One more day
Just got back from Quality Coaches where one of the gentlemen over there gave me a good, thorough look at my car and its issues. The new fuel pump is in place and looks good and he said the rest of the fuel hoses are reasonably new and don't need replacing. Hopefully I won't be smelling gas in the garage again for a good while.
They adjusted the timing and cleaned/gapped the spark plugs, in addition to re-tapping some of the threads where the plugs screw in to. Apparently they were pretty hard to get out of there, so I'm glad I didn't try that one myself. The car starts good and runs pretty good now, but they're going to fix/check on a couple more things yet tomorrow:
* Valve adjustment - Like with the spark plugs I'm sure there will be a fair amount of rusted/hard to move parts in there. So, I'm glad they're doing it first before me. I'll try my hand at checking/adjusting the valves myself in 6,000 miles ... I guess that'd be about a year from now, eh? =)
* Clutch adjustment - Very simple fix: just loosen or tighten a wingnut at the end of the clutch cable. It's a bit rusted-on, though and can't be turned by hand, so they'll take a vice grip or something to that tomorrow to give me a bit more play in the clutch pedal.
* Oil leaks - The motor's underside's pretty oily, but it doesn't seem to be major. They'll do the cardboard test to "get a roadmap of the oil leaks" tomorrow. It looked to him like it might be in a few places: where the tranny meets the motor, the push rods cylendars or the oil pump. Doesn't sound too bad to me.
* Generator light on - Either need generator work, new generator or new power regulator. New generator would be the priciest of them all, about $200 I think, but not horrible. The car kind of needs a working generator, so I won't mind. Heh heh.
* Muffler cracked around pipes - They'll just weld them back together a bit and do some other quick, easy repairs there. The muffler is relatively new and in OK shape, so it's worth a quick patch.
Here are some things that will need done later, either next summer or even later depending:
* Rust issues underneath - Yeah, Ghias get rusty. The car's been re-painted and the topside looks pretty good, but there are some rust problem spots underneath and in a couple of the wheel wells that will need to be addressed.
* Need new tires - It's got snow tires on the back and cheap tires on the front and the snow tires have lots of nasty-looking smooth spots on 'em. I might bite the bullet and pay $103/tire for some nice BF Goodrich 3/4 inch whitewalls for sale at coker.com. Considering how little I plan to drive this car every year, I may not need to buy another set of tires for it for quite some time.
* Check alignment - This car has either been in an accident or something else caused the passenger's-side wheel to be angled in *just* a little bit. Evidence of welding there that may explain a slightly out-of-line frame. Might be a simple alignment adjustment thing or more major. The car doesn't seem to pull to badly on the highway as-is, though.
All things considered, not too bad I think. The rust issues are the most concerning, obviously. The guy said it's not in the shape he'd like for a collector car, but it'll be fun to "tool around" on. That sounds fine by me. I've seen how people completely restore old cars and whew ... that looks like a lot of work! Then again, I do live in an 1887 Victorian home, so I think restoring old stuff is going to be my lot in life. We'll see what the next few years have in store for the car as for how it continues to hold up and if I make any progress on fixing rust spots.
I wanna drive it, dammit! :)
They adjusted the timing and cleaned/gapped the spark plugs, in addition to re-tapping some of the threads where the plugs screw in to. Apparently they were pretty hard to get out of there, so I'm glad I didn't try that one myself. The car starts good and runs pretty good now, but they're going to fix/check on a couple more things yet tomorrow:
* Valve adjustment - Like with the spark plugs I'm sure there will be a fair amount of rusted/hard to move parts in there. So, I'm glad they're doing it first before me. I'll try my hand at checking/adjusting the valves myself in 6,000 miles ... I guess that'd be about a year from now, eh? =)
* Clutch adjustment - Very simple fix: just loosen or tighten a wingnut at the end of the clutch cable. It's a bit rusted-on, though and can't be turned by hand, so they'll take a vice grip or something to that tomorrow to give me a bit more play in the clutch pedal.
* Oil leaks - The motor's underside's pretty oily, but it doesn't seem to be major. They'll do the cardboard test to "get a roadmap of the oil leaks" tomorrow. It looked to him like it might be in a few places: where the tranny meets the motor, the push rods cylendars or the oil pump. Doesn't sound too bad to me.
* Generator light on - Either need generator work, new generator or new power regulator. New generator would be the priciest of them all, about $200 I think, but not horrible. The car kind of needs a working generator, so I won't mind. Heh heh.
* Muffler cracked around pipes - They'll just weld them back together a bit and do some other quick, easy repairs there. The muffler is relatively new and in OK shape, so it's worth a quick patch.
Here are some things that will need done later, either next summer or even later depending:
* Rust issues underneath - Yeah, Ghias get rusty. The car's been re-painted and the topside looks pretty good, but there are some rust problem spots underneath and in a couple of the wheel wells that will need to be addressed.
* Need new tires - It's got snow tires on the back and cheap tires on the front and the snow tires have lots of nasty-looking smooth spots on 'em. I might bite the bullet and pay $103/tire for some nice BF Goodrich 3/4 inch whitewalls for sale at coker.com. Considering how little I plan to drive this car every year, I may not need to buy another set of tires for it for quite some time.
* Check alignment - This car has either been in an accident or something else caused the passenger's-side wheel to be angled in *just* a little bit. Evidence of welding there that may explain a slightly out-of-line frame. Might be a simple alignment adjustment thing or more major. The car doesn't seem to pull to badly on the highway as-is, though.
All things considered, not too bad I think. The rust issues are the most concerning, obviously. The guy said it's not in the shape he'd like for a collector car, but it'll be fun to "tool around" on. That sounds fine by me. I've seen how people completely restore old cars and whew ... that looks like a lot of work! Then again, I do live in an 1887 Victorian home, so I think restoring old stuff is going to be my lot in life. We'll see what the next few years have in store for the car as for how it continues to hold up and if I make any progress on fixing rust spots.
I wanna drive it, dammit! :)
posted by Chris Druckenmiller at 3:35 PM
1 Comments:
I can identify with "I want to drive it, damn it" statement. Fortunately I have been able to drive it every day. I was depressed when I had to leave it in the shop overnight. But its nice not to have the overwhelming smell of gasoline in the garage. Your time will come too.
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