It seems that below the Mason-Dixon, or the south west, is so much more user friendly for working on cars. This northeast cold stuff is getting old fast. So am I for that matter.
It seems that below the Mason-Dixon, or the south west, is so much more user friendly for working on cars. This northeast cold stuff is getting old fast. So am I for that matter.
Real Estate in my town is CHEAP. come to the better side of the Mason Dixon line.....
I like the balance of weather here- we get all 4 seasons but the hot/cold tends to be milder and the spring/fall are really nice. Wouldn't be a problem if I had an insulated/heated garage- but that's for down the line...
More progress yesterday.
Finally got the AC compressor, dryer, and some of the hoses out of the car. The ones that run from the firewall will be a bit more challenging to get to and remove, and I'll worry about the condenser at a later date. The delete pulley should be arriving at home while I'm here at work, so with some luck I'll be able to get it installed this afternoon. I should also be able to get the cooling system back together, so in theory the car should be drivable by the end of the evening if all goes well.
I did encounter one more thing of slight concern, or at least the is worth some head-scratching...
To get to the AC compressor nuts, I had to jack up the passenger side and pull the wheel and part of the inner fenderwell liner. Since I had the wheel off, I looked over the suspension since it would be NICE to not have to replace the struts & springs. But what I found in looking more closely I was surprised to find the front sway bar literally loose and flopping around. The passenger side that I was looking at had the link between the bar and the LCA, but it was rusted to almost nothing in the middle and had snapped, leaving the rubber isolators and the ends of the link in the bar and LCA- they came out with a little work. The driver's side didn't even have that- the end link was missing completely. What is it with cars I buy and sway bars?
Honestly though, this doesn't bother me TOO much- I had figured on replacing all the end links with stiffer polyurethane aftermarket ones anyway, but it was still as surprise to find.
Not uncommon at all with the pogo links those cars used. It's basically a long bolt with a metal spacer sleeve around it, and water gets between the spacer and the bolt and eats it from the inside out.
Yup, that's standard procedure for GM swaybar links.
Thankfully Advance is having a clearance on some polyurethane-bushed links, so I can get replacements for cheaper than online without having to wait for them. :)
Spend decent portions of both days over the weekend at salvage yards up in Cinci (we really don't have much to speak of locally anymore).
I had high hopes for Saturday's outing, but ultimately ended up coming away with nothing of any real use for the Riv. I had hoped that they would have a caddy with the sway bars I wanted for the rear of the Riv, but no luck there. Ironically they actually have a Riviera there- but there's really nothing I need off a stock one for my own. One interesting thing was they were passing out fliers for their coming pull-a-thon in July, so I may be able to grab some useful things (like the top end of the L67 that I didn't get at yesterday's pull-a-thon) that I still need then.
Yesterday's also went less-than-ideally. I got a much later start heading out than originally intended (though I'm not wholly complaining, the extra sleep was nice), and the weather and a semi truck did their best to try and kill me on the drive up (I've said partially jokingly that I'd like to see the Patriot totaled- but I'd prefer to NOT be in it or have it happen in the middle of a crowded highway...). When I got there, I found that the L67 SC & LIM I'd found previously had already been grabbed. I decided to wait and see if I wanted to grab the 20" wheels of the SSEi the SC had come from and headed off to find the subframe for the Patriot. That took longer than I would have liked- but ultimately I walked away with three STBs (not the direct-fit ones, but I may be able to create workable ones from them), two potential water/meth injection or intercooler reservoirs, a PERFECT A2W radiator (Hybrid Escape inverter cooler), a Northstar TB, and a spoiler from a 2002 Mustang in addition to some things for the Patriot and a couple random ECUs to hedge my bets depending on how the rules ruling goes for how we budget these things.
Ultimately, what I picked up is unlikely to get used for a bit (at least as far as the Challenge parts go). This afternoon I'll finish getting the Riv back drivable (refill the cooling system, install the new front sway bar links) and get it out of the garage so I can pull the Patriot in to take care of the work it needs. Hardcore power upgrades on the Riv are likely going to have to wait until a few other things (the Patriot & some work on SWMBO's Mariner) are taken care of and I have more of the parts to do it all at once.
In the meantime, it will get driven and if it seems solid enough I'll try and get it out and autocross it a bit and see if I can figure out where my money will be best spend on improving the handling.
There is a guy in one of my 3800 groups wanting to trade a northstar TB adapter for a set of Aluminium LIM gaskets.
Let me know If you're interested, I'll get you guys in touch.
AClockworkGarage wrote: There is a guy in one of my 3800 groups wanting to trade a northstar TB adapter for a set of Aluminium LIM gaskets. Let me know If you're interested, I'll get you guys in touch.
So, trade one of these for this? Given the former is 1/3 the price of the latter, that sounds like a pretty good deal to me!
Yeah, that's the idea.
Spent some time on the Riv this afternoon as I wanted to get it out of the garage so I could put the Patriot in to replace the front subframe (again, but that's another thread). Finished flushing the cooling system with water and refilled it with the cleaner and buttoned everything up. The battery is rather run down so needed to be given a boost, but it seems to run OK other than the known problems (supposed valve cover gasket leak) with one exception- when I tested out the bypass solenoid on the blower, it sounded like I could hear, for lack of a better word, 'chattering' from the engine someplace- presumably the supercharger. For the time being I'm not planning on doing much aggressive with it so it won't likely be in boost that much so I'm not too worried about it, but will have to give it a good going-over when I have the top end apart down the line.
At least so far I'm not seeing the auto-leveling system in the rear doing ANYTHING- it's as if there's no damping at all. Next step will be to jumper the relay for the pump and see if it will run, and if not try the manual kit and see if the shocks hold air properly.
Tried to replace the flasher, but despite the fact both the emergency and turn flashers are supposed to be right next to each other under the dash I could only find the emergency flasher. It's more confusing because of all of the wiring for the remote-start- including a toggle & momentary switch that look to be tied into the OBDII port.
Finally, I tried both re-syncing and re-programming (thankfully the Riv is old enough to NOT require a dealer setup to do so...) the remote that came with the car, both to absolutely no avail. Interestingly, it was the Park Avenue Ultra I had a year ago that in effect came to the rescue here- it didn't have a remote at all, so I'd picked one up online but never gotten to try and get it to work before I got rid of the car (and didn't send it with the car since it was getting parted out). The remote for it is the same kind the Riv uses, and I was able to get it programmed to sync with the car so I now have a functioning remote for it.
The chattering may be a failing supercharger coupler. You can test for this by taking the supercharger belt off and seeing if there is slop when you rotate the pulley. A replacement coupler is cheap. Link You should change the supercharger oil as well; be sure to use the GM oil for this.
FooBag wrote: The chattering may be a failing supercharger coupler. You can test for this by taking the supercharger belt off and seeing if there is slop when you rotate the pulley. A replacement coupler is cheap. Link You should change the supercharger oil as well; be sure to use the GM oil for this.
I'll have to check that out at some point and see if that might be it. If that's not it and it's something with the rotors themselves, I'm not too concerned since my plan is to grab pretty much the whole top end from another L67 during the July pull-a-thon at a nearby junkyard. I had thought that I should check the supercharger oil- that will be something on my list of things to do.
Speaking of lists...
Things to try and accomplish this afternoon so the Riv is actually drivable:
That SHOULD cover everything to have it good to drive around while I either fix the Patriot or (even better) sell it.
No idea if its required on the Riviera, but I have a steering wheel pivot pin remover in my toolbox that works on 80's GM steering columns. You are welcome to borrow it next time you're up this way. I meant to mention it while you were here on the weekend.
eastsidemav wrote: No idea if its required on the Riviera, but I have a steering wheel pivot pin remover in my toolbox that works on 80's GM steering columns. You are welcome to borrow it next time you're up this way. I meant to mention it while you were here on the weekend.
I'm not sure. I'm hoping that the repair manuals have good directions to getting to the part that's a problem- it's apparently a very common issue on these cars, and annoyingly the part that fails is completely unique to the Riviera/Aurora and not available. I'll see if they call for a special tools for the pivot pin.
Well, made some progress...
The blinkers are back working and the rear-view mirror button is back on, so the things most essential to being able to drive the car are taken care of. The battery is on the charger, so should be charged up by tomorrow. Finally, I tested the air shocks on the back of the car- and found that at least the passenger-side shock does not hold air. I pumped it up with my bike pump and you could hear the air escaping.
So, I've now got to figure out what I want to do about the rear shocks.
Do I get replacement air shocks and keep the air capability (though adjusted manually). The advantage to this being that it's relatively easy to tune the rear end for whatever I'm doing (less air for normal driving, a bit more I imagine for AutoX, and stiffer yet for drag racing). The disadvantage being that it would have to be monitored and adjusted regularly. This is comes in at about $70 for the shocks themselves and another $30 or so for the upper mounts.
Alternatively, I could get the Load Assist Conversion Kit which converts over to more conventional dampers. This would be easier from a maintenance standpoint, but unless I rigged up some kind of coil-over setup (which isn't impossible I would imagine) it would also not be as adjustable as the air shocks. It's a bit more expensive at about $110, but includes the top mounts.
Finally, I could try and rig something custom up coil-over wise... I have two coil-over hardware sets left over from the Fiero build a while back that I didn't use, and may have some shocks that I could try and make work. This would be the most labor-intensive obviously but also would likely be the cheapest.
I should probably figure out what I'm going to do with the front struts as well... the ones on the car look pretty bad, but clearly are at least still working. There's really nothing in the way of a performance strut for these cars unfortunately- and there's only one direct cross-reference strut-wise and that's the Park Avenue (it doesn't even share a shock with its sister car the Aurora...).
Tried to take care of getting the Riv registered so I can drive it around legally (added it to my insurance yesterday), but the line at the county clerk would have had me there for half the day so I'll have to take care of it when I get back from next week's vacation.
I went ahead and ordered the replacement rear air shocks & new mounts for them. I'm heavily leaning toward trying to custom-fab a coilover setup with some of the parts I have around, but doing so will be far easier with an example to work with and without replacements the car can't go anywhere- so I'll put the new manual air shocks on and see how I like them while I work on fabricating custom coilovers.
Have been gone on vacation for the last week and thus didn't get anything done until the weekend (we came back Friday), but was able to get a good bit done. The new rear air shocks are installed- and one of them tried to break my hand while installing it. Thankfully I'm quicker than it was and made it through with just a minor bruise. The new shocks make the rear end a lot firmer- and also make it look a bit weird because they jack up the rear a fair bit even at well below the max pressure (I don't think I HAVE anything that can get to 250 psi- they're at like 80 at the moment). I'll likely see how it handles tomorrow when I have to go get my driver's license renewed.
I also rotated the tires so the better ones were on the front (though I need to check- apparently the tires are directional and I didn't put them on in the right direction, but I've a nagging suspicion that there are more than just 2 tires for one direction...), and in the process found that at least one of the outer tie rod ends needs to be replaced. The good news: a pair of them is like $10, so it's not like it will impact my budget much at all.
I hope to have time this afternoon to flush the cleaner out of the cooling system and get it refilled with coolant. Unfortunately I should really pull the alternator off and replace the plastic elbows from the block to the alt bracket since I noticed that one of them was leaking when I revved the engine up. Not a real surprise- this is exactly why in the very first parts order I included the aluminum replacement elbows, it's something that WILL need to be done with these engines even if it's not actively leaking (like mine is).
Did you go with air shocks or air bags? The air bags should be around 50-52 psi for max lift. Air shocks adjust to height and ride comfort, I would think 65-70 psi. I have manually adjusted air bags in my Buick Rainier, after the compressor decompressed.
Dirtydog wrote: Did you go with air shocks or air bags? The air bags should be around 50-52 psi for max lift. Air shocks adjust to height and ride comfort, I would think 65-70 psi. I have manually adjusted air bags in my Buick Rainier, after the compressor decompressed.
The air shocks were a largely direct fit other than needing to run the new manual air lines- I got the Gabriel Hijackers. I've not permanently installed the fill valve yet, it's just sitting in the trunk with the lines running up behind the bumper. The instructions said a minimum pressure of 25psi and a max of like 250psi, which like I said I don't think I have anything that can get anywhere near that.
Unfortunately I didn't get the coolant changed and the aluminum elbows installed last night, I just didn't have the time. Hopefully I will after work today. I'm also going to run the engine with the supercharger belt off for a bit so I can listen to the rest of the engine- I have a concern that I'm hearing a noise from somewhere lower in the engine and that it's not coming from the blower, so having it unhooked (the engine draws plenty of air through the bypass to run with it unhooked) will eliminate noises from it so I can try and figure out if there's something making noise that shouldn't. If I have the time I'll swap the rear tires- I looked at the tires yesterday and the front tires are on the correct sides but the rears need to be swapped for the directional tires to be going the right way.
Sad to say, but these 3800 engine occasionally wipe out bearings. My 97 Grand Prix did that. Hope not. Air lines are easy enough to mount, conveniently. Good luck.
I'm hoping it's no a bearing either. Granted, I have another L67 sitting on a stand in the garage- but using it would be a massive budget hit. I've got the time to pull and tear the engine down if necessary, but I would certainly prefer to not have to do that...
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