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Don't you love older vehicles!!

MikeD

MikeD

I'm Your Huckleberry
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In the last year I have replaced brake lines, master cylinder, fuel lines, fuel pump, water pump, alternator, tensioner, idler pully, pitman arm, tie rods, shocks,radio, ....

And now this week I'm having to tear the right side of the front diff apart to replace an axle seal. Its in pieces in my neighbors garage as I type this. Took two hours to pull it apart. Hoping reassembly goes easier. I should probably replace the bearing as well as long as I have it apart. Have to see if the parts store rents a puller.

This is my 94 Chevy pickup with 130K miles

Our 08 Honda with 357K has only needed a pair of cooling fans and new struts. LOL


Just had to vent....carry on!
 
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In all fairness, my oldest son was born in 1994.

Sure makes me feel old.
 
I love the old iron. They are so much easier to work on. Until two years ago the newest car I have daily driven was a 1972 Nova with a built up small block. The Nova is semi retired now but I have a boy that will be 16 next winter. My wife has always had newer vehicles. I have found that I can do some work but walk away from some too. My daughter got a 1998 Jeep Wrangler last year for her first vehicle and I have found it overall to very easy to work on.
 
My middle son got a 1998 Saturn last year for his first car.

The saturns are about as easy as it gets to work on them. Heck, almost every bolt on the entire car is 10mm. LOL
 
Michigan winters combined with road salt ages vehicles here amazingly fast. For my vehicle to still be in the shape its in having spent it life in MI w/o being garage kept or babied is amazing.

My 85 Jeep litterally rusted away to nothing.

I see a lot of nice older cars here but the guys that own them go to great lengths to keep them that way, starting with storing them during the winter.
 
MikeD said:
Michigan winters combined with road salt ages vehicles here amazingly fast. For my vehicle to still be in the shape its in having spent it life in MI w/o being garage kept or babied is amazing.

My 85 Jeep litterally rusted away to nothing.

I see a lot of nice older cars here but the guys that own them go to great lengths to keep them that way, starting with storing them during the winter.
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I forgot you were in Michigan. That does take it's toll. PA uses road salt but our winters aren't nearly as bad or long as yours or the New England states. I have a pretty nice 72 Chevelle SS that was my first car. Since my Dad and I fixed t up in 1988 it doesn't see daylight from the first snow until the spring rain washed the roads clean.
 
Yes. Yes I do love old vehicles. However, my wife doesn't see it that way. :( Take care. Tom Worthington
 
Got the seal and bearing replaced. Unfortunately I have some bigger issues. I've got stress fractures all through the transaxle, you can see them in the pic of the housing below. I'm not sure if the hole under the 4x4 actuator port is supposed to be there...i hope so...

I put it back together but it could fail at any time.


I do have another axle sitting in the garage but it is not the same gear ratio. I may need to break that one down and see what it looks like. It came from a truck a couple years older than mine.
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Sometimes the casting looks cracked and sometimes it really is cracked.

I generally strip them bare, hang from a string, and ring them like a bell with a little mallet. The cracked casting will always make a nasty tone, where as a good solid casting should make a clear Bell like tone.

I used to use this method for inspection of weldments as well. In addition to the normal inspections, the weldment would get rung like a bell. Once a welder got good at making them they would all sound the same. Anything that looked good but sounded funny would get more advanced inspection.
 
CaddmannQ said:
Sometimes the casting looks cracked and sometimes it really is cracked.
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I could catch my finger nail in most of the cracks.

Been looking for another decent used truck. Drove a 06 F150 at the dealer this week. It ran so bad I didnt think i was going to get off the lot. I dont care about rust or ammenites but I want a solid engine. Its not that hard to change all fluids and plugs regularly.
 
Just about the biggest Bugaboo on all modern engines is vacuum leaks.

The electronics can correct a little bit for this but once you get to the point where they can't there's something physically wrong.

They are often hard to find, because you have lots of hoses in inconvenient places.

One of the common ones was the little hose to the transmission upshift Dashpot on automatic cars. Once it got old it would suck enough air to destroy your drivability and make the transmission shift funny. If the dashpot itself failed, you would also start smoking transmission oil out the tailpipe.

After that, HVAC controls, & power brake booster Hose & Fittings account for 99% of the easy to fix vacuum leaks.

Other common culprits are the PCV valve and fittings, and all gaskets in the top end.

When you do a scan of the onboard diagnostics these vacuum leaks will often show up as oddball things like "idle control solenoid out of range" but if you change the solenoid nothing happens cuz it's not bad: it's diagnosed as out of range by the system because it can't close enough to make up for the air leak.

There are surely lots of other codes which will pop up but ultimately go back to a vacuum leak.

My '96 Pontiac with the GM v6, ran terrific and started instantly, but every so often that intake manifold would loosen up or it would leak vacuum around the cheapo gromet fitting for the power brakes. It would idle rough and shift funny until I fixed it.
 
Holy smokes MikeD! You can do CaddmannQ's test but it may fall to pieces like something out of a cartoon if you hit it with a mallet. Good luck and keep us posted.
 
You don't hit it! OMG NO!

You tap it like a fine bell that costs hundreds and hundreds of dollars to replace.

I remember once an aircraft mechanic saw me putting together a Volkswagen engine and I used a rubber mallet to seat the cases.

He freaked out.

By the way this is only just a generalized test because you don't normally have several different castings to compare, and you don't know what it's really supposed to sound like until you ring it.

But the dirtier it sounds the more likely you have a poor casting.

And if you have big visible open cracks you got problems that JB Weld & duct tape may not solve. ;)
 
One of the first tests I do when looking at a used car is to open the oil filler cap and pull the dipstick.

Take some oil from the dipstick and rub it hard between your fingers. No matter how hard you press your fingers together they should still slip sideways. If your finger stick together like they don't want to slide, the oil is bad. It may have too many miles on it, or it may have just sat around for years without being driven and only have 500 miles. It goes stale, smells bad & it gets sticky.

Then I take a good sniff of the inside of the engine.

If it smells like burnt oil, it's been overheated. If smells like varnish or gas, there's gasoline in the oil, possible from several causes.
 
CaddmannQ said:
You don't hit it! OMG NO!

You tap it like a fine bell that costs hundreds and hundreds of dollars to replace.

I remember once an aircraft mechanic saw me putting together a Volkswagen engine and I used a rubber mallet to seat the cases.

He freaked out.

By the way this is only just a generalized test because you don't normally have several different castings to compare, and you don't know what it's really supposed to sound like until you ring it.

But the dirtier it sounds the more likely you have a poor casting.

And if you have big visible open cracks you got problems that JB Weld & duct tape may not solve. ;)
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LOL...I didn't mean to wail on it.
 
Im not going to remove it, strip it and whack it. I'll use it til it fails or until I get something else.

My buddy recomended I remove the axles and just use it as a 2wd.
 
Those are probably just casting imperfections. ... to fracture a housing in a pick-up like that it would have to have been high horsepower, heavily loaded pulling truck. And the rest of that Chevy front end would have grenaded long ago. You have nothing to worry about.

Sent from my SM-G360V using Tapatalk
 
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