# Old Cars/Trucks Restoration and Modding



## greenpondmike (Mar 6, 2021)

How many of you out there are not only modding or restoring flashlights, but are also in the process of restoring or modding an old vehicle? I'm driving a 1971 chevy c10 with only 72,683 actual miles on it. The body is decent with some rust in the driver's side rocker panel to which I need to give some attention to soon. I also have a 1975 Ford f150 ranger I'm fixing up. In 75 "ranger" was a package option, not a small truck. Got a 1985 Ford f150 (bullnose)short bed pickup that is just sitting around waiting for me to do the final touches to the engine and electrical before I can crank it and a 1980 Ford LTD coupe waiting on me to replace the freeze plugs and coil. They all need batteries unless I can desulfate the ones I have.


----------



## raggie33 (Mar 6, 2021)

not a fan of older cars my freind. old carbated and point systems . i recall them trying to make a carberated clean running crazy complex carbs . i do like the looks of classic cars


----------



## greenpondmike (Mar 6, 2021)

Ah man, yeah raggie33, the way they look...it's like smelling that good smelling coffee in the mornings, but when you go to drink it, it doesn't taste as good as it smells. 
There are some goodies out there though and the challenge to make them run and drive good plus get decent mileage is fun. If I had a perfect vehicle I would be bored with it. 
Now that I'm older though I want to make for sure that my vehicles don't let my down. It's a good feeling I get when I rebuild a carb and the vehicle runs good and burns rubber when I stomp the gas instead of hesitating or stumbling.


----------



## Chauncey Gardiner (Mar 6, 2021)

1974 3/4 Ton 454. My father was the original owner. I inherited it when Pa died. The plan is to pass it on to one of our sons someday. 

The restoration started with wheels and tires due to safety concerns and that purchasing tires that fit the original wheels is/was next to impossible. Future work is waiting on funds.







My my! The stories Red Horse could tell if he could talk.


----------



## greenpondmike (Mar 6, 2021)

Whoa, that is one fine custom deluxe 20 you got there Chauncey. The original tires were probably bias ply 78s weren't they?


----------



## raggie33 (Mar 6, 2021)

i do wish i had a car im to old for walking every where in this city that has no sidewalks. but car is out of my budget so im saving for a chiease motor scooter


----------



## greenpondmike (Mar 6, 2021)

I know a fellow that has a chinese dirt bike and he likes it. Yeah be careful raggie33, it is easy to twist an ankle on roads that don't have a sidewalk. At least it is for me. 
Also, there are a lot of bad people out there doing dirty deeds.


----------



## raggie33 (Mar 6, 2021)

it sucks every once in a while i see open manholes . or them golpher holes. the chinease scooters copied a honda design. there decent if you know how to fix them . im lucky i can fix most everything


----------



## Chauncey Gardiner (Mar 6, 2021)

greenpondmike said:


> Whoa, that is one fine custom deluxe 20 you got there Chauncey. The original tires were probably bias ply 78s weren't they?



Thanks much, GPMike. I don't remember what they were, but I'll never forget how slick they were on wet roads. Crazy scary when not even trying!


----------



## greenpondmike (Mar 6, 2021)

raggie33 said:


> it sucks every once in a while i see open manholes . or them golpher holes. the chinease scooters copied a honda design. there decent if you know how to fix them . im lucky i can fix most everything



Honda makes some good stuff. I've had a dirt bike from the big three, but I've had more hondas than the other 2. The worse crash I've ever had was on a honda xr80. A weiner dog ran in front of me and I went over the handlebars and hit the pavement at around 30-35 mph, so please watch out for dogs. 
Knowing how to fix stuff is a good talent to have.


----------



## greenpondmike (Mar 6, 2021)

Chauncey Gardiner said:


> Thanks much, GPMike. I don't remember what they were, but I'll never forget how slick they were on wet roads. Crazy scary when not even trying!


Mine had those tiny and skinny tires on it when I first got it. I've got P225/75R15 goodyear wranglers on it now mounted on the factory style mag wheels with the trim ring and center caps. My brother in laws and I had to beat the original smaller rims off with a sledge hammer. Ol truck sat up most of its life.


----------



## bykfixer (Mar 7, 2021)

Hey CG, there are genuine sized tires out there with new formula rubber compounds. My (now retired) boss restores old cars and many are what are called concoures where every item on the car is factory original and minty. But he has a few that he buys reproduction parts for like original looking cases that go around a modern battery to appear oem or redline tires that appear original. Take a drive around your town one nice Sunday morning and you may see an impromptu "coffee and cars" car meet at a Hardees or that sort of thing. Those folks are walking encylopedias and love to pass on the know how. Best of all you being in line of the original owner you may get volunteers to assist your endeavor. 

When I was doing Hondas the geezers did not mind me pulling into the lot because mine were generally restored to factory original or tastefully modified. Heck I even aided a couple of dudes who had squirrel troubles dealing with wiring being chewed on. I passed on links to where they could have a brand new harness made or showed them how a simple flat head precision screw driver could be used to pluck pins out of clips and replace sections of wire without any splices. 

When my oldest boy was little I was working on old jalopies, trying to keep them going. My favorite luxury hot rod was a 77 Cutlass Brougham that could pass everything but a gas station. I always admired the "hot rod Lincoln" type car but my finances kept me driving stripped down versions of sports cars. At one point I had an old 66 Mustang with factory air. It was so sweet to pull up to a red light on a hot summer day and have the windows rolled up. 

When my son was of age he was into cars but he too was on a low budget. I was trying to convince him of older big engine cars and he was stuck on smaller cars with high rev engines. He bought a Prelude with pop up headlights one day and the day I drove it I understood what he was so excited about. It was like a go kart with plush seats, electric windows and a/c. As he got older his process evolved to the point where he now likes the "hot rod Lincoln" type car but it's "hot rod Lexus" instead. He has a super sweet Accura with cornering technology developed in the 97 Prelude I worked on for a while, all wheel drive, goes 0-60 lickety split and rides like a dream. 

Actually I snatched up that 97 Prelude before he could because I was afraid he'd end up killing himself in it. Eventually the two of us built up a 2001 he got real cheap. But later he wanted to go the Toyota route for some super duper turbo ability with a V8 capable of 1000hp. I was intrigued. He ended up with a Lexus GS he wanted to build and turn into a Toyota of the same body but much faster drive train. But then he found a genuine Toyota from Japan with the drive train he wanted to start with and slowly tweak. Yet as he gets older the idea of 1000hp has become less appealing. 

The Lexus and Toyota are both a "hot rod Lincoln" for the new age with all those electronic gadgets and sensors. Working on Preludes we learned a lot about that aspect of the car and why they matter. While our friends in the community were hacking up wires and bypassing all those gizmos and gadgets we were learning how to repair the car properly. With that came reliability. So while our friends in the community were scratching their collective heads why this or that doesn't work anymore we both enjoyed reliabilty year after year. 

The other day my son said "hey dad, want the Lexus?" So here I go again. Geeking out on schematics of a 2004 luxury sedan with plenty of giddy up n go. This time I'll be in a vehicle more suited to get my stiff carcus in and out of instead of needing a hoist then limping the next 50 steps. If all goes well I'll spend more time enjoying instead of fixing it. But then again it is 17 years old and has around 1000' of wiring, electric everything and plenty of other things that can go wrong. So time will tell. 





Ball cap enroute. Here we go again……


I still have my mind wrapped around a stripped down 66 Mustang coupe with straight 6, 3 speed auto tranny and no power anything. But the 1 car garage has a late model Japanese made hot rod Lincoln in it with a Fiero GT waiting to go in there next. By mid 1965 over a million Mustangs had been sold so there's time to wait on that.


----------



## Chauncey Gardiner (Mar 7, 2021)

Hey Lexusfixer, Thanks for the information. When I started shopping for tires I wasn't really wanting to purchase new wheels. However, when the manager of Titus Tire & Service informed me there was only one tire being manufactured that would fit the original wheels and how much they were ..... well, it was a no-brainer to purchase new wheels and a different size tire. 

Red Horse has always been a work horse and will continue to be as long as I'm able to unload / shovel his cargo. I want to R/R all the rubber seals and plastic lenses, new brakes and have the leaks remedy. Replace then body panels where needed and then have it painted. I also plan on doing away with the plastic bed liner for one of the new fangled spray-on liners.


----------



## bykfixer (Mar 7, 2021)

3M head light restorer is great for plastic lenses. You start out by sanding it……yes, sanding it with a drill. Yikes! But you repeat using higher and higher grit until like 3000 grit and next thing you know, your lens looks like new glass. 
Shin Itsu silicone grease is fabulous for rubber restore like window seals and like Bril Cream, a little dab-l do ya. I did 3 cars with about 1/2 a tube. I use it for flashlights these days. 

If your junkyards are like mine they are called recycling centers these days. Meaning a vehicle goes out on the lot for 90 days then to a crusher. And if your recycler center is like mine they have an email wishlist where you fill out a form with the vehicles you want parts from and they email you when one arrives. Bonus, they'll pick parts for you for a fee. Now you probably don't want to pay to have a headlight removed but……if a truck of that body comes in rust free, you request them cut a panel for you. They give you a piece of wax keel and you draw the area you want cut. The fee in my area is like $30 and the panel part is cheap. I found really rare rust free panels on a Prelude that cost $600 each for new. I got both sides for $150!!

And a place called "roadkill customs" is a recycle center depot that can hook you up with junk yards coast to coast, many of whom will mail you the part you seek. Just type roadkill customs in your favorite search engine. 

Info like that was why the Prelude community called my son and I Sanford & Son. We found parts galore for all kinds of people's projects and mailed them at our cost (plus shipping). There were clubs named POG for Prelude Owner Group for towns, and states. We were known as S&SPOG. And I even had swag made up like stickers and t-shirts.





Each package we'd mail out included a vinyl sticker


----------



## greenpondmike (Mar 8, 2021)

Wow! Thank you bykfixer. You just gave out some precious information that could rival anything gleemed from any car forum. I was going to use LMC truck parts for the hard to get stuff. Have you ever had any luck with the "pull a part" junkyards where you can pull your own part or pay someone there to do it?


----------



## bykfixer (Mar 8, 2021)

I have indeed used parts from junkyards on many occasions. 
The wishlist thing I mentioned above yielded enough emails to restore a couple of cars to much better condition simply by obtaining 'better' parts n pieces from recycling centers. Many parts that could not be had new anymore. 
I spent a lot of time researching cross match parts too. Example, my 1984 thunderbird used the same alternator as my 1966 Mustang. Or "impossible to find" Honda parts were re-named with a new part number years later. 

What brought me here to CPF was when I wanted to add a dome light over the back seat of a car like a European version had but not the US version. The circuit was all incan bulbs and was already taxed so I began looking for a way to add an inline LED bulb to the system since they did not pull much amperage. Searches kept bringing me to CPF so one day I joined and frankly forgot all about the car I was working. 





This car was restored using junkyard parts to replace many sun faded or just scuffed/broken or missing parts.
It came with a broken engine and was refurbished stem to stern. About 95% through the project I gave it to my son. He finished it and sold it to a collector.


----------



## Poppy (Mar 8, 2021)

Around 1973-4 I bought a 1967 Cougar off a used car lot. I got it for a good price because there were some little problems with it that the dealer didn't want to deal with. It had Hide_away_headlights, that winked. They were vacuum operated, and there was a vacuum leak, a quick fix. It pulled to the left, due to a leaking brake wheel cylinder on the front right (about a $3 fix), and the sequential rear directionals weren't working. I found that there was a little motorized contraption in the trunk that spun three sets of points on three cams, like a music box. Two of the three points were corroded, and a quick filing with a points file, and it was fixed.

I ran that car for a couple of years and sold it for a little more than what I paid.

I continued to buy used cars and do my own repairs until 1980, then I started paying mechanics to do my work. I didn't open the hood, other than to check the oil after that. Until... in 1983 I brought my Plymouth Sapporro in for a tune up. It came back purring like a kitten, but really lacked the pep it used to have. I brought it to a different mechanic, who assured me that it was running fine. I brought a friend's Challenger (the Dodge version) for him to test drive, and he agree that there was a significant difference, but didn't know why.

So... my brother and I opened the hood, and found a disconnected vacuum hose. Only one barrel of the two barrel carb was opening up. vroom vroom 

I learned a lot about computer controlled engines on my son's 1990 Bronco, and that got me into working on my aging '98 Windstar, and '99 Crown Victoria that I bought new. There was a time here, that I would buy a new flashlight just so I could talk about it, I started doing repairs so I could talk about it to others on a Ford Forum. I actually became a moderator at one of the sites. I'd help others troubleshoot electrical and computer problems. It was fun, and fulfilling.


----------



## bykfixer (Mar 8, 2021)

When I lurked car forums the staff would hold weekly meetings to vote on whether to ban that bykfixer character. One day I got a pm from a moderator who wanted to chat outside the forum. We still communicate to this day. 

See, the forum was an enthusiast forum run by folks who'd dedicated their lives to making their cars go zoom better while my philosophy was learning what the folks in lab coats had in mind when they engineered them and either expand on that or just appreciate how far forward they were thinking when the cars were new. I did not have a problem with that but my philosophy was apparently rubbing some the wrong way. 

Many new members would ask new owner questions that plagued the cars. Now often the subject had been covered a thousand times in stickies, kinda like here. Yet their the typical attitude was not very helpful. Being an old fart I understood the old way of diagnosing issues without computers. Often I would provide a basic explanation. Idea being give a man a fish and he eats for a day. But what rubbed some the wrong way was when my philosophy was teach a man to fish and he'll eat forever. To me it did not matter if it was a Honda radiator, a Ford or John Deere, they all work pretty much the same way so even though I was a Honda novice, I knew what goes wrong in general. That was met with "hey new guy, you don't have the right to tell people how to fix their radiator"……

The moderator I spoke with outside the forum said the moderators voted weekly to ban me but his no vote meant a unanimous vote did not happen. After about a year 'management' had grown comfortable with bykfixers way of helping others after I did numerous how to threads. Eventually there was only one yes vote from a moderator who had said he was building an engine with zero back pressure. I challenged his theories with old fashioned facts and he held a grudge. 

The thing is that nearly every leader had built up their cars to go fast but mine was nearly as fast without being loud or looking like a space craft. As time wore on their cars fell apart while one my son and I built ran well year after year. They'd brag about replacing an engine in a weekend while my son and I took 3 months but……we triple checked everything and at times would disassemble something after checking it a second time. So after 7 years the car still has zero defects and zero fluid loss. There were incidents where even the original design was tweaked due to time showing it would fail. 

All of the cars are gone except the project my son asked me to help him with. We had experts come in one weekend and they rebuilt the drive train. They arrived Friday night and left Sunday morning working non stop. As much as I appreciated their expertise, but after they left I set about redoing some of their work simply because they were punch drunk after about 18 hours so there were a number of things I was not satisfied with. But that was why a project begun in August resulted in the first attempt to crank the car in October. Not expecting the car to start right off I told my son to crank it no more than 5 seconds then lets check for fuel leaks. He turned the key for like two seconds and Vrrrrooom. So the youtube video has me shouting "shut it off, shut it off"……btw no fuel leaks were present. 

When his car was done mine started giving me trouble so I set about fixing it for a while until the day I told Mrs Fixer "I hope space junk lands on this thing while I sleep"……


----------



## greenpondmike (Mar 8, 2021)

This is some good stuff that is packed with wisdom. Thanks for sharing. Please keep on sharing. Those japanese were wise in their designs as compaired to the domestic builders- at least up to the late 90s. I think some of the best vehicles to modify were the full sized domestic ones up to around 86-87 and the mid sized on up into the early 80s. I think the Japanese stayed wise on up to nowadays, its just that the domestic designers also got wise. 
On an old project I want durability to be the foundation with economy second and performance third. I think Ford trucks are the ultamate vehicles, but I also like the square body chevies (73-87). I don't know what year they started having problems with the frame cracking where the steering box mounted, but my 85 did that. I didn't know anything about it before, but after I heard it was a common thing if you put tires that are too large on them. Not talking about a little larger than factory- just after that. Tires that are 70-75 series 215-225 should be fine and maybe 235s IMHO. As close to factory specs as possible is best and that is what the gearing and speedometer are set for. My 225s have my truck going 5mph faster than what the speedometer is showing.


----------



## SilverFox (Mar 8, 2021)

Hello Greenpondmike,

My ongoing project is a 1953 GMC pickup.

Tom


----------



## greenpondmike (Mar 8, 2021)

That's good SilverFox. I guess a 1953 chevy might be similar. My dad used to borrow a 1953 chevy from my uncle every now and then. It had the starter switch on the floor. I was a kid back then and loved to play on it. I hated it when dad had to return it.


----------



## greenpondmike (Mar 8, 2021)

I talk too much, so y'all carry on while I read more and talk less.


----------



## greenpondmike (Mar 11, 2021)

Anyone else out there doing any restoring and modding?


----------



## bykfixer (Mar 12, 2021)

I took delivery of a 2004 luxury sedan. 2004 is not "old" to folks like my boss who restores late 1950's early 1960's Pontiac muscle cars. But it's only a few years from being deemed an antique so to me it's old. 
Unlike my grandmas 1966 Lincoln that did have A/C but no seat belts because at that point seat belts were an option, this one has "dual climate controls", heated seats, bright light sensing rear view mirror and a bunch of other cool stuff now considered normal in todays rolling appliances once called automobiles. 

Research so far has revealed there are some common things that plague the Lexus/Toyota vehicles to this day. It always daunts me how a solenoid that gives trouble in a 1973 Bronco still plagues Fords to this day. And yet since Lexus used the same parts in some cases I know how to fix it. So when the dual climate control gets stuck on heater I know how to fix that because my 95 Ford Ranger and my 97 Honda Prelude had the same mechanical issue. It's either rust in the bicycle brake cable type cable that changes how warm or cold air enters the system or it's a plastic worm gear is broken. Now in the case of the Lexus it could be an electric sensor is dirty so it is blind to the temperature inside the car and thinks the cabin is warmer or colder than it really is. 

The challenge is not what is wrong. The challenge is getting my bloated carcass up under the dashboard anymore. The whole thing boils down to whether or not the car starts, or runs without spilling fluids like crazy. If it reaches that point I'll just pass it on to the next dummy. I call it my latest money pit but with lessons learned from previous projects the pit should be fairly shallow (knocking on wood). 






It's pretty satisfying to take on a project once begun by my oldest son. 
I told a friend not long ago "it's gratifying to know your kids have better transportation than their parents".


----------



## greenpondmike (Mar 12, 2021)

That's a nice Lexus bykfixer. My wife has a 97 avalon. The seats and door panels are ragged out, but it is still a smooth riding car. I said that because I heard the avalon is midgrade between the camry and the lexus. I think the mid 2000s v6 engine is one tough booger. When I worked in Adger out in those abandoned mines there were several toyota pickups that had that engine and they really dogged them, but they held up. One 4 wheel drive lost a rear axle, front axle later on and then a transfer case. The engine held up. I think those are the same type engines as in the cars.


----------



## Nitroz (Mar 12, 2021)

Not exactly old but my son and I swapped the engine in his 2007 Mazda 3 after it overheated and killed the head gasket. With 170,000 miles on that engine we opted to swap in a 2015 Ford Fusion 2.5 with 56,000 miles that we scored from a junkyard for $320. Cheaper and easier to do than fool around with replacing the head gasket.

Out with the old.





Old engine





New engine





BSD delete






New engine timed and installed






Shop dog


----------



## bykfixer (Mar 12, 2021)

nice Nice NICE!!!


----------



## greenpondmike (Mar 12, 2021)

Yes sir!


----------



## greenpondmike (Mar 12, 2021)

Wow, dual cams. That is the longest timing chain I've ever seen. What does that short chain at the bottom run- the oil pump?

If you don't mind me asking, what is BSD?


----------



## Nitroz (Mar 13, 2021)

greenpondmike said:


> Wow, dual cams. That is the longest timing chain I've ever seen. What does that short chain at the bottom run- the oil pump?



Yes, oil pump. The nice thing is he got a little horsepower bump from the engine swap, 155hp to 175hp.



greenpondmike said:


> If you don't mind me asking, what is BSD?



Balance shaft delete. Ir weighs 19lbs. Deleting this make the engine rev up a little faster. I have a 2007 Mazda 3 hatch and I can tell a difference in his car vs mine.

Here's my car.


----------



## greenpondmike (Mar 13, 2021)

The picture of your car hasn't shown up yet, but I'll check back later. Thanks for answering my questions. That was a good deal on that engine. It's also so clean. Makes me wonder what brand of oil the previous owner used in it.


----------



## Nitroz (Mar 13, 2021)

See if this works.


----------



## greenpondmike (Mar 13, 2021)

Yes. That's a nice car


----------



## rebelbayou (Mar 14, 2021)

Just got through restoring my 1968 camaro that I have owned for 32 years.



[/URL][/IMG]


----------



## greenpondmike (Mar 14, 2021)

Wow, that is a rally sport convertible.


----------



## bykfixer (Mar 14, 2021)

rebelbayou said:


> Just got through restoring my 1968 camaro that I have owned for 32 years.



Are you ever truely done? 

My boss told me "you are only done when it's in a museum, because then you can't work on it".
His first car was a 63 vette that he just began restoring for the 3rd time. It was white when new but he wanted it corvette blue (as in dang near silver) then he went back to white. Apparently he likes the silver look better. 

My neighbor has a 68 camaro that was bought new and it sits in a garage in original condition because the guy said as soon as he started working on it he'd probably never stop. If you could see how nice the car is you'd probably think it doesn't really need restoring anyway.


----------



## Nitroz (Mar 14, 2021)

rebelbayou said:


> Just got through restoring my 1968 camaro that I have owned for 32 years.
> 
> 
> 
> [/URL][/IMG]



Now that's awesome! Beautiful car.

I would be afraid to drive it because the war people drive.


----------



## Nitroz (Mar 14, 2021)

greenpondmike said:


> Yes. That's a nice car



Thanks! It's my daily shuttle. Stick shift and a blast to drive.


----------



## bykfixer (Mar 20, 2021)

The last one I had that was a blast to drive caused me to limp each time I pried myself out of the cockpit. 

I've gotten so used to stepping sideways into crossovers or up into pickups that it's a bit odd climbing in and out of a sedan. I've also noticed that unless you park your "car" away from the areas closest to stores you are visually blocked when leaving by all the suv and truck traffic in the parking lot. Even crossovers like my wife's Escape blocks my view when backing out of a space. I just ease on out waiting to hear "honk". I had forgotten why I always parked the Preludes so far away from the door of a store. 

I joined a car forum for the Lexus to get tips on what goes wrong and how to fix it. It's weird to see the changes in what people consider "an issue". Like in the old days when the wheel screeched or there was an annoying rattle under the car that was "an issue". Nowdays it seems that when to touch screen dvd player takes 2 seconds to work or the air conditioned seats play out that's a huge problem for some. When the complaint is that the electric doors won't lock via the keyfob I remind them that the smash n grab thief don't care if it's locked because they don't mind breaking glass one bit so leaving things worth stealing causes you to have glass to clean up later. (Learned that the hardway.) 

Now one cool thing about a car forum for post 2000 vehicles is cheat codes. You can learn stuff like holding down the door unlock button and pushing the volume knob on the radio 5 times quickly can change the door open chime or change how long the lights stay on after you exit the car (or not at all.) Mine has a feature where you can do the hokey pokey or something and the windshield wipers move away from the window 2 inches for when it snows to make it easier to remove the snow around them. The blades themselves still work like normal. It also has a trunk lock feature where pushing the trunk release does nothing so if your electric door locks fail a would be burglar can't open the trunk without the key. 

One feature I though I hope I never need is a trunk open handle inside the trunk. I suppose that's incase you somehow manage to lock yourself in the trunk? If I'm ever abducted and shoved into the trunk that'll certainly come in handy. I figure that feature is due to somebody locking themself in the trunk and sueing Toyota (and winning a big pile of cash). 

One feature I'm not looking forward to fixing someday is all of those sensors. Good gosh!! My 95 Ranger pickup has one sensor for gasoline fumes escaping. Now you get to guess where they escape from when that thing throws a code. Gas cap? Filler tube? Charcoal canister? Vaccum leak? The sensor itself? But with the Lexus there are sensors galore for that. Each one being $100 or more. Yikes! Luckily it's usually a leak it sniffs out and not the sensor itself in most cases. 

At the car forum there is the usual "want turbo……cheap" groopies and "what 22 inch wheels will look best on my car" types. And you get the "my a/c fan stopped and I've searched the internet for hours" enquiries that an actual 24 second search yields 45 threads on the matter. Now one reason CPF is so great is that the staff here keeps things on the rails so searching yields answers instead of 2 potential posts about the issue and 24 pages discussing everything from rocket launchers to grandmas raisin cookies. 

Nowadays it's all about youtube videos which is great when you just cannot figure out how to remove a hidden screw (provided the person putting it on actually shows you that part) or when need to see something done visually. But the step by step how to with photos is still pretty handy. You can read at your pace instead of "wait a second, what was that again, the what?" and you have to rewind. Another thing too is "likes". It used to be someome who gained from your input would "rep" you. That was that. No frownies, or thumbs ups or hearts. You either had a good rep (green) or a bad rep (red) or not at all (usually new folks). But like any forum it takes a bit of time to get to know the place. It's like taking on a restoration project with an unfamiliar brand of vehicle. 

My former boss restores cars from the early 1960's. Mostly GM. He's an expert about particular models stem to stern and each square inch in between both inside and out. Dude has cars in museums and has been featured in magazines galore. But when his wife wanted to restore a 57 VW bug he joined a VW forum and quickly put together a prize winning restoration. When the pandemic hit he could not get a haircut. Barber shops were shut down. I asked why he doesn't get his wife to cut his hair. He responded that after selling her prize winning VW at a car show while she was in the ladies room he was afraid to let her get near him with scissors. So he joined a barber forum. It became pretty obvious he should stick with fixing up old cars when he came in the door one day with one sideburn obviously longer than the other. He comes in one Monday "good morning, shut up"…… perplexed I asked why the long face today and he replied "last night one side of my face slid down"…… eventually he found a black market barber through the forum. lol. Now he just buzz cuts his head and wears a ball cap. 

My first project for the Lexus is to polish the black finish without having a million white dots on the hood from the tiny chips in the finish up front. When I scoured the hood of my Prelude and got the oxidation off the paint was yard stick shiney again. Yet after applying wax there were a thousand tiny white dots of dried wax because the paint looked like someone driving the car had followed a dump truck leaking sand all over the road for 1000 miles. It was bad. I also discovered that seemingly thousands of water drops had merged with the clear coat on the trunk. From 20 feet or more it looked great, but at 5 feet or less the finish of the car was an awful site. 

No biggy really as it didn't affect how the car drove but it was just dam difficult to know that in some ways the car looked better with a dull finish. I even contemplated spraying the car flat black some day. But then the head gasket popped and that was that for that project. So lesson learned I searched the Lexus exterior for chips, scratches and water spots and found it's not so bad but minus an overspray of Onyx black paint it might turn out ok without having to spend hours and hours with a toothbrush removing tiny bits of wax everytime I wax it. Had the Prelude not been so break down prone I would have eventually wet sanded the finish and applied a new clear coat. But with the Lexus I'm going to try black car wax. Idea being it'll mask the small stuff like swirls and tiny chips in the paint. It seems to come down to super shine or a good shine. Super shine with all flaws laughing at me each time I get near the car or a good shine with most flaws being masked. 

I could do like my neighbor and hire somebody to detail the car while I drink beer in the garage. First off I don't drink beer. Second, I don't have a garage. But more important, it aint no fun handing a stranger $75 to do something I enjoy doing. But what I may do is hire somebody that knows their stuff to do it the first time and use their technique after that. 

The car will spend most of its time under a cover so it really doesn't matter anyway. And I don't want to be one of those "step away from the Lexus" types who freaks out whenever a kid rides near it on a bicycle. It really comes down to whether the darn thing starts and drives from point A to B and back without something catastropic taking place.


----------



## bykfixer (Mar 28, 2021)

I'm supposing most reading this have heard of Takata automotive air bags causing injuries across a wide spectrum of automobile brands and models. Auto makers often buy some of the products in them from one or two sources who specialize in that product. 
Hitachi makes many of the wiring harnesses that go into automobiles since at least the 1990's, maybe longer. That means the clips too. And often when assembling said harnesses at warp speed things can go wrong like when crimping a pin to the end of a wire the tool can pinch too firm and break strands. It's not noticed until later on when places like opening and closing doors bend the wire harness. Not if all 12 or so wire strands inside the cable are ok that thing can bend back and forth for decades with no issues. However if 6 of the 12 were broken when the pin was pinched onto the wire then the lifespan of a bending wire is greatly reduced. 
Now finding information for replacement parts can be daunting. What is the terminal block part number? What is the pin that goes into the terminal block part number? 
Toyota put out a repair manual that identifies the terminal block, the pin number and has instructions on how to remove and replace them.
https://www.toyota-tech.eu/wire_har..._source=LexusOwnersClub&utm_medium=ForumLinks
Being Mazda, Toyota, Honda and others use the same stuff you can use the manual to find out how to fix broken door wires in other vehicles besides Toyota. 
Hope you never need this info. Ugh! But if suddenly your electric lock, power mirror etc quits it may be that the wire broke at the connector. 





Like this.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 1, 2021)

That's a good thing to know, bykfixer. Thank you


----------



## bykfixer (Apr 1, 2021)

This was later. 

Back then I did not know you could even fix such a thing, much less how to. Nor did I know these things are largely made in the same factory out of the same parts. I spent countless hours trying to crack the secret Honda code. Google trying to think for me didn't help either. Eventually I stumbled across a technical service bulletin and took it from there. Little did I know that a few years earlier Toyota of Europe had done an entire manual about fixing broken wires. And it's not the sort of thing a kid behind the parts counter at a dealership would know. But cars, boats, motorbikes, refrigerators, washing machines, all kinds of things these days use these standard connectors so knowing how to repair them can make a difference some day.

Lessons learned with the door wire connector project was do not start the car with all of those wires dangling like that. Lots of blown fuses after making that mistake. And while wires were broken the electric lock on the driver side did not work. After the repair it did. Without electric locks the likelyhood of accidently locking the car with your keys inside is nowhere near as great as with electric locks. One day I pulled up in front of my house, got out of the car for a quick moment and left it running. On the way out of the car I unknowingly hit the lock button. Upon returning to the car I found out it was locked. 
Now because the a/c did not work in the car I had the windows down. Later I took the door panel off and unplugged the wire to the driver door lock knowing pressing the button would conveniently lock the other door and only that door. 

Now if you find yourself having to rebuild an entire terminal having a schematic to your particular vehicle or appliance would be very handy to make sure you put the correct pin back in the correct location. Red wire goes in slot 3, white with blue stripe in 4, that sort of thing.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 1, 2021)

That will help all of us bykfixer. You just shared something that a lot of mechanics don't know. 
I heard Nissan had wiring troubles starting in the late 90s. I heard they started using thin guage wires. That bothered me because I preferred Nissans over the other foreign ones. I really liked the lil husler trucks from the 70s. Nice looking, great handling and enough power to bark the tires in 4th gear. Their semi floating rear ends were their weak link. I guess they never meant for me and others to put them through the wringer. Some preferred them on trails rather than a atv. Rust was a big problem.


----------



## bykfixer (Apr 2, 2021)

Pass it on green pond. 

The other evening I was filling a cup with water from the refrigerator door when it suddenly stopped. It gurgled and sputtered a but then nothing. I began looking up what could be wrong as this is the first one I've ever owned with that stuff on the door. Ice, crushed ice or water dispenser. Anyway I see it could be this part or it could be that valve etc so then I turn to the youtube channel and watch a couple of how to videos. I really appreciate the ones made by the Maytag man type. The kind where a fellow wearing an appliance repairman's shirt gives a no nonsense, 2 minute demonstration. Straight forward, no gimmicks. 

Then there's the kind where the guy makes sure you know he has an $80k motorcycle, a hot wife and the best microwave oven money can buy as he also makes sure you know both of his forearms are loaded with tat's (slang for really awesome tattoos). This guy has discovered a connector clip is broken because the female half of the pin is rusted. How did the pin get rusty? I suppose while he is off riding his $80k motorcycle or getting another cool tat he should have been checking the drain pan of his refrigerator and noticed a connector pin in under freaking water……

He's got his high end wire cutters, his super duper soldering iron, a brand spanking new super fabulous heat gun to shrink a 1 inch section of shrink tube when a BiC lighter would do the trick and he's going to eliminate this problem once and for all by golly. By now there have been 3 commercials in his video btw. Yup he's going to eliminate that pesky connector and make a permanent splice. 

The Maytag man would probably cut out the bad connector and splice onto the wires a new one, charging you $99 to show up, $50 every 30 minutes while he does it and the price of the part plus 25% markup for profit. A Plugger would cut a connector from a busted microwave or a toaster and splice that to his refrigerator. 
But now armed with the toyota how to manual in this thread the CPFr can use a flat head precision screwdriver and a wire terminal pincher to replace that failed pin. And would probably use dielectric grease inside the connector and wrap it with some shrink tube incase some water builds up in the drain pan in between their 30 day drain pan check routine.

Now if you are fixing up an old truck and you have an issue with a bunch of rust at a junction point you can know how to repair the connectors if you prefer to stay with an original look under the hood and not have a bunch of butt connectors all wrapped with electrical tape. Nothing wrong with that mind you. But there's just something cool about pushing a small flathead screwdriver in under the pin, push and pry at the same time to unlock the pin and see the pin outside of the connector. My son and I swapped a few busted connectors when installing an engine in his car. We had help from some engine experts when rebuilding things and it was sweet to show them that neat little trick that had them both saying "wow, I never knew you could do that"……


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 2, 2021)

Those youtube videos can be very helpful. They sure have helped me. Did you find out what was wrong with your icemaker?


----------



## bykfixer (Apr 2, 2021)

I had forgotten I bought an extended warranty on the thing so the Maytag man is coming out next week to fix it. 
It's possibly the supply tube inside the machine has frozen or a solenoid on the valve, which is more likely the problem. 

Around February the refrigerator started making a sound a few times a day that was like somebody slowly squeezing the squeaker in a doggy toy. It did it often enough that Mrs Fixers parrot started repeating it. Squeeeeeeek. It was quiet but definitely there. Since the water supply is no longer functional the squeaking has stopped. Only time I hear it now is when the parrot does it. lol. She makes a sneezing sound and says "bless you", barks like a dog, laughs, does a smokers cough, all kinds of stuff. 

It's windy where I live lately and my car cover keeps blowing off. Between pollen and bird poop I like to keep it covered. I found some clips online used to hold tarps in place. They are called Tekton tarp clips. These type screw down so instead of being spring activated they fasten to however tight you want them. Anyway, you tie a cord to each one and fasten them to the corners of the cover with cord under the car and no more problem with wind blowing the cover off. I used all purpose polyester clothes line cord since it stretches some but not like a bunjee cord does.





The Tekton clips and cord





The cover puffed like a balloon but fastened well at each corner.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 2, 2021)

Glad to hear you still have a warranty on your refrigerator. As far as that wind goes I can handle most cold weather as long as the wind ian't blowing. That cold air tears me up, but it's a blessing in the summertime. 
Thanks for sharing all that information. 
I like that American flag.


----------



## bykfixer (Apr 3, 2021)

I can walk across the kitchen floor and use a spigot to fill my glass with water but that automatic ice maker thing is pretty cool. My older refrigerators had a top shelf for ice trays. This one has a giant box to hold ice with no provisions for a shelf. Now I suppose if worse came to worse we could fashion up something "Plugger" style, or saws-all the front face off and slide ice trays in and out but for now I hope to keep it all original equipment. 

The key fob to my Lexus has stopped working to lock/unlock doors. I'm ok with that. There was a time where that would be on my to do list. It's not the battery so that's it for that. Now apparently on some vehicles holding down the unlock button a few seconds causes it to roll down the windows. I can live without that too. But a rattle somewhere in the dash, a squeek coming from the trunk or that sort of thing……no freaking way I can live with that. 

My old Prelude had a light rattling sound coming from the front of the car. I spent hours and hours looking for that. It turned out that an adapter plate to fasten the non standard transmission to the engine to hold the driver side transaxle in place was about to fall off. Three of the four bolts were gone and the fourth was loose. The plate was wobbling while driving it. Now the one remaining bolt was whittled down to about 2/3 total metal left. Man oh man going behind somebodys modifications can be a drag. Eventually it was fixed but not without a bunch of hassle getting a solution custom made. It seemed that at one point many had done that very thing to their Prelude since that particular transmission was geared to go faster, sooner. So I found a guy who made adapter plates……correctly. 

So far in the current project I have not found any stopple-ee-do modifications. The original owner used it to commute to work until it reached 245k miles and sold it to my son. My son was about to embark on turning it from grocery getter to zoom and boom but found a car already built that way from the factory. So aside from trying to figure out where somebody hid the locking lug nut key so far no drama. This one probably won't be a total project. So far I have about 1 house payment worth of $ invested in it. And that was the purchase price. As I learn more I may fix a few things that stopped working using junkyard parts but I doubt it. There's just too many gizmos and gadgets that can fail and sense false signals to the diagnostic system to trip about so if it starts giving me too much grief I'll move onto another project. Something a lot older and a lot less fussy.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 3, 2021)

I really like the vehicles from the mid 60s on into the early 80s and the trucks and vans on into the early 90s. I like Fords, but I've has some mopars and gm products. I miss my 1975 cutless that I traded for a Ford pickup. Guy I traded it to went to sleep at the wheel and hit a bridge doing 90 mph. Both his childern died in the accident and him and his wife were injured, but not enough to call it seriously. I don't think that would have happened if he still had the 6cyl straight shift truck. In a way I feel guilty for trading.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 5, 2021)

In the past I endorsed rock auto parts, but they just went up on a part that they knew I was going to buy. I got the total price with taxes and shipping on a item- went to bed and my wife cashed my check and put the money on my card while I was asleep. Got up some 5 or 6 hours later and the price was higher. Nope nope nope


----------



## bykfixer (Apr 7, 2021)

I've never tried Rock Auto. Lots of my comrads at the Honda Prelude forum buy from them. 

If I buy parts through the mail it is usually because they're from a warehouse that sells the original stuff. I needed a battery cable for a van one time and ordered it from Ford because nobody within 75 miles of me had one. It had a special end I wanted to keep original.


----------



## Poppy (Apr 7, 2021)

I bought from rockauto a few times. Often at car enthusiast forums, one can find a discount code. The discount typically saves enough money to cover the cost of shipping. I never had a problem, buying from them.

The biggest deterrent from buying online, is TIME. If I am motivated to fix something, I usually want the part NOW.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 10, 2021)

They went down on the price the next day so I bought the water pump. I also ordered a 3 flue all aluminum radiator with two electric fans from ebay. Now I'm learning about relays and am considering wiring up one in the fan circuit to keep the high amp wiring out of the cab. I'm not sure if I'm going to have a flip switch or a temprature sensor switch yet- maybe both. Let one fan turn on automatically and the other be manual.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 10, 2021)

Good news- I finally got my water turned back on after almost 2 years. It cost me $15 shy of $2000 though. I just remembered this when talking about buying parts because all of that came out of mine and Melvinia's stimulus checks.
I guess rock auto isn't so bad, but if you pull up the total cost including tax and shipping hop on it quickly because the price can change fast if they find out you're interested.


----------



## bykfixer (Apr 10, 2021)

I always preferred the mechanical fan that always runs and the thermostat that changed the flow inside the engine. Now the old way had its flaws like when the thermostat got clogged up with gunk and didn't operate proper. But that was one part and it took like 15 minutes to swap out. If it quit working you could remove it long enough to get home and install a new one. Plus they were inexspensive. The invention of the cowl between the engine and radiator was a good thing. Partly for safety as well. 
Now engines have "sensors" galore. Sensors to guide air/fuel mix, sensors to guide idle, sensors to operate electric fans, sensors to operate air flow inside the cab, sensors to regulate sensors and still you have that old fashioned thermostat. And as most know, machines last longer when then run long periods instead of frequently cycling on and off. 

One Honda I worked on had a wax plunger that opened and closed as hot or cold water passed it. That's right, a wax plunger that closed when hot water hit it. What happens when wax gets hot? It melts. So over time the plunger leaked. Duh! The plunger dictated hot or cold engine idle. So when the plunger leaked it caused the computer to think "hot/cold/hot/cold, hi rev, low rev. A phenomenon called idle bounce. Oh, and the sensor with the wax plunger was $350 for a new one. Yikes!! Then there was the air/fuel sensor that used exhaust gases to guide itself. If it sniffed out unspent fuel it leaned the mixture. Well folks, exhaust has soot so it would clog after a while. Again that played a role in idle so that too could cause idle bounce. And it was $650 new. Ridiculous. The car had en EGR system that used tiny little tubes on each exhaust cylinder to resend exhaust back into the intake system to recirculate exhaust gases. Again, soot clogged those tiny little chambers so the intake plenum had to be removed from the engine and and the little chambers had to be swept like a chimney. Combine that with exhaust valves that go out of adjustment easily and you get a trouble prone automobile. 

I had a Ford that the EGR valve would clog up on. Easy fix. Soak valve overnight in brake part cleaner, let it dry and reinstall. The system used rubber hoses so again easy fix. If the car acted up you just removed the valve, plug the hose with a golf tee, filled the tank with premium fuel until you fixed the EGR valve or hoses. 

The crazy part is that at one point the catalytic convertor and EGR system could have been avoided entirely. In 1974 the US Congress passed strict smog standards. Strict at that time anyway. The big 3 had some time to get it straight, but Soichiro (pronounced So eech ee roh) Honda had devised what he called CVCC, which was a way of recirculating exhaust gases back into the intake system to re-ignite the exhaust gases. It passed the new smog regulations the year Congress passed that law. One day the CEO of GM had a press conference in 1975 and he was touting the new catalytic convertor and commented that "unlike those Japanese toys"……referring to Mr Hondas CVCC system. Word got back to Mr Honda who bought a Chevy Caprice and disassembled the engine, fabricated a CVCC in it and sent it back to America for testing. The car had more horsepower, got better mpg and passed the smog requirement minus a nitro-something or other that it barely failed. The Honda CVCC engine could pass that test so it could be done. 

Secretly all three car makers sent a delegate to try to get Mr Honda to build engines for them. His front wheel drive engines rotated in the opposite direction than the US rear wheel drive engines. He told them he would build engines for front wheel drive cars but he was not going to build engines that did not rotate the same direction as his. He had the entire US auto industry in the palm of his hand and said "nope, can't help you". Reason being was Mr Honda was a racer by nature so he wanted to beat them not join them. To this day only the production car built by Honda, the S 2000 was rear wheel drive. 
Crazy, huh? 
I read that story in a book called "in his wake". A story about Honda after Soichiro retired. Lee Iaachoca also mentioned it in his book.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 10, 2021)

I like those flex fans- even the plastic ones worked well. The electric fans came with the radiator though so I figured I'd try them. I can go back to my own fan if I need to. The electric ones are supposed to cause the engine to have more power available at the wheels because the engine doesn't have to use hp to turn the fan. If they don't work out a flex fan and shroud should help. Each year when summer comes the truck runs hotter and hotter. I can also have the radiator rodded out for $90, but the radiator and fans were only $141 something with tax and free shipping. I hope I didn't mess up buying it- it sounds too good to be true. 
Man, a wax seal. I wonder nowadays if a viton seal would have worked. 
Sounds like Mr. Honda was on top of his game in the mid 70s. Hondas are good vehicles. Seems like all the Japanese manufactorers had something special about their vehicles and so did Ford and dodge/plymouth. Chevies were just plain out ol vehicles that used oil. The one I have now has a fully sacronized trans and a limited slip rear end. Seems like the 64, 66 and 76 that were straight shift- you had to come to a complete stop just to put them in first gear. It uses a gallon of oil every week or two, but no chevrolet smoke and plenty of power for a 250 6cyl. It turns some rpms at highway speed, but I drive it slower most of the time. 
I'm going to refer back to your post with my brother in law. His 87 nissan d21 EFI hardbody pickup is also idle bouncing seems like. He first thought it was bad gas and now he is going to rebuild the EFI and see if that helps.


----------



## bykfixer (Apr 10, 2021)

If it's a cold engine idle bounce it's likely a device that controls the idle based on coolant temperature. FITV Honda calls it. Fast Idle Thermo Valve. 
If it always idle bounces it could be a simple vacuum leak. If it bounces when cold it could be the what Honda calls a IACV Idle/Air Control Valve. If it fast idles fine and bounces when idle settles down to warm mode it's quite likely a vacuum leak. 
Each brand uses something their own like Nissan uses an FIC (fast idle actuator) and IAC (idle air control) that both do pretty much what those Honda sensors do. Now their IAC has a gasket that can leak so that can cause a vaccum leak, which would cause an idle bounce. 

My Honda fast idled fine but when warm went to bouncing. Somebody had unplugged a hose to the cruise control. Plug back and problem solved. My son continued a project I had abandoned on a real sweet 91 Prelude and he developed an idle boune. We cleaned the IACV and it stopped for a while but later the throttle position sensor screwed up and it went back to bouncing. So the throttle position sensor can also be a cause, but usually isn't.





This was how it lived except on special days.


----------



## Poppy (Apr 10, 2021)

Who is having a problem with a surging idle? Please point me to the details, I might be able to help.


----------



## raggie33 (Apr 10, 2021)

id love to see a chevelle ss rebuilt on a all eltric chasis a eletric motor at each wheel


----------



## Poppy (Apr 10, 2021)

Regarding electrical vs mechanical radiator fans, I am in favor of electrical.

A thermostat that regulates coolant flow is used in both systems. It is used primarily to allow the engine to come up to the most efficient running temperature as quickly as is reasonable.

The actual cooling of the coolant is dependent upon the radiator, and rate of flow of air through it.
Years ago, I would commonly see over-heated cars on the side of the road as we traveled south the the Jersey shore. Yeah... years ago, they all had mechanical fans. Sitting in traffic, in 90+F at an engine idle, the fan did not pull enough air through the radiator and they overheated.

Today, with computer controlled engines, (and fans); far fewer cars are on the side of the road due to over heating.

Sensors in today's cars turn the fan on high when the A/C compressor is activated. The fan/s go to high when needed. This is independent of engine speed.

Regarding rodding a radiator.
In the North East US, I suspect that it would cost more to have a radiator rodded, than it would be to buy a replacement radiator. Labor rates may be lower in other parts of the country.


----------



## Poppy (Apr 10, 2021)

raggie33 said:


> id love to see a chevelle ss rebuilt on a all eltric chasis a eletric motor at each wheel


Why not just buy a new one?


----------



## Poppy (Apr 10, 2021)

BTW If I understood the advertisement, GMC is going to make an all electric 4X4 Hummer.
That would be awesome.

https://www.gmc.com/electric/hummer...UOrHPGYuCt2gkGf50iIaAnffEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds


----------



## raggie33 (Apr 10, 2021)

because i love the looks of old cars i just hate gas engines . i expect in a year or 2 we will see a eltric car run the quarter mile in 7 seconds


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 10, 2021)

Poppy said:


> Regarding electrical vs mechanical radiator fans, I am in favor of electrical.
> 
> A thermostat that regulates coolant flow is used in both systems. It is used primarily to allow the engine to come up to the most efficient running temperature as quickly as is reasonable.
> 
> ...



Hey Poppy, It's roughly $50 cheaper to have mine rodded out than to buy a new cheap one. My original is two flue and the new one is higher capacity with 3 flues. 
My brother in law's 1986 D21 EFI nissan hardbody pickup with a 4cyl won't idle or idles rough and unstabile. It might be a bouncing idle. It is intermediate I think. He thought it was the old gas where it had been sitting up, but it does it now with fresh gas in it. Seems like those early EFI trucks suffered from this and folks would just idle them up enough that they wouldn't bottom out and die. It is the same motor as my 86 720 pickup except mine had a carb on it. 
I almost forgot- those original non aluminum radiators in old vehicles like mine are expensive to replace- like maybe $300-$700, so if I want to keep it original rodding out is the way to go. I just want it to work well whether original or not. This is my daily driver for now and I'm also dealing with water in my gas the way it is running. Was doing fine this morning near empty on the way home and I put some more gas in it from another station instead of where I originally got the bad gas, but it is back to bucking like a mule on the highway.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 10, 2021)

bykfixer said:


> If it's a cold engine idle bounce it's likely a device that controls the idle based on coolant temperature. FITV Honda calls it. Fast Idle Thermo Valve.
> If it always idle bounces it could be a simple vacuum leak. If it bounces when cold it could be the what Honda calls a IACV Idle/Air Control Valve. If it fast idles fine and bounces when idle settles down to warm mode it's quite likely a vacuum leak.
> Each brand uses something their own like Nissan uses an FIC (fast idle actuator) and IAC (idle air control) that both do pretty much what those Honda sensors do. Now their IAC has a gasket that can leak so that can cause a vaccum leak, which would cause an idle bounce.
> 
> ...



Thanks bykfixer. I like being primed with ideals instead of going at it from scratch. I like that Ford sign.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 10, 2021)

raggie33 said:


> id love to see a chevelle ss rebuilt on a all eltric chasis a eletric motor at each wheel



I'm more of a Ford fan, but those chevelles were nice cars and had a full frame as compaired to thr sub frame novas and unit body mid sized Fords and dodge/plymouths. Those unit bodies worked well though. I put a fox body fairlane futura through the wringer.


----------



## bykfixer (Apr 10, 2021)

The Ford sign is actually a giant sticker from the 1980's when I was restoring a 66 Mustang. I bought a bunch of business card sized sticky magnets and turned it into a big ole magnet to go onto the back of my tool chest


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 10, 2021)

I need to get one of those for my tool shed.


----------



## Poppy (Apr 11, 2021)

greenpondmike said:


> Hey Poppy, It's roughly $50 cheaper to have mine rodded out than to buy a new cheap one. My original is two flue and the new one is higher capacity with 3 flues.
> I almost forgot- those original non aluminum radiators in old vehicles like mine are expensive to replace- like maybe $300-$700, so if I want to keep it original rodding out is the way to go. I just want it to work well whether original or not.



Mike, since you already priced it out, I guess you made your decision. Rodding definitely works, and if those engines have a problem with electrolysis, then you are better off without an aluminum radiator.



> My brother in law's 1986 D21 EFI nissan hardbody pickup with a 4cyl won't idle or idles rough and unstabile. It might be a bouncing idle. It is intermediate I think. He thought it was the old gas where it had been sitting up, but it does it now with fresh gas in it. Seems like those early EFI trucks suffered from this and folks would just idle them up enough that they wouldn't bottom out and die. It is the same motor as my 86 720 pickup except mine had a carb on it.



I am not familiar with nissans, although, I am with Fords. 
1. vacuum leak is probably the most frequent cause of a surging idle.
2. fuel pressure, a weak fuel pump, clogged fuel filter, faulty fuel pressure regulator
Early EFI Fords had a two pump system, a low pressure high volume one in the tank, and a high pressure one attached to the frame closer to the engine. 
3. faulty TPS throttle position sensor... that's the least likely of the three. When it goes bad, it will more often give a HIGH idle.
4. edit... I forgot to include your IAC idle air control module
5. electronic ignition module.
6. That engine is old enough that capacitors in the engine control computer may start to fail. You might pull it and take a look for leaking capacitors. 

A Haynes, or Chilton's manual should walk you through how to test most of the components mentioned above.
Beyond that, I am sure there are many Nissan forums, where members help members troubleshoot their cars/trucks. I suggest that you find a good one (one where there are some knowledgeable people who help out, vs one that has members who just blow smoke).

Certainly, pulling engine troubleshooting codes (after looking for a vacuum leak) is a great place to start.
Did you pull codes?
What were they?



> This is my daily driver for now and I'm also dealing with water in my gas the way it is running. Was doing fine this morning near empty on the way home and I put some more gas in it from another station instead of where I originally got the bad gas, but it is back to bucking like a mule on the highway.



Water settles to the bottom of the tank, and since the gas is pumped from the bottom of the tank, the water, if there is any is the first to get pumped out. Therefore... full tank, or empty tank doesn't matter when it comes to pumping water from it.

Unless your County was under water, it seems very unlikely that you could have gotten bad gas from two different stations. I suspect that your problem is with YOUR truck, and not from buying bad gas.

On a carbed engine if I remember correctly, fuel pressure should be between 5-7 PSI. Check the specs for your truck/engine. Also take a look at your fuel line. I once had a rubber hose that connected my gas tank to the metal fuel line. It dry rotted out, and caused a vacuum leak. It allowed enough fuel at idle, and low speeds, but not at high way speeds the fuel pump was sucking some air into the fuel line. The engine bogged down on the highway.

If you are convinced that your problem is water in the fuel, pull your fuel filter, and dump it into a clear container, and examine it.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 11, 2021)

Thank you Poppy. I think my brother in law has a code checker, but I don't know if he checked any codes yet. I considered that with all this rain I could have gotten water in 2 different places.
I just replaced the fuel pump. I had the gas cap off as I came home from work this morning to see if the lines might be collasping on the inside where I can't see it. I figured the vacuum in the tank (the tank is unvented whereas the original was vented) might be sucking the lines closed. 
I've had water in the tank before and it did the same way it does now except it seemed to clear up faster than this time. It also left me stranded twice this time, but hasn't anymore (praise God) since I put on the new fuel pump. 
I also checked my vacuum lines. 
You misunderstood me about the radiator. I want to fix the original, but it is a 2 flue and the new aluminum one that comes with 2 electric fans is 3 flue. I assume the original one barely kept it cool enough when the truck was new since the engine turns high rpms because of it's low geared rear end. I had already ordered the aluminium one this past Thursday and a water pump.


----------



## bykfixer (Apr 11, 2021)

I've never gotten a check engine light when idle bounce was a thing. 
Now being a combustion motor is a giant vaccum system the idle bounce means vacuum is not in spec somewhere. And the computer is confused. "To rev or not to rev?" it keeps processing. So it's just a matter of figuring out what is out of spec. 
Agreed Poppy, forums are great sources for what typically goes wrong, yes. Yet there are times when it is none of the usual suspects so one has to put on their Sherlock Holmes thinking cap and begin analyzing. That's when the fun begins. 

Modern shops have diagnistic machines that can check out all over the system be it vacuum or electronic. I'm not above paying somebody $75 to diagnose an issue I just can't figure out. Then decide either DIY or pay the shop.


----------



## Poppy (Apr 12, 2021)

Trying to think of different sensors that may trigger a CEL check engine light when one of the symptoms is a surging idle include:
IAT intake air temperature sensor... common cause of surging idle
MAF Mass air flow sensor (has the IAT built into it) ... surging, stalling
MAP Manifold absolute pressure sensor (works similar to MAF)
O2 sensors, running RICH, or running LEAN codes may be set depending upon where a vacuum leak is, among other things, such as incomplete ignition.
EGR valve malfunction may cause the EGR valve position sensor to trigger a code.
EGR Differential Pressure sensor may send a code... What are the symptoms of a bad EGR pressure sensor?As with any EGR issue, the most common symptoms noticed when the exhaust gas recirculation pressure feedback sensor fails are rough idling, hesitation accelerating from a stop, lack of engine power, misfires, and, of course, illumination of the dreaded check engine light.




Pulling DTC codes (Diagnostic Troubleshooting Codes) is very easy to do and can REALLY point one in the right direction for troubleshooting a problem.


----------



## raggie33 (Apr 12, 2021)

any of you al recall checking a ford ecm with a papper clip and a volt meter?


----------



## Poppy (Apr 12, 2021)

Yes, I wrote an instruction how to do that and in slightly newer Ford s you can count the blinks of the CEL👍


----------



## raggie33 (Apr 12, 2021)

i used to do it on my ford exp i loved this car the stereo in it was worth more then the total price i psyed for it used. it wasnt cool but i drove thr hell out of it only time it left me stranded was when iran out of gas. i recall drilling a hole in the engine compartment to get to the crank shaftbolt for a timeing belt change. it was this or buy a specailtooll


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 12, 2021)

Thanks Poppy for that info. I like having an old raggity Ford that people would not think much of till it eats their chevies. I want it to be perfect mechanically and on the inside and sound good and have no rust- just look kind of rough on the outside, but easily fixable if I want it to look good. I like the old LTDS and galaxies, but I also like the mid sized offerings. I still wouldn't mind having a modified pinto with a fuel cell or plastic boat tank. Those little cars were tough and people used to put them through the wringer down here. One had a 302 off in it. You had to take the motor mounts loose and jack up the motor just to change the oil filter. Now they make kits to reroute the oil filter where it can easily be changed.


----------



## Poppy (Apr 12, 2021)

Raggie,, you know more than you let on 👍😉
Creating access holes can be a real time saver.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 12, 2021)

Poppy said:


> Raggie,, you know more than you let on 👍😉
> Creating access holes can be a real time saver.



I agree- +1


----------



## raggie33 (Apr 12, 2021)

Poppy said:


> Raggie,, you know more than you let on 👍😉
> Creating access holes can be a real time saver.



ive been told i can fix anything my mind works that way. from ac to computers i can fix most anything. butbin life im a moron lol


----------



## raggie33 (Apr 12, 2021)

lol one time i changed a entire engine with no egine hoist just a floor jack. its how i used to feed my self by fixing stuff


----------



## raggie33 (Apr 12, 2021)

on the exp i had to remove engine crank bolt but a course when i turned bolt egine just turned. so i pried wrench and disconcted distrubter and used the starter to turn engine over while socket wrench held bolt pried lol just held key for a half zecond


----------



## raggie33 (Apr 12, 2021)

but in life most human call me retarded i dont listen any more . at my age i know we all have pros and cons


----------



## Poppy (Apr 12, 2021)

raggie33 said:


> lol one time i changed a entire engine with no egine hoist just a floor jack. its how i used to feed my self by fixing stuff


My hat's off to you for that one my friend. :thumbsup:


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 13, 2021)

Yeah Poppy, Raggie's creative with mechanical things and sounds like instead of giving up he finds a way. Raggie, I hope you don't mind me taking the liberty to say that likewise in your current situation I hope you would also not give up, but find a way to make things work out.


----------



## raggie33 (Apr 13, 2021)

greenpondmike said:


> Yeah Poppy, Raggie's creative with mechanical things and sounds like instead of giving up he finds a way. Raggie, I hope you don't mind me taking the liberty to say that likewise in your current situation I hope you would also not give up, but find a way to make things work out.



ty we mst go on


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 21, 2021)

My ol chevy has been giving me fits. It was spitting, spuddering, bucking and backfiring. It also started dieing and not cranking again, so I did what seemed (by accident) to work before. 

I pulled off the fuel line and had someone who wanted to help me hold it to the side and I turned over the moter. It cranked right up. I replaced the fuel line at the back of the fuel pump with fuel injection hose. The old line looked new, but seemed a little flat in the curves. Another set of used spark plugs were put in except these were a free set that cost my brother in law about $7 something a piece. One had broke on his V8, so he just bought a new set. 

It cranked up and had a non metellic slightly scraping knock that seemed to come from the GM HEI distributor we installed a couple of years back. Pulled the cap and all looked good inside. Drove it home like that. I figured the bushing was bad in the dist. and decided to get one from the junk yard. 
Today ol truck ran fine and smooth- no knock, but I went and got dist. anyway and it died on me when I almost got to the junkyard. I pulled the fuel line and let some gas out. It cranked and I went on and got the other dist. and drove on to work averaging 70 mph. No problems at all, but engine ran a little hot. 

I need to put that new radiator and water pump on, but I wanted to focus on getting it running right first and just using the heater fan for extra cooling. I guess it's coming along.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 21, 2021)

I miss my 71 gold duster. That 225 slant six with a 2 barrel carb was a good engine. Only problem I remember having with it was it developed a dead miss. Found out the adjusting nut on a rocker had come off. I put it back on and it ran fine. 

I miss a lot of my past vehicles and wonder what I was thinking getting rid of them. I had 3 different generations of nova's and four mustangs spanning 3 older generations. A 71 ranchero and all kinds of older trucks from Ford, chevy, dodge and datson. Not to mention all the others. I've lost count of all the ones I had that I actually bought a tag for, 80-90+? And I've owned more than that. 

I wished I'd finished that 64 falcon two door- all I lacked was brakes, flywheel and a floor shifter because the collar on the column shifter broke. I drove it a little- stopping on one wheel brakes was a trip. It had some rust in the floorboards, but I could live with that.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 21, 2021)

Come to think about it I also miss my 75 cutlass and 67 ltd coupe. I was stupid with my 68 mustang. I got it in 85 or 86 for $600 with a good body and the 2 barrel 289 special ran great. It had a limited slip rear end and a 3 speed stick shift in the floor. Unlike the novas, I could trail ride this thing without worrying about hitting the oil pan. I enjoyed it and it got me liking Fords. I let a fellow I knew and trusted take it for a spin and he overrevved it and it developed a dead miss. I tore it down still warm with the hot bolts burning my figures. 
It had cracked three top compression rings and ruint three pistons only. The cylinder walls were barely scarred and would easily disappear with minimal honing. 

Well, I wanted to go all out and build a monster, so I got bought a torquer 2 intake with a holly 650 double pumper carb mounted on it and several accesseries. Was going to buy more as I got the money. Had a so called friend rebuild the heads, etc. 

Well, the carb and intake shouldn't have been sold to me because the one doing the selling didn't own them and the real owner found out where they were. The fellow that was supposed to rebuild my heads was dragging his feet (later I found out he had sold them), so when a friend offered my a 71 mustang that was running for it I traded. Car didn't have a grill and looked like a catfish, but it had a good body and ran good. 

The one that got the 68 just slopped it together- had the timing chain in the dirt and didn't even wash it off- just put it on and it ran just fine again in stock configuration with a cheaper set of heads. It has now had several owners and has been painted back the same medium blue color with white racing stripes on the hood and has the two other magnesium slotted mags I had for it on the front- I only had only mounted the two on the back. 

Last time I saw it a young fellow was driving it and it had no front bumper. I guess this was in the mid 90s. It has either been totalled or a collector has it now I guess.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 22, 2021)

Of the Fords I've owned I like their 289, 302, 351 windsor, and their 390 the best. Some engines I don't know about because I've never owned them. 

I had a friend that had a 260 v8 and it was alright. The 200 six cyl is a very good motor. I don't like their 250 six cyl. The 300 six is a good motor. I've had some worn out ones, but I've also had a few that were as good as people brag that they are. 
Fuel injection helped them because they were too large for that little one barrel the fed the engine from the middle. I'd put that fuel injected 300 up against any big block as far as pulling goes. 

That 390 I had in my 67 Ltd had 275 hp and a lot of torque. It got 20 mpg and ran like a scolded dog. The car itself could climb kudzu hill from that bad side (that's saying something) and could trail ride better than most all the ones I've ever owned. I wish I'd also kept it and restored it.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 22, 2021)

As far as chrysler, plymouth and dodge go, the 225 slant six is the best 6cyl engine I've ever seen. Believe me when I say that my friends and I have abused them and I don't know of a time when they have ever failed us. I also like the 318 and although I've never owned the 360 I have a lot of respect for the older ones on up to when they were used in the little red express. 
I've seen what the 383 magnum will also do. 

A friend that knew and were friends with several of the wealthier folks in the mid 60s to the early 70s told me about the 440. He drove their cars while they partied and if he wasn't going fast enough one of them would put his foot on top of my friend's to make sure the pedal was to the floor. My friend drove all kinds of muscle cars from that era including the 389 gto with 3 duches. He said the one with the most punch he's ever driven was a 1971 coronet with a 440 4 barrel.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 22, 2021)

I've never owned one, but I've heard a lot of amazing things about the pontiac 400. That engine will sure enough go in stock cofiguration if tuned right and if modified with just a good set of heads and a 4 barrel it will scat. I have driven a friend's in a big catalina. It only had a 2 barrel and it had some punch. Several friends had this engine. I've seen 155 in the back seat of a firebird with a 400. There was still more pedal to mash, but that was too much already. The back louvers snapped off.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 22, 2021)

The oldsmobile 350 is a good motor and I've owned 2 of them. I used to think the 250 chevy was alright, but I blew a cylinder on one and now I have this one in my truck and it has me frustrated. The externals are no big deal, but I've had internal trouble with this one. 

The truck had 48,000 something on it when I got it and now it has 74,861. There is evidence that this is the true mileage and the odometer hasn't turned over yet. It has been setting up over half of it's life and I don't know why. I don't know how the original owner treated it- all I know was when I first changed the valve cover gaskets the head was spotless underneigh. There is evidence that the exhaust manafold gasket has been changed. It's possible that the head had been taken off and rebuilt at one time- maybe to put in hardened valve seats for the unleaded gas that came out since it was built. 

All older original engines need this modification because the older valve seats were softer and depended on the lead in the gas for lubrication and would wear if unleaded gas was used. I have another 250 (79 model) and an early 80s 350 that is in a one ton dump truck that I can put in mine. I'd need 3 or 4 days off and some money saved up before I'd want to attemp a swap though. 

I've had some good and bad dealings with the small block chevy v8s. Not really anything to brag about except some would hold up better than others and some would run better and some faster than others. Most of the time- by the time I got a vehicle with one in it, it was done worn out. 

A fellow I know said he quit driving his truck (305 v8) to work when it started using a quart every 1000 miles. MAN, if I had ever had a chevy engine that used that little measily amount of oil I'd think I had a new engine lol. That little bit of usage or less is what I have mainly experienced in Ford territory, but some of the other brands did almost as well. 

This truck I'm driving uses a gallon of oil every week or two depending on how I drive it. It doesn't smoke that I can tell. Now I need to replace the valve cover gasket again and wash the engine, but it's not leaking that bad. Ol truck ought to be a skeeter killing machine for all the oil it's burning, but like I said....no smoke. I'm starting to wonder if this truck is cursed or jinxed and that is why it has sat up most of its life. How much money shall I throw at this supposed money pit....more, more, more, more........it wants attention, but it doesn't like the attention- reminds me of a dog I once had.....strange dog.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 22, 2021)

In all fairness I can't recall a time when a small block chevy let me down. I don't recall any experience with the big block ones. I think I might of had one that didn't use much oil, but I didn't drive it enough to find out. 

That truck looked so good (the center of the grill lenghways was painted red- it set it off) it would almost make a person drool, but it was REALLY cursed/jinxed and I know the one who did it and when she did it. Man......fast acting jinx too. Time my brother in law had driven about 10 miles and got off at an exit (easy driving) we smelled transmission fluid. Cut it off to check and it wouldn't crank back up. Got an new battery and found out alternator was also bad. In one day, batteey, alternator and trans was toast and the trans didn't need the normal build- no, it also needed the pump in the trans. 

Got all that fixed and I was driving local adjusting the headlights and the module went out in front of a drug house (I didn't know at the time) and two guys came out and pushed me out of the road and then one of them that helped me was found passed out on the bathroom floor while I was waiting on my brother in law with the rollback. Paramedics were called and when they got there the woman at the house asked me is she should tell the paramedics about the d***s. Wut da????!! I said uh, I guess only if they ask. I was glad to see my brother in law when he got there and he was tripping on the flashing lights. We loaded up and got OUT of there. 

It was a red 86 SWB fleetside chevy with a 350 crate engine. It used to have a 305 in it. It had a vibration when I kicked down on it. I wonder if the new torque converter was out of balance. When I first got it, it was two or three of the plug wires bad, so it was running on 5 or 6 cylinders only and the quadrajet was only running on the small frontal barrels. I fixed all that. The carb was factory handicapped so that the back barrels only opened so much- I didn't break off the limiters. It finally would squall a tire so I was happy. I was afraid the engine would fly apart if I let the carb do its full potential. I didn't keep it too long.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 24, 2021)

A friend had a 67 or 68 camero rs that was alright. It was a quick and fast dependable car that also got 15 mpg. His formula was a 350 with double hump (300 hp) heads, a crane blazer midrange cam and a holly 450 economizer carb along with a four speed trans. I'm not sure about the rear end ratio, but that's also important it was low geared though. He blew the 454 that was in it when he got it, but the 350 held up a good while and never failed him. He got a wild hair and wanted to build a monster. He rebuilt it and added a tunnel ram and I don't know what all else he did, but he got to where he didn't believe in "breaking in" an engine. He had a mean mamma jama of a car for what seems like a week or two till a rod started knocking and then he sold it. 
Only thing wrong with the setup he had before was when he was taking it apart he discovered that the mechanical fuel pump was about to fall apart. Maybe that fuel pump affected the performance to the point that he though his car was getting weak. 

Two other friends had chevelles- the 69 had a hot 350 and the 68 had a stock 327. I sold a set of double hump heads to the fellow with the 327 and it would scat. Both cars did well though. The one with the 327 also believed in having smaller tires in the back and I tried it myself and it seems to lower the gear ratio somewhat. Going from 235 70r 15s to 215 70r 15s made a huge difference in an old 6cyl Ford van I had- it woke it up. I hated to get rid of it, but I was tired of women looking at me like I was going to grab them and throw them into the side door and also someone making negative comments about me.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 24, 2021)

Seems like chevy engines do fine from the factory and also if someone takes the time to build them right. There are a lot of bubba builds though. One fellow who was a mechanic built tons of them, but he would just slop them together and use an impact instead of a torque wrench/ratchet. Now my brother in law's nick name is bubba, but he does precision work. 

One fellow had a 1979 Z28 that he got new and it held up a while, but after he blew it and started rebuilding it- the engine would do good to last a couple of months. It would set up a year and he would build it again and he was good for a week to a month and so on and so on. 

Chevy parts are cheap as compaired to other makes and you can make more power for a cheaper price. A good set of heads is fundamental to any power build. 

I know one fellow who built his engine quality and for power, but he also wented about it differently. He didn't use special heads or cam. He matched the engine, trans, rear end ratio and carb to all work together to make power along with electric fans on the radiator. Together the truck would eat the tires up, but my brother in law pulled the engine out and put it in something else that had a different trans, a different rear end ratio, mechanical fan on the radiator and a different carb. He thought his truck would do something, but it barely squalks the tires. 

Folks that want to build for power need a formula that is proven to work instead of just slopping parts on it. If you don't have a good plan with your build it would probably run better in stock configuration.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 24, 2021)

I'm really not down on chevies as much as it seems. I do joke about them and it seems like I have been prone to get the ones that are about worn out even though they sure cost enough. 

Fords on the other hand seem to be dependable and low maintenance. Back in 2007 I got my 1980 Ltd coupe for just $100 and that has been a good dependable car that holds up to anything I demand of it. This isn't uncommon. The 67 Ltd I had only cost my friend $200 and I only traded a 73 cutlass for it that I had $173 in. 

To get a chevy of the same quality I would have had to pay thousands. Ford parts are more expensive, but as long as you stay away from auto zone and other "budget" part stores and buy quality parts you may only have to fix certain things once for the life of the car. Even if you are a do it yourselfer, your own time is worth something and I'm sure you'd rather be doing something else instead of replacing "lifetime" warrented parts every two or three years.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 24, 2021)

What gets me though is how arrogant chevrolet was when they came out with their new style truck back in 87 or 88. I think they were insinuating they were so good that you'd want to blow up your old style Ford and it showed people blowing up their Ford trucks. 

The new chevie trucks improved the frame where the steering box mounted so that the frame wouldn't crack if you had big wide tires on the front. This was on the square body 73-87. I had a square body one that did this. 

The newer trucks also had a collaspable steering column, but if you got mad and beat on the steering wheel it would also collapse and you'd have to drive it like that unless you spent some money. I never owned the newer types, but I wouldn't mind having one. I've driven them though and liked them and even worked on them


----------



## bykfixer (Apr 24, 2021)

I had a 2014 Chevy silverado for work that rode like a luxury car. It was comfy too. Trouble was it started falling apart at 45k miles. By 100k miles it was in need of a third front suspension, had two radiators replaced, axles, differential gears replaced, three water pumps, and at 125 the oil pump failed so the engine broke. It rarely left the pavement. In 4 years the company paid as much in maintenance as the truck cost new. 

My 018 Ford work truck isn't much better. But at least the Chevy rode and drove good. The rod knock sound according to Ford is "just the fuel pump don't worry about it". And the rattling valve train, "oh that just means optimum fuel economy". Never mind the 10 speed tranny jumping down to 8th gear out of nowhere (on level pavement) or it lurching from 1st to 5th "wham!" when starting out. "Oh that's the computer striving for better gas mileage" they say. When I'm in a left hand curve it pulls to the right. Right hand curve it pulls to the left and on level surface it just wanders like an old John Deere tractor. They say "that's the soft rubber tires, no issue"……
It's a shame too because the price of these vehicles warrants a helluva a lot better than that.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 24, 2021)

Old Fords from the 60s and 70s had a weakness in their automatic shifters (shift callar on steering collumn) where it would tear loose with age or stiffness. I had two do me that way- one on a 64 falcon and one on a 77 Ford pickup. 
You can mash the emergency brake and put them in gear under the hood until you get that fixed or put in a floor shifter. If you put in a floor shifter make sure it has a reverse lockout. 

Sometimes they come out of park and sometime the shifter will droop even if it's in park and you will have to lift the shifter to activate the neutral safety switch so it will crank. 

Chevies are stronger in that area and so are mopars (chrysler, plymouth and dodge). Chevy trucks up to I guess 87 has a full floating rear end where the bearing is open and is pressed onto the axle housing. The axle slides through that and rides in it. It is lubricated by the gear oil. I don't know about the newer trucks. 

Ford has a semi floating rear end like the Datson pickup- where the sealed bearing is pressed onto the axle itself and then it and the axle fits into the axle housing. If the bearing isn't very tight on the axle you could be going down the road and look in the side mirror and see your axle halfway out while you are driving down the road. Just be thankful you caught it in time. If the gear oil gets low the chevy bearing won't have any lubrication, but the Ford bearing will. Pros and cons in all of them. 
To my surprise a 79 Ford fairmint futura (tough car) has a full floating rear end. 

Never underestimate those old 6cyl unit body cars- they will surprise you. I've seen them pull some amazing stuff. My old fairmont pulled a full sized chevy truck home. Seen a 6cyl duster pull home a Ford elite. Seen a 6cyl nova (subframe) pull another nova. 

Unit body cars seem to handle better than ones with a subframe with the exception being the subframed cameros and firebirds which is surpassed by the fox body (later style unit body) mustangs. Even the mid sized V6 Ltds felt like a comfortable extention of my body. 

The Ford twin "I" beam suspension really works good offroad, but a chevy truck handles better on the paved road. Chevy has a heavier bed, but on a Ford it is best to leave the tailgate on and up because that stabilizes the sides of the bed so they won't eventually get to wobbling over a period of time and crack the metal where the bedsides meet the floor. 
There's you some differences.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 24, 2021)

Hey bykfixer. Sorry I didn't see you sooner. 
On what you were saying I was hoping the newer versions of those two would be better because the dodges also give problems. 

Bpi has a 3/4 ton dodge ram work truck that the engine went out on at 174,000 something and the replacement sounded choppy to me and come to find out it had a blown head gasket- maybe that choppiness was a dead cyl from that- I don't know. It took a long while to get them to fix it, but I think I was told that they completely rebuilt it this time. 

Bykfixer, does your Ford have the 3.5 liter ecoboost in it? On the newer chevies, a friend bought a 2006 silverado when it was almost new and still under warranty. He wasn't even supposed to pull a trailer behind it any larger than I think what a riding lawn mower would fit on. He didn't know this and he pulled a very light load on one- maybe a boat and it ruint the differential gears. 

They say that any kind of work except light duty you would have to move up to the 3/4 to one ton. It looks like the newer chevy trucks aren't made as well as their el caminos from the late 70s. 
Seems like they all are high priced junk- I bet though the bean counters are to blame. It sounds like the differential gears are made out of aluminum alloy. I wonder if Toyota and Nissan are any better....


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 24, 2021)

I found part of my problem now. I think I'm going to have to pull out the sending unit and maybe the whole tank and clean it out. It seems to be picking up trash and not releasing it till I pull off the fuel line to release the pressure and maybe it will run a while without doing it again, but maybe not. It could be potentially dangerous if the engine cut off at certain times and places. It just cuts off like I flipped a switch and no amount of turning the engine over is going to crank it till I pull the hose off and put it back on. Will deal with this tomorrow or Monday since I'll be off (I think) if weather permits. My job may call me in though since they had to recently fire 3 people. I'm so frustrated with this truck that I'd almost be willing to trade it for a good running pinto. I can't do that though because I'm trapped in that I told my brother in law that this truck was his after I kicked the bucket.


----------



## bykfixer (Apr 25, 2021)

Give it to him now. 
Problem solved.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 25, 2021)

Lol, yep. Only thing though is how will I get to work since that is the only thing I have running?


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 25, 2021)

Looks like I need to be satisfied with what I have till I can fix it or do better. I'm sure that chevy and all the rest of them can build a sure enough ride if the epa would stay out of it and quit mandating emissions and mpg. 

With the technology they have today they could build them stronger, faster, safer, longer lasting and cheaper if big brother would keep his nose out of it. That is why I like older vehicles. Although the newer technology wasn't there neither was big brother and most of them would make it past 125,000 with halfway decent maintenance and maybe with only a water pump, starter, alternator, fuel pump, battery, tires and timing chain/gear going bad. Maybe the interior would have some places that are bad and maybe even the paint. Up north rust would claim the bodies before the drivetrain gave up. 

The stuff that has happened to mine is minor compaired to what went wrong with your silverado. I looked up the 2014 silverado and that is the year they peaked on looks. It seems like as they got newer they got uglier, but the 2014 was beautiful. I believe you bykfixer, but just looking at that truck without knowing what you said I would be inclined (again) to think that surely that good looking truck wouldn't give too many problems. I guess I haven't learned my lesson yet- that the secret to a drama free life is an ugly truck and a ugly woman. 

Oh, I just had a thought.....if chevy trucks are getting uglier could they are getting better?


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 25, 2021)

Man, if I had those kinds of troubles that your work truck gave you I wouldn't know what to do. First off someone would have to give me the truck and even then the insurance would be so high I couldn't keep insurance on it. I couldn't afford to fix it out of warranty either. I guess all I could use it for would be a lawn ornament and that also wouldn't work because folks would think I came into some money. The last time that happened we had several folks sneak into our yard just to see what we had and what wasn't tied down. One fellow even sent his little daughter to do the spying- that is low. I wonder what has become of the full grown version of that girl. Is she a hardened criminal no thanks to her dad?


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 25, 2021)

My sister's husband used to have a 71 or 72 impala back in the late 70s. He caved in to the gas crisis probably like I would have and started getting those economy cars. He started with the vw rabbit which I liked and learned how to drive on and then he went to american- bypassing the quality japanese stuff. He said when it was all said and done (I'm paraphrasing) he would have been better off financially if he had kept the impala. I mean, time he paid for the smaller cars and did the upkeep on them that good gas mileage cost him more in the long run.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 25, 2021)

I have a bunch of brother in laws. One owns a 03 or 04 silverado 2500 3/4 ton. He's had it a while and he has a lead foot. Only trouble it's ever given was the electric fuel pump and that was just a bad brand that couldn't handle the ethanol fuel. I've driven and liked it also. It has the engine that is close to 327 cubic inches, but I can't recall the liters. I'm not into that metric bull. I like the way those engines sound with dual exhaust and they have the power.

Anyway, he isn't much on taking care of his stuff and he hardly ever changes oil. He has a lot of miles on it and heavy use. The rear main seal finally went bad and he had to park it till he has time to fix it. Before he parked it he was going to work and someone was tailgating him. He gave it the gas to kinda get out of the tailgater's way and his truck sprayed oil on that tailgater's windshield and they turned on their wipers and they only smeared it and made it worse. Brother in law didn't mean for that to happen, but I bet that tailgater will think twice about tailgating another white silverado. 

Maybe even now you can still get a quality truck if you buy a 3/4 or one ton truck. Gone are the days when you could buy a 1/2 ton regular truck and have most of your truck needs met. Seems like those 1/2 ton trucks are just for moms to go to their childeren's soccer practice in style. They look tough and so does the driver- just don't use them for a real truck. After all I've heard that is my humble opinion.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 25, 2021)

Working out there at those abandoned mines I've seen a bunch of trucks and suvs abused. Not on the section I guarded, but there was a big area surrounding my area. It was a running joke that a vehicle would only last Mikey (not me) a week or two before he would tear one up out there somehow. 
The chevy tracker he drove out there held up to him and he sold it running (barely- with no brakes). The early 2000's chevy 1/2 ton 2wd with that 327 in it lasted a while (a month or two). He slightly sunk it and bent the step up rails the first night. The last night I saw him drive it he busted out my driver side window doing doughnuts when I was near the entrance to the property. He picked up the cashier lady from the store and did some more riding. When he went to take his passengers home a cop seen he didn't have a tag and got after him. Mikey floored it and hit the rough rutted pipeline road near his home a few miles away and hid in the woods till the cops gave up. I think he bent the frame because I never seen him drive it again. That was enough to bend any frame. 

There was a fellow that had the 4wd version of that truck and he floored it just about everywhere he went. He messed up his steering knuckle and had to camouflage it and leave it behind till later. He was way back in there where those hunting clubs were. Someone found it and busted out the windows and stole some stuff. I could have had title in hand for $50, but I only had twenty I think. Mikey got a trailer and snagged it and was looking for a good cab for it. 

Someone had one of those ugly curvey s10's from the 90s and he kept it floored down in the bottoms and it never blew, but the rev limiter was always kicking in. I thought it was a v6, but it could have been a four cyl. 

Mikey got ahold of a late 80s ford 2wd pickup with a small v8 in it and gave it the usual Mikey treatment plus constantly redlining it down in the bottoms and it never blew. 

3 v6 toyota pickups held up well engine wise. Jeep cherokees were the preferred vehicles out there along with razors and atv's. 

My friend Carol had a 2wd dodge pickup from the mid 90s that held up to her busting the swamp at a high rate of speed to get away from someone pursuing her. Her tailgate came off and was dragging from one side behind her. She got a 4wd newer Ford and the bolts kept backing out where the trans bolted to the transfer case- all aluminum. 

Scott got a late 80s- early 90s full sized 4wd chevy suv and he mounted big wide wheels and tires on it. It had great traction, but kept tearing up the gears in the differential. I think he finally put new hd stuff in there and it held up. The 350 finally got a rod knocking from overrevving it while stuck at an extreme angle- probably couldn't pick up the oil in the pan. 

A friend had a late 90s Ford 4wd. Man, that truck looked, ran and sounded good. He got it too deep in the water and ruint the motor. I guess the creek was up and he didn't realize it.

To sum it up, most pre 2004 stuff seemed to hold up well out there under extreme substained abuse unless they were wrecked, flipped or submerged.


----------



## LeanBurn (Apr 25, 2021)

I have an 03 2500 Gmc Sierra 4x4 extended cab 6 pass, 6.0L Vortec with the 4L80E transmission. It has a Blackbear tune with an MIT and Flo-pro exhaust. It will bark the tires as it hits second. It has A/C, ABS and a CD player. No nannies, no nonsense truck and it runs great.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 25, 2021)

Sounds like a good one LeanBurn. That one ought to last a good while. Trucks like that lasted close to 300,000 or over if properly mantained and not abused. The guy that messed up his steering knuckle would go 50 where I would only go 5-15mph. I would open it up to 15 but slow down for the ruts and rocks. I've always been reserved with any abuse I did and then I'd feel guilty and give my vehicles some special maintenance.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 26, 2021)

Bodywise, it seems to me that the 64-66 chevy trucks had the best bodies with their only weakness being the arms (on each side) that extends from the axle housing to the frame. These can break and one did on my 64. 

On the gmc equivalent of these- they had leaf springs that didn't need that like the coil springs on the chevy. The gmc's were ungly though with those double headlights. This all is the same on up to 1972. The 67-72 chevies were tough, but not as good as the 64-66. The body rusted out worse on the 67-72 ones and the cab was also more cramped and narrow and had less leg room IMHO. Some of the 64-66 trucks had a rear stabilizer bar that mounted onto the axle housing and then to the body. Some didn't and you could really tell the difference when loaded or when taking a sharp curve too fast unloaded. I think it came standard on the 67-72 ones. In 73 they all got leaf springs with shocks that mounted at the top in opposing directions.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 26, 2021)

I had 2 trucks going when I was taking a heavy equipment class. They had an abundance of churt rock, so I loaded the lwb 65 chevy with the stabilizer bar by hand with a shovel. It was loaded good, but was very stabile going home. Before that they loaded my 77 f100 swb with a loader. A rock slightly dented the top of my bed. Others couldn't tell it, but I could. That truck was swaying real bad going home and I had to keep the speed down to try to keep it stabilized. My chevy had coil springs with the stabilizer bar and my Ford had leaf springs with no stabilizer bar. 

It surprised me that the swb Ford with the leaf springs preformed so badly in comparison. My 69 lwb Ford with leaf springs did way better loaded down with scrap iron. 

My ol 71 dodge swb with leaf springs did terrible loaded down. Had to keep it around 30 on the highway or else I felt like I would lose control. It was loaded down with 4520 pounds plus 3 full grown men in the cab. It was a half ton doing the work of a one ton. We had heavy auto parts on it and whole engines. The back bumper wasn't far from the ground. It handled lesser loads well. It and my 67 dodge army truck seemed to handle a ton of coal well. The coal must have been more centralized and spread out better than those engines and auto parts and it was only me in the cab.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 26, 2021)

The chevy I drive at present will haul a stabile load. I feel like I'm wasting it as a truck mainly using it for transportation. It has a 4:10 or 4:11 limited slip rear end and all I've mainly hauled with it was a couple loads of firewood. One time I had it loaded down good though. Unloaded it can climb a rough rutted steep dirt hill at 5mph without bogging down- that was mainly the extent of my own abuse on it at that abandoned mine sight I used to guard.

My 69 Ford was the one that got worked the most. It could pull a tandom trailer with 2 or 3 stacked cars on it to the shredder. It only had a 300 six cyl running on only 5 cylinders. I made money with that truck and for a while hauling scrap, being a mechanic for another scrap hauler and having a lawn service was all I did for a living. That other scrap hauler most of the time made $100+ a day with some days he got over $300. He had a 1979 gmc sierra half ton with special springs, a turbo 400 trans and a 350 4 barrel engine. That truck would scat, but on his biggest load he had so much on his trailer that even when floored that truck was doing less than 35mph. I found out that any vehicle can pull way better than they could stop. 

My Fords, whether all drum or disk in the front and drum in the back seemed to stop better than any chevy of similar configuration. All my Fords seemed to also have a better heater.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 26, 2021)

As far as grease fittings go- an old chevy got some sure enough grease fittings. Even the upper and lower control arm bushings have grease fittings. Fords don't have as many because there isn't as much moving parts on a twin "I" beam suspension. You can ruin things quick with that cheap brown grease. It lubricates, but it also hardens up and prevents you from greasing your vehicle at a later time. I have one upper ball joint at this time that won't except any grease. The boot on it is also busted and although the ball joint is still tight- I will need to be replacing it in the near future. That red grease has never failed me, but I like the EP moly fortified black grease better. For all the blondes out there like myself "EP" stands for extreme pressure.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 26, 2021)

If my memory is right it seems like the manual steering box on the 64-66 chevies had a place to either put grease in it or maybe add some gear oil. My 71 doesn't and it feels like it needs it.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 26, 2021)

One more thing before I go to bed. Y'all remember how I said I had to pull the gas line off to make it run again? Since it is at the sending unit someone above put a thought in my head when the engine died again last night. I let it rest a minute and the shook the truck a little. I did it from inside the cab, so I didn't really rock it as good as I could have. It made the gas swish around a little. I turned the key and it was running again. Wow, that's way easier. Goodnight....


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 28, 2021)

Ok, I figure I'd update you all. First though, for the most part it looks like this has become "Mike's blog" instead of a thread. Please come on in and post like it was when I started the thread and don't be concerned with whether or not you have a brand that gave me trouble or not. 

Some folks seem to have more trouble with a certain brand and good service out of other brands. I've owned some good Fords and some not so good chevies, but for some folks it's the other way around and I don't understand that. 

I've also seen chevy fans hate on the quadrajet carb when I think it is the best thing that was out there before fuel injection. They're misunderstood big time. They have to be calibrated for the engine they go on (metering rods and jets) and some will run out of fuel under heavy throttle (even the elderbrock version will) and that can be modified. 

The leaking at the bottom plugs can be fixed and the bog can be gotten out by having the carb tightened down proper on a good gasket and having a good accelerator pump on it. The accelerator pump is on top of the carb and if I remember right can be bought individually or in a kit and it can be replaced without taking the whole carb apart (only on the quadrajet and if memory serves me right). The accelerator pump is a plastic piston with rubber around its biggest part that goes up and down in a small cylinder. When the carb changes upward stages it needs an extra squirt of fuel to enrich the mixture in between the stages so the engine won't bog down or hesitate. 

The accelerator pump supplies that. The two best carbs out there are GM's rochester quadrajet 4 barrel and Ford's motorcraft 2100 series. If they are in good shape they will properly supply a vehicle with fuel on extreme take offs and at extreme angles and are the best thing out there to put on a off road vehicle. Holly has one also for that application (I can't remember the name though), but it isn't quite as good as the other two. 
Those two carbs will give you good service and gas mileage if properly tuned.

One of my brother in laws likes chevies but hates quadrajets. I heard him say a couple of weeks ago that the best thing you could do with a quadrajet is wrap a dollar around one before you chunk it so you will be chunking something away that has value. I'm sure some of you may have similar opinions, but I think it is worth reconsidering and taking another look at.


----------



## greenpondmike (Apr 28, 2021)

Ok, now my truck update. It was rust in the rusted fuel line that was making it quit running. I blew air through it both ways and a lot came out, but at first a big ol chunk came out that my brother in law thought was a rock. It wouldn't pass through and was blocking the gas from also flowing. I don't see how any got through. 

The inside of the tank looked good and so did the sending unit and the fuel strainer sock on it was in good condition. We ran fuel injection hose from the tank to under the truck and had to modify a gromlet. One more steel line to bypass and maybe I can wait a year or so. 

New 3 flue pure aluminum radiator installed and new water pump. Mechanical fan was replaced by two electric fans that come on when the ignition is turned on and it has a 30 amp fuse put in on the positive side. I want to later on run a relay or two and have the fans run off a heavier guage short wire straight from the battery with the other wire it is now connected to just being the feed wire for the relays. Maybe I will have a 50 amp flip switch inside to have more control over when the fans kick on especially in the winter.
Performance seems to be the same, but the faster drive it the better it cools and the better gas mileage it gets- 50mph vs 70mph. It also cools fine in traffic and at idle. No need to run the heater fan in the summer anymore. 

Throttle response seems a little better and the motor seems to not be as loaded down as it was. Had to put another pully on the water pump because mine was warped. My brother in law had a smaller one off of a 350 and it fit. I had to put on my new reserve fan belt to make it tighter and I have a third to a quarter of an inch adjustment left to go. I might have to step down to the next size in belts. 

Will try to kind of rebuild the distributor next Monday, but maybe that can wait because I need to get my taxes done. May 17th is the deadline in my area and the woman that does them is only taking people by appointments now. Usually if you get there by 7am you might be able to get out of there by 4 or 5pm- she's good and popular.


----------



## greenpondmike (May 1, 2021)

Anyone else restoring/modding their vehicle. I was thinking...I don't know what's up with American vehicles beyond the 90s, but in the 70s-90s grease fittings became rare on front ends. One of the best mods you could do as far as aftermarket stuff goes is when your front end suspension and steering parts get some wear on them is to replace them with aftermarket ones that have grease fittings.


----------



## bykfixer (May 2, 2021)

In speaking with some fellows at my work who come in from out of town, they say in their state there are no annual safety inspections for automobiles required. Man, a state where nearly anything that's level is man made, skinny, curvey roads with drops of thousands of feet and you have a bunch of cars and trucks running around with "sealed" suspension parts and no safety inspection required? What could possibly go wrong with that? 

As much of a pain as it is to have an annual safety inspection done I gladly submit to that rule. For $20 a year I get the peace of mind of knowing the condition of my vehicle's brakes, and suspension. It's certainly a drag when the guy says "that'll be $3 million billion dollars for new ball joints"…… all because the industry chose to go with sealed joints. 

When I started the Lexus project I looked up issues with that car and the number one issue was busted ball joints. Oh there were other issues like electric door locks not working or climate control doors not moving but those are creature comforts. A car that costed $49 thousand dollars in 2004 should NOT have ball joints that fail. That is just plain stupid. 

I see these $100 thousand dollar pickup trucks all over the place and shake my head. Sure it's got ability to watch a streaming movie and leather upholstry, but the suspension is going to crumble. I suppose they can watch Austin Powers on the 12" screen while waiting on the tow truck because a ball joint failed.


----------



## greenpondmike (May 2, 2021)

Yes sir, vehicles that cost that much ought to have good suspension parts. People ought to inspect their own vehicles at least every year if not half a year or let a mechanic do it. Mine gets inspected every week- my truck forces me to do it. I'd like to at least go a week without lifting the hood and three months without crawling under it. Often people tell me how good my truck looks and some to name my price or offer thousands for it. I turned down $5000 once and if it wasn't for my promise I would have snatched the dude's arm off.


----------



## greenpondmike (May 4, 2021)

Well, the fuel line has been totally replaced with fuel injection line and the carburator has been blowed out and inspected. I was afraid I'd damage the gaskets, but it seems all good. Truck runs the same- still spits and sputters on the highway at 45 or faster. 

I'm in the process of rebuiding a junk yard distributor, but I needed more parts and they are ordered. It is either the distributor or the "new" carquest fuel pump from advance auto (probably made by airtex). It looked like old stock and was probably manufactored before the ethanol fuels became widespread. I guess once I replace enough things I will hopefully hit on the problem one. 
These problems don't make any sense right now. It's like the trouble moves around and says ha ha you didn't get me.:nana:


----------



## bykfixer (May 4, 2021)

I chased a non functioning cooling fan on a 91 Honda Prelude for 3 weeks and finally towed it to my favorite mechanic who eventually found it. Fans worked sometimes, sometimes they didn't. There were 2 fans that operated independently of each other. One was strictly for when the AC was running and the other to add to the airflow if needed. After replacing two different sensors, two different motors and a timing box things worked normal...almost. 
The timing box I used was from 88/89 version and my car was a 90/91 version. There was just enough difference in the timing box that when you shut the car off a cooling fan would run 5 minutes and stop. Everytime. Didn't matter if you drove 6 hours or ran it 10 seconds the fan would always come on when you shut the motor off. 

The car had an electric antenna that had a toggle so you could decide to raise the antenna or not. The factory version was set up to raise the antenna when the radio turned on. I installed an antenna toggle from an Accord of that era. Later I used the antenna toggle switch as a battery cut off so that when I turned the car off the fan would not run. Reason being was that 88/89 timing box was known to randomly turn the cooling fan on and many people ended up with a dead battery. Oh it would have been easier to just install a 90/91 timing box but I figured "why not just do an anti theft mod" because at the time people were stealing that model Prelude fairly regularly.

Everytime I started the car the clock said 12 so I placed a stick on LCD over the factory one. When I gave the car to my son he wanted it back to stock so he switched out the timing box and removed the LCD clock. He stored the car in a garage while he had it then sold it to a collector.


----------



## orbital (May 4, 2021)

bykfixer said:


> ..sold it to a collector.



+

or maybe someone who races them.

I'v seen *Preludes' *race in SCCA and a some really got on w/ the program.
They are stable in braking, solid mid corner speed & most important, get off the corner well for a front drive car.
also: they handle well in the straightaways*


*if you know what I mean  FAST:devil:


----------



## bykfixer (May 4, 2021)

It's living in a climate controlled environment. It was a special car in that aside from living outdoors under a nice cover for about a year it lived in a garage its whole life. As far as I know the car had only been driven in the rain when a storm popped up while out on a jaunt. It failed a smog test in Maryland so it ended up in my driveway until we made a spot indoors for it. It still had some stickers on it from the factory in Japan like the "do not remove" sticker on the sunroof. 

My son said he was talking about an idle issue at his work one day when a customer asked "wanna sell it?"…… my son said he replied "not to just anybody". It seems the guy whips out a phone and starts showing my son his Honda museum. A month later the guy trailored it home in a closed trailer and has apparently finished restoring it. My son and I were swapping out any part that was worn, rusted or faded stem to stern. We were almost done and had all of the parts. 

The 4th gen Prelude was in my view the ugliest but man what a great handling car. It was light years ahead of the curve looks wise. But it was very well balanced. An outlaw racer once told me the 4 door Civic of that era was the best car to race with but nobody wanted to be caught dead racing a 4 door Civic. I think King Motorsport raced one for a while.


----------



## greenpondmike (May 7, 2021)

I like all those japanese vehicles even subaru. I don't have much feelings toward mazda outside of their rotory stuff though. I don't doubt it's also dependable, but I'm just not into mazdas. Maybe their trucks a little. They did make the Ford curiour and have something to do with the ranger.


----------



## bykfixer (May 7, 2021)

It can be thought of two ways. My 95 Ford Ranger is a Mazda with Ford logos or my brothers 98 Mazda B2300 is a Ford with Mazda logos. Both are nearly identical. And aside from some rust issues both held up pretty well. I drove my 95 for 20 years with zero problems aside from the arm rest hinge point failing and headliner disintigrating. I moth balled it in 2015. My brothers 98 Mazda had a throttle sensor go bad but his interior still looks like new. Neither of us have had rust issues. 
Their choice to use the V6 Explorer rear end gears with a 4 cylinder engine was kinda weird though. Lots of shifting 5th to 4 and back in hill country but other than that I liked it just dandy. I bought mine used from a dentist who had it built with 6 cylinder guts like heavy duty radiator but a 4 cylinder engine. I think my brothers has 200k+ miles on it. I parked mine with 79k.


----------



## greenpondmike (May 9, 2021)

Back in the past- I guess the mid 80s mazda and ranger were totally different. I thought they got to looking similar later on in the 90s. They are good trucks though. I think a lot of stuff was made better in the 90s. So far around the mid 90s is as new as I've owned and probably want to own. I might change my mind when the newer ones age 25-30 years.


----------



## bykfixer (May 9, 2021)

I'm that neighbor who takes a serious look at cars once they turn 16. In my state that's the legal age to drive……
Anyway my neighbors whisper to one another "that sure is a nice looking car but I'll bet it's another junker"……then later they say "howdy neighbor, can you fix my car?" lol.


----------



## greenpondmike (May 9, 2021)

I like my vehicles to look like junkers but run good. There is so much to worry about when I own a nice looking one seeing I'm a class "A" perfectionist. I try to fight against my condition, but if something isn't just right it bothers me. Now I'm getting better at ignoring less important stuff and I'm no longer a slave to a "list". 

On mechanical stuff, I used to be a fan of ported vacuum advance, but now that I better understand vacuum advance I'm starting to respect vacuum advance from manafold vacuum. I tried it on my truck today and whoa what a difference. My exhaust fumes smell more like they should instead of that rich smell. My carb is from a 1976 firebird and there was a place for manafold vacuum I had to pull out the little screw blocking it and install a vacuum port. 

I mentioned the year of my carb because it is an emission carb and ported vacuum is an emission thing. Most manufactors used manafold vacuum before the crackdown on emissions. The difference is ported hole is above the throttle plates and the manafold vacuum is below the plates.
Ported advances the timing when the throttle plate is cracked open a little. Vacuum increases to a certain point and then drops off before the mechanical advance takes over at a certain rpm and wot. Maniford vacuum doesn't increase, but is already there and then it drops off the same as the ported does. The manifold port gives more vacuum at idle and low rpm cruising speeds and causes the air/fuel ratio to burn more completely providing a snappier throttle response and better mpg. 

Manifold vacuum isn't for newer vehicles and most of them are electronically advanced anyway. I used to think manifold vacuum just added to your initial timing adjustment and then just hung around, but that isn't so and that there was the biggest thing I misunderstood. You can double your initial timing without pinging and hard starting because it decreases. I'm just learning all this, so if I'm not explaining it quite right (why do I think I always need to explain things) please bare with me.

Overall though, my truck runs way better and I need to also replace expensive e3 snakeoil plugs with just regular plugs with a decent heat range. E3 plugs seem like they somehow advanced my timing a little- maybe because they have a smaller air gap than what is recommended and the gap isn't adjustable. Some of mine are misfiring and it threw me off temporarily. I got to looking on the web about e3 troubles and I found a fair amount. I'm glad I never had to pay for them and will probably be using mostly stock plugs in the future. 
My 1980 LTD had rapidfire plugs in it when I got it 13 years ago. I never changed them because they seemed to be doing a good job, so maybe rapidfire isn't snakeoil.


----------



## greenpondmike (Jun 29, 2021)

Been using shell gas in it and it seems to be hitting a good lick as far as running goes. It still pops and sputters every now and then but it seems to be running much, much better. 

It doesn't shut off as much as it used to either. Maybe it was vapor locking or something. 

My mileage seems better- I think it is getting 14-16 miles per gallon now. 

Anyone else have any projects? Mine was supposed to be a project, but it became a daily driver.


----------



## bykfixer (Jun 29, 2021)

My son called me recently to say his twin turbo engine in his Toyota has begun running really lousy and wreaks of gasoline smell while idling. So we are in the midst of diagnosing that one step at a time and also discovered one of the turbos has a slight oil leak. An hour here, two hours there we'll find the issue and also figure out why that turbo leaks. 

I took off the map sensor and saw part of the rear cover had melted. Surely that means a vaccum leak and according to experts the very symptoms the engine exhibits. Swap that out and……no better. Dratz! He says it's likely the fuel pressure sensor has failed, while I'm thinking motor oil slung from the turbo all over the ignitor box connections may have allowed that thing to stop sending proper currents to the engine. Both parts are expensive so a proper diagnosis is in order rather than just randomly swapping parts.


----------



## Poppy (Jun 29, 2021)

Pull codes to help with the diagnosis.


----------



## bykfixer (Jun 29, 2021)

No cel, no codes. It's an all stock Japanese market motor to boot. But at least we aren't going behind some kind of hack job. Just trying to figure out which 29 year old part has failed. 
It's a low mileage, all original car so it was just a matter of time before it began having troubles. 

Once upon a time we learned what goes wrong with the Honda H22. Now it's time to learn the Toyota 2JZ and all of its dilemas.


----------



## Poppy (Jun 29, 2021)

bykfixer said:


> My son called me recently to say his twin turbo engine in his Toyota has begun running really lousy and wreaks of gasoline smell while idling. So we are in the midst of diagnosing that one step at a time and also discovered one of the turbos has a slight oil leak. An hour here, two hours there we'll find the issue and also figure out why that turbo leaks.
> 
> *I took off the map sensor and saw part of the rear cover had melted. Surely that means a vaccum leak *and according to experts the very symptoms the engine exhibits. Swap that out and……no better. Dratz! He says it's likely the fuel pressure sensor has failed, while I'm thinking motor oil slung from the turbo all over the ignitor box connections may have allowed that thing to stop sending proper currents to the engine. Both parts are expensive so a proper diagnosis is in order rather than just randomly swapping parts.



Melted MAP sensor means a vacuum leak? I wouldn't think so. Not to mean there isn't one. 
If swapping out the melted MAP sensor didn't do the trick, you might want to back track the electrical components to see what may have caused it to melt. OTOH a failed MAP should have sent a code.

I have never worked on a Toyota. There should be a way to test the fuel pressure with a gauge. Many chain auto part supply stores will offer a tool borrowing program, and a fuel pressure test gauge is often one of the offered tools.

Good luck, and have fun bonding with your son.

I have an electrical and vacuum trouble-shooting manual for my bronco and grand marquis. If you can get one for your son's car, you'll find that there is a wealth of information, in there, not found any where else.


----------



## greenpondmike (Jun 30, 2021)

I've seen many burnt spots on the highway lately and some burnt vehicles also. This is in a half year period or less. Its more than anything I've ever seen since I started driving kinda regular back in 84. When you said something about a gas smell bykfixer, I thought of this. Makes me wonder if the fuel has changed recently with the new summer blend or if they decided to just use the winter blend year round.


----------



## bykfixer (Jun 30, 2021)

On this particular motor the map sensor has a silicone (or similar) cover on the back that melts after a while and when the cover is "missing" it becomes similar to a broken vacuum hose. 

We confirmed a bunch of stuff is ok and today discovered a fuel leak on a line we suspect is a fuel return line. Hence the strong smell of gasoline. The car sits low to the ground in stock form and we saw a puddle while looking for a dropped screw. So we pushed the car back 5 feet and sure enough the puddle was gasoline. So this weekend the car will go up on jackstands for a closer look. 

My son has a trouble shoot manual for a '96 Toyota Supra, which has been great for torque specs, how many psi for proper fuel pressure regulator etc, but the car is an Aristo and the search is on for what exactly it is that is leaking fuel as what we saw is not on a Supra. I may try a Toyota Crown manual since that is pretty much the same car, just not the factory hot rod type car.


----------



## Poppy (Jul 1, 2021)

bykfixer,
I suggest that you use your flashlight to highlight the leaking part, and take a picture of it, then post that picture to a Toyota forum and ask... what is this part?

Then you'll have something to post in the "What did you use your flashlight for today" thread. 

Good luck with fixing that leak.


----------



## bykfixer (Jul 3, 2021)

Man, we both looked and looked through e-manuals and forums galore for information and last evening I found a diagram with a how to on a site discussing how to diagnose bad fuel injectors. It appears it could be an inline fuel filter junction and could be as simple as an o'ring that seals a bulkhead where the fuel takes a 90 degree turn in a tee and the straight path side has what appears to be a cleanout feature similar to a sewer pipe that runs from the house to the street. We'll jack up the car when he's off work and give it a look-see. 

I'm astounded at how complicated the automobile combustion engine had become in the early 1990's. They had sensors for sensors and it seems like those all had computers sensing them. Yet the car runs ridiculously bad right under the nose of all those gizmos and gadgets without detection. 

I work with a car guy who told to forget about relying on the computer for everything and re-learn how to use the vacuum guage. Music to my ears. I told him of a time a few years back when a Honda was giving me grief without any warnings from the computer and how the vacuum tester found my exhaust valves were out of spec enough to cause the issue. A simple valve adjustment got the car running like new (that time). My sons car acts like it could have a vacuum leak and we are supposing if that o'ring has failed it could be allowing just enough loss to cause the issue. 

When we installed an engine on one of his cars a few years back the power steering pump had a chronic bubbling after several hours of trying everything to rid the line of air. He even swapped in a new pump to no avail. He just drove it like that for a time, power steering pump all whining like it was low on fluid. Then one day while changing a headlight bulb we saw the end of a tiny hose was wet. We changed the clamp from the factory type you squeeze with pliers to the type you tighten with a screwdriver and viola……no more air issue. So that showed me a line can be losing fluid and sucking in air at the same time. There was no puddle(s) under that car because the fluid was falling onto a plastic shield between the radiator and the oil pan. He said "I told you I didn't want to put that back but you insisted" lol. (He had installed a higher performing engine model that was not stock for that car and I was trying to disguise it as the stock engine because I like the sleeper look.) (Sleeper meaning looks and sounds stock until you hit the accelorator pedal, then it wakes up.) He removed the shield later.


----------



## Tomblue817 (Jul 11, 2021)

Great restorations :wave:. I like to see old vehicles coming back to life again


----------



## greenpondmike (Jul 20, 2021)

Just about got my truck straight now. The problem was the combustion chamber was sometimes leaking at higher speeds and on acceleration although it ran good otherwise. The white/gray crust that was getting on the plugs were getting other places also. I think it's the gas I've been using regular. 

Sea foam is some good stuff and has done more for that engine than anything else I've tryed. 
I got a wild hair and bought some and did a pour in your carb treatment that I hadn't done since 2008. 
You pour a little over half in while keeping your engine revved up to keep it running and then you use the rest to kill it. 
Let it set 20 minutes and then crank it and enjoy the purdy white smoke it puts out. 
Keep revving till it clears. 

That treatment really helped and later on I put a whole bottle in the tank...man what an improvement! Truck gets better gas mileage also. 
The treatment is supposed to burn off any crust or carbon on the valves and pistons and free up sticking rings. It seems to use less oil also- a half a quart compaired to a quart and a half at highway speeds or higher. 

I like sleepers also bykfixer. I would like to fix up my "hutch" mobile under the hood and drive it around again. People would look at it and say "rag!" and then I would surprise them and grin my opossum eating grin at them as I pull ahead.


----------



## greenpondmike (Jul 30, 2021)

Having problems with rolling the winders up and down now. Stupid truck....
If it ain't one thing it's another- if it ain't my wife it's her mother.


----------



## bykfixer (Jul 31, 2021)

I had a Honda Prelude that had a built in window regulator issue. Being electric windows just aggrevated the situation because all would be normal until the day it was not. With a hand crank window you can feel it coming on and maybe even halt it before something gets bent. But with electric windows you push a button and feel nothing.

Oh there comes a day you push the button and you hear the motor strain or your lights go dim from the extra drain on the system. But by then it's too late. Something bent. See, the Prelude was just that. A prelude for things to come from Honda. Many of the things that worked are still in use today like some plastics, some manufacturing techniques and the electric window regulator system from the Prelude generation after the one I was having trouble with.

The window regulator itself was great. It was the grease they chose to lubricate gears in the "scissor" like parts that hardened and jammed up the gears in the cog. It was like sticking a penny in between one or more the gears after a while.

That may be what's going on with your 71 truck GP. Perhaps a good cleaning of all moving parts and a glob of silicone grease on moving parts will get things going normal again. That is if nothing has bent. When mine bent I went to a junkyard and found one, cleaned that sucker to be like new and sprayed it with lithium grease. When I sold the car the driver side window worked normal. The passenger side? Well that was the buyers problem.

Like Ford and Chrysler, GM is not real big on retooling things, failures be damned. So there is a chance they are still using those same parts here in the new millenium. The guy behind the parts counter at a small Chevy dealer may know, since by now they probably changed the part number. The crooked hat wearing kid at the big city dealer? Well maybe, maybe not. But at the small dealer there's a good chance somebody there still has a 71 floating around somewhere but knows if the same regulator is used in Silverado's or Suburbans, Perhaps Impalas. If so then you can go to a local junkyard and find one on a crashed ambulance or one of those stoopel-ee-doo jacked up numbers that was barrel rolled a few times.


----------



## greenpondmike (Jul 31, 2021)

Thanks Bykfixer. I can get a new one from rock auto fairly resonable. I think the plastic on the rollers have deteriorated and is now crumbling. Yesterday they got sprayed and greased. The passenger side works just fine whereas before it was very stiff. The driver's side is better, but it is like the round plastic rollers are now square. I left the door panels off so I can service it often. I think a new regulator costs from $21- to somewhere around $40. I'm not sure, but rock auto has different brands to chose from if I remember correctly.

Got one for my Ford truck that works well. Just put a starter on my Ford F150 yesterday afternoon. Going to try to get it on the road in the next month or two. Had some wasp nests in it. Ether does not work on redwasps. Use gas, mineral spirits or wasp spray.


----------



## greenpondmike (Aug 11, 2021)

Since we can now upload better here is my chevy and my Ford pickups I've been talking about.


----------



## knucklegary (Aug 11, 2021)

SilverFox said:


> Hello Greenpondmike,
> 
> My ongoing project is a 1953 GMC pickup.
> 
> Tom


53' I think can wear the earlier windshield visor, good looks and functional 👍


----------



## raggie33 (Aug 11, 2021)

i still say take a 69 vette and put a electric moter in each wheel


----------



## greenpondmike (Sep 25, 2021)

Well, I think I've finally fixed it with wisdom from above.....The ignition switch. Man, that thing runs great, feels like it picked up 50 hp and has waaaay better bottom end. Doesn't randomly cut off either. I guess that thing should be part of a tune up after 60,000 miles. What came out wasn't original though- not with "made in Mexico" on it- not on a 71 chevy. It was also packed with a lot of grease which I think caused the connection problems. I put in the best switch Standard Inc. made.


----------



## greenpondmike (Nov 11, 2021)

Well, the ol Ford F150 is coming along


----------



## greenpondmike (Nov 13, 2021)

Engine needed some adjusting, vacuum hoses fixed, egr valve blocked off and fuel pump. It cranks and runs good---ol FE 360 V8 seems to run leaner than my 250 6 cyl in my chevy truck-- no problem though, I just need to warm it up with the choke on. The 6 cyl doesn't need a choke. Maybe I can squeese 15 or more miles per gallon out of it. Looks good with the ac stuff off of it and now it's lighter. I need to clean it up.....maybe detail it. C6 auto trans seems alright. Lot of brake work done and tie rods and drag link replaced. Replaced some wheel studs and lug nuts. Need to order some new back brake drums. Seems to be coming along. Has high pressure fuel injection line ran to the back. Can turn the steering wheel with one finger. Brother in law prefers chevies, but he likes my Ford.


----------



## greenpondmike (Nov 15, 2021)

I don't think anyone is reading this. It's supposed to be a shared effort, but it looks like just me now, so I guess I'm backing out if it keeps going like it is. 

Thanks to the ones that shared stuff a while back.


----------



## bykfixer (Nov 15, 2021)

I was going to comment that I prefer old Ford engines over Chevy but prefer fixing old Chevy over Ford engines……but forgot to. 

I miss the days when you could tap the starter solenoid on the firewall and get it to start. And that didn't work it was a $15 repair. Nowadays the starter has the solenoid attached and if you can even find the dam thing tapping on it is very difficult so you end up with a $500 repair. 

I may have said this before, but once upon a time I changed the starter on my 200ci Ford engine under the hood of a 66 mustang without laying on the ground because I could fit between the fender and the engine block. 

My latest money pit, a 2004 Lexus has a starter somewhere……


----------



## greenpondmike (Nov 16, 2021)

Good to see you back in here bykfixer. 

Toyota starters are kinda difficult to get to. My wife had a 93 toyota corola and her cousin and brother in law "thought" they were going to take it off, but they loosened the wrong bolts and took the starter apart instead. We got one from the junkyard and I almost fixed the other--I say almost because all I needed was an insulator. I think I gave it to someone that needed a starter. 

The crazy thing is...if I remember right I think the original problem was just the battery, but I guess they were just itching to turn some wrenches. Kinda of like a coon dog that thinks he's chasing a coon only to be sprayed by a skunk, but I'm the one that got sprayed lol. 

Fords can be a little more difficult to work on. On those fe blocks the intake manafold is heavy and you really need a hoist or something of a sort to carefully install it or at least the back gasket (the rubber one) will slip out and then it will leak oil real bad. That happened to me back in 85 or 86. Trying to balance yourself on the fender or in an awkward position sitting on the fender well and lowering that heavy thing just right can be difficult. I've had my trouble with chevies. Installing a fuel pump on a 283 v8 should be a simple job, but that rod keeps falling down as soon as you take your fingure off of it to quickly get the pump on is frustrating especially when your shirt is gas soaked on the side you're laying on. Some say to put some grease on it, but I didn't know. Fuel pump goes right on a Ford no problem. 

The 200 six is a very good engine. I practically killed mine, but it was an effort. I didn't mean to--I was just rough on it. No engine can hold up to my lead foot forever, but I gave that 1979 fairmont futura....well, you know.


----------



## greenpondmike (Nov 16, 2021)

One thing yall need to know--older pre 1980 Ford trucks will jump out of park if they are sitting level and running. They will drop down in reverse and take off. My 69 did that to me and I had to run and catch it and stop it. My 75 just did it to my brother in law. He ran and caught it and got it stopped thank God.


----------



## bykfixer (Nov 17, 2021)

I had to chase a 79 model at work one time. Put it in park, got out and two steps away from the truck with the door still open the pin slipped and luckily the steering wheel was turned so it was turning until I caught it. 

My neighbor got run over by his LTD so it wasn't just their trucks.


----------



## greenpondmike (Nov 17, 2021)

bykfixer said:


> I had to chase a 79 model at work one time. Put it in park, got out and two steps away from the truck with the door still open the pin slipped and luckily the steering wheel was turned so it was turning until I caught it.
> 
> My neighbor got run over by his LTD so it wasn't just their trucks.


I like Fords, but the emergency brake needs to be in working order and top notch on them. I've had several dodges and chevies that the emergency brake didn't work and I never had a situation where it need to. On the chevy I drive now the emergency brake doesn't work, but I never tried it.

Also on Fords the gear selector can get in a bind on autos to the point of breaking off the collar the lever is on. Seen it and also did it. Best to put it in neutral and apply the emergency brake first and then put it in park where there isn't a bind. Best to do this on all inclines, but if running and you step out on a level or uphill, have it in neutral with the emergency brake on real good.

Also the gear lever sags on older model cars and trucks--especially in the 60s and you need to lift up on it just to crank the vehicle. My 1980 LTD coupe doesn't show any signs of these troubles yet. I think Ford gave some attention to this after 79. You just have to take the good with the bad on some things. That never turned me off to Fords though. Seems like them jumping out of park was in the news back younder in the past.


----------



## bykfixer (Nov 17, 2021)

Aside from the exploding Pinto I never had issue with Fords. But I know a few mechanics who whenever they see something bone head on a vehicle they say "another better idea by Ford" which apparently refers to a Pinto advertizement or something.


----------



## Jim Bonney (Nov 17, 2021)

Oh man. I’ve had my share of classics. First was a beater 1970 Malibu coupe. Built a 3/4 cam 350 for it and created many clouds. After that I had a 1964 Studebaker Lark Sedan. After that I had a 1969 Ford F250 390/C6. Had a couple bikes too. Now I roll a 97 F250 with a 460 and some EPA approved modifications. I mainly help my buddy behind me who’s taste is more exotic. We got a 2012 Audi R8 V10 up and going from being totaled with frame damage. Same for a second Gen Ariel Atom. I prefer to wrench and not pay for parts/insurance. I used to be a mechanic professionally for a short time about 18 years ago. Grew up working on old American cars.


----------



## greenpondmike (Nov 17, 2021)

bykfixer said:


> Aside from the exploding Pinto I never had issue with Fords. But I know a few mechanics who whenever they see something bone head on a vehicle they say "another better idea by Ford" which apparently refers to a Pinto advertizement or something.


74--77 mustangs also blew up when hit in the back and the classic ones were no better. I like them though. I also like the pintos.


----------



## greenpondmike (Nov 17, 2021)

Jim Bonney said:


> Oh man. I’ve had my share of classics. First was a beater 1970 Malibu coupe. Built a 3/4 cam 350 for it and created many clouds. After that I had a 1964 Studebaker Lark Sedan. After that I had a 1969 Ford F250 390/C6. Had a couple bikes too. Now I roll a 97 F250 with a 460 and some EPA approved modifications. I mainly help my buddy behind me who’s taste is more exotic. We got a 2012 Audi R8 V10 up and going from being totaled with frame damage. Same for a second Gen Ariel Atom. I prefer to wrench and not pay for parts/insurance. I used to be a mechanic professionally for a short time about 18 years ago. Grew up working on old American cars.


Sounds like you had a lot of good ol vehicles Jim. I've never owned a chevelle malibu, but I sure wanted to. Custom wheels set them off--don't know why chevolet made them so drab from the factory except the SS model. My Ford F150 also has the C6 auto trans.


----------



## greenpondmike (Nov 22, 2021)

Fuel pressure regulator--some, if not most fuel injection systems have them. Now though because they put that stupid alcohol in the gas it changes a lot when it comes to older vehicles. The pressure builds up causing flooding and with the higher pressure and the fact that ethanol deteriates the rubber fuel lines you have a real problem if you have an older vehicle. 

High pressure fuel injection lines with a fuel pressure regulator fixes that. I found this out by trial and error. My truck no longer floods and it runs better. It fires up time you turn the key every time except when it's cold and hasn't been running for a while.


----------



## bykfixer (Dec 14, 2021)

My oldest used to have a 93 Honda Prelude. He sold it to my wife's middle son who sold it to her oldest. He drove that jalopy for a good while before getting pulled over for expired tags. Pandemic mode DMV was ridiculously slow last and this year. Boy had sent in the dough in October 2020 but in February had still not received the tags. He got in a bind and left it at my house for a while. 

A few years back my son had bought the car because it had tons of Japanese Domestic Market parts on it. Aside from being a left hand drive it was practically a Japanese car. Even the radio was JDM. He bought it to sell those parts to young crooked hat wearing fellows who just love love love those JDM parts in order to fund another project. Each part was replaced with US market stuff from a local junkyard. Eventually it was back to stock. 

We worked on that car stem to stern. In 3 instances it was taken to a shop on a rollback when it failed and we couldn't figure it out. Today was incident 4. Sadly it's probably simple too. Yesterday the wife's oldest came to get it as it got dark outside and while letting it warm up he turns on the headlights and "poof"! It died electrically. It's a problem in the steering wheel area I thought we had solved. 

The combination turn signal lever and headlight switch was murdering the main fuse at one point. We replaced it and all was well. At least until yesterday. It's baaaaaaaack. So it caused me to wonder, did we really fix it? So I had it towed to a shop to let them find the short. 

I know which "relay" it popped but don't know why. The wife's oldest son uses that car to carry around the grandson so instead of going the routevwillie-nillie part changer mode again I sent it to an expert. 

My wife says "just about the time you no longer hoped space junk would fall from the sky and land on the Prelude while you sleep, that feeling is back".


----------



## Poppy (Dec 14, 2021)

Electrical problems aren't too hard to track down if they are consistent. It's the intermittent problems that can be a real PIA. You might consider getting a EVTM - Electrical and Vacuum Troubleshooting Manual for that vehicle. A good EVTM is worth its weight in gold. It will give color codes for the wires, show where connectors are and the pin outs, even locations where the wires are spliced with others.


----------



## bykfixer (Dec 14, 2021)

My son and I have techician manuals for the preludes we have worked on over the years. 

Turned out to be as simple as a loose alternator belt was not charging the battery, then turning on the headlights killed what juice was in the battery because the alternator was not spinning fast enough to power the headlights. 

New battery and a proper tightened belt and vroom vroom, ole bessy was going again. I'm just glad it was not the turn signal/head light switch again. 

The Honda Prelude was an R&D car that Honda tried a bunch of new ideas with. Some model Acura Integras too. Mostly manufacturing techniques, but some plastics, some mechanical ideas. Some stuff that worked is still being used in Honda/Acura vehicles today. 
But stuff in the steering column in the 92-96 and 97-01 Preludes failed like the turn signal switch and in the 97-01 models the ignition imobilizer. 

Anyway we have both PDF and hard copy versions of shop manuals the Honda technicians use. Very handy for torque specks and trouble shooting.


----------



## Poppy (Dec 14, 2021)

I'll bet you are happy you had her towed in, otherwise you'd be back at tearing that steering column apart.


----------



## bykfixer (Dec 15, 2021)

In one sense Poppy, yeah I'm glad it was towed, diagnosed and fixed in 24 hours but……in a sense I'm kicking myself for not spending more than a few minutes checking under the hood. It sure acted like it blew a main fuse.

Right now my bruised ego is trying to justify the expense. Life right now dictates I would have been looking at it this weekend and I wanted the car off my driveway. So I decided to send it to a shop, and pay for the repair so my 5 year old grandson can quit yammering "I wish my daddy had a car"…

I have a 95 Ranger in the back yard I want to get going again so having the Prelude gone leaves room on the driveway for that. The truck ran fine when I parked it back there. The cloth interior has gotten brittle over the years and I've yet to re-do the interior of a vehicle other than swapping good junkyard parts for bad so I want to gut the cab of it and do some custom work then lower it about 1" to have it look a bit less like a truck stature and sit like a car. No "slam" or anything stupid like that. Just a tad bit lower than factory. 

My nephew did his that way and it looks fabulous, yet unless it is sitting next to another Ranger you cannot tell. The truck only has 78k on the odometer.


----------



## Poppy (Dec 15, 2021)

I can hear Mrs. Fixer's sewing machine running now. 

'95 ranger is OBD-1 if you need help with pulling codes, and deciphering what they might mean, let me know. In an earlier life, I was a ford forum moderator.


----------



## bykfixer (Dec 15, 2021)

Thanks. I hope I never need that assistance.


----------



## scout24 (Dec 15, 2021)

Byk- My youngest now owns a pair of 2000 Preludes. (One lunched timing belts at 5k rpm despite my pleading with him to get them changed) Despite my best counsel, lol. Both were less than $1500, so we're talking the pride of Mother Honda here... I'm sure you know my pain. 🤣


----------



## bykfixer (Dec 15, 2021)

Thing about the H22 (2000 Prelude motor) is the timing belt Scout, although not as easy as say, the alternator belt it's not a really difficult one.

The hardest part was the harmonic balancer bolt. Good Lord that one is tight. It's torque spec is 180 foot pounds! And it tightens up itself even more over time.

But with the Honda harmonic balance holder tool and gentle tug on a 6' section of pipe slid over a GOOD breaker bar it pops loose pretty easy.

The Prelude is not especially difficult to work on once you know how. Until then though they can be really frustrating.


----------



## scout24 (Dec 15, 2021)

Lol, I've learned and heard more about H22/H23 motors in the last six months than I would have thought possible. Thanks for the harmonic balancer bolt info. 👍 I've done a ton of timing belts over the years, most with the luxury of being at work in a heated shop and not out on the cold ground. That's a young man's game anymore. Unfortunately, most 20yo cars up here in the rust belt are just that, rusty. At least he's got a job and isn't doing dope anymore. Cant afford to, trying to fix up these 'Ludes... 🤔😉


----------



## Poppy (Dec 15, 2021)

scout24 said:


> Lol, I've learned and heard more about H22/H23 motors in the last six months than I would have thought possible. Thanks for the harmonic balancer bolt info. 👍 I've done a ton of timing belts over the years, most with the luxury of being at work in a heated shop and not out on the cold ground. That's a young man's game anymore. Unfortunately, most 20yo cars up here in the rust belt are just that, rusty. At least he's got a job and isn't doing dope anymore. Cant afford to, trying to fix up these 'Ludes... 🤔😉


Ah yeah, RUST! that's what put our 1990 Bronco in its grave. The oil pan rotted out. To drop the pan, one has to raise the front of the engine until the back of it hits the firewall. The exhaust manifolds have to be removed, and other components that were so rusted in, that it was easy to see that we would have many bolts that snapped off inside the block. 

Up here, with an older vehicle, PBblaster, an impact wrench, and a fire-wrench, are your constant companions. My son had an old jeep, and he got a fair amount of practice with that fire-wrench.


----------



## bykfixer (Dec 16, 2021)

In the driveway, put the front of the car on jack stands, remove the driver side front wheel, and you'll have access to the harmonic balancer.

My son used a factory "tensioner" when installing a new t-belt. All the experts said use brand whatever or just delete it. He insisted on stock and has about 60k miles on it so far.

Do you guys have a pdf shop manual for the car(s)?


----------



## Poppy (Dec 16, 2021)

I have a haynes manual for 80-96 ford bronco and pickups, same for 88-2011 crown vic/ grand marquis, and paperback EVTM for 1990 bronco / F150, and EVTM for 2008 crown vic/ grand marquis.

I used to have EVTMs on CDs for a bunch of other fords, but they require windoze 98 or older, and don't run on my boxes anymore.


----------



## Chauncey Gardiner (Dec 17, 2021)

What's this salty liquid coming from my eyes?


----------

