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So, I've been bored and there's nothing like boredom to have you endeavoring into impractical missions.
USA MY84 automatic car. The one photo'd in my avatar, but this car has fallen quite far from its former glory. That was from back in the spring of 2016. Fast forward to late fall 2017.. My neighbor plows through my detached garage at our former residence and destroys the garage, striking the car in the right 1/4 panel in the process. So, I walk outside to the scene of a destroyed fence, garage, and gasoline trickling down the slight grade of my driveway leading up to the overhead door that the car was parked in front of. Ouch!
Fortunately, my elderly neighbor was fine. He had been unhooking a small utility trailer from behind his SUV. He said his shoe hung into the accelerator. Not much more than a year later, he passed away. I think his mind was going in all honesty. His policy limit wouldn't cover the whole balance of the damages & I couldn't bring myself to sue him for the remainder, so I rebuilt the garage & let the car go to the back burner, as I seriously thought this one probably ought to go the way of a donor car.
But, here we are now.. This has been a ridiculous journey over the past 7 weeks. Started tearing it down on June 21. At some point many moons ago, I let the smoke out of the terminal 30 wire from the headlight pod switch (spade connector backed out of plug). Unfortunately, it was impacted up to at least half its span back to the CE panel. First thing I did was take out the interior, HVAC case, and CE panel to completely replace all of the burnt wires. Fortunately, nothing else was bothered elsewhere from the terminal 30 path.
While I was in there, I replaced the 3 HVAC vacuum diaphragms & cleaned the snot out of the solenoids until they sprung back to life. I also replaced the fan resistor pack, a/c expansion valve, o-rings, etc. Then, I ran into one heck of a bummer.. I either missed it or the plastic actuator arm for the comb flap broke while reinstalling the HVAC case.
I was lucky it didn't break such that a repair couldn't be made situ. I was bailed out by a 1/16" drill bit, a drill bit extension, a short #1 & a steady hand.
While the gauge cluster was out, I swapped out the PCB, replaced the odometer gear (again), and swapped in LEDs. The cluster was really degraded looking on the inside, so I lifted off the clear lense & cleaned the snot out of everything, then glued the lense back on.
Then, you might say the real fun was about to begin.. Sorting the wreck. I pulled the rear bumper and gas tank right away. Somehow the filler neck survived, though it took a lot of creativity to pull the tank without destroying it further. This 1/4 panel was really mangled. I was really unsure what, if anything, I could do with it. After several hours, I finally got far enough along with it to have confidence that repairing it could be a tenable plan.
I fixed the tank while it was out. It had a very short tear in it. I also replaced the fuel pump wire terminals & boots (thx @Andrew Schauer , tank vent hose, and fuel filter. Once the 1/4 panel was roughed in, reinstalling the gas tank was painless.
Next, I decided it would be prudent to replace ALL the rubber lines in the engine bay. I swapped in a hot battery, jumped the fuel pump relay, and... fuel leak!! This car is unrelenting! But, so am I. To make a long story short, something had dented/slashed the metal feed line (presumably during the crash?) RIGHT IN FRONT OF AN UNDERCARRIAGE CLAMP. Ugh.. Of course the feed line spans the whole undercarriage, and of course it is NLA.. So, I had to make a new one. This was kind of a PITA to be quite honest. Thanks for your advice, @drooman .
Sorting this required removing the exhaust & the WYAIT rabbit hole had now consumed me system by system. I realized I needed to replace a hanger. Hey, no problem..
But, since I had to drop the heat shields too, I encountered an altogether missing 3.5mm vac hose from the modulator hard line from the intake. So, I got 3' of the special cloth 3.5mm hose on the way to replace the short section at the front & the long one in the rear. It was pretty rewarding to finally put the heat shield & exhaust back in after the rest of this work was done. At this point, I felt like I was pretty much all-in. The front main seal started leaking like a sieve just before the crash. I had already dumped the coolant prior to pulling the HVAC case, so I dumped the oil & then stripped down the front of the engine to make everything right in there, too.
While working up there, I found a sizable puddle of fuel sitting at the bottom of the throttle housing. Doh! The cold start injector must've been hung open. When I pressurized the system to check for leaks, I guess the cold start injector had sprayed. I found an NOS CSI on Ebay & swapped it in. Yesterday, I finished putting the front of the engine back together, refilling the fluids, replacing the rear tires, rear bumper, etc. I just got back from taking it on the first drive in over 7 years. It probably exceeded expectations. The engine ran very happily. Actually, all systems performed very well!
Some debugging is in order though. In spite of ample alternator performance, the low charge warning light is staying dimly lit. Also, the speedo is not working. I thoroughly cleaned every connection on the entire car, the CE panel, and replaced the engine ground strap & battery ground strap. Maybe it's time for a new FOE harness despite the original still visually looking extremely good?
As you can see from the picture, the left side door & quarter panel were impacted in the crash too. The damages are a fraction of what they had been on the opposite side, but I will have to refinish quite a bit on this car to make it right again. Picture is immediately after the first drive. Might have traveled 7-8 miles or so, but all was well on its first short trip. I've also left the dash, pod, and glovebox lid out of the car. I'm going to send them to @olmann to be reworked. It's been several years now since I replaced the engine mounts, steering rack, OPG. Though it was fewer than 5k miles ago. It's nice to report that there wasn't even a single fluid drip after the first drive.
Wish me luck that I won't open Pandora's box of WYAIT items when I replace the pan gasket, ATF filter & fluid in the coming days! Keeping 40-year old cars has to come with some adventures, right?
Today, 05:34 AM
First drive in over 7 years..
