Leadfoot Video: Rods and Cogs

A car’s fluids are all different colors so you know which is which without having to run a chemical analysis. I’m sure they all taste differently too, but I don’t recommend preparing a cheese platter to pair with them at your next social gathering.

But why does transmission fluid have to be red?

After seeing a puddle of it magically appear under my car after work, I’m convinced its visual similarity to blood is intended to strike fear into the heart of the automotive owner. Seeing a spill of gearbox oil evoked the thought of a loved one bleeding out on the duvet.

That’s not quite the thought that came to my mind, but that’s because I have no idea what a duvet is. But I did want to grab a handful of towels to stem the bleeding. But towels would only go so far. Eddie needed surgery and a transfusion.

The puddle of red drippings was really just the last nail in the “I have to do something about this” coffin. At times, Eddie’s transmission would slip, but only in the right conditions. Leaving the gear select in automatic, and turning left onto my home street, applying some throttle persuasion to carry on through the off-camber turn, the engine would rev up as if it were in neutral. After reaching about 3500rpm without actually going any faster than before, the computer would decide “Time for second gear,” and engage it. The gears would suddenly catch, engine speed is back down to about 1200, and I’m instinctively taking my foot off the Go pedal because I’ve just received a kick in the backside.

This was due to low transmission fluid. An automatic gearbox is a bit like me: it doesn’t work properly if it hasn’t got enough fluid. The difference between the two of us is that while the transmission needs Dexron, I’m much less picky. I can run on water, orange juice, Coke Zero beer, rum, whiskey, regular unleaded or the blood of my enemies. Always with ice, of course.

Adding fluid mitigated the issue, but when that problem returned, I knew I had a leak somewhere. I just had no idea how bad a leak it was until I’d stopped the oil leaks. Then, the slipping got so bad I added another quart of Dexron, only to find those frightening red puddles the next day. I knew then that a bottle of stop-slip wasn’t going to do the job, so it was back to that online retailer of auto parts. And because I had a coupon, I figured, “Why not do the tie rods, too?”

Tie rods are another of those parts that just wear out with age. They’re a critical part of steering the wheels. By that, I mean they actually turn the front wheels so the vehicle may proceed in the desired direction. If an end breaks… well, best case scenario is the car stops moving. Worst case is the car starts going in an undesired direction.

So after 15 years, I’m wagering Eddie could use some new ones. I don’t want him going in undesired directions.

And the last plan on my mind is replacing the output shaft seals. These are designed to keep the transmission fluid inside the gearbox while still allowing the axle to spin freely. My research found them to be a likely leak candidate. The parts being only $5, I figured it couldn’t hurt.

So, with a few cans of brake cleaner, Scotch-brite pads, disposable nitrile gloves, *all* the tools I own, and the parts I’d ordered, I made my way back to my parents’ house. I also brought a six pack for my dad as payment for borrowing his grease gun.

The day started off rough. After loosening the axle nut (and having to buy a deep well 30mm socket), standing the car on a few four-by-four wood blocks and taking off the wheel, I hit my first snag.

Contrary to the norm, the stock tie rod ends aren’t secured with a castle nut and cotter pin. For the uninitiated, here’s a picture of the standard setup. The pin runs directly through the bolt and the open spaces in the nut to keep the assembly from unraveling.

Instead, Eddie’s tie rods were secured with some kind of epoxy inside the nut, and no amount of penetrating oil would facilitate its release; only leverage would do. I didn’t discover this until after having to borrow a deeper 18mm socket than the one I had. Because I didn’t have an 18mm open-ended wrench.

Hey, I never said I’d had every tool I’d need.

So then came removing the tie rod from the knuckle. Funny, everyone online made it look so easy. One guy made it happen with a few taps of a hammer. So in my arrogance, I thought I could make it happen with less effort.

I’m starting to think my parents’ neighbors have begun to associate Eddie’s appearance with the sound of hammering on metal, because no one batted an eye as I wailed on this God-forsaken steering rack extension.

WD-40 wasn’t doing me many favors that day. When the tie rod wasn’t going anywhere, I cut out part of the already-punctured boot in the aim of applying oil from above and letting gravity help with the capillary effect.

While (I hoped) the oil did its work, I turned my attention to removing the axle in order to replace the output shaft seals. Two bolts keep the spindle firmly connected to the strut. They’ve got teeth around the shaft nearer the head, to keep them from spinning while tightening or loosening their corresponding nuts. The friction these teeth provide also make them difficult to remove without the use of a hammer.

But these strut bolts weren’t nearly so stubborn as the tie rod end, so a few good whacks and they popped right out. There was still some residual friction between the spindle and the strut, so it took a bit of leverage to pry it free, but free it was. Some taps on the outside of the wheel axle had it loosened from the hub as well.

But being free of the strut wasn’t enough space to wiggle the CV joint out of the hub completely. The spindle needed a bit more freedom, and since I was already taking off the tie rod…

Nope, still seized.

A visit to the auto parts store later via my sister’s Golf, I had in my possession a borrowed tie rod end separator. That, along with the hammer used liberally earlier, finally made short work of the seized connection. What a satisfying “thunk” that was.

The outer end was indeed shot. No resistance in the joint, contributing to the loose feeling in the steering wheel. The inner joint was stiffer, but not by much.

Next was dropping the tie rod back into the spindle for added leverage so I could undo the lock nut.

Yeah, turns out the outer end wasn’t the only thing that was seized. And all the WD-40 in the world wasn’t about to undo fifteen years of elemental exposure without the assistance of some serious leverage.

Enter, again, the come-along. Yeah, seems like I can’t ever stop keeping that thing in Eddie’s trunk.

Wrapping mule tape around the maple tree in front of the house and clamping some lock pliers onto the nut, the come-along was hooked up in between.

It’s after snugging up the ratchet do I realize the only thing holding up the front of the car is a couple of four-by-fours. No, I’ve decided I’m not stopping.

Turns out an emergency brake is more than enough to keep Eddie from moving before the outer tie rod breaks free from the inner. Thanks, Physics!

With that loose, I counted the number of turns it took to get the outer end off and turned my attention to the still-seized nut.

At least, I should have. I should have taken a bucket of WD-40 and dipped the tie rod into the immersion for several hours. But I didn’t. Instead, I was so aggravated by the tie rod ordeal that I started on the transmission pan.

For all the research on the matter I conducted, I really should have discovered that there isn’t a drain plug for the transmission pan. Instead, armed with the assurance that “the fluid will come out somehow,” I started work. So I shouldn’t have been surprised when the super-simple catch can (consisting of a piece of molded plastic which feeds into used 2-liter soda bottles) would prove insufficiently small for the amount of drippage that would take place.

So a mess was made. There’s probably still an oil stain where all that oil dripped onto the asphalt.

See, when I saw there wasn’t a drain plug, I thought I could contain the flow by positioning the narrower end downhill, and jacking the opposite side slightly higher. In my mind, that would minimize the spill if I undid the downhill bolts first.

Perhaps it did. Perhaps the smallest mess possible was the one I’d made. It’s still a lot of oil spilling everywhere, because I’d forgotten that when oil can potentially go somewhere, it will.

Regardless, I upgraded to a bigger catch can. When I say “bigger catch can,” though, I mean a two-foot diameter, two-inch high circular pan, the true purpose of which I could not imagine.

So, slowly opening the uphill bolts on the pan, I eventually got the spillage to the point it was all pouring into the pan. That made me happy.

Eventually, the dripping stopped, and I could completely remove the pan without gearbox oil splashing everywhere.

Free of the anxiety over unpredictable drippings, I could finally examine the problematic gasket. Being so non-uniform in its structure, I’m left to assume (post-operation) it’s a liquid gasket. That’s to say whoever applied it squirted silicone onto the mating surface, then squished the pan into place and tightened the bolts, but not too much.

This must be why the pan is leaking again. All the bolts I tested were loose. Clearly, the plan was to bring me back to the shop soon for more maintenance.

Thinking back, I remember a trip to Jiffy Lube while I was still in film school. The kindly manager told me I had a transmission leak. Those words scared me as much then as they do now, because I was about to embark on a project that would have me commuting 100 miles round trip each day for two weeks. If not for the voyage upon which I was about to embark (the next day), I would have waited for dear ole’ Dad to give me a second opinion. Instead, I saw the distance I must travel with this potential problem lurking, and ended up dropping $300 on what was initially a simple oil change. I now see that Jiffy Lube simply used liquid silicone to make a new gasket instead of calling around to local shops to see if anyone had a proper gasket for the 3-speed.

Five years later, I’m left with red puddles. The oil leaks might have contributed to the degradation, but I’m comfortable blaming the shop.

Scotch-brite, brake cleaner and elbow grease had the mating surfaces clean and ready for the new gasket. The bolts also got a cleaning, because liquid gaskets can and will go everywhere. I’d also cleaned the outside of the filter, since it had fallen out of its mount when I was wrestling with the axle.

Which wouldn’t come out. Of course, the filter fell out on its own, but the axle is stuck in the output shaft. Granted, I didn’t have any tool that would have properly facilitated the axle’s removal. I suppose I was under the impression that an axle could be removed with confidence and a stern talking-to. But no.

Stuffing the axle back into the wheel bearing, I turned back to the tie rod. Yeah, that tie rod, the one that I didn’t dip in penetrating oil like I should have. That lock nut is so seized that trying to loosen it with the come-along just turned the inner tie rod itself. It was enough to get the outer one off, but because I couldn’t get that nut free, I couldn’t take off the inner boot, which is what stops me from applying the special inner tie rod remover tool. Daylight was burning, and the inner rod felt okay enough for me to put it on the back burner. For now.

With the lessons learned from the driver’s side, I attacked the passenger side. Made for about the same progress. And the same lack of progress.

The sun was about to start hiding behind the houses, so I screwed on the new outer tie rods, dropped them into the spindle and applied the castle nut and cotter pin. None of that epoxy-in-the-nut nonsense.

I then returned to the transmission pan. Had I used ramps to get Eddie in the air, I would have had more space to work with, but the floor jack I have is really only meant to get the car high enough to extend the suspension so the wheels can come off. It doesn’t allow much space for crawling around underneath. I also had to somehow keep the gasket lined up while positioning the pan for attachment.

Enter duct tape. Duct tape was my friend in that moment.

No, I hadn’t taped the gasket to the pan. That would have been stupid. Instead, I slotted some bolts into the holes and taped the heads to the pan. Those bolts kept the gasket in place while I held the pan against the housing and fumbled blindly for another bolt to thread by hand just barely outside my reach because I don’t fit under the car unless I’m flat on my back.

At this point, the cordless drill I bought is earning its keep. A 3/8” socket driver meant I wasn’t spending my time down there with a ratchet. Instead, it was setting the drill’s clutch and pulling the trigger until the thing stopped spinning.

The day’s charms were wearing thin on me, so I expedited putting Eddie back together and cleaning up the spilt oil with the grease-fighting power of Dawn and a hose. Worked better than I thought it would.

Driving Eddie to test, I knew right away he’d need an alignment done. The steering felt tighter, but tire noise was intrusive even at ten miles per hour. Also, while steering straight was fine, when turning right the car wanted to steer back to center. And turning left made the car want to turn left even more. Toe adjustment was definitely in need.

What I hadn’t noticed when driving to the shop was that Eddie wasn’t using all the available gears. That’s because I didn’t drive anything resembling fast when he was out of alignment. No, it wasn’t until I got onto an interstate after having the alignment done did I ask myself, “Shouldn’t it be in third by now?”

In a three-speed gearbox, third gear is kind of important. At highway speed, second gear has the engine turning around 4000rpm. That’s the peak of the torque curve, so it’s very sprightly and easy to overtake the left lane hog in a Camry.

Why is it always a Camry?

And the engine sound great at four grand. As long as it’s under load. Otherwise it’s just a loud drone, like a vocally-amplified economics professor.

Despite that, the steering feels good. Like I’m driving a car that’s eight years old instead of sixteen. I doubt I’ll ever get Eddie back to showroom condition without some real investment on my part, but I can do my best, can’t I?

Chatting with my car guy coworker, he suggested a bit of the gasket might have been sucked up into the transmission and was blocking a valve, preventing third gear from engaging.

I let it go, because I was tired. Also, my commute to work never has me exceeding 50mph, so the car is comfortable with second gear at that speed. Feels like I’m on a track day, only on my way to work.

I was prepared to let it go until I could get time to replace the transmission filter. Then, after a busy night at work, I was headed home and, upon joining Route 50, I noticed the engine wasn’t turning nearly so fast as before.

Third gear came back. All by itself. I’m now convinced this car is magical.

I’m still going to replace the filter, because I’ve no idea when it was last done. And yeah, I cleaned it, but it’s still something that I should have thought of replacing when I cracked open the pan in the first place, but I can only think ahead so many steps.

Also, that ABS light came back on…

Leadfoot: Water Conducts Electricity

When you drive an older car day-in and day-out, you learn to deal with the things that are wrong with it. Things like slow oil leaks, broken air conditioning, loose steering, that funny squeak the door makes when the right-side tires go over bumps.

Then the day comes when the oil puddle in your parking space has expanded beyond the painted white line, and your wheels roll over it, leaving more oil marks all over the lot as you head off to work. That’s when you sigh, slip on some work gloves and break out the floor jack.

You also go out and buy as small a bag of kitty litter as possible. Because you don’t have a cat, but the conditions of the lease say, “You spill it, you clean it.”

I must confess, I did a bit of that work without telling the world. Back in early June, I decided to flush Eddie’s coolant system, since he hadn’t had the coolant changed since 2008, shortly after his purchase and we found a bolt on the water pump had worn a hole in the radiator.

A proper job of it is done by draining the antifreeze and filling it back up with water and a helping of coolant flush. Seriously, that’s what it’s called. You just ask for it by that name. A few weeks are then spent driving normally with the heater on while the flush works through the system and cleans it up. The water and all the crap that got picked up is drained again and new coolant is administered.

But because it was the start of summer, I didn’t want to drive around with the heater on. I’ve had to drive without air conditioning in the humid August days of the mid-Atlantic coast, and the last thing on my list was adding more heat to that equation.

I also only get one day at a time to work on Eddie. My lease also prohibits automotive work on the premises, so I venture to my parent’s house, where there is a tree providing shade, a fridge full of cold drinks, and a hose to facilitate radiator filling. I do wonder how I got away with working on that scooter, given the lease terms.

Draining the system is straightforward enough; find the drain plug and open it. Old antifreeze is collected in a bucket, and the hose fills the system back up. I run the engine with the heat on, letting the water get hot and start dissolving the crud, then it’s drained again.

What a lovely shade of brown it was.

Fill, run, drain, repeat again, only this last time with coolant flush, just to get the very last of it. By the end, the water coming out looked almost as clear as the water going in. Close enough for me.

Between doing these fills and drains, the engine was running, so I had little to do while internal combustion did its thing.

You may recall Eddie was in a front-end collision before he came to me, specifically the front-right.

It must not have been major, or else the car would have been totaled. But it was obviously enough to bend the front-right door frame, such that there is terrible wind noise on the interstate, and necessitate a new front bumper. I know it’s not original because the new one had to be painted, and the shop didn’t use the correct primer, so the paint it’s got is flaking away bit by bit. Flex primer is not an option for painting plastic parts, I’ve decided.

The collision also tore up the forward fender liner and splash guard. These serve only small purposes: mitigate the water that splashes onto the serpentine belt and support the ABS wire as it leads to the main loom. Being shattered into five separate pieces where there should only have been two connected ones, they didn’t perform well in either duty.

Being harnessed to the splash guard, the ABS wire ended up being crushed by the fractured pieces. That was enough to puncture a small hole in the wire’s insulation. And you remember those oil leaks? Yeah, oil loves small holes.

Oil also corrodes copper, which is what wires are made of. This eventually meant the ABS module had lost the connection to the front-right wheel speed sensor. For a system that monitors each wheel’s rotational velocity, a speed sensor is kind of important. So important, that losing one sensor means the entire system shuts off and a little light on the dash glares at you. You still have brakes, of course, but you should be wary in slippery situations.

It’s been an issue for a while, if I’m honest. I’ve got decent tires, and I know to limit myself in the rain or snow, but warning lights bug me. Even if it’s not really a problem. Besides, I had the time, a bunch of spare wire (courtesy of dear ole Dad) and I’d already jacked up the front-right wheel.

(The radiator drain plug is on the left. I wanted gravity to work with me on this.)

What makes oil awesome is that it penetrates into the tiniest of spaces, worming its way in and breaking metals loose from other metals. That’s great, unless you’re talking about wires.

The small hole punctured into the ABS wire’s insulation made a nice entryway for Eddie’s leaking engine oil. The corrosion runs all the way from the sensor plug to the main loom. It’s not as bad near the loom, but it’s still there.

So I’ve got the time, I decide to replace the bad wire. It’s something I’ve already done before, but that was four years ago, and the oil leaks hadn’t been solved back then. So new oil got in, basically at the same spot as the old wire. Time to put new wire in.

Up until recently (not recent enough to do this for the fix, unfortunately), I had no idea the wire connectors I was using will heat-shrink. That would have been very helpful, considering I was trying to keep oil out of the connections. Electrical tape only does so much.

So the ultimate goal is to stop the oil leaks. For that, I turned to a coworker for assistance. A master technician for Toyota in a previous life, he suggested starting at the top with the valve cover gasket. It made sense, I decided. Gravity being the funny thing that it is, taking things that were up high and putting them on the floor, a leak up top would cover everything below in dead dinosaur juice.

My coworker-come-Sherpa enlightened me to the wonders of Scotchbrite pads and brake cleaner that day. Mating two metal surfaces with a molded rubber gasket works best when said surfaces are clean and smooth. Scotchbrite is like a hand-operated pressure washer. Those pads felt like they could scrub off skin, if I was inclined to do so.

But I’m not into exfoliating, so I focused on the valve head cover. When the two surfaces were all shiny, the new blue gasket was wedged in and the bolts were tightened up. I gave the block some more cleaning around the joint to make potential new leaks show up better and crossed my fingers.

Staring at those broken pieces that once were fender liner solidified my resolve to finally replace them. After all, they’d been in my way when the radiator hose needed replacing, when the AC compressor needed work, and the three times I’d replaced that torque mount. If I didn’t replace them, I’d be running new wire for this sensor again in about a year.

These being somewhat unique parts, the local stores were unlikely to have them. To the Internets I went, and was able to find the ones I needed. Had to get them from two separate stores, because each of them had one of the parts but didn’t carry the other. With that, it turns out there’s a bit of ignorance in the “All the parts your car will ever need,” slogan.

And, of course, the parts had a cheap feel to them. I wasn’t expecting carbon fiber from McLaren, just something a bit thicker, with more substance. It’s of small consequence, since the parts are function over form.

The funny thing about finally seeing how the part is supposed to go together is that makes you understand things. Like the fact you’re missing a few fasteners.

Times like this make me grateful my dad is a packrat (sorry, Mom). If I need a nut, bolt, and two washers to secure the splash guard to the sub frame, I’ll find them. It’ll take almost twenty minutes of picking out likely candidates from three different bins marked “Assorted,” but by Grabthar’s Hammer, and the Sons of Warvan, I shall find them.

But why am I having to look for a fastening solution? Because whatever shadetree shop Eddie was taken to after his crash decided to take shortcuts. And who could blame them? The Sunfire is hardly going to be a collector car, so why endeavor to preserve it? This is a daily beater, both in my hands and the previous owner’s. As long as it runs, who cares if the splash guard is really connected at all six points?

After seven years, I care. It’s not David taking down Goliath with a slingshot. It’s David’s next door neighbor with asthma coming out of nowhere to thrash Goliath to a pulp with his bare hands. It’s not a long bet if the bookie never put odds on it.

But David’s neighbor still needs his inhaler. That’s why I then turned my attention to a puddle of red fluid that’s started to appear now that I’ve cleaned up the leaked motor oil.

Leadfoot Video: Rockin' Dat Bass

Cars last a long time these days.  Sometimes that’s a not-so-good thing.

Don’t get me wrong: there are great benefits to your car lasting to the end of days.  The average price of a new car has never been higher, so it’s nice that your investment goes a long way.  Plus, the used-car market would suffer greatly if an Accord (or my old Caravan) didn’t last 200,000 miles.

But technology moves faster than it takes a Yugo’s bumper to start rusting.  In the time it takes you to pair your phone’s Bluetooth, this year’s Lexus can become last year’s Oldsmobile.  Luckily, when you realize CDs are the new mini cassette, there’s an ample aftermarket that will let you swap out your factory radio for something with this season’s bells and whistles.

That’s exactly the recourse my mom took when the CD changer in her 2003 Voyager kicked the bucket.  And because I’m cheaper than those guys from Best Buy who drive Beetles, I’m the one she asked to install it.

I sent her to Crutchfield, since they include the extra stuff necessary for to install an aftermarket head unit into your particular make and model, including antenna adapter, wiring harness, and mounting frame.  I didn’t want to be stuck without parts.

It was also almost time for me to replace the torque strut in my Sunfire.  Last time, I’d resolved to buy a performance part with polyurethane bushings, instead of one with OEM-spec rubber.  The engine’s age has led to multiple oil leaks, and oil eats rubber.  But it apparently doesn’t eat polyurethane.  So I bought a $50 part to replace a $20 part in the hopes of never having to replace it again.  Odds are, it’ll outlast the car, depending on whether I come into some money and can afford to rebuild the engine.

So I made a day of it, starting with the radio.

Step one in any process involving electrically-driven components is to disconnect the battery.  It’s less of a concern over electrocuting yourself than it is creating a short, damaging the battery and possibly other things.  A high-school teacher of mine told me he once saw a car engine melt from a short circuit, caused by an improperly-installed stereo.  (That one involved running a wire through the firewall without proper insulation.)  All things considered, electricity is one of those invisible things that can kill you, so I disconnected the battery.

This Voyager is from the Daimler days of Chrysler.  The buyout was supposed to be a merger of equals, but the only thing worthwhile that Chrysler got was the LX platform, upon which the Charger and the 300 were built.  They also got the Crossfire, based on the old Mercedes SLK, but all of them were built with cheap materials and suffered poor quality.  (The worst thing Daimler did, in my opinion, was to kill the ME Four-Twelve; a turbocharged V12 supercar built by Chrysler engineers with Mercedes parts that was designed and built in just eighteen months.  But it out-performed the $500,000 Mercedes SLR, and Daimler couldn’t have that.)

So the Voyager has cheap materials and build quality.  It was designed to be assembled in a hurry, to maximize productivity.  So the center console is held on by six metal clips and two screws, obscured by a small pop-off panel.  Screws are easy.  Invisible metal clips that need to be pried off always make me think I’m going to break something.  Proceed cautiously.

The panel does eventually come off, after come cringe-inducing creaks.  It’s only necessary to remove the top-most wire connection (the one for the hazard light toggle and rear window wiper controls) to get the panel out of the way, but you could remove all three of them by sliding the red latches out and the connectors will come free.

Then comes the removal of the old unit.  It’s held in place by four screws, easily removed.  I was a bit worried that Daimler might have gone with some weird fastener head, like a pentalobe, in order to make sure their own mechanics are the only ones who could service their products, like Nintendo and the tri-wing bit.  But rest-assured, Daimler decided a Phillips head was cheaper in the long-run.

If ever you needed a reminder this is from the Daimler days, it’s printed on top of the head unit.  A more subtle clue in in the snap-lock antenna connection.  The connection releases by pulling the black collar away from the stereo unit, but only in just the right way.  Seems to be on a time-delay of some sort, because it took me and my dad some fifteen minutes of pulling and pushing and prying and prodding the connector every which-way before it finally relented.  The speaker wire harness is much simpler, I thank whatever higher power.  A simple clip-lock connection held that in place.  The connector for the CD changer was an aftermarket installation, and rather than pull the cable all the way through the dash and passenger-side door sill, I just tucked it deep into the dash.  There’s plenty of room in there, after all.

The mounting bracket Crutchfield sends installs into the dash using the four screws that held the original radio.  I am a bit worried about the style of screw they used, which looks more at-home fastening pieces of wood, as it seems to drive into some kind of metal clasp.  But I suppose it is hard to fit a nut, washer and bolt into such a confined space on an assembly line.  So here we are.  The DIN sleeve, which holds the actual head unit, slides into the bracket, and you bend down the appropriate tabs (determined by sight) to keep the sleeve securely in place.  Tabs further out from the center correspond to a thinner bracket.  If it’s still wiggling in the frame, use a tab further-out.

So now comes connecting the wiring harness.  Do yourself a favor and buy an actual wire stripper/crimper.  The harness from Crutchfield was pre-stripped (nice touch), but the length was excessive for the connectors I had.  I had a wire cutter/stripper, but it was a cheap one, and didn’t crimp so well, so it only served to trim stripped wire and strip wires on the harness from the new head unit’s manufacturer.  Dad had a real crimper, made the job easier on the crimping end.

Now, this is not the first time I’ve installed a head unit.  The first time, I screwed up the left-rear speaker, which I only discovered after installation.  If you’re following my footsteps, do yourself a favor and use a multi-meter to verify the wiring connections before plugging it all in and closing up the trim panels.  Nothing like pulling everything apart all over again, especially a Daimler-era Chrysler that doesn’t belong to you.

So I had everything solidly connected.  I counted my blessings and connected the wiring harness at both ends.

Drama-free, the new unit slides in with a satisfying click.  Then comes reconnecting the battery, turning the key, and finding out if it worked.  The radio prompts for initial setup, so I consider it a success.  Some nervous budging got the panel back into place, and the whole installation actually looks pretty good, despite the radio being glossy and everything else being matte.

Now on to the other half: permanently replacing my own car’s torque strut.

Either the upper mounts are putting some odd pressure on the engine, or rolling the front onto raps somehow pushes the engine forward.  I might never know, unless I put the whole car on a lift, which would only happen in a shop or a wealthy friend’s house.  So with this in mind, I pull out the Harbor Freight cable come-along from the last job.   To keep the engine from lurching forward when the screws come loose, I preloaded some tension, to be released when the new part is in.

But here I come to a problem.  The new polyurethane mount is a different shape than the old one, so the come-along’s hook is in the way, prohibiting me from slotting the bolt in.  I would just have to take off the come-along, attach the front end of the mount, then hook the winch back up and tension the engine back into place.

Problem deux: Be it by manufacturing defect or bracket deformation from having to install so many of the same part, the new mount is too thick for the bracket.  Either way, no amount of Jeremy Clarkson-style hammering would wedge the wider end into either bracket, so some trimmings must be made.

Dad’s got a pile of files and rasps in his workshop, so selecting an appropriate one and hammering out the inner barrel, I figured I’d only need to take off a millimeter or two.  Of course, I had no way of knowing when I’d get to that point, so after a few minutes filing I did a test-fitting, and immediately went back to the workshop for more filing.

One last try got the larger end into the rear bracket (just).  So I had to pull it out of the bracket and attach the front end before winching it so the hook wouldn’t get in the way.  More hammering was needed as it was still a snug fit, but hammering is always better when it leads to results, Mister Clarkson.

Bolts in place, tension released, and one last check to make sure I hadn’t done anything stupid to something critical, I gave the engine a turn to check the mount’s effectiveness.

Here, we had something a bit strange.  There was more… “gusto” from the engine, I guess you could say.  Like a subwoofer was synced to the exhaust note of the car.  Stepping outside, I heard no difference.  I must assume that polyurethane is more resistant than rubber, and the mount is translating more engine vibrations to the chassis.  It might be annoying to someone more accustomed to the ride in a Lexus, but it suits me just fine.  Eddy just growls now.

Feels like I added 10% more horsepower without having to add any stickers! Now I’m wondering what I would get with a real performance part…

LeadFoot Video: Oil, Wind and Fire

I take pride in my car.  A 1999 model year Pontiac Sunfire sedan with a 2.2 liter engine, 3-speed automatic transmission with overdrive, aftermarket radio and tasteful body-colored rear spoiler.  I call him, “Eddy.”

Sure, it’s fifteen years old.  Sure, we got it just before GM canned the Pontiac brand.  Sure, it hasn’t got much power, it shakes the front passenger door panel when the compressor’s on, someone in the parking lot at work put a big dent in the rear driver’s side door, and it’s not great on gas (despite its four-cylinder engine; damn the three-speed auto).

But beyond all this, I love it.  The car has grown on me these past five (almost six) years.  In that time, much has been done.

Before we even got it, it had been in a front-end collision.  This was immediately apparent, because the front passenger door doesn’t fit right in the frame and generates significant wind noise at highway speed. In addition, the plastic bits in the front-right wheel well aren’t in good shape, and rub against the wheel in full-left steering lock.  This became gloriously apparent when a bolt on the water pump wore a hole in the coolant hose, and half a dozen pieces of plastic had to be removed to attach a new hose (with proper screw hose clamps and the old hose wrapped around the new one for protection.

Actually, now that I’m thinking of it, I should probably investigate that hose.  It has been a while.  Next time.

If I recall correctly, the next thing we did was regular maintenance (brakes and the like).  There was a coolant temperature sensor that went bad, which made for some interesting readings on the dash.  And almost three years ago, we found the starter motor was going.  The OBD reader was throwing off some weird codes because of the voltage drop on that occasion.  Replaced that part in a parking lot.

Then two years ago, the air conditioning died.  In the middle of summer.  After an entirely new system was installed, we eventually we’d found that multiple slow oil leaks had worn out the rubber bushings in the torque strut mount, and without the dampening effect of the mount, the engine was rocking forward, rubbing the AC hose on the radiator fan grille, rubbing a hole in the line, allowing Freon to escape.

Replacing the mount would have been cheaper than rebuilding the engine (the ultimate solution to the problem), and we had a warranty on the earlier AC system work, since we were at the same shop, so we had them install a new mount and they’d replace the AC line for free.

(Between this and the next service, the cooling fan motor had gone, which was an interesting day in and of itself, and I shall detail it another time.)

To their credit, when they did the complimentary AC work, they’d wrapped the line with rubber hose, like one from a coolant system, and zip-tied it on.  This was very kind of them, and I’ve always respected them for this.  But in practice, rubber is a soft material, and if you beat on it enough times even with plastic, it will be eaten away.

Lately I haven’t been driving as much, living so close to work, so I haven’t been able to notice the recurring problems with the Sunfire.  As summer has been rolling in, I’ve finally noticed the air conditioning wasn’t working again.  This meant another possibly damaged hose.  I watched the engine as I shifted from neutral to drive and reverse, and saw that dramatic rock-forward as the transmission shifted into reverse and the engine pushed against the torque converter, pressing the AC line on the radiator fan grille, rubbing in that ever-irksome hole in the system through the rubber covering.

Upon learning this, I immediately banned myself from using reverse gear to prevent further damage.  This meant I would be walking to work more often (especially because the scooter has decided to go on strike; All this time I thought it was Chinese, turns out it was French).  It made it interesting when I had to back out of my parking space at home, and there’s a big column on the driver’s side that would have hit the door, so I was pushing from the passenger side and hoping the steering would stay straight.

One day, I was running too late for work to walk, so I braved driving.  Sitting at an annoyingly long light, I saw the engine temperature climbing uncomfortably high.  Oh, crap, there goes the cooling fan again.

So to sum up so far, we’ve got no AC, no reverse, and no cooling without forward momentum; a veritable trifecta of problems.  I’d guessed I’d need a whole day to resolve them.

So finally comes a day off from work, and I get down to business.  Quick trip to [insert national auto parts store here], and I had a torque mount, cooling fan motor, some engine degreaser and a headlight polishing kit.

Let’s get this out of the way: I’ve seen the results of those kits that involve just wiping the oxidation away.  Do yourselves a favor and use a kit that needs a drill.  It’s just better.  Eddy’s headlights are sparkling now, and they light up the end of the street.

With the car on ramps, I doused the oily bits with engine degreaser and followed it up with a spray from the hose.  It did all right, but there’s so much caked-on oil, I’d need a stronger product.  In the meantime, elbow grease took care of the worst engine grease, especially around the torque strut brackets.  They’re nice and clean now.  Or, at least, they will be for a little bit before oil gets on them again.

Removing a torque strut mount is a simple affair: wedge some plastic parts out of the way and loosen the two bolts, letting the mount fall free.  One normally has to loosen the bolts about an inch and they can be pulled out (there’s only thread on one side of the bracket, and not in the torque strut itself).  Such was not the case.  As soon as the bolt was free of the thread, the engine pulled on the strut, holding the bolt at an angle so I had no choice but to unscrew it the entire length.  The front bolt, having more play, took on some especially interesting angles.

At last, it was free and I could further clean the grime off the brackets.  Then came time to put in the new one.  Rear bolt in: Check.  Front bolt in: Um, the bracket’s not supposed to be that far away…

The engine had shifted forward almost two inches, and my arm strength from underneath the car was not enough to force it into place, let alone hold it there while my other hand inserted the bolt.  A super-strong, eighteen-inch screwdriver employed as a pry bar couldn’t give me the necessary leverage, either.  I had a ratchet strap in my trunk, and I was able to find two suitable points for the strap, but it was such a piece of [expletive] it couldn’t even move the engine half an inch without slipping.  And every time it did slip, it did with such force and noise I thought the world was going to end.  I’m amazed my heart’s kept beating to this day after seeing all that.

It’s worth saying now, I think, that I had taken the car to my parents’ house.  My lease prohibits automotive repair done in the garage (though I’ve done quite a bit to the scooter there), and my dad had a set of ramps I could use to raise the car.  (They’re old, so I put some blocks of wood underneath them for peace of mind, as I’m not fond of 3000 pounds of metal landing on my face, but they held up all the same.  Good job there.)  There’s also a power drill for the headlight polishing, a hose for the engine cleaning, and a much shorter walk to a refreshing drink of water.  It’s been kind of hot lately.  The house also has a backup vehicle in case I needed to make a run to the national chain parts store.

My folks are on vacation, having taken the minivan, because it’s better at carrying many things.  My dad’s car is a Honda subcompact with a manual.  His old car is a Nissan subcompact with an automatic, which my sister now drives to her work.  She was home while the folks were away, just hadn’t gotten home until I’d gotten to the torque strut part.

Having realized manual labor and a lousy ratchet strap wouldn’t be enough to move the engine, I knew I’d need to make an additional purchase.  An educated guess told me Harbor Freight should have something.

Side note: This mention of Harbor Freight is an actual endorsement.  I’m not being paid for this, I just think it’s a great place to buy that one tool you need for that one occasion you didn’t have a tool for before, and probably won’t need again, and getting a decent price on it.  That said, it took a while for me to find what I was looking for.  In my head, I was looking for a bigger, badder ratchet strap than what I had, but ended up with a steel cable ratchet that was hiding in the “Trailer Hitch” section.  I was thinking it would have been in the “Rope” section, which didn’t exist in the first place.

An earlier Skype conversation had granted me permission to use the Honda if need be, so when I’d come to the decision to go to the store, the only thing in my head was, “Okay, I’m going to borrow the Honda, get the part, and be back before the dinner my sister cooked gets cold.”  My sister was home, as was the Nissan, but still it wasn’t until I got to the second main street after a couple of hard shifts before I asked myself, “Why didn’t I take the AUTOMATIC Nissan?”

But as a gearhead, I was already committed, and in my defense, it was only the fifth time I’d driven a stick-shift. So a couple of rough shifts and two stalls on uphill starts later, I’m back with a cable come-along.

Used in conjunction with the lousy ratchet strap (which works better at shorter lengths, and adds length to the new steel cable ratchet), I was able to move the engine into place and hold it there to screw in the bolts (which are, thankfully, thick enough to withstand the forces involved).

Much cursing and grinding of teeth got me this far, and the sun was going down, so something involved as replacing the radiator fan motor would warrant checking simpler solutions first.  So, multimeter in hand, I disconnected the fan motor cable and pulled the coolant temperature sensor connector, forcing the fan to turn on.  Sure enough, the car’s computer wasn’t sending the necessary 12V to turn the fan in even the worst of circumstances.  This meant there was an electrical problem bigger than the motor, which I didn’t have time or resources to diagnose. So I called it a day, feeling I’d at least accomplished three of my four goals.

The fan motor turned out to be a bad fuse upon another trip to the national auto parts chain store.  While I was there, I grabbed an air conditioning system stop-leak product, along with a recharge kit.  Hell, it’s worth a shot, right? And if it works, it’s better than half-a-grand in shop repair.

So here we are, in the end, I have a new torque mount, clear headlights, and (kind of) clean engine,  a working fan motor, and a (for now) working air conditioning system.  I’ll call it a win for at least two weeks.  Beyond then, Eddy probably needs AC work…