Assorted ramblings and bolt-ons with Daniel and George

[Duke George V]

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):

• 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

[Duke George V]

I have been getting a P0300 in the wagon recently, and it's been missing like crazy, to the point of being nearly undriveable. After spending money I didn't need to on an ignition module and coils at the yard, and contemplating if I'm going to have to pull the upper intake so I can test the fuel injectors, I caught a comment about the crank position sensor wire. I don't recall if it was here or on one of the Facebook groups, but someone was having a misfire on their 2.8 Celebrity, and the suggestion given was to inspect the 7x crank sensor wire. Hey, my engine also has a 7x sensor.

Click for bigger:


Yeah, that will probably do it. Because of my engine swap, I'm running a remote 7x reluctor, attached to the front of the crank pulley. The wire was sitting on the axle on that side and being abraded, causing the misfire. I went to the yard and got a wire off a Cutlass that someone else had helpfully pulled the entire top end from, and slapped it on. All is well now.

[Keiths1976]

Yup been there man 2 times with that wire Both had to redo I wanted to reroute it differently but wound up triple insulate it . Also the wire off a 2000 gm 3100-3400 v6 are the same connectors .

[Century7667]

I can recognize that wire anywhere. Fortunately I got to mine and re-insulated it before things went critical.

Ken T.

[Duke George V]

Looks like I didn't post about it here, but the transmission in the wagon is completely dead now. No forward, no reverse. My mom drove it to the corner store and when she came back and went to park in the driveway, it slipped out of gear and coasted back down into the street. I left it in the street for a little while, tried a couple bits of diagnostic (fluid level, wiring, shifter actuation, swapping the PCM for my "backup"), but the trans is entirely unresponsive. My mom is not a "car person", so she wasn't able to tell me anything other than "it just stopped working", so I have no clue if it made any noise before failing.

Anyone ever heard of a transmission completely shitting itself to the point of unuseability like this?

[Pontiac6ksteawd]

I have, but only on a Ford. GM usually you will still have reverse. That leads me to beleive that the planetary imploded.

[CorvairGeek]

IIRC, unplugging the external connector to the transmission solenoids can force a drive / direct engagement engagement only in the 4T60E. Don't know if that is of much diagnostic value in this situation, but can allow the car to move forward when put in gear in some situations.

[Duke George V]

IIRC, unplugging the external connector to the transmission solenoids can force a drive / direct engagement engagement only in the 4T60E. Don't know if that is of much diagnostic value in this situation, but can allow the car to move forward when put in gear in some situations.

No response. I also checked all the fuses I could find on the off chance that a popped fuse was the cause, like last time. No such luck. Thanks though.

[Keiths1976]

Jack her up off the wheels confirm if u hear any grinding in neutral . There was something I read a long time ago about the actual pin that engages park reverse to drive internally going or snapping is have to reconfirm and see what’s it called some gm cars when rolled from reverse slightly then drive without fully stopping cause stress on this pin per say and eventually a snaps and cause a no movement symptoms . But also jack her up and confirm the differential has opposite direction when rotated in neutral . The main shaft could have finally worn teeth down so much that it won’t lock the gear in position so park is in theory park but not locking up from rolling if that makes sense I have the book in the garage I will look in a few

[tlc1976]

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.

That's cool, Malaize, I never knew there was a name for it. I'm a little more specific in my car age preference, but when people ask me about my cars, I call it a golden era where you get the reliability of fuel injection but the simplicity of OBD1. Where you can diagnose them with a paperclip. I seem to get more comments on my cars as the years go on. One old guy saw my Celebrity at a gas station said those were the best cars ever made.

[Duke George V]

It's me, I'm the terrible owner.

Oil change on the yellow sedan did not go smoothly, though it wasn't because of the oil change itself. This is how much oil came out of the engine.


After I started it up to let the oil circulate, I was poking around and moving the spark plug wires away from the alternator when this happened:




I am the worst car owner. I am the current previous owner.

[Duke George V]

Wherein I finally get off my ass and start working on my shitbox.

Assume the position.


Passenger side brace off.


Driver side brace off.


Air cleaner and battery out.


Throttle body off.


Wifey pulling that last spark plug wire.


Upper intake off.




Power steering pump shoved aside.


Fuel rail shoved aside.


Lower intake stuffed.


That's about all my back could handle for the day.

Next up: make a mess draining the radiator! Fucking up my alignment by yanking the knuckles and axles! More back pain!

[Skip]

Oh how I understand the pain portion of that job. Nice that wifey is there to help. I can not reach the rear plugs easily anymore. Nice to have a helper.

[Duke George V]

Radiator out.


Action shots of me vacuuming the sand out of the lower intake so it doesn't fall into the injector bosses. (lol the first image has SAND in the file name)



Passenger axle punched out of the knuckle. Of minor note, this axle is original to the car. I've replaced the driver's side twice, both times due to a torn boot.


Driver axle out.


I also popped off most of the rest of the wiring, the transmission range sensor (aka PRNDL switch), found the other lift bracket and bolted it on to the front head, and made a bit of a mess with spilled coolant, as anticipated. Steady progress will now come to a screeching halt.

[Skip]

Cool, you're moving right along.