Moving

Since my mom got sick with cancer in March, I have not been able to do many things with my cars.
I hardly have any news to put on this blog.

I've decided to include any future posts about my cars into my other blog here, http://juliesjournalpages.blogspot.com/
It's more about my artwork, but I update more often

Headlight Motor - Red Car (Part 1)

Firebirds from 1982 to 1992 have headlights that flip up.
It looks cool but after awhile the gears and bushings in the motor wear out.
It is somewhat tricky, but the usual fix is taking the motor apart and replacing the plastic bushings.
Recently both my 1992 firebirds needed this repair.
Today I took the red car in to get it fixed.
Blue arrow is  headlight motor. It has a knob you can turn to raise the headlight manually.

Both cars have the problem in the left side headlight motor.
(The left and right side motors come apart in different ways.
The right side motor is supposed to be easier because you don't have to take it all apart.)

First I had to remove the black plastic cowl around the headlight. 4 small screws.


Next I had to unscrew the bolts to remove the whole headlight assembly. (Blue arrows=bolts)

Here is the car with the whole headlight assembly, gone:
You can see the plugs where it gets its power from the car (left side of picture)
and the plug that goes into the back of the headlight bulb (right/middle.)

Actually at this point, my friend Don the mechanic took over taking apart the headlight motor.

I thought it would be simple. I've seen it done before.
But, in the end it was more complicated than I thought.
That's why I've been taking notes.

Tomorrow I will put up the rest of the pictures...

Speedometer

Last month I needed to replace/fix the speedometer cluster in the green car.
Luckily I had a spare one from the old green car that got parted out.

I went to Don the mechanic's shop for supervision.
(Also, he knows exactly what size tool I needed for every thing. )

The first part is removing the black plastic bezel that goes over the front of all the gauges.

To remove the bezel and eventually the gauge cluster, it is also necessary to drop down the steering column.( Blue Line.)
First the knee bolster needs to come out. (Not shown in any of the pictures)
It is a padded panel that covers all the wiring under the dash board.
There is also a metal bracket that holds the pad away from the steering column.
Under the bracket is a second bracket that holds up the steering column.
By loosening the bolts marked in red, you can lower (and I guess remove the whole steering column for other kinds of repairs.)

(This is looking up under the steering wheel:)

Here the black plastic bezel is off of the instrument panel, and the clear (brittle) plastic covering the gauges is visible:
Also you need to undo the small panel above the stereo, where the trunk release and fog lamp switch is. (Green)
The whole cluster will now slide out.

The back of the instrument cluster has a funky old green and gold circuit board:

Here is the individual unit for the speedometer, now out of the car:

Since my mom is sick and I can't get away for days at a time, I did half the work one week, drove around without a speedometer, and went back to finish the next week.

According to the guy at the speedometer repair place, it is not illegal to drive without a speedometer!

Not tomorrow either

Don is still working on a car and has another one in the wings.
So maybe next weekend I'll blog about the tune up.

The good news is: I don't have to get up early, until then!

Maybe tomorrow.

I have to do something, some day!

Tune-up on Green car

The tune-up is definitely going to happen some time next week...

Today I thought about weather stripping.

Today I browsed the local vendor of rubber weather stripping for the doors.
It's a good idea to do these things when painting and refurbishing a car.
Your paint guy is probably not going to do this for you.

The problem I have, is the last time I painted a car, the replacement stripping wasn't as good as the original.
And this new green car is ok, as long as I roll the glass up from the passenger side.

Doing that tune up is an all-day thing...
and Saturday morning I have an art show.
Maybe Monday won't be too hot? The weather man says it's going to warm up.

Mom says about the green car "Ese carro no tiene madre."
Either means "motherless" or "shameless excuse of a car"

Come to think of it, I don't think anyone has offered to ride in it...
My brother says it "Smells just like the old GTA" but I think it smells worse.

Today it rained.

Today it rained. Maybe it would have been a good day to work on the green car. I hate the sun.
But I woke up at noon and have to be at work by 3.

Doing a thorough tune-up requires removing (at least) the plenum and the fuel rails, and it will take several hours.
I also have to clean up and go to my job afterward, so bear with me.

Once I get it done I will try to document it and split it up into parts.

Next will be a headlight motor repair on the red car, as the driver side quit working on Monday.

The more I postpone, the more stuff I have lined up to blog about...
Luckily, I now have the blog as another motivation to get working on things!

Lazy

I postponed working on the green car for a few days, because it was hot today and I was lazy.

Green car has a miss

It has been running rich lately, (which means it smelled like gas,) and a little bit rough.
I thought it might have a miss, but the reason is a mystery.

I took it to Don today and he is super busy.
All week he has been working on this car, changing it from a 305 to a 350:

The first thing we checked for were any obvious wires loose on my own car, but there wasn't.
 Kevin ran his laptop and it was showing high levels of unburnt fuel running by the oxygen sensor.
This gave them a clue that one injector or cylinder isn't firing.
Apparently the O2 sensor tests one side (which is 4 cylinders) and it might be on that side.

I hope it is just an injector. They are used, but not often known to go bad. Stock injectors go bad all the time.
It could also be the coil (part of the distributor)

I wanted to blog about something, so on Monday I'm going to document what it takes to test the injectors.
Don is super busy and not excited to do this, so I'm going to try to do as much, myself.

I didn't have time to visit the paint shop before work, but a friend of his said he is super busy.
Tax refund time is coming up soon... I wonder how long it will be before I get in?

Gas Problems

When I bought the red car, the gas tank (and the place where you stick the nozzle in) was slightly off.
The last person who worked on the car didn't put the gas tank in the right place.
You have to remove the gas tank to work on the rear end gears for instance.

It never really acted normal when I would put in gas.
After bringing it home from the painter, the problem became worse.
Lately, I can only put one gallon of gas in, and then it will start coming back out!
I can put in 3 gallons tops, before the leaking gets really bad.
Also, the little flap that covers the hole is now in a weird position.

Compare Green car with Red car.

Don says it's possible that there was something stuck in the tank, down by the baffle.
Maybe somebody tried to steal gas out of the tank while it was parked at the painter's for 10 days.

Don's prescription is to take out the gas tank and replace it.
Luckily I still have the gas tank from the green V6. 
(The dead GTA's gas tank is in the green car now.)

Unfortunately Don has several jobs lined up for the next few weeks.
I think it will be OK as long as I don't have to go for a long trip.

Also the green car has started acting like it needs a tune-up, but it hasn't been running long enough to need a tune up... It smells like gas and worse.

I will take it to Don in the next few days. I didn't want to overwhelm him with bad news.

New spoiler

This is the green car which will be going to the painter's in a few weeks.
I bought it from Craigslist in May. It was cheap and relatively unblemished, but was lacking in the paint department.

Ideally, I would like it to look the stock color, which is a dark green metallic, like this Camaro I saw at a show in San Diego last year.

 

A friend from the car club, Lon, was able to find a complete GTA style spoiler at a junkyard this weekend.
I don't know how he did it! These 25 year old parts are nearly impossible to find.

(They make an aftermarket spoiler at Classic Industries, but it's expensive and I heard it has fit issues.)

 

Don put it on the car on Monday so it wouldn't be cluttering up his shop.

We will have to take it off again when I take the car to get painted.
This is the 2nd car I've had entirely painted.

There will be some other dismantling to do.
It's better to take these pieces off so that the paint place paints both sides, otherwise they will just do the top side. Or, charge extra for taking the pieces apart.

Bumper ding repair

This new blog is about the never ending repairs to my 2 Firebirds.

I was thinking about doing an educational blog about the restoration of the green car from the bottom up.

However it already has a lot done to it. For instance, we put the motor in it over the summer...

Today, I needed a place to quickly upload pictures to show my friends of the repairs.

I got rear ended before Christmas.

Here is the before picture.

Here are two after pictures.

The actual color of the car has not changed.
The camera angle makes the after picture look darker.

It still is the same color as the top most picture.

I'm going to have the same person repaint the entire green car in a few weeks.
2nd time I've had to have a whole car repainted.
I will be sure to share the experience of taking the car apart, etc.