Motors How I wanted to be like GOO, and then became more awesome

I reckon that's a winner! Would explain why there's no warmth coming from it.

 

100% what has happened.

Common as heater cores can be a bitch to get to.

 

tru.dat

 

Great.

 

Might be worth plumbing the garden hose into it temporarily just to check if it is leaking or not. My dad's Scimitar was sold to him with a bypassed heater matrix due to the previous owner stating that it leaked. I tore the dash apart to replace it and there was nothing wrong with it.

If you cant see any leaks with the hose, plumb it back in (I don't think it matters which way round it's plumbed in) and keep an eye on the water level or for soggy carpets

 

I would bet if somone took the time to put that "Fix" in there that the heater core is bad, combined with the cars age and the lack of care. That old of a vehicle it shouldn't be too bad to change it. Have a look up under the passenger side dash and the box will probably be sitting there fairly easy to get to, you may have to remove the glove box to get at all of it.

 

Good that you nothing happened to you with that anglegrinder.

 

Lucky indeed. Last time I lost an argument with an angle grinder it required 7 stitches in my knee.

I finally finished replacing the alternator in my pickup today. Took a week and a half and I had to remove the radiator to get the @(&*! thing out. At one point it was physically detached from the vehicle, but I couldn't find a hole in the engine bay large enough for it to pass through.

 

We last saw the rims being stripped so that I could get new tires mounted.



The tires were ordered a week ago, and in the mean time we had some incidents around the home



including The Slumbering Death getting her head stuck in a water glass and making a run for it.



Also, the sheriff was serving papers to a neighbour, looked down and smacked my mailbox. So now I'm on a internet goose chase to find a new bracket in keeping with the rural aesthetic.

But then the el cheapo Hankooks came in and we wheeled them out the truck to get shoed.



It went well, considering they were totally confused about the fact the I just brought the wheels. Go figure.



Coming home.



Straight into primer.



The first dustings of the red.



And full on metallic hot rod red.

It will harden over night. Then I'll wet sand it and touch things up. Then comes a UV protectant clear coat. It should look pretty sweet, if not entirely original.

 

Once, my cat got caught in a bag and made five trips back and forth racing trying to get away from it before the handle broke and it collapsed on top of her. I had to take four puffs on my inhaler I laughed so hard.

More on topic, that looks good. Is this a clue as to the final color of the car?

 

Yeah. Cadillac has a sort of iridescent opal white that they use on the CTS and SRX. I want to have the body painted in that. The top is still under discussion. My wife wants a new vinyl top, which at $165 is fairly reasonable. I wanted to paint it, again staying with Cadillac colors, a deep tri-coat diamond black. It looks like a metallic 1970's bowling ball, that 3' deep look. but, the vinyl top has the classic look to it.....so I'm 86.5% sure were are going with that.

I totally am not a patient man today, lol.



It doesn't catch the metallic shimmer, but ya'll get the idea. The blue ring is actually white, I need to clean the adhesive off it from the protective cover.

 

Looking great! Probably wouldn't have been my colour choice, but now it's there I'm warming to it.

 

Yeah, it's a bit over done in the 'rat rod' scene (but, lets face it, right now the body is kind of ratty). As you know, these wheels aren't going to last forever on the car. In the worst case scenario, I can simply strip them down and revert to a glossy black. It's not like I can possibly damage steel wheels....

and that sounds like famous last words.

 

It's possible. My late father once ran over a large rock at highway speeds, it flat-spotted the steel wheel.

 

I'm very much a "shades of silver" wheel colour choice person, so I'll reserve judgement until we get a full body shot.

I saw a bronze RS with dark metallic purple wheels that looked very nice, contrary to my normal choices, so..

 

What paint did you use on the wheels? I'm getting ideas.

 

I started with a high build primer from Lowe's, it helps fill in the dings and scratches on on the steelies. Then a solid coat of Retro Red from Dupli-Color (I bought it from O'reily's Auto parts). Wet sanded with 1200 grit and another solid coat. Lastly 2 coats of a clear enamel. It's a UV protectant, indoor/outdoor product made by Valspar and also available from Lowe's.

If you are going to use the metal fleck paint, I highly recommend you get a $.99 can of spray paint. That way when the nozzle clogs you can use the cheap paint to blow out the nozzle. It will clog and start to splatter. Shake often and blast out often. It worked for me, YMMV.

I meant more that I can't damage the rims with paints and solvents. As in, I can strip and paint them over and over again if this turns out badly.

Edit: to give you a better colour idea, the red in the Z71 is sort of a standard automotive red as compared to the painted rim, which is more candy apple.



And mounted. This picture is by far the best representation so far. The iPhone camera isn't great with colour fidelity and I certainly haven't edited these.

 

This red needs a chrome center hubcap to reflect in...

Another LOLcatstory, mine'sbeen stuck in a baghandleas well, and in the frenzy following ripped my USB-Ports clean off my motherboard

 

Alright lads, I noticed a distinct lack of #motoring in the top 10 threads, so time for an update.

All 4 wheels are done and mounted, all with the proper lug nuts and torqued properly. All in all, I get more comments and looks now, and it has even better road manners. Every thing I do to the car is like one more layer of a great drive. I drove up to the plant to bring my wife lunch and she was astounded by how smooth and controlled the car was compared to 6 months ago. I also washed the exterior by hand and detailed the interior. She's a gem. Well, I mean she still has some rust spots, that $99 paint job and a ratty roof top. But you can see her inner beauty *cough*.



Then I changed the oil. My thoughts were to flush it all out and let the new oil do it's thing for a bit, knowing I will be removing the motor soon. WOW it was an eye opener. That **** was rank. It flowed out of the pan and you couldn't even see through it. and the filter......

Needless to say, I'm embarrassed I didn't do this earlier. I bought a quality filter, not race worthy, but an AC Delco one. Hey, that's my retirement fund so I support it when ever I can. I also got 7 quarts of Valvoline 10w-30 and a ZDDP additive for the flat tappets. I'm a Mobile 1 guy normally, but this was in stock and it's not like it's a random quality oil.

There was a pronounced change in the sound of the car. Smoother. Meaner. More muscled. So much so that my wife actually got out of the bath and came to see what I had done. This is the sort of thing one dreams about as a teenager.

Does it still drip? yes, that's the rope seal though, and will be solved in the rebuild. But no drips from the filter or the oil pan, so that's good. I then promptly drove the car almost every day for 2 weeks. It's been almost flawless.

Almost? Well, I filled the car up with 87 octane right after that. Topped it off to start getting a baseline for milage. Up to now, I never drove it enough to where I was worried about it. And I used 87 with out thought. Over the next 70 miles, I started to notice that under about 60% throttle in 3rd gear (mostly) I was getting some spark knocking. My first though was that it's the octane. then I did some looking, and honestly, I'm not so sure. I thought it might be carbon build up, compression, casting flash, or I was running lean at a certain point as the distributer advanced. But, the car simply isn't set up for unleaded fuel, certainly not 10% ethanol. So, I'm driving gently for now and after the inlaws are gone, we'll rebuild and address that knocking.

And yesterday, we had a moment:



We officially broke 38,000 miles! yay!

 

Congrats.

87 sounds rather low, can you not get 92/93 in your area? Not surprised it's struggling with E10 and going from leaded->unleaded! Have you done anything with the carbs? Is it a tricky job to tune them? My carb experience is limited to a single pair setup, not sure what yours would be.

RE: The oils, I'm a firm believer in avoiding flushes and treatments unless absolutely desperate. The former can often cause more problems than they solve with blocked oil ways from dislodged lumps of filth being loosened etc, and there's a few treatments that can be useful to quieten tappets etc until they're adjusted/replaced.