Since my daily got totaled and I wasn't in a hurry to go through the new car rigmarole, I found what appeared to be a pretty dang clean 91 V6 manual for a very reasonable price.
Drove 3 hours to go look at it since the guy wouldn't take a deposit to hold it til the weekend. Understandable. It was a nice looking 20 footer. Had a new 2.8 put in 2 years ago, so I wasn't concerned about the motor. Had a fairly recent MAACO paint job (as you can tell from the overspray on everything). It drove ok, fan seemed loud, definitely needed a tune up, AC needs a recharge, but everything pretty much worked. Little rust on it, which isn't surprising as it spent time in the DC area, but mostly the overspray from the paint job coming off the unprepped frame. Not a big concern. Steering box is leaking, will need tires soon. Can deal with all of it.
In my excitement, since the motor was fresh-ish (with paperwork) I didn't think to actually check the motor over. So we signed the title and I handed the man 15 crisp $100's. Seeing as how I'm about to drive it 3 hrs back home, I opened the hood to top off fluids. Added a qt of oil, checked the belt, etc. Popped the rad cap and oh boy. Looked like oil had gotten in it. Nice rusty brownish looking aerated stuff. Called the guy, he pretty much said tough luck, but don't worry, it looked like that before and never came close to overheating. Ugh. I didn't have the means to do a rad flush, and I also thought it could just be old rad fluid, mixed orange and green and maybe some rust? Dunno.
So I had to make a choice. I had driven a rental car there. I could drive the rental back and call AAA to tow it home. Or I could chance it, drop the rental keys in the drop box, and if the rig ends up on a tow truck, by God I'm going to be riding shotgun in the sumbitch. I figured my wife, patiently waiting back home, would be equally irritated with either scenario, so I chanced it.
The fan clutch was seized so it sounded like a freakin' dump truck, and it felt like it was only running on 5. The tires were 10 years old. But I took her easy and made it home, no big deal.
Yesterday I picked up plugs and fluids and swapped the fan and clutch assembly from my big trooper. The nuts on the fan on the new one were a huge pain, all sorta pre-rounded. Stupid rusty pos. After much dirty frustrating work and a lot of PB blaster, I got the good fan on it. And there was much rejoicing. Next, I replaced the spark plugs - one was cracked! no wonder it seemed to be running on 5 - it was! I mounted up my spare MSD blaster coil, and adjusted some vacuum lines, and wow, totally different. Feels peppy!
Next on the list will be running some rad/cooling system cleaner, then flushing the hell out of the cooling system and putting in new stuff. If it become contaminated, I'll begrudgingly do the head gaskets and that ought to fix it.
I will need to get new tires, but being unsure about how much more I will need to do with this, I am going to try to score a good used set in the stock 235/75/15 size.
Ultimately the goal is to have something reliable and comfortable to commute to work and drive to/on the beach with the fam, stuff like that. If I can avoid a new car payment for a while, I'm good with that.
Must do's:
Rad flush
Steering box - either re-seal or put a good one on
Tires
Window weather stripping - backseat roll up windows are missing stripping so they rattle if they aren't either all the way up or all the way down
POR-15 on the chassis and under the carpet if/where
Recharge AC
Tint
Misc interior pieces
Adjust hood mounts and latch
Better secure the grill (few busted tabs on the sides)
Want to's:
New shocks and springs (maybe OME's for the extra load capacity)
4.77s and 31's
Limited slip
Bit of sound deadening
Drove 3 hours to go look at it since the guy wouldn't take a deposit to hold it til the weekend. Understandable. It was a nice looking 20 footer. Had a new 2.8 put in 2 years ago, so I wasn't concerned about the motor. Had a fairly recent MAACO paint job (as you can tell from the overspray on everything). It drove ok, fan seemed loud, definitely needed a tune up, AC needs a recharge, but everything pretty much worked. Little rust on it, which isn't surprising as it spent time in the DC area, but mostly the overspray from the paint job coming off the unprepped frame. Not a big concern. Steering box is leaking, will need tires soon. Can deal with all of it.
In my excitement, since the motor was fresh-ish (with paperwork) I didn't think to actually check the motor over. So we signed the title and I handed the man 15 crisp $100's. Seeing as how I'm about to drive it 3 hrs back home, I opened the hood to top off fluids. Added a qt of oil, checked the belt, etc. Popped the rad cap and oh boy. Looked like oil had gotten in it. Nice rusty brownish looking aerated stuff. Called the guy, he pretty much said tough luck, but don't worry, it looked like that before and never came close to overheating. Ugh. I didn't have the means to do a rad flush, and I also thought it could just be old rad fluid, mixed orange and green and maybe some rust? Dunno.
So I had to make a choice. I had driven a rental car there. I could drive the rental back and call AAA to tow it home. Or I could chance it, drop the rental keys in the drop box, and if the rig ends up on a tow truck, by God I'm going to be riding shotgun in the sumbitch. I figured my wife, patiently waiting back home, would be equally irritated with either scenario, so I chanced it.
The fan clutch was seized so it sounded like a freakin' dump truck, and it felt like it was only running on 5. The tires were 10 years old. But I took her easy and made it home, no big deal.
Yesterday I picked up plugs and fluids and swapped the fan and clutch assembly from my big trooper. The nuts on the fan on the new one were a huge pain, all sorta pre-rounded. Stupid rusty pos. After much dirty frustrating work and a lot of PB blaster, I got the good fan on it. And there was much rejoicing. Next, I replaced the spark plugs - one was cracked! no wonder it seemed to be running on 5 - it was! I mounted up my spare MSD blaster coil, and adjusted some vacuum lines, and wow, totally different. Feels peppy!
Next on the list will be running some rad/cooling system cleaner, then flushing the hell out of the cooling system and putting in new stuff. If it become contaminated, I'll begrudgingly do the head gaskets and that ought to fix it.
I will need to get new tires, but being unsure about how much more I will need to do with this, I am going to try to score a good used set in the stock 235/75/15 size.
Ultimately the goal is to have something reliable and comfortable to commute to work and drive to/on the beach with the fam, stuff like that. If I can avoid a new car payment for a while, I'm good with that.
Must do's:
Rad flush
Steering box - either re-seal or put a good one on
Tires
Window weather stripping - backseat roll up windows are missing stripping so they rattle if they aren't either all the way up or all the way down
POR-15 on the chassis and under the carpet if/where
Recharge AC
Tint
Misc interior pieces
Adjust hood mounts and latch
Better secure the grill (few busted tabs on the sides)
Want to's:
New shocks and springs (maybe OME's for the extra load capacity)
4.77s and 31's
Limited slip
Bit of sound deadening