Straight Is The Gate

To the untrained eye, this may look like an ordinary, straight-gated automatic transmission shift lever.

But it's not the one that the Eagle came (to me) with. At least not entirely. The metal lever and the handle came from an assembly that arrived from Pennsylvania on Wednesday.

See, when I got the car, there was this liiiiiitle tiny huge problem with the shifter. Basically, imagine you're in your car, about to move the gear lever. You probably need to push the button in with your thumb to unhook the thing so you can move it, right? That's so it doesn't move around by accident. Well, when I got the car, this mechanism was probably long since broken, so the lever just kind of clicked back and forth through the gears (or more accurately, the detents) by just gently pushing the lever forward or back.

This means that it if got kicked or bumped somehow, it could easily move, say, into Reverse while the car was driving down the road. You don't need to be a mechanic to surmise that if that happened, it would be a Bad Thing. Not to mention that it could nullify all the work you just did to rebuild the transmission.

So in what will be one of the Eagle's last significant repairs under my watch,* I Frankensteined the lever and handle from the new shifter assembly into the one that was already in the car.
The end result is what you see above. The gear lever now works properly, and there were plenty of leftovers:

*As I described in a post on Oppo, I may be sending the Eagle off into the sunset soon. Let us observe a moment of silence.

The Heat Is On

It's not summer yet, but you wouldn't know it in the Sonoran Desert. Our summer starts in mid-to-late April and ends some time around the week of Halloween. So it may seem that I picked an odd time to fix the Eagle's heater.

But, of course, the irony is that the heater is an integral part of the cooling system, that had been bypassed because of a heater core leak. Last weekend I de-bypassed it, as part of a larger pre-summer cooling system service.

I also drained and refilled the coolant and used a wire wheel to clean up the business end of the coolant temperature sensor. I threw some stop-leak in as well, and so far the cooling system works as it should, the heater makes heat (and I haven't seen any evidence of leakage), and the temperature gauge on the dashboard is more functional than before.

So that's cool. Speaking of which, it's time to turn my attention again to the air conditioner. When I got the Eagle, I was concerned that the A/C was running R-12, the refrigerant of choice in the bad old days. This is because of both the age of the car and this sticker on the compressor:

It's expensive and hard to find today, and supposedly it's bad for the environment, but it's less prone to leaks, and has more cooling potential.

I could also tell that some of the fluorescent-dyed refrigerant had leaked...

and that the system wasn't cooling as well as it should. Before anyone suggests it, "A/C delete" is not an option. While you (most likely) won't die without A/C in this town, you'll wish you did.

And it's a moot point anyway, because after some research and a look at the hardware on the system, it turns out after all that it runs R134a (YAY!), which is being phased out in the EU but is still the only game in town on this side of the pond. I already had a can of it, so I added some on Monday night to get the system's operating pressure where it should be. So far, so good.

• Reinstall starter and brace
• Put in the transfer case
• New transmission fluid cooler line to replace the one I had to break
• Fix speedometer
• New u-joints for the driveshafts
• A new driver’s side CV axle in the front
• Install new exhaust components
• Change oil and brake fluid
• New driver's seat belt ($$)
• New (stock) rims and tires ($$)
• New shift indicator cable (which keeps the gearshift from moving accidentally)
• Service the front and rear differentials
• New gas springs for rear hatch
• Insurance, operation permit, emissions, title, registration
• Flush coolant and repair heater core with some stop-leak and a prayer
• Fix whatever makes the A/C compressor scream when it’s on
• De-grease the engine bay
• 4-wheel alignment
• New under-hood insulation
• Interior detailing 
• New paint job. Desperately needed. ($$$$)

Pimpin' Ain't Easy

Well, folks, it just goes to show that you should never unquestioningly trust a repair shop. We all know this, but I'm not usually as flabbergasted about it as I am today.

To fix the Eagle's stalling problem, the shop by my house wanted to put in a new carburetor for over $700. They didn't even mention or address something I found on Wednesday, namely three broken and rotted vacuum hoses. I saw them and thought, hey, maybe that's what the stalling issue has been all along. Maybe it's not the carburetor, which I heard was rebuilt not that long ago anyway.

I went down to the O'reilly and got two feet of hose, from different area codes... just kidding. Same area code. With the new hoses, the car hasn't stalled since, even when the engine was cool, even in the places where it ALWAYS stalled. I don't have to do my special anti-stalling braking technique anymore, I don't have to turn off the A/C when coming to a red light anymore, none of that stuff.

The cost of the hose? $0.84. EIGHTY. FOUR. CENTS. No Benjamins. Not even any Washingtons, unless you count quarters. Some cheap hose, right there, playa.

Two feet of this stuff, plus tax:

This could turn into a rant if I'm not careful. Instead, let's put a positive spin on it, and be grateful for auto parts stores, and that the Eagle is a little safer today than it was on Tuesday.

The Long-Awaited Day

I took the Eagle in to get an emissions re-test today. Using half the old gas and filling up with new gas right before the test seems to have done the trick, because it passed!! Carbon monoxide was almost nil, and hydrocarbons were down more than 1000 parts per million from last time. So you know what that means....

And checkout the watermark on the title. Arizona knows what's up.

Not only got the title, but also the plate... so it's officially a real car now. 

And there was much rejoicing.

"Get Your Motor Runnin'... Head Out On The Highway"

I've been feeling reluctant to post much lately, for two reasons. One is that most of what I'm doing now with the Eagle is just driving it around to use up the old gas to try to pass emissions. So that doesn't lend itself to a lot of photogenic moments, and we all know that the internet loves - no - demands pictures. 

The other is that the things I am actually doing besides driving it are pretty small right now. I had a duplicate key made. I finally washed the thing. I tightened a drivebelt so I could use the A/C without it screaming. Okay, I was pretty jazzed about that second one, to be honest, since it's supposed to be 95 degrees here on Monday. Amazingly, it works just fine. 

In my exuberance at this discovery, I decided to cross another thing off my list and de-grease the engine bay. It went all right, but not great, although it is somewhat cleaner than before. And, well, there was that thing about how I took it on the freeway for the first time this morning. The good news is that it can get up to about 70 mph without exploding in fiery death. The bad news is that when you have only 3 forward gear ratios, the RPMs get a liiitle high at that point, and holy Hannah does the gas mileage suffer when that happens. I've never seen a fuel gauge move that much on such a short trip. I went less than 25 miles, and the needle moved at least 10%. And remember, that tank is muy grande.

• Reinstall starter and brace
• Put in the transfer case
• New transmission fluid cooler line to replace the one I had to break
• Fix speedometer
• New u-joints for the driveshafts
• A new driver’s side CV axle in the front
• Install new exhaust components
• Change oil and brake fluid
• New driver's seat belt ($$)
• New (stock) rims and tires ($$)
• New shift indicator cable (which keeps the gearshift from moving accidentally)
• Service the front and rear differentials
• New gas springs for rear hatch
• Insurance, operation permit, emissions, title, registration
• Flush coolant and repair heater core with some stop-leak and a prayer
• Fix whatever makes the A/C compressor scream when it’s on
• De-grease the engine bay
• 4-wheel alignment
• Probably a new carburetor ($$)
• New under-hood insulation
• Interior detailing 
• New paint job. Desperately needed. ($$$$)

America's Favorite Game Show: Tune That Carb!

I wrote the following earlier this week:

"On Monday, I drove to and from work in the Eagle. It went okay, but it stalled often. So in an attempt to remedy that, I took a self-taught crash course in carburetor tuning on Monday night, and a little bit on Tuesday morning before work. Lots of trial and error have lead me to two conclusions:

- the fuel mixture was too lean, probably because of the large drop in elevation since the carb was tuned last

- even in making the mixture more rich and thereby increasing the speed and smoothness of the idle, some stalling still happens, and the exhaust smells... wrong.

I'm sure some degree of both of these problems is at least partly due to a lot of the gas being pretty old and reluctant to burn. The only real cure for this is driving the car everywhere I go, i.e. using it in favor of the Altima for a while. When most of the old gas is flushed out and replaced with new gas, I have high hopes that I'll be able to get the thing to run reliably. Ironically, the large capacity of the tank actually presents a challenge in this case."


I've now got the carb tuned to where the engine pretty much doesn't stall as long as it's warmed up. I've also secured the exhaust system better so it doesn't make a sickening metallic thump every time there's an imperfection in the road. I'll probably spring for at least one new belt this weekend so I can use the A/C without it screaming.

Boring update is boring.