Leaderboard

I forgot to mention a Thank You to Dave for many of the parts, Dashmaster for the clear bushing instructions as well as ROJ in general for the tutorials and support. A small variation on the bushing compression was using an sae bolt I had laying around which was a 9/16” nut and bolt from a trailer spring, and I did not need to loosen the top strut mount. In retrospect I probably should had loosened the strut as those fractions of inch may have been beneficial.

Home stretch now. The agenda for today was looking into the heater plenum and cleaning it. After removing the blower motor and speed controller, I was surprised to find it was almost completely empty. The face of the evaporator was covered with fine dirt and general crud but nothing alarming like an oily spot from a leak. I did find one white plastic fin from a squirrel cage fan but this fan was fine so must be from a previous installation. I use a toothbrush and brake clean to do evaporator cores plus a vacuum. This time around, after #2 son and I did initial cleanup, we employed the one family member not directly involved so far, the youngest grandson, eight years old. He dived right in and his hand and arm fit right into the core where he cleaned in detail, photo below. We were rewarded with very nice air flow. I looked at the parking brake cable situation again and it is as I surmised, something collapsed. Where the cables come together at the rear, inside the rear crossmember, is another setup similar to the adjuster under the floor by the driver. It looks like it pushes rather than pulls and the parts have telescoped together rendering it usable but it will leave the light on requiring a manual reset. Going to leave it alone. We finally tackled the subframe bushings today, which was not as terrible as I envisioned. From the notebook in the glovebox, it appeared four of the bushings had already been done but what I found was confusing. I haven't fooled with these before so I have no frame (sic) of reference, but all four rear bushings appeared to be exactly the same. If one or more had been replaced, they must have used oem style parts rather than the Dorman replacements we have adapted, which are much heavier. I am including a photo of the parts removed. Two of them have the bolt stuck in the mount but I did not see any fasteners in danger of breaking. Two bolts did look fresher than the other two, but nothing appeared to be very recent. Again, I have no idea how fast these parts age? In any case, we did the four rear and most important bushings. Despite the lack of impending doom found, the replacement of the bushings has eliminated a mystery clunk sound while driving under certain conditions, so the new larger surface area bushings seem to have firmed up the connection from subframe to body. A test drive confirmed everything is working as it should, quiet and smooth, and with a cop driving, very elevated speeds. #2 wanted to take it home immediately but I prevailed on him to leave it through Friday so I can drain and replace the coolant, replace the thermostat and remove and clean the injectors. I noticed the running temperature indicated at a little over 200*F, unconfirmed with a heat gun, and it stays below fan cut-in but prefer a bit cooler. I will reverse flush the system first and go from there.