Nate's Micellaneous Vehicle Thread

[LordNatedawg]

I've got a fairly busy life. Often times I can only set aside a few hours each month to work on my '66. Sometimes that time gets eaten up by other projects; my family loves using my mechanical skills to save some money. This thread will show you what I'm wrenching on when I'm not working on Papa Smurf.

The first vehicle I'm showing you is a 1998 Ford Mustang. It has the V6 engine and a manual transmission. We bought it from a family friend. He started a family and no longer had a use for it. It sat without running since at least 2016. I started working on it in early 2020.



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The first thing I did was check all the fluids My main concern was the condition of the oil. To my surprise, it was full and looked fairly clean. Next, I pulled all of the spark plugs and gave each cylinder a shot of lubricant. IIRC, I used a lubricant that is meant to protect marine engines during long-term storage. My goal was to make sure that the cylinders weren't bone dry when I try to start it. While I had the spark plugs out, I made sure they were all in good shape. It looked liked they all had been recently replaced. I also took the time to replace the spark plug wires. I had torn a few during the removal process.

Next, I siphoned as much old gas out as I could, and then poured in a few gallons of fresh gas. 4 year old gas looks similar to cheap beer. Smells terrible. I certainly didn't want it gumming up my fuel system.

At this point, I was ready to try and start it. I disconnected the fuel pump, cranked the engine and got it started on starter fluid first. My goal was to try and "prime" the oil pump. My starter fluid also claims to lubricate cylinders. After this was done, I reconnected the fuel pump and tried to prime the fuel system. The fuel pump refused to kick on. Unfortunately, Mustangs in this year range seem to have an issue with dead fuel pumps.

I immediately got to work on replacing the pump. I left the 4-5 gallons of gas in the tank when I dropped it. I replaced the fuel pump and the filler neck grommet while I had the gas tank down. After that was done, I reassembled everything, verified that I now had fuel pressure at the Schrader valve, and the cranked the engine. It roared to life and soon I was smelling a mixture of old gas, burning cobwebs, and burning leaves.



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Now that it was running I could focus on other parts of the car. The oil was changed, and the coolant, brakes, and power steering were flushed. The differential and transmission fluid were left alone because they looked brand new. As you can tell by the photo below, the coolant was....a little dirty.



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That's where I'm at with this project. It needs new tires, it sprung a leak at the power steering pump, and rust has deformed the disc brakes pretty bad. It also might have a bad throwout or pilot bearing. Releasing the clutch while the vehicle is in neutral causes a short but loud squeal emanating from the transmission. This vehicle will sit for a while because the soon-to-be driver doesn't have his license yet.

[LordNatedawg]

Another vehicle I worked on was a 2003 Saturn Ion. It belonged to one of my older siblings. They sold it to a newly licensed younger sibling, but it had a few problems. Of course, those problems quickly became mine to solve. It needed a new alternator. The master cylinder was leaking brake fluid, and the brake fluid was filling up the brake booster. The leak was very slow so the vehicle could still be driven, but obviously it was not an ideal, or safe, situation.


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The alternator was easy. I got one from the junkyard for cheap, threw it in and called it a day. It still works, over half a year later. The master cylinder/brake booster was not easy. As you can see by the below photo the brake booster bolts are hard to access. 3 of them can be reached with a u-joint and some extensions. The 4th bolt required a crow foot and a lot of patience.



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Once those are loose, it's time to go into the engine bay and pull it all out as one assembly. But first, you have to remove the ECM and the fuse box. I also pulled out the coolant reservoir because I wanted to clean out some of the dirt.



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After that, install the booster, bench bleed and install the master, then play the game of "where does this ground strap go?" as I reassembled the engine bay. Once that's done, I bled the brakes at all 4 wheels and had no brake pedal. Replaced the wheel cylinders, thinking that they might be bad, and still had no pedal. Eventually I realized that my master cylinder was bad despite being new. Got it replaced and everything worked great. The last thing I did was restored the headlights. This vehicle was going to my younger sibling. I obviously want it to be safe for them. The TurtleWax headlight kits are super cheap and work amazingly.



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And that's where I finished. The Saturn has a little over 200k miles on it, but it has been a reliable vehicle for its current owner. If nothing else, it makes an amazing first car. Fuel efficient and reliable. What more can you ask for?

[FetchMeAPepsi]

No pictures are showing up for me on this one. Sounds like busy time though!

[LordNatedawg]

Originally Posted by FetchMeAPepsi

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No pictures are showing up for me on this one. Sounds like busy time though!

Strange. The photos were showing up on my phone and PC. But now they suddenly aren't. I'll be honest I'm not very good at tech stuff so idk what happened.

Thought I'd give a little update on the Mustang and the Saturn, plus introduce a new vehicle.

The Mustang's power steering is solved. I replaced two o-rings on the pump's pressure regulator and it stopped all leakage.

The Saturn ran into a problem. Here in Nevada, construction detours will occasionally take you down dirt roads. Following said detour, the Saturn hit a rock and punctured the oil pan (see pic). Slapped a junkyard one in it and it's good to go.

The new vehicle. A 1995 Toyota 4Runner with the 3.slow engine. We bought it as a "mechanics special" back in 2019. It had the notorious head gasket issue. We bought a wrecked 4Runner that had a new engine and performed a swap. The car was just a "spare" vehicle at that point because it needed some major suspension work. I recently tackled that job. I threw in a new wheel bearing, new tie rods, new control arm bushings, and new shock absorbers. The car still needs a few other things, but these components turned a pile of junk into a usable vehicle. Work will continue to turn this car into a daily driver for a family member.

[LordNatedawg]

Did some more work for another family member. My brother bought a 1994 Chevy K2500. It has the big block 454 and a 4L80E transmission. He got it rather cheap. All service receipts were maintained since the truck left the dealership, so even though the truck has over 200k miles, we both know that it is in great shape. Regardless, this truck is only being used as an off-road and winter rig. It will not be a daily driver.

First thing we did was tackle the easy stuff. Valve cover gaskets, tires, spark plugs and wires, fuel system cleaning, and shock absorbers. Just general safety and tune-up. The tires were over 14 years old, so I took the truck to work and personally installed some new ones. Most recently we did a transmission flush. Later on down the road, we will be redoing the brakes, front suspension overhaul, and tackling some other oil leaks (oil pan, oil filter housing, oil cooler lines, etc). This truck runs real smooth. I believe it is worth saving.

And just as a side note: be careful when replacing spark plugs. I've replaced several sets in the past, but on this truck I hit an issue. After the plugs were replaced we had a slight misfire on 1 cylinder. This misfire was accompanied by a loud and rhythmic "cracking" sound. If you have ever been tazed, you'll recognize the cracking sound as arcing electricity. I had to replace each spark plug 1 by one with the old plugs until I found the offending cylinder. The plug on cylinder 2, brand new out of the box, was cracked. Instead of sparking on the electrode, it was arcing to the head through the porcelain. Replaced that plug with another new one and the issue was resolved. Never seen that before. But it just goes to show that "new" doesn't always mean "good".

[LordNatedawg]

More work complete, more work to do.

The 4Runner decided to blow a headgasket. So that is going to be getting yet another engine swap. Can you hear my excitement? When the new engine goes in I will be using headers instead of the stock exhaust system. On the 3.0 V6 motors there is an exhaust crosspipe that passes behind the heads. It heats up cylinder 6 and causes warpage of the heads. You can even see in the attached pic that one of the cylinders has quite literally been steam cleaned. With headers, I can delete the crosspipe and hopefully eliminate head warpage. More on that later though. I still have to source a new engine.

In more exciting news. The Mustang is registered and finally on the road. I installed a new clutch, brakes all around, and took it to work for a new set of tires. It's not a GT or a Cobra, but it is still plenty fun to drive. Most importantly, my brother now has a reliable vehicle to get him around town. It still needs some minor suspension work, and possibly some performance exhaust work in the future. But for now, I can finally take a break from this project.

Coming soon. My parents picked up a 1992 Subaru SVX with a blown motor. Somehow I have to revive this vehicle for yet another sibling who will be getting a license soon. Stay tuned.

[LordNatedawg]

Here's another project I've been slowly picking away at.

Remember my 1995 4Runner with a blown head gasket? Well...it blew another head gasket. You can see in the pictures that cylinder 6 has literally been steam cleaned. I tore the engine apart with the intent of fixing it and deleting the exhaust cross pipe that causes head warpage. Unfortunately that wasn't viable. The cams were badly grooved, the cam caps were grooved, and the cylinder walls had very deep vertical scratches. The engine was going to need a complete rebuild, but no local shop would've been able to look at it for at least a year.

So I did the next easiest thing. I bought a 3.4L out of a 3rd generation 4Runner to drop into my 2nd generation 4Runner. It has been a slow process but today I finally got the engine installed. I still need to install a wiring harness and finalize a few small things before I can start it.

Just a small summary. I had to relocate the charcoal canister and battery from the right to the left side of the vehicle. I'm reusing the original transmission. I had to drill a hole in the engine block to relocate the dipstick. The wiring harness is a complete adapter harness. I had to buy a ECM for a Toyota T-100, because they used the 3.4L engine with a A340H transmission (the same combo I now have).

I didn't take as many pictures as I thought. But this project has been going on for about 8 months now. Very slow because it isn't cheap and I don't have much spare time.