Maintenance Flurry November 2008
I suppose I could consolidate my whole maintenance record here, I used to keep
it in a little paper notebook, then I transferred it to a Palm Pilot - it still
lives in the Palm Desktop that just got migrated to our new
PC, but I wonder how long before that
gets hopelessly lost... so, webpages have proven pretty durable...
February 2010, 95440 miles - catching up:
- Oil and filter today
- Horn - air trumpets finally gave it up, installed single electric unit in January 2010
- Radiator and most minor hoses, installed in December 2009, battery ran pretty flat waiting for this repair, seemed to recover well after a charge.
All in November 2008, between 90800 and 90880 miles, in no particular order:
- Battery - Big crank ETX30L,
replaced a 4 year old liquid filled Bosch that was getting just a little too weak in the cold - note
about the liquid filled battery, when overfilled it vented out the tube during charging, just like it
was supposed to, but the tube vent on the 1991 cars drips directly on the exhaust pipe, probably a
good idea to watch for that and rinse it off when first running just after filling with water.
- Outboard heater hose, firewall gromet and the metal pipe and O-ring that run up to the thermostat.
The pipe developed a hole where a mod-bend was exposed to exhaust manifold heat - not complaining
really, this is 10+ years after the mod-bend was made. New pipe also had to be bent to clear the
turbine exit downpipe, but this time it is a new pipe instead of already 6+ years old. Didn't change
the inboard heater hose because the hoses were actually in excellent shape (and the engine side
clamp looks to be a real problem to work on.) Notes on the job: dish soap is an excellent lubricant,
and necessary for sliding the spring clamps around / putting in the new gromet, etc. Also, the
firewall penetration pipes are made of thin soft copper, the old hose should be cut off lengthways
with a sharp knife, pulling is futile. Also did a full coolant system flush with this job, but kept
the existing thermostat and radiator cap, cap might be ready for replacement soon, thermostat seems
to be working well.
- Oil and filter - it was time.
- Spark plugs and wires - need to get the plug part number here, I believe they are NGK long reach heat
range 6? Wires are Magnacore 8.5mm - the old wires were letting spark arc past the plug insulator
during boost, causing stumbling. Old plugs had a gap reading of about .037, gapped the new plugs to
.025.
