Assorted ramblings and bolt-ons with Daniel and George

[Duke George V]

Double post.

Wife is tired of doing the rear transmission mount for me, since I have giant meatball hands and hers are small and dainty and able to reach the bolts for it. She wants me to buy some polyurethane transmission mounts. They're specified for a Fiero but the design looks identical to what I have. Not really surprising since the Fiero subframe is an X/A-body subframe, and the drivetrain is shared as well. $90 each is a little eye watering, but they would basically be a lifetime part. But how far down the rabbit hole does that lead? Poly dogbone? Poly engine mount?

Anyone here have experience with poly mounts, with regards to durability and NVH?

[Pontiac6ksteawd]

I really dont like the Poly Mounts. The work, and they work for a long time, but the vibration transfer is more than I want.

[Duke George V]

HOW ARE YOU GENTLEMEN

ALL YOUR STICKER ARE BELONG TO US



YOU ARE ON THE WAY TO DESTRUCTION



WAT YOU SAY



YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO SURVIVE MAKE YOUR TIME



HA HA HA HA . . . .

[Duke George V]

I've mentioned this in the past, but there's an upgrade I've been wanting to do for some time on the wagon, namely van brakes. It's a fairly simple swap, with the majority of the parts readily available from any parts house or Rock Auto. Everything except the most important bit: the steering knuckles. The knuckles are the only part not available anywhere but salvage. You also need outer tie rods, ball joints, brake hoses, rotors and calipers, and the hub from the Century.



I went to the yard this past weekend with my brother, and lo and behold, there was a '94 Trans Sport freshly put out. Just what I needed. However, as we all know, Las Vegas summers are brutal and unforgiving. Did I really want to spend a couple hours sweating to death to pull the parts myself?



lol no I would much rather drive 600 miles and pay someone else $35 a pop to pull them from a '96 Lumina that's been sitting in their yard since 2009, so that's what I did yesterday.. They didn't bother playing around with it though, so I got the brakes and hub still attached.



It gave me a chance to really test this truck. I know some folk might not think of a 600 mile highway blast as a test, but I don't really plan to keep this truck for too long. My mom has expressed an interest in it after all, and seems willing to trade her Silverado for it. I would prefer the Chevy anyway. I want it to be reliable for her, since she plans to make a cross country trip sometime soon.

The place I went to was around 7000 feet in elevation, and they have some interesting choices for fuel.



No one but me cares about this, but this V6 4 speed auto Ram is EPA rated at 14 mpg city and 19 highway. Driving steady state at 65 mph and pissing off absolutely everyone on the road, with some occasional AC use, the drive there returned 20.4, and the trip back home netted 23.3. Those are not typos. I have photos of the odometer and the fuel pump for any skeptical ones. For a vehicle with the aerodynamic profile of a pile of hippopotamus shit, and commensurate power output, that's damn good.

As the above photo illustrates, a car sitting for 13 years tends to collect rust. I need to disassemble the extraneous parts so I can get the knuckles blasted and painted or blued. So I got to work this morning.

Today's participants:


Rusty garbage. The hub and rotor will go in the bin, but the caliper will hang around for a bit to be used as a core.


The little Makita wasn't cutting it, so I brought out The Big Guns.


The Earthquake XT and a little further persuasion got the caliper, rotor, and hub knocked off.


Second verse, same as the first.


Hero of the day.


Zero of the day.

[Pontiac6ksteawd]

Well, you were 300 miles closer to me! The Rams arent bad, but the EcoDeisel, or the new Duramax ECO is where its at. Those things are getting in the high 20's, low 30's for fuel mileage.

More local to me, I use a 89 Octane Ethanol Free gasoline. It gives me a 1.5 MPG boost.

[Duke George V]

Well, you were 300 miles closer to me! The Rams arent bad, but the EcoDeisel, or the new Duramax ECO is where its at. Those things are getting in the high 20's, low 30's for fuel mileage.

More local to me, I use a 89 Octane Ethanol Free gasoline. It gives me a 1.5 MPG boost.

This is an '08, which has the 3.7 single cam. I in no way shape or form endorse this truck, but it has functional air conditioning and better-than-expected fuel economy.

[Duke George V]

I will be taking the wagon to a shop on Monday to have some electrical bullshit looked at, namely the turn signals and cruise control. I might go to the yard and grab a CC module to see if that makes it work again. Also, the CHMSL stopped working, and the rear defrost turns itself on and off at random. Electrical gremlins are fun!

I fixed the fuel leak though. It ended up being one of the plastic clips that seats the fuel filter into the main line coming from the tank somehow got damaged and wasn't sealing completely. $18 for a new filter since you can't just get those clips by themselves and George was back on the road.

[Duke George V]

Today was supposed to be an easy day of swapping wheels, since my rear tires are nearly five years old and have some decent cracking in the sidewall.


Started like this:


Ended like this, with wheels from a 1992 Silhouette with really good tires. I picked them up from the yard in June of last year, and they've been collecting dust in the garage since.


The headache arose when trying to pull the wheels. My brother had give me some lug nuts that wouldn't fit his car last year, some kinda fancy chrome ones with internal hex, making them a little hard for randos to remove. Unfortunately for me, they were also difficult for me to unscrew, resulting in this:


One broken and two mangled studs. I went ahead and replaced the entire hub, since it was easy enough, and I would have had to pull it to replace the studs regardless, and the rear hubs are original. Painful, at about $100 each. I will do the other one in the morning. A liberal amount of antiseize was applied to the studs and the mounting face so as to prevent such nonsense in the future.

Free shit always ends up being the most expensive, doesn't it?

It also leveled the car back out, which will probably take a little readjustment for me as a driver. I liked the old-school rake the taller rear tires gave it. "New" tires are 205-70-15 all around, while the previous setup was 215-60-16 front, 225-60-16 rear. There's like a tenth of an inch difference in height, so I probably won't even need to recalibrate the speedometer.

[Duke George V]

Second verse same as the first, with extra bonus broken studs on the passenger side.


Time for new shoes, it seems.


New hotness.


No such thing as too much antiseize, right guys?


Old hub goes exactly where it belongs.


Quick test drive confirmed speedometer calibration is accurate. Unexpected side effect of new wheels: steering wheel straightened out, where it was clocked a few degrees left before. I had an alignment done when I replaced the struts last year, and the mechanic was obsessed with getting the wheel straight, spending something like two hours fucking with it. I commended him. His efforts have paid dividends now.

[tlc1976]

Nice wheels. Same as I put on mine. I load up the surfaces with that much anti seize too. I put 205 65 R15 on mine. It was a toss up. My old 6000 had both 205 65 R15 and 205 70 R15 at times. Stock size for that car was 195 70 R15 which I couldn’t get even in 1996.

[Duke George V]

Well, that was fucking awful.



Date code 0216. I probably shouldn't have been running a tire that old, especially since I JUST complained about tires younger that that not that long ago. At least I didn't die.

EDIT: Here's some better daylight pictures.





As I said last night, this was luckily not a sudden catastrophic failure. I was able to pull over safely. No damage to me or George.

[Duke George V]

Two new tires purchased and installed on the Grand Am wheels that had the cracking tires. The fronts from that set are still in good shape, with date codes from 2019, so I had the tire shop put them on the rear and the new tires on the front. I might need to have the now-rears rebalanced, since I'm getting a little bit of vibration on the highway.

I may have a buyer for the Ram lined up. A guy at work has one car that him and his [girlfriend/wife?] have to juggle since they both work. That would provide enough funding for the van brake swap, and the ported cylinder heads from WOT-Tech. I also kind of want to grab a proper parts car, not like that garbage pile I had a couple years ago. I found a white 1996 V6 Century wagon in the Los Angeles area on Facebook Marketplace that appears to be in decent shape and wouldn't be a huge hit to the wallet to pick up. Heaven forbid, but if I wreck this thing again, I might not be able to find wagon-specific body parts or glass unless I already have another one. The only "downside" is that the Marketplace car doesn't have a third seat, and consequently doesn't have the vent windows in the rear, so the cargo area glass is different.

[Duke George V]

Do some work for once instead of constantly complaining.

Services performed today: Replace blower motor, engine oil change, transmission oil/filter change.

Begin.


Unhook the battery. The alternator has to be pulled to R&R the motor.


Belt off.


Alternator. It's much easier to just unbolt its mounting bracket from the cylinder head.


Plenty of room.


Motor out. It did not spin freely and made the entire car vibrate when I turned it on.



Part of the reason it failed is that, a while back, one of the bolts for the dogbone engine mount somehow fled, and the engine leaned back, and the fan on the alternator ground into the blower motor, seen here.


All buttoned up.


Up we go. (Take note of the Duralast filter and Walmart oil. Only the best for George.)


I've talked about this before, but the pan on a 4T60E has TWENTY FUCKING BOLTS holding it on. The filter is inside the transmission. If you don't have a drain plug (factory pans do not), it's an absolute mess to drain. Mine is Dorman branded, but a couple other outfits carry pans with drain plugs. If you have a car with a 4T60E, do yourself a favor and get one of those pans.

Then it was time to break this bad boy out.


Quinn digital torque wrench. I bought it last year but haven't really had the chance to use it. It beeps rapidly when you get close to the selected torque specification, then a solid tone when you're there, which was super annoying at first, but I got used to it. Pan to case torque spec is 151 inch pounds.

Engine: Wix 51040 filter and six quarts of Walmart high mileage full synthetic 5W-30.

Transmission: Duralast TF207 filter and five quarts of Dexron VI (recommended by the transmission builder) and a bottle of Lucas.

[tlc1976]

Good call on a drain plug pan. I always slowly loosen the bolts on one side more than the other and drain into a big disposable turkey roaster but still sometimes end up with a mess.

Yeah tightening the bolts. I always go every 3rd bolt and progressively to spread the clamping surface, then end up going around it a bunch more times till none of them move anymore at torque. I just use a little 1/4 drive clicker.

The part I always hate the most is getting the old filter o ring out.

[Duke George V]

1996 Buick Century

P0502 Vehicle Speed Sensor A low input
P0503 Vehicle Speed Sensor A Intermittent, erratic, or high input

Symptoms:
"Service Engine Soon" light illuminated
Speedometer, odometer, trip odometer inoperative
Transmission shifting inoperative/erratic

Suddenly. Stuck in third, then first, then third. That made the trip home from work today, uh, interesting.

EDIT: At first it behaved like it did a few years ago when the fuse for the quad driver popped. Starts in third, access to 2nd and 3rd via manual shifting. Then I shut it off, started it up, and it was stuck in first. After annoying everyone in the city by doing 20 mph with my hazards on for a few miles, I gave it the beans so I could get up to a higher speed and coast. Around 31 mph or so it shifted into third, and I left it there. (speeds verified with a GPS speedometer app)

The cause is a broken wire to the VSS. I will have to hire someone to repair that, because I don't fuck with wiring.

In the meantime, I had little choice but to finally put a new water pump on the Ram, since I still need to get to work for the rest of the week. This went well, except for the battery being stone dead. Jumper cables hooked up to the wagon eventually got it started, and I left it running for something like a half hour, driving to the gas station for fuel and back home. I shut it off, and it wouldn't restart. Bad battery. $130 later it's fine.