Mechanics

There aren’t really pics to go with this.  Sorry about that.

It began simply enough:  A dog days Saturday that promised mild temps and good weather.  Car parts in two separate boxes in my garage.  “I’ll probably have this done before you guys get back from the hair place, " I said.

I set myself two tasks:  Kill the Check Engine light in the Camry that’d been on for two years and 5 days, and give my 1995 truck a tuneup–plugs, wires, rotor, distributor cap.  I had all the parts, and plenty of hand tools.

Hrm…so, when using your snazzy power bleeder from bavarian automotive, you note the following:

1. You’re unable to get the pressure in the bleeder past 10 psi, no matter how hard you pump the cylinder.

2. You’re hearing a strange hissing, dripping sound

3. You peer past the master cylinder and reservoir to note the large puddle of brake fluid pooling beneath your car.

Sir, you have two alternatives:

(A) You just asploded your 17-year-old master cylinder by pressurizing the system past the seal tolerance

Arr arr arr!

Jeff Roberts - Apr 2, 2007

Arr arr arr!

Sunday I was all worked-up about Whitney’s car having a catastrophic oil leak somewhere behind the engine. So, this week, I monitored the oil level on the dipstick every morning before going to work, checking it at that time because all the oil drains back to the pan overnight.

Surprise, surprise: No oil loss.

Okay, going theory for now: When I poured-in the oil Sunday, the engine was tilted back at ~30 degree angle from vertical (the engine slants back towards the firewall, and I had the car up on jackstands), so my funnel allowed some oil to spill back off the valvecover.

Yeah, so I get my new radio, and I follow the easy-to-read step-by step instructions and I end-up with the mess you see above you.

Seems that E30’s all have wonky common-ground stereos, and if you want any sort of quality, they have to be rewired. I’ll be getting this done tomorrow…

Still, it was a priceless moment when Whitney and Joey returned from church Wednesday night to find me wrestling with my car’s wiring in my pj’s :-)

So, having bought our new-to-us Camry on Friday, and brought it home Saturday, I noticed some interesting things about it Sunday.

It has THREE brands of tires on it. The front tires look new, but they’re called ‘Road King’ or something like that. The passenger rear was a Dunlop P4000 touring tire, and the driver’s side rear was a BFGoodrich something-or-other.

The BFGoodrich tire was also backwards.

Some tires, particularly rain tires, have V-shaped treads that dissipate water, IF THEY’RE MOUNTED CORRECTLY! If they’re not, they approximate the wet-road traction of a greased pig.

7 hours, 3 beers, 4 Sprites, 2 rounds of Gojo, 1 large pizza, and no busted knuckles later, Joes’ maxima has 2 new front struts and a fresh oil change.

I think we could do it now in under 3 hours if we had to do it all over again.

Joe’s upper suspension mount + bushing was making some extreme noises, and since his car has 138k miles on it, he decided he wanted to get some Monroe Sensa-Trac struts, and he asked, “Harold, do you think you want to tackle this?”

Big red now has some new Bilstein shocks, thanks to my father, some air tools, and a little elbow grease. It took us two-and-a-half hours, but knowing what I know now, I could probably do it in about an hour’s time.

The jack only slipped once, but we had two jackstands under the frame at the time, so the whole process was injury free, minus some bruised knuckles.

The new shocks firm-up the ride of the truck, but it’s not punishing. It just feels more planted and controlled than before.