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Post by Cowboy Camper on Apr 23, 2011 1:53:11 GMT -6
While not a good and Proper Tow Vehicle, I have been recently commissioned to basically rebuild the better half of the Chassis on this car that my neighbor just bought for his daughter in college. We just picked it up and brought it home tonight. The car's parked at my shop as we speak. (in the infamous 3rd Lane of the Driveway.) Anyhow, this Topic shall serve as the Record for the Progress of the latest project. Man this thing is gonna take some some work to make it Road Worthy for the gal that's gonna be the ultimate Main Driver.
All Four Springs. Need Replaced, cause the formal owner cut them all down to make a Low Rider out of this thing. Brakes. Shot! Complete Front Brakes need replaced. And this list goes on..... Only running on 3 of 4 Cylinders. Just plugs, or something more? Muffler.... Gone. (Likely farm out to the place that did my Truck recently.) Headlights.... (Stupid Plastic things) need to be polished up and cleared. Door panel.... torn in half. (Why??? ) need to find a JY replacement on this one..
The Springs are gonna be the Biggest Job I think. It's a good thing that I have the tools for this type of task, as I've done this before when I had the '94 Escort. Or rather, the neighbor is Lucky I have this stuff. For my Labor Rate is still set too darn LOW!
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Post by blaird83 on Apr 23, 2011 10:45:17 GMT -6
at least the brakes are easy.... I even know how to do those.
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Post by Cowboy Camper on Apr 24, 2011 20:01:18 GMT -6
You should See this rotor Bryan. A Vented rotor with half of it missing. Man, this kid really wore them out. Had to replace the Caliper too.
We spent Saturday looking in the JY for a door panel. No luck yet, but we think we have a good set of Springs & Struts coming. Turns out there are some skinny little custom springs on our car and all the originals look to be about twice the diameter. We're having the JY pick the whole things out and I'm just gonna swap them out as an assembly rather than taking apart the springs from the struts.
I pulled the plugs to check on them and one was full of oil. Not having an extra plug laying around, we still don't know if that's all that's wrong with it. Hopefully that oil isn't going to be a major problem. It's possible too that the individual Fuel Injector isn't firing. Either way, still a dead cylinder in it. Weather permitting, we should know more after work on Monday.
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Post by Cowboy Camper on Apr 27, 2011 20:32:48 GMT -6
Over the last couple of days, we've replaced the plugs, ran a Scanner test and also found that the #2 Cylinder Injector is only working part time. That explains a lot as to why it's running rough. Still haven't pin pointed the issue, but now I know where to keep the focus. Meanwhile, we have the 'new' struts and springs as of today. I figure at least a Hour to swap out each one, so we're needing a couple of days with a good two hours free each. With that, I should be able to do the fronts one day and the rears the next. Back to the plug/injector misfire issue, we're gonna try running the car a while with some Injector Cleaner in the tank with some fresh Gas. We really don't know how long this car was sitting before the neighbor bought it... so why not? Might help. During some of the testing, we had the entire fuel rail out and when he cranked it over I saw that all four injectors fired a shot of fuel. Like I said, we're still working on that one. So.... that's my Update for this project. Dad should be coming back from the farm in the next day or so, and maybe he'll chime in with an idea or two.
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Post by Cowboy Camper on Apr 27, 2011 20:40:06 GMT -6
I forgot to mention that the neighbor got another tire from the JY, as the RR tire has been run flat a few too many times and the sidewalls are shot. (Too bad, cause there's a Lot of Tread left on it!) Anyhow, while swapping that out I also pulled a Drum off to check the rear brakes. As suspected, A-OK. Rear brakes don't do much on little cars, so they don't wear out nearly as often as the front ones do. Come to think about it, I've Never put rear brakes on the Escort I used to have, though I have been through about 3 sets of front pads. Just a little side bit of info I suppose.
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Post by Cowboy Camper on Apr 30, 2011 3:03:13 GMT -6
4-29-11 Update: I actually got All 4 of the Struts/Springs replaced this evening after work. Nice! That went a Lot quicker than expected!!! While doing so however, I pulled the other back drum off for the brakes and found another probable issue. It's full of oil or brake fluid. While the brakes feel OK for now, this should likely be fixed up before we hand this car over to the daughter in school. This is up to the Dad here, but if it were My daughter... I think I'd go ahead and finish that up as well. Also, I found some Aluminum Tape to patch up that noisy Custom Muffler. WOW did that work better than expected. I imagine a better patch job on that muffler might even suffice as a "Fix". It would for me anyhow. Again, this is up to the Dad. Still at issue is the #2 Injector. We put some Cleaner in the gas tank and he's thinking about driving it over to his Lake House and running some fresh Gas through the system. This Might work, as the car runs pretty good while Driving with the foot on it. So this part is a wait and see right now. But the bumps in the road feel a Lot Better now that we have the Stock Springs back in place!
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