I don't like to expose her to winter any more. Fresh fluids in her and the Ctek battery maintainer is hooked up to her. The Dodge Grand Caravan is now in full use.

Ditto. Just take it easy. My wife had a similar situation. It takes a while. The trusty a-body will be there waiting.

Ken T.

[CorvairGeek]

The turn signal actuator arm gave out in the '96, so I figured it was a good time to fix the non-cancelling of the left turn signal and loose steering column;



Found there was a problem (tiny break in the plastic) in the cam assembly, so I got a whole new AC Delco switch assy;



The disassembly, after removing the Claymore and steering wheel;





It should be noted that I could not remove the tilt spring (under the shiny cover with the square hole), no matter what I did;



The four black screws (bottom right is removed) are what normally make GM tilt columns loose, but that was not the case with ours. It was actually loose tilt, pivot pins. I went ahead and made sure the four black screws were tight and had locking compound (they had it from the factory too).



Disconnecting the steering column wiring;



The turn signal switch was at the top part of the connector;



The reassembly, the cap to the tilt spring had displaced some of the pot metal in the secured position. A little work with a small file cleaned it up so I could reinstall it;



Almost ready to install the lock plate with the new turn signal actuator arm installed (black screw) to the new turn signal switch assembly;



I really didn't like this project, but it works great now.

[Century7667]

Jerry,

Looks a lot like my '95 down to the same interior carpet. I pulled mine apart too to replaced the multi-function signal switch. Job went ok, but had two issues: 1) The ignition switch didn't want to move to the start position (assembly error, but I was able to go back and fix that) , and 2) pulling the wiring up through the steering column was a pain.

Glad your job went well.

Thanks,
Ken T.

[CorvairGeek]

It takes 3.5 hands to keep everything aligned and slide the upper column back together with everything in the correct relationship.
Surprisingly, feeding the wiring went smoothly. I didn't expect that big connector to slide through so easily.