Howdy guys. The last couple of weeks have been fun. First and most important,

The wagon rolled to 200k miles!
I also did some long-put-off repairs. One of the bolts holding the EGR to the intake backed out, probably almost immediately after being installed way back when, so I've had an EGR leak for forever. Doing a helicoil on it probably would have involved pulling the upper intake, so I just decided to swap it with another one I had lying around.
Old one on the right, "new" one on the left. Because I still give a shit about my sleeper appearance, I ground off the "3400 SFI" on the replacement manifold. The LG8 and LA1 uppers are physically identical aside from the branding.

Disassembled.

Action shot of me torquing the manifold back down.

Then it was time for the PCM. I ordered a new one from Milzy. On my car, it's behind the glove box. Pulling the passenger seat makes accessing it a bit easier, so I went ahead and pulled both seats and my wife volunteered to clean up for me.

The symptoms I was hoping to fix with the PCM swap were the cooling fans not turning on on their own and the transmission not shifting at all. Unfortunately for me and my wallet, the new PCM did not alter the behavior. It ended up being a popped fuse for the quad driver module that was the culprit the entire time. :argh: With that replaced the fans turned on and the transmission had all its gears again.
Now for the bad news. The converter won't lock up (which is what the SES light in the 200k image is for, P0740) and the trans sometimes does not like to 1->2 shift. It's in bad shape. So I'm going to have to swap it again. My fault, of course, so I only have myself to be angry at. I will contact Mike Miller on Monday to see it he'd be willing to work with me about at least a partial refund on the PCM, but if not, again, oh well. Git gud at diagnostics scrub.
ALSO, I don't only pay attention to the wagon. The sedan got some love too. I attended the Malaize Daze car show in El Segundo on Saturday, and took the sedan to it. The show was run by the Malaise Motors Facebook group, and was for cars from the malaise era. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's defined as the period between when emissions and fuel economy regulations were instituted and the introduction of OBD2, so 1972-1995. The sedan is a 1992, so it was eligible. It needed to be tarted up a bit, of course. Here's where I started.

My wife and mother washed the exterior and did a decent job. I would be, again, pulling the seats and cleaning the interior and swapping the Celebrity wheels for stock steels and covers.
Steels reinstalled.

Covers on.

Seats out. My mom liked to keep a putter in the car as a becoo stick.




Vacuumed and looking civilized again.




Then I tackled the decades of nasty ass human skin goop crusted on the armrests. They're easily removable on these cars, which eliminates the need to sit out in the hot sun rubbing at them. Here's me with a sink full of hot soap scrubbing the everloving life out of them.

Boxer supervising to make sure I did it correctly.

Then it was time to hit the road.
At 2:30 am.
The drive was uneventful, which is always nice. The car returned 31 miles per gallon, an impressive showing. Highway gears (2.73) with a .70 overdrive and peak torque at 2000 rpm will do that.
There was quite the variety of vehicles at the show. There were a few repeats, but everything else was unique. Here is a list of the cars, in no particular order (the order that I photographed them):

The wagon rolled to 200k miles!
I also did some long-put-off repairs. One of the bolts holding the EGR to the intake backed out, probably almost immediately after being installed way back when, so I've had an EGR leak for forever. Doing a helicoil on it probably would have involved pulling the upper intake, so I just decided to swap it with another one I had lying around.
Old one on the right, "new" one on the left. Because I still give a shit about my sleeper appearance, I ground off the "3400 SFI" on the replacement manifold. The LG8 and LA1 uppers are physically identical aside from the branding.

Disassembled.

Action shot of me torquing the manifold back down.

Then it was time for the PCM. I ordered a new one from Milzy. On my car, it's behind the glove box. Pulling the passenger seat makes accessing it a bit easier, so I went ahead and pulled both seats and my wife volunteered to clean up for me.

The symptoms I was hoping to fix with the PCM swap were the cooling fans not turning on on their own and the transmission not shifting at all. Unfortunately for me and my wallet, the new PCM did not alter the behavior. It ended up being a popped fuse for the quad driver module that was the culprit the entire time. :argh: With that replaced the fans turned on and the transmission had all its gears again.
Now for the bad news. The converter won't lock up (which is what the SES light in the 200k image is for, P0740) and the trans sometimes does not like to 1->2 shift. It's in bad shape. So I'm going to have to swap it again. My fault, of course, so I only have myself to be angry at. I will contact Mike Miller on Monday to see it he'd be willing to work with me about at least a partial refund on the PCM, but if not, again, oh well. Git gud at diagnostics scrub.
ALSO, I don't only pay attention to the wagon. The sedan got some love too. I attended the Malaize Daze car show in El Segundo on Saturday, and took the sedan to it. The show was run by the Malaise Motors Facebook group, and was for cars from the malaise era. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's defined as the period between when emissions and fuel economy regulations were instituted and the introduction of OBD2, so 1972-1995. The sedan is a 1992, so it was eligible. It needed to be tarted up a bit, of course. Here's where I started.

My wife and mother washed the exterior and did a decent job. I would be, again, pulling the seats and cleaning the interior and swapping the Celebrity wheels for stock steels and covers.
Steels reinstalled.

Covers on.

Seats out. My mom liked to keep a putter in the car as a becoo stick.




Vacuumed and looking civilized again.




Then I tackled the decades of nasty ass human skin goop crusted on the armrests. They're easily removable on these cars, which eliminates the need to sit out in the hot sun rubbing at them. Here's me with a sink full of hot soap scrubbing the everloving life out of them.

Boxer supervising to make sure I did it correctly.

Then it was time to hit the road.
At 2:30 am.

The drive was uneventful, which is always nice. The car returned 31 miles per gallon, an impressive showing. Highway gears (2.73) with a .70 overdrive and peak torque at 2000 rpm will do that.
There was quite the variety of vehicles at the show. There were a few repeats, but everything else was unique. Here is a list of the cars, in no particular order (the order that I photographed them):
- Honda Prelude
- Pontiac Fiero
- Dodge Viper
- Delorean DMC-12
- AMC Pacer X
- Pontiac Bonneville Safari
- Chrysler New Yorker
- Dodge Charger SE
- Ford EXP
- Nissan Pulsar Sportback
- AMC Eagle wagon
- Lincoln Town Car
- Volkswagen Super Beetle cabrio
- Chevrolet Silverado C1500
- BMW M6
- Pontiac Firebird
- Dodge Royal Monaco Brougham wagon (Best In Show winner)
- Cadillac Fleetwood
- Chevrolet Malibu wagon
- Cadillac Eldorado
- Oldsmobile Delta 88 convertible
- Toyota Crown Super Saloon E (Most Unusual winner) (2L-TE diesel)
- Ford Ranchero
- Cadillac Deville
- Lincoln Continental
- Mercury Comet
- Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser
- AMC Pacer D/L (I Might Be Old But At Least I'm Slow winner)
- Buick Century
- Ford Taurus
- Ford LTD LX
- Chevrolet Caprice 9C1
- Buick Apollo
- Chrysler LeBaron
- Chevrolet Corsica
- Chrysler New Yorker Fifth Avenue (Best Interior winner)
- Oldsmobile Delta 88
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