What did you do to your other car(s) today?

[1st 5er]

[gadget73]

drove it to work again. My rusty truck is on loan yet again. Guy that stays with us had an engine failure in his Ranger, replacement cost exceeded value of the truck and available $. Some hack shop did a timing chain (one of the two) and didn't replace the tensioner, which immediately failed. They fixed that, and it had some random "I have no oil" noise that would come and go. They told him it would be OK, engine seized a week or so later. They basically denied responsibility and he didn't push the issue, but they did offer $500 off the 5 grand replacing the engine would cost. Just the longblock is $3800, plus shipping, etc. My guess is a chunk of that tensioner dropped into the pan and either clogged an oil passage or jammed up the pressure relief valve.

[gadget73]

Replaced the block heater again. Tried a new one, it refused to seal. Found an NOS one and we're trying that.

[e28Sean]

Put a new set of tires (Michelin PilotSports) on the AMG. It needed them. Badly.

[nik77356]

Couldn't get my car running properly, so I borrowed a good friend's car and went racing at Mid-Ohio!

https://youtu.be/_FQixB-X8SU

[vinceg101]

Oil and Coolant service to the wife's CR-V yesterday.
Oh and cleaned the engine bay (had to feed the OCD gremlin a little bit).

[SPF2006]

Alternator in my wife's e46 finally gave up. Original factory unit. At 200K. No complaints here.

[Mike W.]

I've been wanting some sort of Datsun emblem on my QX4 ever since I got it. The badges on ebay seemed either ugly or expensive or both. Finally found stickers! Out with the old, in with the new.

Before



Now

[1st 5er]

I've been wanting some sort of Datsun emblem on my QX4 ever since I got it. The badges on ebay seemed either ugly or expensive or both. Finally found stickers! Out with the old, in with the new.

Before



Now

[Mike W.]

Glad someone appreciates my humor. The Nissan/Infiniti people don't seem to.

[gadget73]

second year at the Ford Nationals at Carlisle, and again the only diesel Lincoln. Pretty sure I was the only diesel not in a truck too. 335 miles, ran absolutely fine. Had a nice trip there and back through Amish farm country too, which is way better than taking the turnpike.

[tig]

Bought her back...

[davintosh]

Bought her back...

Hero.

[amagansa]

Had to destroy my e23's passenger door panel in order to get the door to open. That sucked. The internals are definitely showing their age and some of the thin metal bars have stretched to the point where "unlocking" the car would do nothing.

[davintosh]

My son's e34 535i got tapped in the rear bumper over the winter; not very hard, but with the cold temps at the time, the plastic cover cracked pretty badly. Not so badly that we worried too much about it, but... Earlier this week he & I finally got around to pulling the bumper off: I love the way the e34 bumpers detach; pull off the trim strip across the face, remove the four nuts with a 17mm wrench (lug wrench works well) and the whole assembly slides off, but in this case the stupid thing just about fell apart. Well, we could patch it up, but it would be far better to replace it, so I checked Car-Part.com and found that a salvage yard right here in town had one; score! I called them yesterday, then went and picked it up today. Its condition wasn't as good as I'd hoped, but it's the wrong color anyway (looks like Bahama Beige, whereas the car is Bronzit) so we've got some cleanup to do and some painting. It'll be a good learning exercise for the kid.

The old bumper was also sagging on one side; turned out it was this guy, which holds the side of the bumper cover to the body:



It was probably the heat from the exhaust that killed it. I was hoping that the replacement bumper might have one good one; nope. Both were broken. Replacements are about $5 though. A new set of them, plus the ~$100 for the bumper... We should have plenty of insurance money to get it painted, then maybe have a enough left over to get the door bottoms repainted too, after a little surface rust cleanup.

[gadget73]

got the Towncar out for a drive. I really need to replace the mufflers on that thing, the exhaust is annoying. It also has a leak somewhere, sounds like passenger side header. I hate exhaust work.

[Mike W.]

Oh man, I've been working on everything.

The Grandson's Toyota Tacoma. Son called a week and a half ago saying it was screeching/screaming on startup. Could I help. Sure, dollars to doughnuts it's belts, classic symptoms. I probably spent half an hour figuring out where to start, but it was reasonably straightforward once I did. Crude though.

The Datsun came without a bumper. It's got brackets for it, but no bumper. Finally found one in the yard to try to harvest. Not there. Turns out they didn't put a bumper on it, a sheet metal "stiffener" thigh high just below the headlights, but nothing else in spite of brackets for it. We'll see. Replacing the power antenna mast wasn't fun, had to peel off all the plastic to get to it, then take it apart, then put the plastic fender lineing back together. That was more work than the antenna. Clearcoated the headlights, but I got some runs. Still looks great from 5 feet away, but I'll wait for it to harden and finish it then.

The E39 touring, the wife's car. Found a upgraded Navigation computer in the yard, the DVD based one instead of CD based. $3-400 on the bay, $28 at P and P. Said it was a CD player. Which is mostly true.

The E36, the ultimate commute machine. This time the passenger window motor died. The drivers died a few years ago. Spent more time drilling/grinding/chiseling the rivets out than all else combined. But it works again.

Still thinking about a bumper for the Datsun. Under the plastic bumper cover of course. Lets see, is it a bumper cover if there is no bumper?

[tig]

Gave Uglina a wax Saturday. She shines up nicely and is looks GREAT at 10 feet (before she looked great at 20 feet). At least now she's better protected from the elements.









Also, before and after:

[tig]

Got a bee in my bonnet to actually do some wrenching on the 911. Long overdue was a refinishing of the steering wheel.




I'd bought a Marine Blue refinishing kit from Leather Magic... BACK IN 2013.


Step 1 - Get the wheel off. Of course, in doing this, I break one of the retaining clips on the horn pad. And, of course, these are apparently NLA. If anyone knows the part # and/or parts diagram location, that would be swell because I can't find it anywhere. Even better if someone knows a source of these puppies.




Lacking replacements, I'll need to fabricate something. I've seen threads...

Step 2 - Get the wheel off for real. Of course, I all of my 27mm sockets are thick walled and tall. So I hit the road to Harbor Freight (no joy), NAPA (no Joy), and O'Reilly's (Joy!). At least I got to drive my wife's car.


Step 3 - Get the wheel off for real.


Step 4 - Clean it per the Leather Magic instructions.



Step 5 - Mask and use the sand paper to lightly scuff the leather, per instructions, being careful to not make the stitching fray any worse than it already is.




Step 6 - While waiting for the last bit of Leather Prep to completely dry, prepare Leather Magic paint/die. Discover that it is rock solid since it's been sitting SINCE 2013!

Step 7 - Order more. While at it, order a kit with Linen color to do the same magic on the seats which are showing a fair bit of wear and age. Also the shift knob... (look closely in first pic)

Frustrated with lack of ability to finish the steering wheel, I decided to fix a gremlin that popped up recently: The fuel gauge has started to jitter/jump wildly around regardless of fuel level.

I figured it was the fuel sending unit. I was right.


Well, THAT doesn't look right. Good thing I pulled up carefully.


I was able to get leverage on the sleeve while pulling the core out and not have the sleeve drop into the tank where I'd be royally screwed.

I knew these things failed, but I didn't know they fell apart.


New unit inbound from Pelican.

Ok, so what else can I do on a fine Sunday afternoon?

I've wanted to install this for ages.


So i set about pulling the old Tokyo At Night head unit that works well enough but looks like ass. I have a 4 channel amp mounted in the frunk that was installed by the PO (I later simplified the install of it, but it's still there). I had forgotten that this Continental unit doesn't have pre-amp outputs. The amp in the frunk has high-level inputs in addition to low-level, and I could use those, but that left me feeling unsatisfied.

I could also rip out the amp and go back to powering the speakers directly from the head unit, but then I'd have to re-do a bunch of speaker wire.

I used this as an opportunity to procrastinate by searching the internwebs for something else.

And found this:


Which is apparently on the cusp of actually, really, being sold. If true, it is a thing of my dreams (and like a lot of my dreams, stupidly expensive). But I've decided to hold off making any changes until I these are available.

In summary: I accomplished basically nothing on the 911 this weekend.

[Mike W.]

In summary: I accomplished basically nothing on the 911 this weekend.

Yeah, but the title of the thread is What did you do to your other car(s) today?, not what did you accomplish. And you did a lot, you just didn't accomplish anything.

[gadget73]

Fuel pump in the rusty Chevy. Poor truck is just going away. The ribs under the bed are about half gone, so is the ear on the frame that serves as the cab mount. I think its about time to start shopping for it's replacement. I was hoping for an even 20 years out of it, but I don't know that it has 2 more years in it. Damn thing still runs great though.

[jhh925]

Replaced oil, air & fuel filters and changed the oil on our 2012 X5 diesel.

I'd never replaced the fuel filter before on this car, so I figured I best do a bit of research on it before I start. As usual, YouTube seemed the best place to get a quick "how to." Found a good short vid without bad musical accompaniment done by a guy with a pleasant Australian accent. Straight-forward instructions, good camera angles ... play the video a couple of times. "Fuel filter is here on the passenger side right under the body seam between the front & rear doors. Remove the front panel, best to remove the rear as well ..." Got it. I head out to the driveway. Jack the Beast up on passenger side, remove front panel. Hmmm. No fuel filter. Maybe they repositioned the filter further back with the facelift? OK, remove the rear panel. No filter. Goddamnit! WAIT, Australian accent? Was he working on an Australian car? In Australia? Where they drive on the wrong side of the road!?!

Start over on driver side. Sure enough, there it is. Three extra panels removed and reinstalled.

[tig]

Actually, got some results on the 911...

The Linen dye/paint came.



I followed the instructions and began layering on thin coats. I've never done this before and am surprised by how many coats it takes to get good coverage. I'm pretty nervous about doing the seats this way now.



It's also hard to NOT have it look somewhat "painted".



That said, I'm pretty happy with the results. Nobody but me will ever notice it's been refurbished and I think it should hold up well for another 32 years. Far better than replacing it with some lame aftermarket shifter. I did replace the shift pattern insert with a lame aftermarket aluminum unit from Pelican that I don't think is actually that lame



I finally started on the long (4+ years?) overdue basic maintenance work I've discussed above.



Of course, as is my typical fashion I immediately noticed something cosmetic that could distract me from real work. The factory steering cross-member shield was just ugly with all that cosmoline on it. I also have a deep, deep hatred from cosmoline and I just can't resist removing it correctly.




Cleaned and prepped for paint. I could have done more to straighten it, but seriously?!?


Primed. You'll have to wait for after photos...


I'm so severely tempted to drop the motor and tear all this apart to clean it up right. But I will resist. I will resist!





Back to the real job at hand: Performing a bunch of stuff that I've been procrastinating addressing. I narrowed down the list of stuff I really *should* do at this point of time vs. *want* to do by revamping my Excel sheet I use to track everything.



It all came down to this:

• Change oil and filter
• Flush brake / clutch fluid
• Inspect tons of stuff
• Air filter
• Spark plugs
• Disti & rotor
• Belts
• Fuel filter

There really is no need for a valve adjustment or replacement of other obviously 'not broke' stuff (I appreciate the sentiment of folks who've reminded me to not break open a motor that is running smoothly and not leaking or burning ANY oil).







This will wait for a later day...


Sunday, I got all the green stuff above done.


In otherwords, I changed the oil and flushed the brakes.




Bleeding/flushing brakes is always an adventure for me. I use a Motive power bleeder but I always have to re-read all instructions, am paranoid about spilling brake fluid (because I always do), and can never seem to find a family member to be a 'helper' on the pedals. This time it all went pretty smoothly, but still took much longer than what a pro would take.

I had forgotten how challenging it is to get to that nipple on the clutch slave on a 911. What a PITA. But I got it done.

Later this week I hope to get after the spark plugs & belts... Lots of stuff to remove from motor to do that.

[vinceg101]

^^^ Fumoto Valve FTW.
(I have one on the block drain for the coolant).

[I don't have anything to add to this thread (yet). It's all E28-centric getting ready for 5erWest now that the shows are over. First on-deck: Fix the passenger seat back tilt issue in the E39.]

[gadget73]

Those things use 10 quarts of oil? Is it shared with the trans, or is that just a massive tank with a dry sump system? Other than the fact my uncle had a 911, I know basically nothing about them.