Lazy Saturday · 6:13pm Dec 12th, 2015
It's a Saturday.
And I don't have to work today.
I don't have to take ASE tests today.
I can do whatever I want today!
Decided this morning that I was going to get the old Grand Marquis back on the road. Got the battery charged up, and then noticed that the red brake warning light was on. Gave the brake pedal an experimental push, and it went flat to the floor. So much for putting it back on the road.
Way back when I bought the car—actually, after I'd owned it for a week or so—I determined that what was going to end its life was either brake failure or transmission failure. The transmission was already at maximum adaptive on the 1-2 shift*, which is a pretty good indication that the transmission is on the way out.
The brake lines were scary as well. Every inch of them was flaky rust, and it was only a matter of time before one of them went. Those of you who have ever had the misfortune to string brake lines on a Grand Marquis will understand why I had little interest in fixing them.
I haven't totally given up on the old girl yet. I don't have to make a decision right away, but . . . I think it might be time to go looking for another cheap, disposable winter beater. Ideally, another Grand Marquis or Crown Vic, so I can just swap parts back and forth if need be. Or a Buick LeSabre with a 3.8. Got a lot of extra Buick parts left over from my old Regal.
Or maybe I'll get really bored one weekend and decide to fix the brakes on the Marquis. Unlikely, but one never knows. Best option is see what cars are going for on Craigslist, and see if I can find one I like more than I like the concept of fixing the Grand Marquis.
Still, whatever choice I make, I can't really complain about the life the Grand Marquis had with me. I paid $300 for the car, and put over 40,000 miles on it.
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For the non-mechanicy people, modern transmissions try to give nice, smooth shifts, and the transmission sets the line pressure accordingly. When a trans has reached max adaptive, that usually means that that clutch is totally worn out, and the computer has decided to throw all the line pressure into the shift that it can, in the hopes that the car actually goes into that gear. It's a really nice, sporty shift feel . . . but in a luxury car (which the Grand Marquis was intended to be), it's a sign of impending transmission failure.
I also found out this week that somebody translated Pinkie Pie's Last Nightmare Night to Russian. Here's the link, if you're interested:
Да, это — Табун!
Or, if you prefer, here:
Библиотека
Since I don't speak or read Russian, I machine-translated the pages. Here's Google's idea of what the short description is:
Pinkie Pie Night Nightmare loves. She also loves to dress exactly like candy. Most of all she likes to play the ponies. But once she has gone too far.
Anyway, I'd assume that the translators have done a better job than Google did.
I have also been remiss in not sharing this with y'all. CatCube did a sketch of the arrangement the ponies used to pull the fire engine out in Apple Honey's Perfectly Ordinary Day.
I feel like there was something else I was gonna blog about, but I can't really remember what it was.
Blargh.
Oh yeah, this is all kinds of adorable.
Source
EDIT: In a nice little bit of serendipity, I passed a s-10 for sale by the side of the road for $800, and a friend just texted me to say she's selling her LeSabre. [There's also a Pontiac Grand Prix for sale between my house and town, but I don't want one of those] Suddenly, I have options!
So, out of curiosity, how would this apply to manuals? I've never actually driven an automatic, but it never hurts to learn more about the equipment you use.
Clutches always gave me trouble. I mean, you have there a friction plate, and a flat plate, and you have to vigorusly rub them together in an attempt to wear them aout to get things moving, just because youre not allowed to use a nice flat torque electric motor or steam engine.
Igor. To the workbench. I want all patent expired tech listed that can be Mcguyvered together to give a hybrid replacement engine and transmission with similar spec to the existing unit. Similar cost would be good but greater cost against greater effiicncy can be traded off.
Still think that the current $40 a barrel will only last until its killed off the $55 a barrel alternative renewable crude companies.
3613412
With a traditional manual, it doesn't apply. You, the driver, apply the force to shift the gears; the fluid in the gearbox is just there to keep everything lubricated. There isn't a pump or anything.
In a manumatic--which is a manual transmission controlled by a computer--fluid pressure is probably a big deal. I don't actually know much about the nuts and bolts in them, since they're fairly new in automobiles in the US. Late-model Focuses (Foci?) have them; the one I drove to Bronycon in 2014 was a manumatic.
3613425
Steam engines probably aren't practical for cars any more--too much equipment needed that's too heavy and takes too long to get to temp. If you had a nice, ready source of steam, you could probably build a fireless kettle type of car for short trips (I've heard that fireless kettle steam locomotives might be making a bit of a comeback).
As for electrics, there are a lot of electric over mechanical transmissions in use in cars today--hybrids. There are a number of different styles in use, and each one has its own advantages and disadvantages; one of the biggest is that some designs can't have 'neutral' due to the magnets in the motor, so if your electric drive battery fails entirely, you can't even push the car off the road, because the wheels will lock.
It's my understanding that right now the big players in the game are Toyota and Ford. GM's got a fair bit of experience (much of it in what doesn't work), and Honda does as well. For pure electrics, Nissan and Tesla have both got good cars on the market, but they're niche vehicles. Interestingly, cars are getting more and more add-on electrical technology (electric power steering, for example), so a lot of the more mundane challenges to a pure-electric car are already being dealt with in order to get a more efficient gasoline car.
I think you're right on the fuel prices . . . one of the speculations I've heard is that OPEC is keeping prices low to try and drive small-time domestic companies out of business (like in the Bakken range). I'm not sure that will actually work; after all, we know where the oil is, and when the prices go back up, it'll be worth extracting again.
3613453
Fair enough, then. It's a bit embarrassing, but in all honesty, I don't actually know a whole lot about how my own car works. I mean, I know the physics and chemistry behind it and all, but on the level of the mechanics, I couldn't tell a carburetor from a piston. I never really had the time to learn about it, so I enjoy picking up little tidbits like that when I can find them.
Okay, my first reaction at seeing Marble and Mac: "AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!"
"Maximum D'aw achieved! Houstin, the Eagle has landed!"
Also, I like the sketch of the block-and-tackle fire-engine extraction device. Not to criticize but, had I done the drawing I would have done it in 3/4 exploded view to give a clearer view of the tackle and anchor arrangement but that's just me.
Finally, sorry to hear you're having so much trouble with your car but, at 300 bucks you can't beat it, especially since you've managed to get 40k miles out of it. Doing some simple math, I saw that it has cost you merely 1.33 per mile of use and, not taking into account the expense of gas, oil, repair and maintenance, that's not too bad. Hopefully you may have the time to fix the thing and get it running properly, again.
I'd had a similar experience when I was young, having bought an old Plymouth Fury III for a hundred dollars. It had a really solid 318 CI V8 which, I discovered later on, had semi-hemispherical heads which had been custom installed at the factory, a very unusual thing for engines under 350 CI at the time. Pretty much everything other than the transmission and brakes were sound so, going to a auto recycling yard, I put together all the necessary replacement parts with which to fix the brake system then replaced the Torqueflite 727A transmission with a Mopar five speed (with OD) manual transmission, new flywheel, new clutch. I then installed a bolt-on custom floor shifter, cutting the appropriate hole in the tranny hump for the cover plate. It ran great for about 30K miles or so and then I started experiencing engine oil leaks and then burned a valve.
Availing myself of the use of a friend's shop, I pulled the engine, put it on a stand and proceded to rebuild it, adding new sodium filled valves, high tension valve springs, a new cam. I then shaved the heads and increased the compression ratio from 9.6-1 (stock) to 10.9-1, added a heavy duty starter, Mopar four barrel high induction carburator, hooker high-flow headers, high flow exaust (again Hooker) and Blue Streak ignition.
I replaced the rear end with one from a differential from a scrapped (wrecked) '69 Plymouth Roadrunner (best year), added new five point star chrome rims, 15x50 radial racing meats on the back, 15x 35 on the front, I beefed up the suspension and finished it all with a Plum Royal metalflake paint job. (Plum Royal's that really deep, pretty purple you see on custom cars, sometimes.
Finally, I took it and traded some major auto repair with a friend of mine who totally redid the interior in Navaho White Leatherite, giving it all a really beautiful tuck-and-roll with buttons and the works! With all chrome work cleaned up that car looked AWESOME! It would do 0-60 3.5 seconds off the line, making it one of the fastest semi-stock track cars around, something I took great pride in.
Ultimately I ended up dropping about five grand into that car. I ended up selling it at a car show for fifteen grand! Not a bad piece of change for about eighteen months of rather casual work.
No vague candy costumes for Pinkie Pie. Only precise accuracy. Candy deserves it.
Doesn't surprise me that Pinkie has a gambling problem. Wonder what kind of pony races she bets on. Eating contests? Milkshake chugging challenges? Or perhaps Pinkie and Ditzy run an illegal underground muffin baking organization.
They make a lot of dough.
3613463
Well, that's all right; there's lots of stuff I don't know until I start researching it, and then I blog about it and someone in the comments turns out to be an expert, and then everybody learns. There are some good basic tutorials out there, like in YouTube, if you really want to know the nuts and bolts (no pun intended) about what goes on inside an engine. This is a reasonably good primer that covers both some of the basics and some of the modern tech used:
3613478
Oh, no complaints. I bought the thing as a winter beater and thought I'd be lucky if it lasted through one winter. As for maintenance . . . I didn't do any. Probably a few oil changes here and there, but I honestly can't remember the last time I changed the oil on it. I got my money's worth out of the car and then some--especially since it's worth the exactly the same now as when I bought it. I can sell it for scrap and get my $300 back.
Hard to find cars in that price range any more, sigh. Besides the Grand Marquis, the last few cars I've bought cost $600 each, and I may have to spend even more to replace the Marquis. Although I did find a rear-ended Crown Vic on Craigslist that's going pretty cheap. A little work with a sledgehammer, and i could get it roadworthy again, although it's unlikely the trunk could be used.
Too much road salt around here to find nice older cars that can be restored cheaply. I've got a 69 Chevy C-10 that's got a decent body; one of these days, I'm going to do something with it. Right now, it's a driveway ornament.
My dad used to have an AMC Javelin that somebody bought and restored. I kind of wonder if that car's still around.
3613463
When you break an engine down to it's basic systems it's pretty simple, actually.
1: Induction system, which is a header attachedd to the carburator or fuel injection which serves as the channel from the aforementioned to the ignition chambers.
2: fuel/air mixture system, usually a carburator (asperated system) or fuel injection (pre-mix induction system)
3: Ignition system. This usually involves an induction coil, which receives electricty from the battery at start up and then from the alternator once the engine starts, the coil then passes said amplified electricty to a distributor cap where it passes into a rotor and distributes the charge to the cylendars in a timed squence (ignition timing.) In a four cylendar engine that sequence is usually 1324.
4: Exhaust system. This one's obvious.
5: Cooling system. How it works: water passes through jackets in the engine block, cooling the OIL. The OIL then cools the engine. The water, having done its job, then passes through some pipes through a radiator to cool it then back into the engine to repeat the process.
6: Cylendar timing system. Working integrally with the ignition system, a cam shaft, with precisely sized and positioned lobes, actuates push rods which serve as levers to open and close intake and exhaust valves at the correct time, allowing the engine to take in fuel air mixture, burn the mixture for power then exhaust the waste gasses out of the appropriate valve port.
Excluding such things as SMOG and air quality control systems, you can see that the basic of an engine are pretty simple and, once you understand how that works, the rest is just engineering and knowing what parts to put in.
Addendum: Oops! Forgot to mention the oiler system. Of all systems in an engine, it's the simplest being comprised of nothing more than an oil storage well (oil pan) a pump to drive the oil (usually in or just above the pan) a filter to strain out impurities and channels through which the oil flows. Very simple.
3613637
3613588
Thanks, you guys. Now I already know a lot more than I did before.
3613641
You're very welcome!
Best way to learn engines? Buy an old one, tear it down being very careful to note the position and location of each part, how it disassembles/reassembles then put it all back together. If you do it right the engine will start right up! If it doesn't, repeat the aforementioned process until it does. That's how I learned, starting when I was about ten years old. By the time I was fifteen I was building competition racing engines.
3613647
You know, that's actually not a bad idea. It certainly worked wonders for me when I was learning computers and general electronics. Something to keep in mind for when I move into a place with its own garage again. Don't really have the storage space right now, sadly. Thanks for the tip.
Hey look, I get better at Russian when I've been drinking! :D
3613453 They're called manumatics? I always just called them semi-automatics.
3614478
Technically, no. And yes. I don't think there's a specific term for them.
For example, the Focus transmission I alluded to above is (according to Wikipedia) a dual-clutch semi-automatic gearbox, which Ford calls the "PowerShift." It's a manual, but it does the shifting for you, and you don't have a clutch.
3614481 Best of both worlds. The one I rode in was so lazy it even did the downshifting for you if you didn't after coming to a complete stop.
I'm still curious as to why it hasn't caught on more. I took to my mom's standard Cavalier like a pro but haven't really driven them since. I like standards.... most of the time.
3614490
They feel weird. You have to get used to them.
[An aside; Ford had that problem with CVT transmissions as well. People complained that it didn't shift (which it didn't; that's how it's supposed to work); eventually, Ford had a software update which blipped the tachometer during 'shift' points to make customers happy.]
The one I drove reminded me of an Allison transmission in a medium-duty truck. I could feel occasional compression braking, and I could feel the clutches come on and off; it was especially noticeable during low-speed operation. It was sort of jerky and harsh . . . on the plus side, though, I averaged 41 mpg, and I wasn't trying to be efficient. Probably would have done even better if I hadn't hit two traffic jams on the way out.
The moral is, people don't like new technology if it's forced on them, but love it when they buy it on purpose.
3614501 Well yeah there's going to be a learning curve and it's going to take time for the companies to smooth out all the bumps (literally) it's the same reason why I wouldn't have wanted the Honda Insight (I think that was the name of their first hybrid) when it first came out. Yes I was overjoyed to see it but like most things I'd rather give it a chance to mature a touch.
3614566
That was actually a really good hybrid. But you're right, it's not always best to be the first to have the newest tech, especially when it's as expensive as a car.
Pft, they're not that bad. Though I certainly appreciate your not-wanting-to-do-it. I haven't done any of those Fords lately, but it does feel like all I've been doing lately are brake lines. Actually today, a good customer brought in a
shitbox98 Accord they just bought and said 'I need a brake job.' Of course, you probably see where this is going. I had to string 2 rear brake lines, in addition to front and back brake jobs. Oh well, still better than that Geo Prism / Corrolla I did earlier this week. 2 rear brake lines and 3 fuel lines front to back... fuel tank, straps, and filler neck... and repair the evap lines on top of the tank.Speaking of Panther platfrom brake lines, my friend's father (many years before he met me) took his Town Car to the dealership for rear brake lines. They charged him something like $1500 (remember this was 10 years ago), claiming they had to separate the body from the frame. Of course, it was plainly obvious from underneath that they did no such thing.
3613463 It's easy to remember how a 4 stroke engine works: Suck, squeeze, bang, blow.
3614834
If the car was in nice shape, it'd be a no-brainer. It isn't, though. Best that can be said is it still runs.
That's one place where I'm kind of anal, since to do it right, brake lines are pricy, just because of the labor. I don't want some customer looking under their car and thinking we did a half-assed job and charged them too much, so when we do brakes, all the lines go in the clips, if they're serviceable; new clips are added where needed, and they all get new fittings, too. None of this half-ass stringing pre-made sticks with unions, and tossing in loops to take up space. Ditto for fuel lines . . . of course, we mostly use the nylon lines these days.
3618706
Heh, I do use those 5 footers myself. Yeah, with unions where needed. But one thing I despise is those loops to shorten a line. That's really half-assed, imo. That is something where if a customer sees it, it looks like you did a shit job. I just cut the line to fit and flare the end. I honestly wish I had new clips to play with, I try to resuse the old ones, but you know how it is. When the line rusts so bad, it expands inside of the clip and destroys it.
Throw a bottle or two of Lucas Transmission Fix in it, then fill the brake reservoir back up. You don't need BOTH front and rear brakes, anyway. Wherever the leak is, it's not like you can't stop with the other half (unless it's your master cylinder leaking). Ah, that year I spent running only the drum rear brakes of my S10 was some fun times. Stopped on a dime like always and confused the heck out of people when I showed them. The Lucas oil is great stuff, too. My mom's truck is at 313,000 miles with the original torque converter and transmission, so we threw some of that in at a recommendation when we started feeling what you're talking about and it somehow fixed it.
Magic.
3742112
It's a diagonal-split brake system, and both rear lines are rusted through, so that's not an option, unfortunately. Could block the lines at the ABS module, I suppose.
Got an impala for $600 to replace it. So I don't need to think about it until the spring.
3743323
Impalas are good cars. With your knowledge, I wouldn't be surprised to see it give you another 100k miles before it dies. I managed to get a Passat for $700, but I have to fix VW's genius idea of putting extremely important computer modules under the floor board to get wet.
3743338
We'll find out just how good it is. I tend to buy pieces of crap that are on their way to the junkyard, fix as little as I can get away with, and drive it until something vital fails. It's got a 3.4, which is unfortunate, but for the price, I can't be too picky.
VW's not the only one with the idea of putting important modules in the basement (so to speak). Lost the airbags on my Regal after it partially flooded in a rainstorm. I'm assuming (never went looking) that the SRS module on those cars was in the footwell on the passenger side.