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Is there any decent one-stop site to search for junkyard parts? I'm trying to find a body panel the right color for my car because having one painted to match is $rape. I've been using http://www.car-part.com/ because it came up on google but half the places I call have long since sold the part in the result, or it's not actually that color, etc.
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Oct 21, 2015 06:30
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 12:25 |
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$220 vs. $1800 is probably the difference between "pound it straight-ish and put 97 cent spray paint on it" and replacing a part with a factory one.
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Oct 23, 2015 01:19
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I find improvising a hole saw out of a properly-sized piece of expended rifle brass or even tubing works much, much better on soft rubber than a standard drill bit.
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Oct 25, 2015 21:03
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Gonna try one more time: I'm trying to find a body panel the right color for my car because having one painted to match is $rape. Is there any non-awful way to go about this? Half the places just don't respond to emails, or don't seem interested in actually looking at the part to see what color it is. Failing that, how terrible an idea is attempting to paint it myself?
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Oct 29, 2015 05:15
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I have no idea if that's been a factor in the quotes I've gotten but I'll ask again armed with that info. I'd be happy with a fresh coat of that color code; it'd still be closer than a random non-matching junkyard fender. Thanks!
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Oct 29, 2015 06:15
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It's an 89 cougar; color code of 6V. I got a little jug of paint to do touch ups locally and they mixed it from poo poo on hand so it's nothing too bizarre, but it's not something easy like black or white either. It's not a winter beater but I'm not TOO obsessed with it being perfect either. I just don't want the mashed up panel it's got now or a straight panel that's a different color.
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Oct 29, 2015 06:58
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Cage posted:Having a 2nd set of wheels is cool and good because then you can swap winter/summer wheels yourself. Even if you don't, a lot of tire places will swap wheels for free but charge to change out tires on the same wheels. $33x4 for cheap steelies for my car and $whatever for the initial mount + balance has saved me $mount+balance twice a year taking the studded tires on and off. If there are no cheap steelies for your lug pattern and size the math may be less favorable, however.
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Nov 11, 2015 20:43
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nthing AAA. I've even burnt a leftover tow at the end of my year to get someone else out of a ditch. It's pretty handy. They also aren't dicks about what constitutes a tow. If you break down at 11 PM on a Friday night, the tow home + tow into a shop on Monday are both one incident, not eating your two tows for the year if that's what you have.
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Nov 30, 2015 02:17
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How old is the battery? After a while they do just straight up die, and since it sounds like it's been going downhill for a while I'd bet that's what you have here. I'd get a jump start from someone and get to the nearest auto parts place, all of them do free battery/charging systems tests and if it's the battery you can just buy a new one and swap it on the spot.
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Dec 13, 2015 22:24
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I'm looking at needing to replace control arms on my car. The wide variety of arms available on rockauto range from $18 to $80 each, is there any reason to not just get the $18 ones? I'm also told I could just replace the bushings, which are cheaper than the arms but not staggeringly so; is it enough extra work to not be worth it over just doing the whole arm?
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Dec 28, 2015 00:31
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Yeah, no racing or towing. Here's all the options now that I found the share button on their site: http://www.rockauto.com/catalog/raframecatalog.php?carcode=1198627&parttype=10401 Some of those are for the rear or bottom front; I'm specifically concerned with front upper. I've bought other Dorman aftermarket stuff; are they decent? That's the second cheapest and still reasonable.
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Dec 28, 2015 00:49
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IOwnCalculus posted:Dorman is usually a safe bet. I would avoid the cheapest-possible brands on Rockauto; while I ended up using them all anyway, one of the control arm assemblies (very similar to that, '98 Ranger) came with a balljoint boot that was poorly crimped on. It was still reasonably tight when I sold it but I'm sure it will wear out much sooner than the others. Yeah, it's hard to argue with $23 each to just replace the whole thing. Thanks.
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Dec 28, 2015 01:20
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A $35 steelie and having the best of your old tires mounted on it every time you get a new set makes for a great non-donut spare if you have the trunk space for it. Wiser minds may opine, but I feel like an aging full sized tire is superior in every way to a donut, and it's objectively superior to nothing at all. AAA is great, but the one time I called them for a flat instead of changing it myself, the guy showed up without even a compressor to air it up, and pretty much intended to use my lovely jack and wrench - "intended" because they took way too loving long to show up and I just did it myself to get the gently caress out of there.
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Jan 12, 2016 06:17
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Car: 89 cougar Car starts and runs. Idle sounds a little rough but not hugely. When running, exhaust emits white smoke. No coolant in the oil, it's the color it's always been. The coolant in the radiator is low but I hadn't checked it in a while so that may or may not be new. My immediate assumption was head gasket, but my mechanic claims it would sound like dogshit if the head gasket was blown - and when driving the engine sounds like it always has - so he doesn't think it's that. He thinks it might be an intake gasket and says there was a problem with those on this year of car. I don't know enough to sniff test that assertion so here I am. What are the possibilities here and how harmful would it be to drive like this? I'm not in a position where I have to so I won't but it'd be nice to know if I'm gonna blow it up or not if something emergency-level comes up.
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Mar 1, 2016 05:00
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Godholio posted:^A headgasket failure doesn't necessarily cause any weird noises. My 93 Taurus (3.8L) ate its HG and burned coolant and I had no indication other than the white smoke. What engine do you have? 3.8 V6, probably the same one. So it's possible for a coolant to combustion chamber leak to happen without an oil to coolant leak? Is that like, less bad than it letting go all the way? On the one end, a local shop with a solid rep will do a complete head gasket + unfuck everything related job for $1800 and change. That's a significant multiple of the car's nominal value, but it will be straight up fixed. On the other end, this guy's telling me that if it is the head gasket we can try some in-coolant leak plugging stuff which kinda gives me the heebies. I'm hoping to find a middle option. Javid fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Mar 1, 2016 |
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Mar 1, 2016 05:36
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Tow weight is different from passenger weight. All that weight isn't entirely bearing on the rear of the frame, for one.
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Mar 1, 2016 21:37
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Godholio posted:Yes, and not really. Burning coolant will trash your pistons. So I'll stick to not driving it. When it comes time to take it in for the gasket, will a ten~ish mile drive to the mechanic be safe or do I have to tow it?
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Mar 2, 2016 02:11
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Followup question to the blown head gasket situation: The shop can't get me in until next week. Will it hurt the engine to sit with a bad gasket for that long? It's already been ~10 days.
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Mar 8, 2016 04:45
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More fun with the '89 cougar head gasket: The mechanic says there's so much coolant getting into the #4 cylinder that it's definitely a gasket, and possibly a cracked head too. This was scary for the two minutes it took to look up prices for junkyard heads which are $50-75 each. So, the guy is pulling the engine apart to see what's up. This is the kind of engine with two heads and gaskets - since he's in there anyway should I just have him do both gaskets? Same question for the heads, too, if I can find solid ones from a lower-mileage car. An extra $75 on this repair isn't poo poo if it will possibly prevent future issues.
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Mar 18, 2016 18:00
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Not that I'm buying, but are there any cars left these days that use a normal goddamned $1.99 hardware store key instead of some giant digital plastic thing that costs $300 if it dies?
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Mar 22, 2016 07:02
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89 cougar: How much of a pain is swapping out the cruise servo? Isn't in the Haynes manual 
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May 14, 2016 06:26
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The Door Frame posted:I am a little late to the party, but I am catching up on the thread and had a legit question about engine braking in the mountains. When I was in the Appalachians, I hit an area on the interstate with a steep gradient down the mountain, so I downshifted from fifth, but I kept accelerating up to ~70mph from my previous 60. I went down to third, where was redlining and still accelerating, up to almost 90mph, before just going to neutral and regular braking the rest of the ~2 mile stretch down the mountain. Some hills flat out require brakes. The method taught in CDL school is to, in a gear that's giving you some engine braking, coast up to a reasonable top speed - say, 70, then brake down to 60, repeat.
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May 29, 2016 03:10
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Hi thread. 89 cougar as always. A couple years ago the left third of my dash cluster went dark. It was still usable, just dim, and tearing into the dash isn't included in the haynes manual I have, so I left it alone until today. Let the bad decisions begin! Got to the instrument cluster, and there's a long light board with six bulbs on it. I swap the leftmost pair with the rightmost pair to see if the dead spot moves with the bulbs or not - put it back and none of them light up. gently caress. At this point I do what I probably should've to begin with and get the multimeter out to check the bulbs. All six (including the four that had been working up until I went and hosed with it) are dead. I also realize the key is on and the plugs into the back of the cluster have had power the entire time I've been plugging and unplugging. gently caress. I went and got six bulbs and replaced the entire set - with the key off this time - and everything lights up beautifully. Is it likely I toasted the first set by working on them with the car on? Would it be worth the time and money to find LED versions of these bulbs to eliminate burnouts - and the resulting dashboard surgery - entirely? As far as I know these are the factory bulbs from 89 so it's not a HUGE problem so far - but still.
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Jun 16, 2016 03:02
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Anything beyond a direct fit replacement is  , I only even consider it due to the butt-pain involved with getting in there to replace them.
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Jun 16, 2016 03:25
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spregalia posted:Thanks, I'll check it out. I suspected the recharge cans were likely snake oil. To clarify: if your ac is otherwise perfectly fine, and just needs to be topped up on refrigerant, those kits will perform that function well enough to make it blow cold again. However, that's a big "if", and they won't do it as well as a professional recharge job.
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Jul 2, 2016 05:07
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I've got a seat belt with a sticky retractor. All over the internet are articles about de-crudding and lubricating the assembly once you remove it, but information is sparse on actually getting the thing out, usually glossed over with "find bolts, remove bolts" It's the 89 cougar, not that I've been able to find any info for this model anywhere. I'm dealing with this right here:  The only fastener I can find is that bolt on the left that I've already removed. It's still held on by something I can't even find. tl;dr how the gently caress do I remove that thing
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Jul 17, 2016 00:07
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Car: 89 cougar Recently the car has been exhibiting temperature spikes. Tuesday: Idling with the AC going the temp slowly climbed from its usual dead-center-of-normal* position up to the low end of "too high" and retreated back to the normal range when I cut the AC off. Didn't think anything of it until later but this had never happened before and I do idle-run the AC often enough The next day it happened in a much shorter span of time while stopped at a light. In both cases I was already up at operating temp beforehand. The last couple days, it's started rising while braking to a stop at lights without the AC going. At a long light it will even bump up into the red until I can get going again. In all cases, when I start moving again it goes back to normal. Once I'm cruising on the freeway I can run the AC or do whatever and it doesn't budge from the middle of "normal", and running the heater usually at least reins it back out of the red if the light is long enough to need it. I have had this car for a decade and it has never done this before, even in hot-rear end summers like this one, including having no engine fan for a couple days when the fan clutch exploded. What could be randomly cropping up now? *My gauge doesn't have actual temps, just low/normal/high ranges, or I would be providing hard numbers
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Jul 29, 2016 22:30
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Thermostat is a year old so I'm gonna go with clutch first, then. Thanks!
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Jul 31, 2016 17:45
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How do I test the thermostat? Checked the clutch; the fan spins when pushed but doesn't freewheel so it's not obviously dead but I dunno what it should feel like.
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Jul 31, 2016 19:11
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*without tearing poo poo apart, as at that point I may as well just replace the $15 thermostat
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Jul 31, 2016 19:47
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I went and spun it earlier; moves freely under hand pressure but will not throw at all. The clutch is ~8 years old now, anyway.
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Jul 31, 2016 20:24
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B4Ctom1 posted:That is the answer that doesn't help me tell you for sure. Some perfectly good clutches exhibit this trait. Even new ones. Still hard to say sorry. OK, so, a clutch is $24 on rockauto and the thermostats are a few dollars - and both are relatively easy jobs - so my inclination is to just pick one and swap it, and if that doesn't fix it, swap the other too. Is there anything else it could be beyond those two parts that would render this diagnostic trial a waste of time? E: There's a fuckload of options for the thermostat. http://www.rockauto.com/en/catalog/mercury,1989,cougar,3.8l+232cid+v6,1198627,cooling+system,thermostat,2200 Prices range from $0.94 to $8.67 - aside from disregarding the ones that open at lower temps than the original, should I just get the $8 one or is there a different best one? Or are they all equally likely to die in a year again so I may as well get the $1 one? Javid fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Aug 1, 2016 |
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Aug 1, 2016 02:13
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I don't recall the coolant's state when we did it, unfortunately, but that also means it wasn't memorably gross. The water pump is roughly 5 years old, if that matters; coolant has been dumped and refilled with new a few times since then (pump, thermo, radiator, head gasket) but I've never done it by itself. Clutch plus thermo and shipping is $35 and if this goes away for that much I'm happy.
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Aug 1, 2016 06:34
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Temp spike diagnosis: low coolant.  Now to figure out where that much coolant went...
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Aug 2, 2016 00:02
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My car battery turns five this month and has been slowly dying, so it's time for retirement. Walmart says these batteries fit my car. Is there any reason not to get the brand that's half as much as all the others? I remember somebody making an effortpost about batteries semi-recently but I couldn't find it with a quick search.
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Aug 4, 2016 05:58
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Re: headliners. Where do you find the stuff to actually match your original headliner? Joann's has like, black, white, and tan. My car has tan, but a visibly much darker shade than they have.
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Aug 22, 2016 03:37
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Funddevi posted:Is there a detailing thread? Or other such resources you guys recommend? Now that I have a car that's less than 20 years old, I'm ready to actually give a gently caress about maintenance and keeping it looking pretty. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3474488
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Aug 23, 2016 03:26
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Re: pulling codes I have a pre-OBDII car, how hosed am I for plugging a reader into it? And if there's no CEL is there even any point?
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Sep 1, 2016 04:20
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89 cougar. It has some kind of port somewhere but I don't know exactly what it is.
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Sep 1, 2016 04:28
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 12:25 |
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I don't have to smog here, I just want to know how to pull codes for my own use. However, I am specifically after scanning devices, not blinking lights or whatever.
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Sep 1, 2016 07:44
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