The 1990 Celebrity Project

[Kristopher Gerbracht]

To Silver1990:

It is good to see any of our a-bodies being restored. Keep up the great work.

Kristopher

[SilverBullet1990]

Found out how low the fuel tank can be run down on the wagon today...drove it to the train station and it seemed to run ok though the gauge was pretty much down to empty and had stopped moving...wife's been driving it the past few days and neglected to gas it up yesterday. Knew that I was going to stop and put gas in it on the way home. Needless to say when I got off the train, it wouldn't start up due to lack of fuel. I started walking home since my wife was still at school (I'm about a mile or so from the station) and as I was about 2 blocks from home my neighbor was driving by, saw me and pulled over. She picked me up, stopped at the house and grabbed my lawnmower/snowblower gas can and went back to the wagon... fired right up after putting some gas in. Took just over 16 gallons to fill it (counting the 2 gallons I put in from the can), I'll have to look at my notebook I keep mileage/fuel records on to see how far it went since the last fill-up.

[billkandi]

My son ran the Ciera out of gas, now the pump sounds like an outboard motor.

[SilverBullet1990]

Debating on how I should repaint the Eurosport wheels...do I redo them in the silver like they are, or paint them black, like this 1990 Euro's wheels?

[billkandi]

I think I'd go with the black, more low key. The silver ones look more "grandpa-ish". $.02

[SilverBullet1990]

I'm definitely leaning toward the black more and more.

[Fer1973]

if you are going to repaint anyway, try gunmetal or something like that is called the color, dark gray, it will look more aggressive

my .02

best regards

[SilverBullet1990]

Ordered fabric to replace the headliner...should be here later this week, and now that I'm almost finished with my wife's Lumina rust repair job the wagon will come in next for some fixing up.

[SilverBullet1990]

Got the headliner fabric today, looks like it'll be a pretty close match. It's juuust slightly darker blue than the original but once I get it installed it'll be much better than the'tufted' look it has now with 50 twist pins holding it up. Probably won't happen this weekend, I have a bit of finishing work to do on my wife's Lumina and I have a coworker's car coming in Sunday that I need to do some work on. As for the Lumina and its drawn-out rust repairs (mainly due to me having limited time to work on it the last month plus a slight lack of ambition) holding up some of my A-body upgrading/fixing/restoring fun... it's definitely looking better. I finally wetsanded the front fender that I had to replace last year (wife got into a parking lot mishap with it) and gave it a polishing. Did the hood too to have something to reference. Looks pretty good and matched pretty decent for being just some of the duplicolor perfect match rattlecans. Still need to wetsand/polish up the quarters but I hope to get those knocked out pretty quick.

Pic of the Lumina's polished fender and hood - still need to hit the front bumper:

[SilverBullet1990]

Lumina is done! The wagon is now in the garage ready to get some workin done on it. First up is check out the rear brakes, the right rear is locking up/grabbing under moderate braking (not slamming on 'em). Had a scary moment of that happening as I was going about 60mph on the beltway and another car attempted to merge right into my lane (where sb 270 meets the beltway). Put the brakes on not too hard just to bleed off some speed and it got real squirrelly. Thank goodness I was on a straightaway or I'm sure I would've lost control on the wet road and it would've been wagon over.

[SilverBullet1990]

Time for a brake job... got a leaking wheel cylinder on the right rear.

[SilverBullet1990]

As another aside on the Lumina project I thought I'd toss up a photo of the finished Lumina after I buffed/polished the whole car... thus releasing the garage to bring in the wagon.



Of course now that the Lumina is done I couldn't only look at the brakes tonight... I'm pretty gung ho on working on the wagon, so after getting done assessing the rear brakes, curiosity has gotten the best of me this evening on this car. It's always had an area around the right rear wheel well in which some very old body filler was starting to lift. Started picking at it, and I found a nice rusty area underneath. Looks like when the dent (it's the area between the wheel arch and the back of the rear door) was pulled out by drilling holes and popping it out. Unfortunately it doesn't look like the holes that were drilled all the way through were painted/sealed on the back/inside the wheel well, allowing moisture to invade the filler. Gonna be a bit of a project patching that up now.

Also the car's been leaking some kind of fluid... now that it's been sitting in the garage a couple of days, I've found it's trans fluid and it's likely the pan gasket leaking. Probably has one of those crappy replacement gaskets that likes to leak. So a trans pan drop/fluid/filter change is also on the list.

So far my to-do list now that the wagon's under the knife:

Front brakes (pads/rotors/check out the calipers)
Rear brakes (drums, shoes, wheel cylinders, HW kit)

Transmission fluid drain/filter change/fluid refill/obtain non-leaking gasket

Body - fix rust/rebuild the old dent repair, get some attention to the bottoms of the rear doors as well

Wheels/tires - Start cleaning up the Eurosport rims, obtain tires once I have them cleaned up/painted. Going to go with gloss black (likely do a base/clear for some nice shine).

Interior - Replace headliner, upgrade cluster to Eurosport full cluster. Will need to obtain the correct engine temp sender.


Got my work cut out for me the next few weeks once I start ordering parts and start cracking on putting them on...

[white89euro]

The Lumina looks fantastic! How does it compart to an A-body, such as a Celebrity?
George

[SilverBullet1990]

The Lumina looks fantastic! How does it compart to an A-body, such as a Celebrity?
George

The Luminas (I have 2 of them) feel a bit bigger inside, and with them both being LTZs, they got the F41 suspension, so they definitely handle better. They'll still understeer if you push them too hard into a corner, but nowhere near as much as the Celebrity does. I'm sure the 16" wheels/225/60/16 tires definitely help as well. Steering is definitely tighter feeling given they have the quick ratio rack, though their turning radius seems a lot wider than does the Celebrity. They also are better highway cruisers - seats are a bit more comfortable for long drives, and there's less wind noise. And of course, with having the SII 3800 (L36) under the hood, they're considerably quicker to accelerate. Just yesterday I was coming home from work and got stuck behind someone doing less than the speed limit (i'm sure their thinking was zomg the road is a little wet). Once I got an opening to overtake I put the throttle to the floor and was in a matter of seconds doing 75mph, of course leaving the slow car in the dust.

[SilverBullet1990]

Yesterday I ordered the parts to do the brakes (front and rear), a coolant temp sender, and a transmission filter kit. Looks like everything will be here by the weekend so I'll have plenty to keep me busy for a while.