What Did You Do to Your A-Body Today?

[Papadopoulos]

They're basically light diffusers I think they go behind the oil/temp and gas/volts faces 2 for each one.

That explains why these gauges are unevenly lit now. Thanks a lot!

[Skip]

Ciera91, your car is just beautiful. I love it with the white walls on it. Mine used to look similar before I went with over sized custom wheels/tires.

[thesam1984]

Ciera91, I just have the standard gauge cluster in my '93 Century with the dummy lights. Would you happen to know if a cluster like that would work in my vehicle? No mods? Hmmm, only mine is a 3 speed no OD. I wonder if there is something like that available?

Hi skip, my 90 century has the same dummy lights... we have a few options for gauge clusters...
1) Larger speedo that goes up to 100+ mph but still has dummy lights for guages out of 95/96 (not to hard to find)
2) oil/temp gauge and a trip odometer. I have one that is waiting to go in my car. Ive only seen a couple in the hundred or so junk a-bodies Ive been in.
3) the full guage cluster with the strip tach, I think it only came in the older t-types and other sporty models.

The 3speed to 4speed simply unbolts, I will have to switch that out myself when I put the cluster in, which might be sooner than later as my speedo needle dropped on the highway, disengaging my cruise, but the engine lost no power... 20 secs later it bounced back to life and hasn't acted up since... quite puzzling

[Skip]

Thanks for your response thesam1984. I'm glad that there are some options available. I'll have to look around the bone yards in my area and see what's available to me. My car is really clean and sharp as is but I'd like to add a performance look to it if possible.

[Ciera91]

Passenger side plastic fender liner up front was cracked around every screw hole so I got a thick plastic outdoor potter and cut patches from it and drilled out holes and riveted the patches to the liner where the cracks were and put it back in.

[thesam1984]

Thanks for your response thesam1984. I'm glad that there are some options available. I'll have to look around the bone yards in my area and see what's available to me. My car is really clean and sharp as is but I'd like to add a performance look to it if possible.

Thats what im trying to do, give mine a performance edge. Mine however was not so clean when I bought it and has a "I love the eighties" vibe going on lol

[gbb]

1993 Century Wagon; replaced all parking brake cables; replaced right front power window motor;
tomorrow the front brake pads,

[Old Gold]

Yesterday, I drove up to the Pick-N-Pull in Arlington, WA (About 150 mile round trip from Tacoma, WA where I'm at) and scored the rear brakes (and axle assembly) from an '05 Chevy Uplander Van (that's the van in the background). 11" rear disks, here I come!



I tried to get just the brakes and caliper mount brackets, but found that the brackets were more securely welded to the axle beam then we all suspected (photos to come). With about 4" of weld (front and back) and 4 recessed spot welds in the hub-mount bolt holes (on each side), I was way over-matched with my hacksaw, cordless drill with grinding wheel chucked-up, and files. It only took about 30 minutes to pull the axle, so that was no big deal. Luckily, the cashier at Pick-N-Pull was cool, and I came away with the whole axle assembly for right around $120 (he could've charged me way, way more) and loaded it all into the back of my '94 Camry Coupe; thank goodness for fold down seats!



This yard was awesome, clean grounds, helpful folks, and there was a ton, I mean _a TON_ of FWD A-cars and even an X or two along with a bunch of other interesting vehicles. It reminded me of what my local Pick-N-Pull used to be like 5-10 years ago. I wanted to look around more, but ran out of daylight and just barley got the axle out in time before the yard closed. I'll definetly be going back...

Removing the caliper mount plates from the Chevy Uplander axle won't be a big deal, it just wasn't possible (in a few hours) with the tools I had at the time. I would've needed a battery powered angle grinder and reciprocating saw, neither of which I had. At home with my angle grinder and Sawzall, no problem. I'll post more photos showing the process in the future. Also, looking at the caliper mounting plate, there's no reason a person couldn't get this made fairly cheaply from a place with a Plasma-Cam machine. It's just a flat piece of 3/8" thick mild steel. If we could get a batch of those made, that would save folks a lot of trouble, as it's the only hard-to-get part in this whole brake swap....

The core charges/caliper cost of this conversion is off the chart (unloaded calipers go for about $100 each, loaded about $150 each, from Rockauto, including the core charge), but other then that, all of the other parts aren't too horrible. Shocker did this conversion awhile back and documented it really well in photos. More to come...

[0S1R1S]

I drove it today and fiddled with my new in dash USB port.

[PGuru]

Seeing a yard like that is awesome. You don't see yards with A-Body's in eastern Canada very often. A great job on the removal and good luck with the install; keep us posted!

I actually learnt to drive on a 94 Camry LE; I loved that car. The engine died quite early though (about 275,000kms).

[Ciera91]

Changed my oil to the Pennzoil platinum synthetic and Bosch filter the store had on sale. I have to say what a stupid ass spot for the oil filter. Oil all over control arm and stuff.

[0S1R1S]

Changed my oil to the Pennzoil platinum synthetic and Bosch filter the store had on sale. I have to say what a stupid ass spot for the oil filter. Oil all over control arm and stuff.

Next time take a plastic bag, garbage, grocery, what have you, and wrap it around the areas the filter is above.
Keeps everything nice and clean, and the oil will roll right off the bags and into the pan you conveniently place below.

What store, may I ask, had that oil and filter on sale? I need to change out the lubrication in my Ciera.

Also, today I went to a pick and pull about 40 minutes away, had a decent haul.
New ash tray and mount to replace my broken one, got an EBCM, testing that tomorrow,
and found a couple of decent floor mats to replace my missing rear.
Also helped my buddy tear apart a Buick Roadmaster for a few odds and ends.
This same buddy hooked me up with a FREE pair of brand new 14" Cooper tires he had on his junked Mercury Topaz.
Put about 100 miles on, enjoyed the weather, it was a great day.

[Ciera91]

Oreilly has it for like 35$ with a mail in rebate for 10$ gift card.

[babyivan]

Ordered a replacement module, the one I put in 10 months ago has crapped out... Chinese junk!
In the meantime, I put the original one back in (good to keep the old part just in case). The original one blew a fuse once (didn't help that I was doing 100 mph at the time ), but other than that, still works for the meantime.

[93centsp]

I repaired the rear window defogger grid on my '93 Century last weekend. Only three of the 12 grid strips were operating.
I used the Permatex kit #09117, which has a conductive paint to bridge the breaks in the grids.

I tried to use an analog Ohm meter to locate the breaks, but due to parallel and low resistance grids, I was unsuccessful.
But I was able to locate all the grid breaks by visual inspection, as recommended by Permatex. A total of 27 breaks were repaired. All of the breaks were located on the sides of the window, none in the center.

Very satisfying to have an operating rear window defogger!!