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I've been long overdue in making a thread about my cars, and after so many delayed promises to do so, I am finally doing it! This thread will document the work on my cars as well as the projects I'll be doing to them and the occasional car show and other things I encounter relating to cars. I tend to type a lot of  so keep that in mind this post might be a mess. I cut it down from a LOT more, trust me! This post will start with just a background on all of the cars and the next posts I'll make later tonight or tomorrow will go over each one and what I've done with them!I'll try to give some backstory on the methods to my madness: == Part 1: My First Car AKA ==Sometime in the early-mid 70s my Grandfather was moving from engineering job to engineering job and finally landed a gig at the Romeo Engine Plant. It was at that point my whole family on my mum's side pretty much committed 100% to Ford has stuck to that ever since. My grandparents always traded up their cars every few years or so, my grandmother moving from various sedans in the 70s to a Tempo to Windstars to Escapes, you name it, but my grandfather stopped buying new cars after his purchase of a 1994 Thunderbird LX, citing it as the greatest car Ford had ever made at the time. Many Ford people I've talked to at shows and things seem to think he was crazy, but as we'll get to later, I believe him. Here's a picture of me with it sometime around 1994:  Fast forward to around 2004, my Grandfather lost a lengthy battle with lung cancer and I was soon coming to driving age, my mother bought the Thunderbird off of my Grandmother and it was now mine. The car only had 24,000 miles on it and it served unfailingly for nearly 100,000 miles after that, losing only a fuel pump, alternator, rear shocks, and front struts in the entire time I owned it. Being a stupid teenager and well into my early 20s I was hell on the highway. I always kept the car cleaned and detailed but I drove the hell out of it.  My parents lived right up by the Northern Illinois / Wisconsin border and the car was always parked outside, then I went to school in Missouri and Iowa, where the car was always parked outside. I always kept it as clean as I could but road salt kept getting to it worse and worse. I even had it covered while I was in the final years of school but the cover would get ripped off by other students from time to time so it was futile. I promised myself I would move SOUTH and finally get the car the care it needed, but by the time I graduated, it was pretty much gone:  I got a job and moved to a town north of the giant DFW sprawl and kept the Thunderbird going while I lived in an apartment, but I couldn't escape the rust and the brake lines blew on me one day at work. Nobody down here would touch it given the rust it had, which I found out was pretty much swiss-cheesing the underside. The Thunderbird was DOA and there wasn't much I could do about it. The interior was spotless and I had somehow kept the clearcoat from going so the apartment would never know it was immobile. I began looking for a replacement. == Part 2: Poor Choices AKA ==Having had such a good experience with the Thunderbird I was committed to Ford, and like all good Ford fans I wanted a Bronco, and I didn't have much of a budget. Alternately I just wanted another Thunderbird but I was effectively priced out of everything I wanted so I was running out of time and options. I was borrowing my roomate's car for work (he worked from home) and didn't want to wear out that welcome. I was looking around and found it, and it was really all I could find anywhere. What do you get when you combine a Bronco and A Thunderbird? A 1987 Ford LTD Crown Victoria S Wagon!!!  The paint was baked, it was a fleet model, the AC didn't work, it had a smash in the door (from the dealer I bought it from), the headlights barely worked, it was everything I could have wanted. I cut my teeth properly working on this car. Unlike the Thunderbird this car was pretty well abused by the previous owner. The interior plastics were trashed, the door seals were ruined, it was a mess. But I realised that Hey, I could park this IN car shows! and got to working on it! I buffed the whole car by hand with a bottle of NuFinish, not too shabby! I fell in love with the car, and as Paul Niedermeyer of Curbside Classic once wrote: I finally found Broughmance.   Work was starting to pay, I paid my loans off, things were going good: I replaced the door seals, the clock, put a new AC compressor in, put the Thunderbird's tires on it, cleaned up the interior, fixed the door mirror, upgraded the radio to another OEM radio, replaced a ton of brightwork, redid some wiring, just in general got the car daily driverable! But all was not well in LTD land, as about a year later I tried to pass a dumptruck and it blew out the upper radiator return hose going about 85:  While waiting in the car for AAA to come get me from my hometown (and having the gas station attendant repeatedly threaten to call the police on me for loitering) I did what anyone else would do when they have insurmountable car trouble, I called my dad. The words he said to me I'll never forget, "You've spent all this time working on this one, why don't you just buy a nice one?" Later that night, I got an email from my dad linking to a Ford dealer in Pennsylvania, he had found something great. == Part 3: Wood You Believe It AKA ==I jumped on it:  And a few weeks later, this was being delivered, a 1989 Ford LTD Crown Victoria Country Squire LX   Here's a recent picture of the window sticker I just had laminated:  It's amazing how opposite these two years apart cars are in how they drive and how they're put together. I sent the Thunderbird to the great wrecking yard in the sky (donated it to NPR) and pulled out a few items that I thought would be useful. I now just had the two wagons. Fast forward another year and the red '87 is starting to show more and more problems having been driven daily. It's burning oil more and more, something in the transmission was starting to go, it was leaking just about everything, and the brakes are getting worse and worse. I start looking for a replacement, I figured I'd have the Squire for a show car and the other car would be a daily driver. Something fun that I could beat on and leave outside and not care too much. Just a raggedy beater. I decide to get something sporty, I wanted a rear wheel drive stick shift convertible roadster that wasn't a Miata, because I'm stupid. Some goons may remember my 90s Mercury Capri temptations. I was courting everything from Foxbody Mustangs to Corvettes to SL560 roadsters. Till one day I found it on Craigslist and I couldn't say no: == Part 4: I buy a RWD sporty convertible roadster manual that's not sporty, a roadster, or track-capable as my fun sports car ==   I mean, how could I say no? The seller had it for only a few weeks when I bought it, he didn't even know how to open the hood despite having a collection of 20 something 1930s, 40s, and 50s cars at the property I bought it from. He said he got it for his daughter who refused to touch it because it was a manual! I didn't know how drive a manual myself and begged my friend who used to work for the Mecum auctions to drive it home for me. I learned that night. I looked up the RPO codes and ordered a new roof and got new tires. But I had a problem... I bought this as a beater and it was too nice.  There's no rust anywhere on it... I can't leave this outside!  At this point I've got three cars (not counting my roomates) and the apartment's not happy about it. This was the middle of september and with spring coming in 6 months meant hail and this Geo had sheet metal like tissue paper. The Squire was normally covered but the apartment didn't like that. I had to buy a house... so I could have a garage. Plus the apartments were getting worse and worse and our town was about to go through a huge industry boom that we had learned about in advance so I could get a jump on the market. A lot happens in the next year: I find a house, it's run down but fixable, I'm in debt, I have a health crisis: I inhale quite a bit of asbestos thanks to a well-meaning contractor, I go to a therapist who helps me get through it as-best-os I can, my house starts having tons of issues, I'm in more debt, something has to give, and the red 87 is it, it has to go. It's falling apart more and more to the point where it's almost un-driveable and I can't afford to fix it. Here's the last photo of the cars together, note the Geo has different wheels.  My financials start to stabilize and I use the red wagon for one last big project. It was a hell of a moving van for the move from the house to the apartment and it did me one last good gesture with this 1940s display case I found on Craigslist:  This was mid-removal. The entire thing actually fit in the wagon.  I sold the wagon to a nice college kid and his grandfather who was a mechanic. They said they could take care of just about everything that was wrong with it and gave me some good money for it. I sent him a CD of all 300 some odd photos I took of the car and all the books and brochures I found as well. Things are looking up, I no longer feel like my house is actively killing me, my money's stable, and I've got time to enjoy my cars and hobbies again! == Part whatever: Now == So now I start my thread, I spent way too long typing and cutting down the contents of this for but I'll make the next posts be the full history of what I've done on the Squire and the Tracker since I bought it!!! Although... all is not well in the the world... because there's another car in my life... I've mentioned it before but you rarely saw it in photos... for a reason...My roomate's car... a 1999  B5 VW Passat : More to come on that later. Luxrage fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Mar 17, 2019 |
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Mar 17, 2019 02:13
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Sorry for the delay, work's been brutal. So I'll go over what's been done on the Country Squire so far and what I'm planning on doing with it in the long run. From the moment I got the car I already had to work on it. When the auto transporter loaded it up in Pennsylvania, they loaded it under a 1950s car which promptly dumped oil all over the windshield and hood. The car unloader tracked it into the car and got it on the doors, the seats, the steering wheel, you name it. I spent a fun first few days cleaning it top to bottom.  God, that pissed me off, but I was able to get it all out! Except for the rearview mirror which had some sort of permanent discoloration, but that wasn't a big deal because I was going to replace it! == The Mirror / Dashcam == The first thing on the agenda was a dashcam, I took the one out of my other wagon and got to work wiring up the car. Since I was going to do the wiring for the dashcam, I might as well do the mirror as well!    This is the mirror from the Thunderbird, a Gentex auto dimming model. I was dumb not to cut the thunderbird's cable off when I took it, but I found they upgraded to a larger pin count of the same connector and you could condense it back to four. I dremel'd it and it fit perfectly. For the actual install, I bought a little fuse block with spade connectors coming out the sides.  I made a miraculous discovery when I was fudging around with fuse-taps looking for circuits. It turns out on mine (and this may apply to other CVs as well) the supposed "Unused" fuse position in the fusebox was actually powered AND switched! Another neat discovery was that this car actually has a grounding bar full of spade connectors, so I just hooked up the dashcam and mirror grounds right to it!  I bought one of these for the Dashcam and sliced off the fusetap portion and made it into a standard spade to use in one of the slots, and the mirror power would go in the other. Here's how I ended up running the wires, I was able to go from the fuse box under the steering colum, through the dashboard, out the side, through the A pillar trim, up to the roof trim, and out to the mirror and dashcam!     I somehow managed to not ruin the headliner and was able to make it look ~somewhat~ OEM in the process. The TownCars had a hole in the top trim for the cabling to come through but I wasn't about to do that! https://zippy.gfycat.com/MagnificentVariableGentoopenguin.gif == The Trip Computer == One thing the car has that kind of let it down was a bare-bones clock. Just a simple piddly little one line display which promptly fell apart when I took the dashboard off:  Well, one amazing ford Accessory I found thanks to the brochure I picked up on ebay was the TRIPMINDER  Which gave you a full readout of all of the digital dashboard / cruise control / EFI control info on a TWO line display!   I was expecting this big crazy setup of wires with it and instead just got a single plug. Being naive as I was, I was expecting to have to wire it up to all these different points in the car. After all, the 87 red wagon had them, but for some reason, the Squire didn't! It took a whole day of fighting and reading documents and broken photobucket links to find out that in 1988 they revised it and moved all four data lines to one plug in the dash.  More digging around the car and documents and I managed to find the pinouts: Pin 1: EMPTY Pin 2: EMPTY Pin 3: Ignition Power (light blue/black stripe) Pin 4: Dimmer (light blue/red stripe) Pin 5: Power (light green/yellow stripe) Pin 6: Fuel Flow Input (light blue/pink stripe) Pin 7: Ground (black) Pin 8: Speed Input (dark green/white stripe) Pin 9: Ground (black) Using both plugs, plus a lot of wiring and two days of blowing fuses and in general having an absolute crap time, I finally got readouts! Using a troubleshooter I found in the car's owner manual I had ~Success!~    Going from left to right, top to bottom, it has a trip timer, average speed, total gas used by the gallon, distance traveled, instant MPG and average MPG! And the default is a two line clock!  I was in business! == Stuff Breaks ==  This had a crack in it when I bought it and it gave way on the highway. If the Thunderbird taught me one thing, it's that plastic is bad news on the front of an old car. But this is old detroit iron! How bad could it b-    Some of that is colored wrong, but it's the entire front of the car from the hood forward (with the exception of the bumper) The other thing that went somewhat recently has been the driver's side door lock actuator, I fixed it without taking too much time but it was a pain in the rear end. I was also an absolute madman and didn't take the original mounting bracket out, so I replaced the entire thing while it was still in the door.    however in the process I had to pull the plastic vapor barrier off which took of a lot of paint!  I ended up repainting it and using thick mil shower curtain and 3M strip caulk to rebuild it!  The next thing I did was replace the headlights and front bulbs. The high beams were plastic and starting to fade:   Some of the OEM fitment was showing through... like this side marker lens not being installed flush with the trim.  == Future Fixes == So when I first bought the car the dealer noted that the trim was peeling, it's only gotten worse since then but it fades to the color of the car and is still in good condition underneath the peeling clear coat so eventually I will try to have them restored. There's also one spot underneath where the gas cap is where the main wood siding is cracked, but other than that it's in great condition all over so I won't worry about it for now. I just keep drowning it in 303 Aerospace Protectant to keep it slick n' shiny!   My father was in town visiting and got very very invested in the idea that he could repaint them and clear coat them himself. He's an avid hobbyist and works on race bikes and restores things so I believe him. The main challenge for me is going to be removing them without damaging them or the clips, plus finding extras just in case. I ran into someone who made their own replica of the Wagon Queen Family Truckster and they had repainted all of the trim themselves so I have some nice photos of how it's supposed to look from the factory. After all, that wagon was an 86 Squire!   When the car's cleaned up you really can't tell any of the imperfections, here's a photo taken by Steph Schrader when I was at RadWood a few weeks ago in Austin. It really cleans up well! The second one I found on Bringatrailer.com.   The other minor annoyance is the wheels are all pitted to hell and back, I might see about having them sandblasted and refinished.  Other than that, the car's in really good shape! Mechanically it is all original, so just about every hose is leaking and I've been slowly replacing all the clamps and trying to stop them. The air conditioner is constantly losing pressure and freon, so that's going to have to be addressed soon. STR posted:I didn't even have to scroll past the "moved north of DFW" to realize who it was or where you were. If it wasn't for work being where I live now I'd most likely be living in Denton, I love that town so much! I'm actually even further north than that, up in Sherman! But all my friends (and all the good bars) are in Denton so I'm there just about every weekend! A proper Dallas friend I know called Sherman the boonies and super rural, but I don't consider an hour drive any inconvenience at all, plus in the Squire it's a dream!  Their Arts and Autos car show every year is a blast! I talked to my friend who lives down there and he knew all about Mi Ranchito so next time I'm down there I'll hit it up! Same for the bookstore's automotive section, that place is huge but I never thought to venture into the deep recesses of the basement!! Thanks for the tip for the Honda/Toyota/Nissan stuff, because I might just be looking for a Toyota LandCruiser soon, these two cars are great but neither is really the type I want to take out in horrible weather and face TOO much of the elements! Making a post this long is probably bad for my health, I'll try to break the Geo one up a little more, plus that way I can do it on my lunch hour at work! Luxrage fucked around with this message at 05:44 on Mar 20, 2019 |
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Mar 20, 2019 05:38
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Those wheels came out really good! I'm impressed! Sorry for the disappearance, there's been a lot going on IRL for me, including going from 0 to 7 cats in the span of about an hour. I had a stray start living in my garage who was heavily pregnant and ended up fostering all of the kittens until they could be adopted. Kept two kittens and the momma cat but it has been so much work! However, I'm back now and with an update. We had a couple of close calls with hail and tornados the last few weeks and I'm getting sick of taking my Geo to work and watching the weather. I wanted a proper beater car. A friend in Denton hit me up that he had a car rotting in his driveway; he said if I could get it running I could have it for $300. It has (when parked) new tires and brakes. I stopped by to look at it last night, having been told it was parked about 8 months ago, but the registration went out four years ago, so I'm a little wary:    I put a walmart battery in it, checked the oil and the rest of the fluids, and everything was where it should be. We managed to cycle it a few times and get it running with some good gas (I suspect it has been driven with no registration up until 8 months ago) and take it around the block a few times. The only thing that's not working on it is the digital dash, the HVAC controls, and the clock won't come on. I saw the same thing on a car I used to have so I'm going to the local pick n' pull because by the powers that be in cardom, another one just showed up at a pick n pull two days ago!  Other notables: The car has a bunch of weird rust spots and the gas filler door looks cursed, but the tank still held pressure when we took the cap off so there's something!   The other reason I'm tempted to bring this back to life is this is in their back yard and I don't want it to meet the same fate:  Now the real question remains if I do get the ignition switch swapped in and it all powers up as it should, should I oil change it in his driveway before driving an hour back to where I live or just drive it back on the potentially 8-48 year old oil it has? It seems like it'd be safer to do it before I go but his driveway is a mess and it was holding proper level sitting all this time. Luxrage fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Nov 2, 2019 |
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Nov 2, 2019 16:43
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Powershift posted:looks like body filler cracking. Have you checked the rear frame or seams inside the trunk? based on the weird bodywork issues at the same place on both sides, i would wonder if it took a shunt from the back. I took a look in the trunk, but it was so full of crap that I couldn't see past the broken kitchen appliances and other things they put in there, my friend's parents tend to hoard junk everywhere they can put it. More on that later in the post. I hit up the yard and pulled some things from this 93, not a lot matched the 89 as far as trim went which really irritated me because the back MAXIMA panel is broken on the 89 and this one's didn't match. I also stopped at Half Price Books on the way and found two basic repair books for it! Not that they helped too much but it's good to know where the oil pan plug is and things like that:   I grabbed the igntion switch + wiring as well as the turn signal lenses and some interior trim bits, a not disgusting ashtray (there was something nasty in his), and the owners manual. 55 bux for the whole haul wasn't too bad. Bonus lego head under the rear seat:  So I got back, waited for him to get home, and then swapped in the ignition, no dice. I dug deep into the owner's forums and found that if the instrument cluster goes bad, the climate control and the windshield HUD don't work either. Here's what I'm seeing:  Here's what should be there. The Dashboard powers the HUD on the windshield as well.  The climate control came on and off a few times while I was messing with it, so I know the cluster isn't actually dead, I suspect there's bad solder joints or something in there, so the question remains do I try to dig into this and see if I can get it working, because man that's cool. I work with old electronics as my job so I have some knowledge of what I'd be getting into trying to fix this, it's more of the getting it out of the car that's the hard part! So here's the bad part, While I was at the yard, my friend started the car up several times and even took it around the block on whatever gas it had in it. Now, I didn't see any oil leaks starting and I didn't hear any god awful noises when I got back and he showed me it ran, so I'm hoping that the bad gas prevented it from starting for a while and it had time to circulate SOME of that sludge around. Despite them telling me they had the title, they couldn't find it. I waited for about an hour while they dug through big mountains of unsorted paperwork throughout their house. I just gave up and told them if they couldn't find it I wasn't going to take the car, so they offered to have AAA tow it up to my house Wednesday ( can you do that with AAA? Just move cars around with it? ) and they'd have the title for it then. So for 300 dollars I'm still tempted to see if I can pull that cluster and get it going. I really just want something to take to work during bad weather. The Country Squire is out of the question and the Geo is too nice to get hailed on. I, unfortunately, fixed my roomate's car up too much to get it ruined now as well, so this would be the beater. From what I gathered from driving it just around the block, it still drives really well, it just has a horrible exhaust leak that makes it sound like those old cars you drive at Six Flags. I think with an oil change and a little TLC I can get it driveable. And the interior is nice so I don't feel gross in it, I just have to remove the aftermarket crap tint job. 
Luxrage fucked around with this message at 17:27 on Nov 3, 2019 |
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Nov 3, 2019 17:24
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Turns out AAA will tow a car for any reason up to 100 miles, so it worked out! I got it in yesterday afternoon. We attacked it with a hose, and when that didn't work, a mop. It is still a total mess, like the black stuff is part of the paint at this point. Oh well!   Today I did a few little things, I did a baby's first oil change on it and put a new filter on as well. That engine's very easy to work with. The oil was burnt but not a milkshake or full of engine shards so I'm grateful for that! I was able to reach the filter from the top of the engine with enough room to fit a wrench in as well.   The window tint that's on this is awful, the back window's horribly peeling and the passenger side is blurry. I scraped as much of it off as I could and it looks a lot nicer now.  (this is halfway through to show you how bad it was initially) One highlight is I took the nasty foam steering wheel cover off to find the wheel in nice shape, which is a plus for once:  Another thing I did was pull the front license plate off to see why it was missing the mounting box:  The high mount taillight and the turn signal lenses in the front are trashed so tomorrow I'm gonna swap those and get that box installed. I'll take a greater inventory and get some video of the car in action. Quick notables that I'm worried will make it fail inspection: 1. There's a big exhaust leak somewhere, it sounds like a 19-10s car when you have it running. 2. The digital dashboard is toast so there's no odometer to read It's super cold outside but I'm still tempted to go dig around the back seats more for fun since my roommate just went to bed and I've got not much else to do! Luxrage fucked around with this message at 06:05 on Nov 8, 2019 |
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Nov 8, 2019 06:01
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Double posting, but I forgot to add had a run in today with this one man who seems to walk the neighborhood and find me when I least want him to. He calls himself "Q" and always tries to buy my cars. He feeds me lines about how he's an honest man and doesn't believe in lying and then just pelts me with lowball offers. Even though I'd love to flip this Maxima, I'm not gonna give it to him because I'm sick of his constant lowballs and you think a man who wants to buy a car from me would actually tell me his name. The conversation went a bit like this as he saw me getting into the car while it was in my driveway by the street:  "You just get that car? Did you sell your wagon? (I had that red '87 parked in the street) "Yeah, just got this from Denton yesterday for $300" "How much you want for it? I know you want to get your cut but I'm an honest man and I could give you $450 for it."Like, drat, get your own car lmao. I just told him I was interested in selling it to get rid of him and if he calls me I'm just gonna tell him it has some big problem with the title and it's gonna take a long time to sort out. I also got antsy since I've got nothing to do other than make a mix CD for the car and decided to take a look at the high mount brake light to see why it wasn't coming on. Figured the bulbs were bad. For some reason both the clips were missing and the housing was just free-floating in the back deck...   those monster bulbs melted their housings!I put some way smaller bulbs in for the time being but now they don't shine right because the mounts are bad and that makes me
Luxrage fucked around with this message at 07:29 on Nov 8, 2019 |
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Nov 8, 2019 06:41
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angryrobots posted:Tell him $600 and wash your hands of it imo. Let inspection be his problem. As expected I haven't heard from him since. I've been working on the car more and more in the meantime. My goal with this is to try to spend as little money as possible as a failsafe for it grenading itself. So far I'm down like $55 so it hasn't been too terrible. Just a walmart battery, an oil filter, and some junkyard parts. I'm just gonna plod away at it until something happens. I put the junkyard license plate holder and turn signal lenses on. It looks a lot better already. The license plate bracket was a pain to put on because I had to unbend whatever damaged bumper braces were under there to get the clearance. Also, the hail damage is horrific and the windshield is cracked but other than that it now looks acceptable from about... 30ft away. The whole point of the car is to take it to work in hail anyways. I don't want my daily driver Tracker getting damaged, so I am not gonna go crazy with fixing it up like I did the Tracker when I bought it. More on that Truck later. It's also giving me a chance to work on a lot of the more crummy car stuff that I haven't encountered in my other cars yet.    Upsides are it isn't leaking oil and doesn't seem to be burning any as well. I don't see any loss of coolant or anything else either. The engine looks to have been replaced at some point. I can see paint marker on it with "150K" but who knows how long ago that was. The tires are holding air and there's no screaming belts or horrible noises. I've been driving it to work the last two days ( I drive a rural farm road in the morning so it's rarely full of cars) and haven't had any scary moments. Regarding the Texas vehicle inspection, as far as I can tell, doesn't care about no speedometer, so we'll see on Thursday or Friday when I get it inspected if it passes. My county doesn't do emissions, so that saves a lot of hassle. The only upcoming big purchases I'm going to do are to replace the hood struts and patching that exhaust leak. My friend mentioned it had one and you can clearly hear it but he said he never could find it. It took about two seconds under the car to see:  so once I get that patched this weekend that should be all it needs to pass inspection and get registered. Other issues is the car seems to randomly forget overdrive exists and the whole digital dashboard / climate control issue, but that'll all get fixed when I pull the cluster. If I get that working that'll be a good selling point (to sell it and the HUD by itself if the car dies) Speaking of the truck earlier. It was supposed to be what the Nissan is now, but it's too nice to get trashed in severe weather, and I'm working on getting that prettied up as well. Here's a recent picture of it from earlier this week. I experimented a few weeks ago with painting the bumpers black again with some trim paint. It seems to be holding up okay:  However, the power steering hose clamps have finally given way and are not so slowly leaking as of a few days ago. That'll be this weekend's project along with a big rearview mirror replacement job I'm still working out the details to. I'll make a post about that later this week when I get that somewhat finalized.   Also, an update on the kittens, we kept two and the mom, who they won't spay yet and it's extremely annoying having her in heat right now trying to escape as I work on the garage.   Edit: The car taunted me by turning on a section of the digital dash and then turning it off again while I was warming it up this morning: 
Luxrage fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Nov 13, 2019 |
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Nov 12, 2019 04:37
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^^ True, I shouldn't really say they're 'too nice to drive' cars though, the Squire and the Geo were both daily drivers at one point for me, and the Geo still is used almost every time I have to go out regardless of the weather, but I'm sick of worrying about or horrible hail storms taking out my cars! Having the Squire outside was one of many motivators that finally pushed me to buy a house. I didn't even have covered parking!  And speaking of hail, we had one storm come through a few weeks after I bought my house, so the Squire narrowly missed getting hit and the Geo already went through one since I got it. My experience living at the Texas / Oklahoma border so far is that this area has been a nasty habit of forming hail storms out of nowhere around here, and I work shift at a manufacturing facility so it's not like I can duck out of work. I just have to sit there watching stuff like this roll in:   This is the hail balls from the one that hit the Geo while I was trapped at work:  So I promised myself this wouldn't happen again! That Geo has sheet metal like kleenex. So anyways, I am thinking about how I'm gonna do this Geo dimming mirror project this weekend. I have replaced the rearview mirror in the truck twice now because the things keep breaking and dumping little plastic bits all over:  At $30 a set I am getting sick of doing this over and over. I flip them up and down a lot since my commute is half daytime half nighttime and they end up always failing. So I'm going to do what I did in the Country Squire and wire up a Ford auto-dimming rearview mirror. I picked Ford's Gentex ones because I'm familiar with the wiring and they seem pretty robust. The first issue I have is the way they mount the Geo mirrors. They're mounted on the roof!  However, this leaves me with an access hole that I can use to run wires through the truck down to the footwell where I believe in the dash there's an access panel I can remove to get into the body structure. I'll just mount the new mirror button on the windshield. It'll run like this:   down to the fuse panel that I might have to wire up a breakout box for. There's no empty fuses like the Country Squire had. That thing was practically cheating since the standardized fuse box had several switched and unswitched power taps for police/taxi accessories.  It's a real rats nest in there right now with one tap for the Dashcam. The mirror is this one that I posted in the terrible car stuff thread about. Just a standard Gentex 7-pin mid-00's auto dimming mirror. I accidentally ripped off a layer of the donor car's windshield for so oops! I have one from a Lincoln MK VIII but that one looks out of place so I'll use the more basic Crown Vic one.   Seat Safety Switch posted:That exhaust leak is a perfect opportunity to learn how to patch with a beer can, hose clamps, and muffler putty. That hole is suspiciously close to the taper in the pipe so I might have to get crazy with it! Here's some bonus art from the owner's manual:  
Luxrage fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Nov 13, 2019 |
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Nov 13, 2019 20:01
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So I've done a bunch in the last few days, both good and bad. I'm gonna try to break this down into two posts. The Maxima and the Tracker. The Maxima I took the Maxima to my friendly neighborhood Ford dealer on Thursday with the hole in the exhaust and the non functional cluster just to see what would happen. I'm friends with the manager of the quicklane there and he assured me it'd pass.  It's funny because the guy knew just from looking at it what it was and was asking how all the cool (and non working) features were. it failed. Reason: No speedometer  But, they told me if I get that fixed they'd pass it and didn't charge me. So I took to the internet for my options. Lo and behold, you can just swap in an analog cluster! So I pulled up a guide and pulled my cluster out for now. Getting a working analog one in will buy me some time to get this one fixed anyways. Here's the gauge cluster without the dark lens on it  Here's the board in the back that I believe is the source of my problems. I'm not seeing any cracked solder or bad capacitors so I might have to throw myself to the lions at the Maxima owners forums and see if they know the specific components that go bad. It was actually a nice easily removable board that I wan swap off the back of the cluster so I don't have to mail it off if I find someone willing to repair it for me if I can't:  Working on this was hell because I was under constant assault by acorns and had quite a few bounce up in my face  So, I broke a bunch of brittle trim panels doing all of this so I set off to the pick n' pull this morning to get the cluster from that one! Nobody had messed with it since I was there last time which was good and the interior was immaculate (but not blue but oh well!)    as I am very smart and cool, I immediately realized that the plugs in the back were different. That's right, I'm replacing the whole dash harness for this! Since I had the dash apart, I also pulled the clock and the keypad door lock controller board since mine's not holding a code. I am gonna see if that solves that problem. The master reset code is on a sticker on the box which makes it easy! I was going to take the keypad from the driver's side door as well but it is attached to huge pigtail and wouldn't be worth the hassel. It works just fine but some of the numbers have worn down.  That panel full of buttons snapped in half and broke ALL of the tabs on it when I pulled mine. This one was much nicer. That wiring harness has about 10 plugs on it but it isn't very hard to figure out. Nissan did a decent job making each one different. When I got back I did a test fit, and guess what? It works! There's no speedo cable in this so I just plugged in the harness adaptor and plugged in the cluster and it popped right on!  Here's a video of the initial test. Listen to that exhaust go! I did end up testing the speedo just by driving straight forwards in the driveway. I saw it move a little so I think it works! The car at the yard had a few reasons for being there written on the windshield and none of them were electrical. https://i.imgur.com/xuhTjhB.mp4 The clock also worked  The cigarette lighter I pulled also worked! The transmission switch backlighting didn't work so I took the one from the car as well.  It looks like an utter disaster at the moment, and I work 12 hour days for the next three days. Wednesday is gonna be when I get this all back together and get it passing inspection. The hardest part is fishing it all back through the dashboard. This harness goes from the instrument cluster to all the buttons below it, the clock, to the glovebox lighting and switch for that.  This has been pretty fun so far messing with this car, and I'm only now about $200 in. They only charged me like $110 for all those parts! The big hurdle is going to be to figure out the airbag light on the cluster. It's not a light but an LED with a board that might be tied to something else. I'm gonna do some research before I mess around with it too much. I might just leave it behind the cluster and cover the hole up so I don't accidentally trip some failsafe. The only thing that I'm going to lose from this conversion is that the fuel gauge won't read correctly as the digital has a different sending unit. I'm not concerned about it as I'm sure the fuel pump will fail sooner or later. To get to the pump to swap the sender units you have to pull the back seats entirely out and that's not something I really want to get into. If this passes I'm going to celebrate by getting some hood struts for it AND someone on the Maxima forum is has remade the 4DSC stickers! https://www.makestickers.com/design/190819221700-3tc0vn0h4k3gf5icog1312xb?pgid=ae32995f-f804-4246-9e9a-78d282a2de19 I'll get a post together on what I did with the tracker next... Luxrage fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Nov 17, 2019 |
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Nov 17, 2019 04:13
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So I did 90% of the mirror work for the Tracker this weekend. The one roadblock I had was that I was a bit incorrect on my memory of the access hole under the mirror mount...  At least it looks nice when you put the screws back in. I might put some little plugs in instead but I think that's good enough. I'll probably find a better way to run it in the future, but the wire runs I've got at the moment should be big enough for two cables. The Gentex 7-pin plugs all share the same wiring, the layout is like this:  Most of the functions like the reverse dim-disable and the tempurature sensors I'm not needing for obvious reasons which makes this very easy. I simply ran a wire for hot and for ground. I had some leftover plastic wire wrap whatever it's called and used the last of it for this.  This photo has the other wires on the plug still, this was just for the first initial test fit. I slapped a fuse tap on it for a quick install.  There's one unused fuse slot in the truck for a rear window defrost what I can use. I might use that as a breakout point for a power block.  I have a brown cover for mine, I don't know why there's so many variant colors! and it works!   The button's in and needs 24 hours to cure. I might bring it all with me and install it all during my lunch break at work Monday  
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Nov 17, 2019 05:16
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That was some sort of plastic film looking stuff that was chipping off. Maybe that's part of the problem. I can find posts on the Maxima forums of people saying they've fixed this board problem but never what they actually did. I'll get some close up shots of the board later this week. The nice thing is if I do get this fixed in the future it's a simple plug-in test to ensure it works and not something I need to gut the car for. Luxrage fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Nov 17, 2019 |
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Nov 17, 2019 13:57
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Well, I'm in the thick of it now! I tried every trick in the book I could to get that digital dash working without tearing into it too hard so now I'm going to focus on getting that analog gauge cluster in there. I pulled the glovebox to get the end of the wiring harness out. He had four and a half pairs of sunglasses in there...  See that gold box on the far right of the first picture, that's the keypad control box. Nissan is nice enough to print the reset code for the box right on it. It's that bottom number. This picture's of the original non working one.   I put the junkyard one in and.... https://i.imgur.com/BGNGlHF.mp4 It's like 60 degrees and overcast so I gotta keep working to get the most out of this day!!!! Luxrage fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Nov 20, 2019 |
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Nov 20, 2019 18:22
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Sgt Fox posted:The blue and green bars are transformers. The magnet wires wind around the bobbin and then terminate to stiff wire leads on the side. The soldering of the magnet wires to the leads generally looks poor on most cheap teansfoemers. It's probably exacerbated by the conformal coating sprayed over the board, which is what is flaking off. R18 does look odd though. I'll try to get some better board photos. In the meantime here's how yesterday and today went! So right after that last post I found out something awful, the trim with all of the buttons on it wasn't the same as the one in my car because the junkyard car didn't have tilt steering.  But it's a good thing I have a dremel!  After that, I got the car back together and vacuumed it out. It looks really good now! I mean, on the inside it does...    So, shortly after these pictures were taken something happened. Something awful. As I was leaving for the inspection place I noticed the engine was eerily quiet, like all of the exhaust noise went away. However, the car now was barely able to hit 30mph and would die at every light. It wasn't able to idle at all!!!!! So naturally I took it to my friendly neighborhood Ford dealer for the inspection anyways. My friend who works there sure likes this car because he fought with the state inspection guy to get it passed despite it not really running right and told me if I couldn't fix this engine issue to tell him and he'd buy it off of me. This is the same guy who I met at Radwood Austin and also was all over this car before so he's very sympathetic towards the cause of keeping 80s cars alive. I owe him big for that one. I took it back and checked to see if I was getting spark from any of the plugs and it seemed like half the plugs weren't firing. I went out and grabbed an in line spark tester but gave up because it got dark out. Here's what it was idling at, if you can call barely staying alive idling:  The inspector told me he was only passing it out of pity. I mean, it's a state safety inspection and what's safer than a car that doesn't run! Anyways, it's a real kick in the dick to get all this stuff finally working and have the car nearly die on you, that's for sure!!!! But, all was not lost, as I took my rage out on the Geo and installed the wiring for the mirror.  It's hard to see but the wiring is there. The mirror works like a charm. So all of this was Wednesday. Today I get up and go out to check the worst and wouldn't you know it the car's working just fine! Here's the idle speed now:  I drove down to the registration office which is also the town's fallout shelter and was promptly denied registration because my friend forgot to sign the back of the title. This is good because I was sitting there and realized I had forgotten to submit my paperwork for my Texas Classic Vehicle Plate which does nothing but say that your car's 25+ years old. I swear by these useless plates and will put them on everything.  For classic plates there's no extra charge for adding your own lettering, up to 6 characters. Also, if it's a truck like the Geo you can get classic TRUCK plates. Anyways, I drove it around a ton and tried to replicate the issue but it never came back. No idea what that was about, but I did a few things to it in the meantime. I noticed one of the reverse lights was out so I put LEDs in there, now they're bright as hell. Same with the high mounted stop light since those were melting the housing. I also pulled the wind guard off of the top of the car to clean the crap out of the sunroof and see if I could get it retracting again. I couldn't but at least it's clean! Also the light on the transmission mode selector came on! Only C though, no P for me.   I drove the car around town and stop and started it several times. The issue hasn't come back since then and the horrible rattling from the engine bay has stopped. The coolant temp is holding good and it isn't leaking any fluids. I think it is almost ready for the maiden voyage tomorrow to South Dallas in which I will visit the pick n' pull again and maybe steal the climate control unit from the car down there. This one's still not working and I want to get some functionality out of it! Other than that, it's looking pretty good!   There is one little issue that the car still has, and that it seems to be stuck in 3rd. There's been a few times where it shifts normally, but 9 times out of 10 when I start the car it is locked in 3rd. It is like driving with a CVT. A few times I've had it shifting through the gears so I'm not sure if this is a failsafe kicking in on the transmission or something but it's very odd. The shifter is sloppy so maybe that is something that has to do with it. There is one at the junkyard... but I don't know what could be causing this. I'm impressed the car can power through it and still drive normally but I'd like to get this thing shifting again. Edit: My dad just sent me this so I'm not the only one dealing with car work at the moment:  I have a whole post about 100 series LandCruisers lined up for some time in the future. I want one so bad. Luxrage fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Nov 22, 2019 |
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Nov 22, 2019 01:37
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So, STR, reading through your post today at the registration office got me thinking. I know I've had that thing working before so I'm wondering if like the Climate Control, it is just coming on randomly whenever the car is set to "run." One of the reasons I knew it was staying stuck in third, other than the tach numbers kind of making sense, is that the manual has this blurb in it about the transmission control switch:  Now, you know from a previous post that the Comfort light has gone on before, but I've never seen the [P] power light come on. I even messaged my friend the previous owner about it and he said he never had seen either light on. This makes me suspicious about some long term problem. I remember way back when I first moved to Texas hanging out with him when he still drove it and it being slow as hell. I'm sitting in the grocery store parking lot with my newly registered classic plated (coming in the mail) Maxima dicking around with the ignition when all of a sudden:  and it stayed solid! Good god, it's like someone kicked this car in the rear end, the amount of get up and go this thing has is bananas! I couldn't believe it! It shifts beautifully and both the comfort and power settings do work. You can set it to power and have it hold third until something like 4000rpm and as soon as you select off of it it shifts into overdrive. At this point it makes me wonder if it really is the neutral safety switch and not something in either the transmission control box or the ECU. I took it to a back farm road outside of town that's barely maintained so this video is a bit wobbly but I didn't want to do a pull anywhere near town: https://i.imgur.com/KdrskIo.mp4 I'm blown away by my friend telling me he has never seen a light come on on the switch box... does that mean he's been driving this thing in 3rd gear the entire time he's owned it? No wonder it has already been through one engine  To celebrate this monumental occasion, I went out and bought a pair of speakers for the car. Now, I went with what crutchfield said were the recommended speakers but I might have boned myself on that one. This is another good example of something that makes me absolutely rage about prevoius owners of cars: My friend told me one speaker just straight up didn't work. And he has an aftermarket radio in it that, up until I took charge, was in demo mode. I set to finding out what was going on there. This maxima has the BOSE audio system in it so it should be pretty good! Well...  Whoever put the aftermarket radio in the car bypassed the amps and left everything hanging which caught on something and pulled the guts of the speaker out!!!!  For the speakers that crutchfield recommended ( which BestBuy had in stock and price matched ) I don't need the whole housing so I pulled it out. I have to just use the factory holes for the non BOSE unit. It has been a real pain trying to get these things installed and I ended up running out of daylight to do this job, not to mention a good set of bolts to keep these things installed. I am gonna run to the hardware store tomorrow and get some good mounting hardware for these things.   The cabling for the speaker wire is so thick it can't fit under the speaker so I might have to do some wire cutting and just remove the BOSE amp wiring entirely if these don't fit correctly. This is the BOSE housing that went under the deck and bolted to the top, it is huge:  This job would be 900% easier if I could find these things instead of dealing with nuts:  To get these speakers out I had to pull the back seat bottoms to pull the back seat backs out to get to the deck cover. Most of the bolts were missing which tells me whoever did this just didn't care. I'm finding on every job I do that a majority of the screws are missing.  Now, I found another problem here. Neither of the rear seatbelts actually work. They are both locked in position. I have no idea how to remedy this one! Luxrage fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Nov 23, 2019 |
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Nov 23, 2019 02:04
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I've got a riveter I could bust out but I don't know if it would fit given the rake of the windshield... Although typing this out I just realised I could go from the bottom! I'll try some stuff tomorrow! Tomorrow I'm also gonna do a proper high speed highway drive to cycle out the seafoam and gas in the tank and also to go see a drag race! I picked up a fuel filter today and I'm gonna install it before I go.
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Nov 23, 2019 02:52
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I have the ignition switch from the junkyard car and tried plugging it in back when I first got it. Those ignition switches you can operate with a screwdriver. And it just plugs in in two spots. It didn't seem to change anything. It is an easy enough swap to try it again but I wonder if the junkyard one is bad too. Maybe there's one of the relays for controlling that kind of stuff isn't triggering properly in the engine bay?. I'll post my progress today after I get back from the drag strip, but I got the speakers in and all together! It drives very spirited when the transmission control is working properly, and the idle seems to be smoothing out. Definitely needs new plugs, though, the ones I looked at were fouled badly.
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Nov 24, 2019 01:00
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While driving back from Denton I gave the climate control a punch and it came on briefly and then shut down again. I'm definitely thinking that is going to just need to be outright replaced. The transmission control either does not come on entirely or when it comes on when I turn the ignition on stays on the entire time. I also noticed after I got home that as long as the car was warmed up every time I turned the ignition back on the transmission control would come on. I'm wondering if it's as simple as a relay crapping out. RockAuto says that there is a transmission control relay for the car, I believe it's one of the ones that goes next to the fuse box. It may be worth replacing just to see what happens. I'll have a better update over lunch. I ended up getting back around 1am last night after am hour drive back in the Maxima. Power mode in that car is insane: it down shifted to second when I passed someone and took it all the way up to 5K on the tach which I was not expecting. That car is a snappy shifter! I was with the previous owner of the car during my time at the drag strip, and peppered him with questions about his experiences owning it. I'll give you the best and worst of that too.
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Nov 24, 2019 16:38
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Well, while I was looking at that relay, I couldn't find anything on any site that said where it was. I found all the relays in the engine bay and such but nothing actually said Transmission control. I sat in the car about 10min ago at the start of my lunch break and I discovered this: It seems like a quick snap back to accessory and forward again gets the [P] light on and the transmission working. https://i.imgur.com/bSBeIET.mp4 Edit: the more I mess with it the less likely it seems specific to the ignition. I can feel a relay in the shifter going off either way, same with the column. I'm still going to try the quick ignition swap later this week. I can feel a definite 'clunk' in the steering column on the times when it does engage. This is all without running the engine, mind you. I guess I'll try that ignition again on Thursday. When I installed it before and tested it I was only looking at the instrument panel and had no idea about this [P] light system so I'll try it again and see what I find. The transmission light, when it comes on, stays solid so it is passing its internal checks. I'll have to pull the kick panel but it won't be a huge job. That'll at least eliminate the ignition switch.  I also found a post detailing the internal checks and this was the 'no light' scenario so maybe the neutral safety is still a part of this problem. Strange that it does come on from time to time though. Getting back to what I did with the car the last few days: I picked up some speed nuts but found the sheet metal around the speaker was curled downwards which made it so the nuts wouldn't sit flat with the holes and after going back and forth a few times in my impotent rage I grabbed some sheet metal screws and was expecting to continue the hack job tradition, but I will say they were almost the exact same size as the pre-made holes so they screwed in by hand and fit very snug. I have less bass now but I'd rather some nice wire managed mid-level speakers than a half working setup of good ones. They were the original OEM speakers so someone pretty much ruined this thing's audio setup just by wanting a CD player in it.  I wish I had pulled the speakers first because I could have mounted the larger ones in the existing Bose box and stuck it back in there, but at least this way I have better wire management. I put it all back together after that. No rattles and both seat belts are still seized. Most of the hardware for holding in the back decking and the upper half of the rear seats was missing which is an alarming trend I'm seeing everywhere in this car.  Another thing I took a look at was the cruise control switch. It felt super loose and would crunch into the wheel housing when I would press it. I popped it out and both the switches are clickable. So that's odd. the nubs that pressed the two switches has worn down over time, I think. That or there's a layer of something missing between these switches and the rocker.  So getting to the questions I asked him about the car, I hit him with a few questions on what the car was like in his ownership and got some interesting findings. 1.) The lights on the transmission switch never came on for him. It very rarely drove properly. I suspect, as I said previously, that it has always been in limp mode for him. 2.) The cruise control does work but "randomly speeds up" sometimes. 3.) That issue I had that one day where it idled at about 250 and would die? "That just happens sometimes." 4.) The windshield has a ton of vertical scratches in it. I asked what that was about.  He said one morning he didn't have an ice scraper so he used the back of a knife.  5. )The sunroof shade is gone which causes the roof of the car to bounce and rattle at idle. He says he removed it for reasons unknown and might still have it. 6.) The speaker and the aftermarket radio were already in the car when he got it so I can't rage at him for that botch job. The radio's CD player is starting to go out. I would replace it with the same single DIN unit that I put in to replace the Tracker's equally bad aftermarket botch job but I'm afraid of what I'll find when I take the radio out. I am planning another junkyard trip to see if i can pull the blend door motors for the HVAC to find if that's the reason nothing moves in mine. Bonus shot from the drag strip: 
Luxrage fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Nov 24, 2019 |
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Nov 24, 2019 20:22
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Update: I didn't realise it would be so cheap, so I'm going to pick up an allegedly tested Transmission Control Unit for the Maxima since they seem to be on sale for only 7-10 dollars with free shipping and returns. Since I won't need the car to be on, it'll be like the keypad control unit where I should plug in the new box, turn the car to run, and the transmission power light should immediately illuminate. For that price I'm willing to try it while I work on the alternatives this weekend. The overdrive switch works perfectly fine and I can feel in the shifter the inhibitor switch triggering when the car is in park so I don't think it's either of those, but I'm not 100% confident yet.  We'll see! I'm thinking Friday is when I'm going to go to the parts yard and pull the blend door motors. I also checked for any Infiniti Q45s because they share the same climate control module but the only two available are 1 and 3 years too new and they are missing the mechanical blend door for cabin/outside air. What a pain! However, in my digging I discovered a forum in which someone claims to have found a fix for the climate controls: https://forums.nicoclub.com/fix-for-1990-1993-q45-climate-controller-found-t449899.html That'll give me another thing to mess with this weekend. Edit: I knew this stuff wouldn't be too expensive but this is ridiculous:  Edit: This is the idle speed in park after 3 hours of highway driving, I'm still gonna replace the plugs but I think it is finally back to where it should be. It goes from about 1500 - 1200. I wonder if the Haynes manual will tell me what the actual speed should be, I should check. 
Luxrage fucked around with this message at 00:45 on Nov 26, 2019 |
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Nov 26, 2019 00:34
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I put the 'new' ignition switch in and it is acting the same as before. It did lead me on by working the first few times, but then it went back to acting how it has before. However, this ignition feels lightyears better than the one that's in the car, so I'm most likely going to replace it anyways. It requires a bit of soldering if I don't want to take the key tumbler out but only for the two wires that make the 'key in the ignition' dingdong connection. https://i.imgur.com/S7YNVbY.mp4 The transmission controller is marked 'Out for Delivery' and it's almost 4pm so I have no idea where it is. My mailman has a habit of giving our street's mail to the wrong houses so that makes me worried. It's not marked delivered yet so maybe the mail truck finally broke down. That thing sounds worse than the Maxima did when I first got it! The UPS package of my capacitors for the climate control did show up this morning though.  I set about trying to get into the center stack to access the transmission controller if I do get it today and found that to get it out you have to pull the actual center console and everything. That wasn't terrible, as it was just 6 screws. I pulled the radio as well, and the good news is the butcher of a previous owner at least used the harness adapter for this!  Taking that out finds that the climate control is behind the center stack, so it really does have to come out all the way!  You can see the test ignition to the left, it is that strange electrical tape-wrapped box. I'll get a better picture of it next time I'm out there. The bad news is the seller of the $2 repair book cancelled my order. BUT I did find a PDF for a 94 that is almost the same if I just disregard the other engine option that they added in 92 I think.  Here's the diagnostics section for the transmission. As you can see mine fails step 1...  It gives me a good place to start working, though:  I also put a new fuel filter in it, but it's raining on and off pretty hard. If I get that box in before dark I'll continue to tear into it and see if I can do a test fit. If it works I'm gonna head to the junkyard tomorrow and do some more parts pulling! I found out more about the history of the car while having Thanksgiving with my friend: The car was given as payment for some residential construction work to his Grandfather. Luxrage fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Nov 29, 2019 |
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Nov 29, 2019 23:12
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Here's the A/T controller box plug, you pull the left kick plate off next to the gas pedal to get at it.  That purple cable has been an ongoing mystery. It has a bunch of crimp connectors in it and a ferrite bead, but it has no connection anywhere and is floating around in the dashboard. I suspect it is some aftermarket radio crap and maybe it's for the radio's remote. It gets in the way of the gas pedal sometimes and is very annoying. I heard the mail truck go by, so I think he's finally dropped off my box. I'll see what I can do with the limited daylight. That's the ECU underneath the transmission control box. I hope the previous owner never dicked with that screw. 
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Nov 29, 2019 23:43
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I pulled the top plug off for the A/T controller and popped the one I got in the mail in: and.... https://i.imgur.com/OG541rp.mp4 It works! The P light is much brighter now, too. This was sitting cold as well, so I have faith it'll keep working when it is installed properly. I might do the ignition switch swap tomorrow as I'll have to drop the column to pull the center stack out and that's also necessary for the ignition swap. I need to figure out what I'm gonna do with the Maxima and get it back together tomorrow because it's blocking the garage! 
Luxrage fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Nov 30, 2019 |
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Nov 30, 2019 00:46
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I pulled out the climate control unit. Looks like the front plate and board slide right out of the housing after you remove two screws and pry off the clips: I did the capacitor swap but it didn't do anything. I was suspicious that mine was either different from the Infiniti ones or had some other deeper problem and it looks like I might just have to wait for a parts car or a junkyard one. After that I set to work pulling the A/T box and installing the new one. That thing took me three hours to get out. The screws are mounted front and back of the box, so I had to take a wrench back up behind the ECU and unbolt it from this big annoying bracket that everything was attached to.  (looking down through the radio hole) There was no way that was going back in how it came out so I double sided taped it and put the front screw in!  I put the car back together and stress tested the transmission controller. It comes on every time and the troubleshooting shows no faults!  I'm still waiting on the hood struts from Rock Auto, but this took so long I didn't have time to go to the Pick n' Pull. Either way I took it out on the street and it's still stumbly in the lower revs, as expected, but it runs great!
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Dec 1, 2019 00:23
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I'll have to keep that method in mind. The car isn't throwing the CEL at the moment which is surprising, and the light does work since I swapped in the cluster. I'm really puzzled by ">>84 A/T Diagnosis Communication Line." never having been thrown since the A/T controller never worked most of the time. There is a rubber covered pink connector hanging down the front of the dashboard. I'm not sure what that is for if this car predates OBD2. Unless it's a Nissan scan tool port or something like that.  The hood struts I ordered came in last night so I put them in the car!  They didn't hold the hood up so I guess they're going back to RockAuto. You do get what you pay for I suppose. At 1/6th the price of the ones at O'reily's I was at least hoping they'd barely hold the hood up or something! I hope Rockauto takes my return since I had to slice the bags open. My game plan for the HVAC is, starting tomorrow, I'm going to basically time travel back in time about a week and start posting on the Maxima forums and give them a sped up version of everything that has happened so far. I know there's someone on the forums that repairs the HVAC controllers so I could hopefully get some guidance (or a replacement) from them. I might also go to the junkyard just to play around with that car and tear it apart more, but I'm starting to run out of things that I can take from that one.
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Dec 3, 2019 16:48
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The book refers to CONSULT quite a few times so I bet that is what that port is for. Being an 89 and full of computer controlled gadgets I would bet that is what it is for. This one doesn't have ABS so it wouldn't be a connector for that. So I went to the junkyard today. Took the Maxima to run another tank of SeaFoam through it. It kept up with the flow of traffic well enough I didn't have dashcam set up in this car so I followed the JDM rulebook and put the GoPro in over-the-shoulder style. I might get a front/rear window cam for it that I'll eventually migrate to the 100 Series LandCruiser that I will someday get. https://i.imgur.com/YUq4zdf.mp4 edit: I'm not doing anything crazy over the speed limit here, it's like 80 in a 70, but I don't really know what SA's policy is on posting stuff like speeding. Anyways, I got to the yard and, as always, I'm the only person who has taken any parts off of the maxima so far. I'm really gutting it at this rate!    I got the rear seatbelts out with relative ease:  I also grabbed the rear finishing panel which they only charged me $15 for  It isn't the same, but I didn't think that would be a problem. It was only held on with 8 easy to get to nuts anyways!  I don't think it looks as cool, but I'd rather have mismatched than broken! Maybe I should go back and get the taillights as well...  I ran out of daylight but I did get one seatbelt in. For some reason the ones at the yard came out so nice, these were so hard to remove I destroyed a cheap ratchet in the process. The bolts were pretty heavily seized on only the left side. I got the left replacement in but it needs some adjustment to retract properly! 
Luxrage fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Dec 5, 2019 |
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Dec 5, 2019 01:52
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Put the new belts in and they both work great. They're not blue, but whatever! I'd rather have mis-matched than not working! The front brakes are starting to screech, I'm sure they're gonna need replacing. I'm gonna clean my garage today so I'll have to shuffle all the cars around.
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Dec 5, 2019 19:18
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Sgt Fox posted:Looks good, but I think I'd go get the tails to go with it, or a different filler. The only thing holding me back from going down there tomorrow and getting those taillights (aside from money at the moment) is I noticed this was part of the removal:  I see the three bolts but trying to remove whatever seal is on it might not be easy in the middle of the parts yard. Although thinking about it, it is probably all dried up by now and probably doesn't do much of anything as far as sealing. I might go next weekend or tomorrow, we'll see how much work on the house I can do today! I had a terrifying gas station encounter of the Tracker a few days ago as well. So most of the encounters with random people I get over the Tracker and the Country Squire are usually normal car enthusiasts / people who had one and such. I even have already ran into a Maxima enthuisast who was on Maxima #7, but sometimes I get some crazies. And this one was up there. I'm in the gas station waiting in line to buy something to drink, when this old dude comes in, and stands about two feet in front of me and just points at me wordlessly... for about ten seconds. This is what he finally said (he's  in this conversation) That yer Tracker? Yeah, why?You got any spare carburetor parts? I need carburator parts for my Tracker. I have a pristine one, only 1900 miles on it but I need carburetor parts.Now, I don't know about this, and I can't find any information on this, but I don't think ANY Tracker/Sidekick was sold carb'd. I can only assume he took the EFI off of it and put a carb on his. I tried to clarify if he was talking about a Samurai, but nope, it's a Tracker. I can't find any parts, there's just no parts anywhere. I got a '91 and I need carb parts.Again, I didn't want to say anything about the carb situation and how I don't think a single US/Canada Tracker/Sidekick is gonna have a carb on it unless someone specifically modded it, but I know there's a bunch of Tracker parts suppliers all over the place with full engines and EFI parts at the ready. I told him about the smashed up '96 that's currently sitting in the same Pick N' Pull as the Maxima. He didn't have a phone so he wrote the number down and said he'd call them for that one's carb...   The only other sketchy Tracker story was I once walked up on a trenchcoat-laden fellow peering into my windows, but it turns out he was an ultra-die-hard Tracker fan so I guess you can't judge on appearances. Luxrage fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Dec 13, 2019 |
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Dec 13, 2019 20:05
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I bet some of the world-market Sidekicks would have had the carburetor on them, but I can't find much info on those. I think all of the North American market ones built in Canada came with EFI as the only option. I did some digging and found a video of a carburetor converted Tracker and, well,  That air cleaner is just kinda hangin out I guess. I am seeing a few other conversions as well, but everyone seems to use everything from VW Beetle carbs to Toyota ones so he's probably boned on parts unless he knows what it came from.
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Dec 13, 2019 20:18
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I tried using google's photo translate for that, but it really doesn't like vertical text so I didn't see one that stuck out as a blower. My grandma had a bluebird in Scoltand so maybe there is a UK fuse cover you can find on UK ebay or something that would have that in english? Well, I did it. I went down to the junkyard for what I hope is the last time for Maxima stuff. We'll see, though! So pulling those taillights out was pretty simple, but good god was that black stuff nasty. It came down to just taking the three nuts off and pushing on the screws to pop it off.  https://i.imgur.com/iHwaTWH.mp4  Annoyingly the backplate that has all the electrical wasn't interchangeable since the lamp sizing for the turn/reverse lights are different so that cost me an extra 20 bucks. All-in-all, it cost me about $50 for this. I did find that you can install the backplates backwards. It swaps the reverse and turn signals which I guess makes sense!  Like all of my junkyard expeditions, I got home right at 5:30 so I only had enough daylight to get one of them on and see how it looked. It looks a lot nicer! Depending on how busy things are I might do the other one over lunch at work tomorrow since it is such a fast conversion. The light plate just plugs in to the car so I can swap the bulbs and pop it on easy. The left taillight has a scuff on it from I assume when they were positioning the car at the yard and the right one has a tiny bit of the black plastic surround broken off that I can fix with RTV  Also, as you can see, my classic plates came in! Now it's a stylish jalopy! Luxrage fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Dec 15, 2019 |
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Dec 15, 2019 03:55
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There, once the sun hits it for a few hours that sealant just pulls off like bubblegum: 10/10 didn't even have to pull off any trim, a true 5min job. Replaced some bulbs while I was in there, too. Do I like them as much as the previous full-wrap turn signals? Not really but these are larger and more clear. I also noticed when I plugged the wrong panel in that the LED bulb I got for the reverse lights work as turn signals so I miiight swap them just to have ultra noticable turn signals. My neighborhood turn-in is off of a 60mph road and I've almost been rear-ended several times already turning in. At this point the next course of action is to get the muffler patched. I don't know how much will need to be done so I'm going to hold off on that for a bit since my cat needs spayed. She's keeping me up all night howlin' and other wild cat things! The front end is also making more and more noise the more I drive it, various squeaks and clunks and clicks and things so I'm hoping once I get the muffler patched I can more clearly hear what's going on up there. Luxrage fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Dec 15, 2019 |
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Dec 15, 2019 19:45
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Best case it works when you free it, worst case it's dead. Best-worst case it makes an amazing screech noise and then dies! Do you have any pictures of the outside of the car, I'd love to see it!
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Dec 17, 2019 00:17
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So I was running late for work yesterday so I took my roomate's car as he parks outside the house and I can leave quickly. His car is worth quite a few posts worth of content as in exchange for copious amounts of housework I told him I'd fix up his car for him. More on that later. Anyways, I get in the car and as soon as I turn it on I'm greeted with a familiar sight, his transmission is in limp mode and can no longer access 5th gear:  I've done this so many times, I have it down to muscle memory: Pull out the USB VAGCOM adaptor and plug it in,  pull up the software on my laptop and scan the transmission codes and find the one fault it has:  clear it, and I'm good for another four months. From what I've read, these cars use hall effect sensors to tell transmission shifter position for the manual shift mode and other settings. This is also located right below the cupholders so they get contaminated and full of crap. If no sensors read or two read at once when the car starts, it immediately cripples the car and you aren't supposed to be able to clear it without dealer doing it themselves with the VW reader. I'll type up a full essay on all that I've done to this car and how I took it from this abused, duck taped, zip tied, oil burner:  to this clean, showroom-looking, oil burner:  edit: searching google images for B5 Passat stuff a while back gave me this image, and it couldn't be any more true: 
Luxrage fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Dec 26, 2019 |
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Dec 26, 2019 20:59
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So I told myself I wouldn't go back to the Pick n' Pull in South Dallas for any more Maxima parts since I've gotten just about everything I could off of that car. But.. I really REALLY want to look at this ambulance so I might go down there tomorrow. There's one part I could still get from that Maxima and that's the high mount brake light interior bulb housing since that one is melted on the Maxima. I've also done some deep thinking at work yesterday and I think I'm going to try to buy that 1972 Buick Skylark off of my friend's family. I want to go look at it to check the body, but it is parked on concrete so I'm hoping the rust isn't too bad (it is Texas so I have my hopes that it is all surface level). This was in a previous post but it's the only picture I have. It is wild that you can order just about everything for these out of a catalog: It's my friend's grandfathers. I thought he had passed away since I have never seen him but he is very much alive and that might complicate things. I'm super broke at the moment, and I'm supposed to be buying a 98' - 02' Toyota Landcruiser (in blue, green, or red) so this might not happen for a while still.
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Dec 27, 2019 02:30
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Raluek posted:At least go meet the old man and tell him how cool his car is; butter him up so that if/when he's ready to sell he'll already have a soft spot for you I've tried, but he's never there. I don't know if he works and lives somewhere else or what, but I have mentioned fixing it up like I have the Maxima to the rest of the family and they all don't seem attached to it. I haven't been able to do much with the Maxima recently. Been working on the house and a few other things. The more I drive it, the more noise comes out of the front left wheel, I think the caliper is sticking and the pad's wearing out. I need to get in there and free it up. There's a few more things that need done as well still, like the climate control. And peaking of that, I'll definitely be making a trip to the yard this weekend because the same pick n' pull that has the 93 I've been pulling from got this last week: 
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Jan 7, 2020 01:28
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So here's what's been up: I visited the Maxima at the yard, and look what it had!  It also has the big trunk mounted speakers that I took out of mine since they were damaged.  An OEM radio AND climate control, the two things I wanted, and even had working hood struts!   I got back home with these three things and... well the hood struts work.  The climate control barely works, and the radio is DOA. The climate control screen is super dim. However, it works 100% of the time. All it did show me, though, is all of the blend door motors don't work. I'm not too concerned about that since I really just want it so I can actually run my heater! One thing I can try, also, is the face of the climate control unplugs from a ribbon cable, so I can swap it with my broken one and see if that works full bright! The radio, after doing some research, is a BOSE package that this Maxima had. Now, it looks like a simple four speaker config so I don't think that it is going to be an issue with whatever the previous owner did, but I did find that the 94-00 revisions of the radio are much more reliable and use the same plug configuration. I'm gonna return this radio as a DOA unit and try to snipe one of them. This is something easy enough that I can test in the parking lot of the pick n' pull.  However, that's not the only news, the Maxima's low idle and failure to stay running when not moving in drive is back. Do you think it could be the fuel pump starting to go? It HAS been sitting for four years before I got it going again. Replacing the fuel pump would also mean I could have a working gas gauge in the analog cluster since they had different sending units. I'm gonna try that this weekend since I've already taken the rear seats out twice so it's a cakewalk. Also, this popped up in town on Craigslist, I'm gonna look at it for fun: 
Luxrage fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Jan 13, 2020 |
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Jan 13, 2020 03:59
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Well, I went to check out that RamCharger... You had to start it with a switch under the dashboard. Nothing electrical worked on it other than it ran. No turn signals, no wipers, no gauge cluster, headlights were a maybe.    Poor kid wanted $2000 but I think he's going to get about $300 for it. I know that's all I would have paid for a truck that won't even pass state inspection. I would totally buy it as a Maxima replacement if it wasn't so expensive. But we'll see if he sells it before I get my work bonus (I'm still not gonna pay anywher near 2000 for it) Anyways, I went back to the junkyard to pull a BOSE radio since I had a compatibility list of radios that would work. None of them matched. I pulled three OEM Nissan radios out of cars that were supposed to be matching but not a single one had the correct style of pins on the rear. At least I got my refund for my parts. Here's two of them:  I put the car's interior back together with the functional but still half dead junkyard climate control unit and wouldn't you know it the car's running again...   The fuel pump is already ordered so I guess I'll install it. I want to tackle the rubbing brakes next. I think both front calipers are sticking closed. My dad told me to just get a C clamp and press them back open as a quick n dirty check to see if they're the problem. New calipers are about $50 for each side so it won't be a huge huge deal to get them replaced. This is something I haven't done before so I'd rather practice on the Nissan than the Squire or the Tracker!  
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Jan 16, 2020 20:00
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Well, I took the Maxima out for some errands. It is mis-firing on the low end like crazy and took ages to start so I'm definitely gonna go through with the fuel pump replacement. The tank's almost empty so I'm gonna lay off driving it so I don't have to refill it before the pump swap. On the plus side, the climate control from the junkyard fixed itself! Even though none of the blend doors work, it still pushes hot through the defrost and outside air through the front vents which you can cut off with the manual switch, so I can actually heat the car up now.  I picked up some brake cleaner and C-clamps while I was out. One thing I really want to do is install a standard whip antenna where the broken power mast is. Luxrage fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Jan 16, 2020 |
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Jan 16, 2020 22:07
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STR posted:Both of those stereos look like late 90s, vs the <96 that you'd need. They were from a Pathfinder and whatever the Infiniti equivilant one was, maybe 98's? I had found a bunch more radios but they were all later than '96. The video I had watched had implied that anything up to 2000 from any BOSE Nissan would match, and while I did find some that had the same pinouts, they were not a standard double din shape.  Anything earlier than 96 had already had the interior ruined and the radio pulled. If I keep the car for any amount of time I should probably just put a cheap double din radio into it so I can at least get bluetooth audio. I will keep an eye out on ebay and stuff, though. It was a disaster, but I pulled the front left caliper that I suspected was sticking and I was right. It was pretty seized. I clamped it down a few times to cycle it and it seems marginally better. A new caliper is $50 so I will probably just change it out along with new pads. The pads were all cracked and rusted.  On the plus side I found a spark plug socket in the trunk floating around! 
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Jan 17, 2020 21:52
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I slapped the 4DSC stickers on and took out the window tint!  I also scrubbed the back window tint and much to my dismay it was the nastiest stuff imaginable: https://i.imgur.com/j7hi4YY.mp4 I couldn't get it all off but I'm hoping the ammonia in the windex will bake into it and slowly remove it. I also found out My job is shutting down and I will hopefully be having to work in Dallas instead of getting laid off so I'm gonna switch focus from buying a 100 series land cruiser to something more sensible on gas.
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Jan 27, 2020 04:12
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So a lot happened last this last weekend, my roomate's car has been burning more and more oil out of the engine bay, and the transmission resets are happening more often as well. I'm down to having to reset it at least once a month at this point. The transmission is also doing really hard reverses. I took it to get a full inspection on a lift to see just how bad everything was, I got the prognosis that there's oil leaks from just about everywhere. I've put up with a lot from this car working on it myself but I'm drawing the line at a full engine teardown and transmission work. The electrical gremlins in the transmission aren't going to get any better based on my research. My roomate's parents told him when they got it the sunroof floods the floorpan (which I fixed) but the transmission controller is under that so it has been soaked a few times already. That's just a timebomb from what the B5 community has said.  I've done so much cosmetic and mechanical work on it already I think I can sell it for at least $1500 given everything wrong with it. It is the V6 so someone who really likes Passats/A4s could get something out of it. I'll most likely list it today on Craigslist for $2000.  This Passat has been more than a mechanical problem, my roomate's not really driving at all because of how many issues it has, whether it is pushing oil smoke through the cabin or the transmission limping itself so it is a good thing it is going. But he's still going to need a car. This is where the painful part comes in. I'm going to sell the Maxima as well. There's a few issues that are deep in the Maxima that I really would need to put time into, and I've come to the realisation that this is taking time away from the Tracker and Country Squire, the cars that really should be having my full attention. Instead of upkeep on those I'm spending my time keeping the Passat from imploding or working on the Maxima. The Maxima has been super fun but I really should get one car that's 'reliable' as they say.  It's a shame, because it is a blast to drive, but with none of the blend doors working, the whole exhaust needing changed out, and the intermittant low idle issue I think it's time for it to go to someone who doesn't have two other cars plus the house to work on. On the plus side, I did an oil change on the Tracker this weekend and there was no metal shavings or milkshakes, so the Truck's in good health! I'm still going to need to replace the power steering hoses soon, though, because it definitely has a small leak somewhere. This is the kind of thing I've been neglecting for the Maxima and Passat.   all that wet stuff up there is power steering fluid!
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Feb 6, 2020 20:11
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