Car Repair Situation

[lordkenmore]

I'm cautious with any shop, regardless of who it is...

I think there are arguments for dealer shops. They have factory official parts and information. And there are, I'm sure, dealers that want complete satisfaction.

Unfortunately, at the same time, there are dealer shops that should be avoided at all costs.

I heard one lovely story about 10 years ago. A man took his truck in for service recall work. He was given a list of "needs to be done at once!" service. He told me that, unknown to the dealer, he'd already had all this done separately. He told them this, and said it was puzzling that they wanted to replace all these things. That was when the "oops, we issued the wrong invoice!" song and dance started...

 

[lordkenmore]

'82 Cavalier

may have had--to be nice--many growing pains. I think I drove that car (but a later year) in driver's training. One of the teachers said it was one of the most troublesome cars they'd had in recent memory. Item #1 went out the first day they had it! And it wasn't the last problem they had. While the car continued running, he said they were looking forward to getting rid of it the next year.

Although from my view, that car was one of the best they had. I liked the way it drove so much better than the Ford or the other Chevrolet. The Ford had the dubious honor of being the only automatic transmission car that has ever stalled on me in a panic stop! (Years later, I had a chance to drive a newer low end Ford, was amazed at how much it had evolved past that one I remembered in driver's training.)

 

[Iowegian]

Meh...

A clutch replacement should include the clutch disc and the throwout bearing at the minimum.

Replacing a pressure plate isn't necessarily required, but is good practice if your budget allows. As long as everything is opened up, the clutch slave cylinder should probably be replaced, too. But if my budget were tight, I'd replace the slave cylinder and leave the pressure plate alone.

The flywheel should be inspected. Sometimes it's a good idea to remove it and have it gently resurfaced. But if you're on a budget, you can use an air grinder and a scotchbrite pad to get any funkosis off it.

It really depends on how much money you think you should put into a 10 year old Cavalier and how long you expect to drive it.

You might have heard the saying, "Nothing runs poorly longer than a GM car." That's not a slam against your car, but you'd be surprised at how long it might run by just replacing the bare minimum parts.

My 2 pesos, and I know how it is to keep a car working, if not at factory-new level.

 

[fester]

North south or east west configuration?

Is the engine is in the front, the gearbox in the middle and the differential out back, like God and Detroit intended? If so, you could easily change the parts in your garage or driveway and blow the savings on cheap beer and cigars. That's what I'd do. A floor jack, a hand full of tools and a buddy to lend a hand and it's a done deal. YMMV.

If it's one of those sideways abominations, all bets are off. I'll NEVER own another of those POS! One was more than enough.

FEster

 

[Iowegian]

@fester:

There aren't a whole lot of cars any more that have a powertrain layout as you describe.

You might be surprised how many inexpensive miles a person can get out of a front wheel-drive car with a transverse-mounted engine.

Usually, it isn't the engine or transaxle that ends up sending those cars to the junkyard - it's collision damage. Asking a pair of inexpensive aftermarket front tires to share the tractive, steering and braking duty all together at the wrong time is a recipe for a bad outcome.

For the same reason there aren't any front wheel drive motorcycles...

 

[hydralique]

I've meddled around with plenty of cars most of my life and really don't think engine and transmission layout has much to do with ease of maintenance, some cars are easy and some are not. One thing about a unit powertrain with engine and transaxle in one place is that you can often get some support on the top of the trans if needed, whereas with a front engine rear drive layout it usually must be done all from below which means lots of upward lifting, OK if the car has a light tranny but not all do.

 

From having perused cheap salvage yards - I love a good junkyard tour - I suspect two things take lots of cars off the road: failed smog checks and bad automatic transmissions. Fixing either one can cost more than the owner of a 15 year old car wants to spend if it isn't in really nice shape to start with. Replacing a clutch isn't fun, but at least you can baby a slipping clutch for awhile. Automatics often just quit going either forward or reverse, or sometimes both. A friend of mine who owned a roofing company once had a salesman with a Toyota pickup. Nice shape but lots of miles and a bad reverse. The truck's owner was too cheap to fix it and so drove for at least a year making sure to always parallel park in front of a house and never, ever in the driveway!

 

 

[fester]

sideways motor much bad medicine !!

By all means, if you can get it done for under a grand and the car is worth it, go for it...and be wiser next time you shop for wheels! LOL! Granted, the FWD clutch cars are far easier to deal with than a slushbox, but still a PITA. I scrapped a great running Northstar Caddy because it cost more to rebuild the auto transaxle than the car was worth. You have to hang the motor, split the motor and trans and drop the whole lower assembly. That's suspension and all. Then strip away all the running gear before you can even get to the trans. Manuals don't require as much disassembly.

BTW, the 3500 clams needed to repair my Caddy's transaxle, an inherently bad idea, will go toward building a proper automobile. Got my eye on a shoebox Ford for $2000.00 and I have a mouse motor and a 700-R4 under the carport already. The car already has a 9 inch out back. That should get me back into the grace and light of Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration and the four saints of internal combustion. Never again shall I stray.

FEster

 

[hydralique]

Sounds like fun, though you'd better save some of that money for the gas pump, tuned small blocks do love gas and lots of it. Back in the '90s my sister had a '66 Corvette. It was a low option car: 327-300, four speed, AM/FM radio and power antenna, not even power brakes and no A/C. It had a broken odometer - she bought it that way - so fuel mileage couldn't be checked but we all knew it was pretty bad. Once I drove it from Dallas to Waco, the trip was almost exactly 100 miles so I measured how much gas it used just out of curiosity. It sucked up nine gallons in that hundred miles, for 11 mpg! Of course it was nice weather, the top was down and I wasn't driving for economy . I suspect the newer fuel injected small blocks are better, it would be hard to be worse! 

 

[Iowegian]

Yep, and the shame of it is that automatic transmissions aren't really that hard to fix. Anyone with modest wrenching ability can do it with a little guidance and a couple of specialized tools.

My drag car has a trans brake, which lets me rev the motor up in gear, but doesn't let the car move across the staging beam until I let go of the button on the shifter.

And a trans brake just consists of a simple solenoid tapped into the valve body that short-circuits a fluid pathway and basically puts the transmission into low and reverse at the same time...

 

[Iowegian]

@fester:

When you say shoebox Ford are you talking about 49/50s?

My dad had a '50 flattie Business Coupe way back when - Duntov heads, Offy 2x2 intake with an Isky cam. Tuff stuff for the day. Looked really industrial, like something the phone company would have bought. Cool car, though.

Big azz diseased Dutch Elm tree fell on it during a windstorm - smushed the roof down to the seat cushions, and that was that...

 

[cfz2882]

auto tranny repair

i have had to repair a few automatics and they weren't too hard to take apart and reassemble;most recent one was the 700r4 in my z28-aftermarket converter blew it's thrust bearing and spread debris through the tranny,had to take all apart and muck out before reassembly with stock converter back on.
easiest clutch replacement i ever did was a '68 chevy pickup with 3-spd stick-took me about 4 hrs as a 16yr old kid LOL.

 

[fester]

mileage

Add overdrive, plug and play fuel injection and choose your gears wisely and just about anything from the 50s - 80s will get respectable mileage. I had a 73 f100 360 that got 17+ MPG, 3speed, no OD and a 2bbl carb. My 72 454 Nova, TH400, 3800 stall and 4.10s got 11 mpg. what did that Vette have, 5.13s? My Grandmother had a Mazda in the early 80's that got 38 mpg hwy via a carb and 5speed OD. My 01 f150 gets 14 - 15 hwy with FI and OD! Boy, we've really come a long way, haven;t we. The idea that newer vehicles get this awesome mileage is bunk. It's all in the combination and choosing your parts well. Just because it can smoke some econo box doesn't mean it has to suck fuel. Besides, I'm thinking of jacking the compression to around 14:1 and running it on CNG. $1.79 per GGE and 130 octane!

FEster [this post was last edited: 10/29/2012-00:51]

 

[fester]

shoebox

yeah, 49 - 50 something. not sure of exact year. The guy wasn't sure and is looking for the paper. It's not cherry. Prolly build a lead sled DD with it if it pans out.

FEster

 

[hydralique]

Duntov heads . . .

Do you mean the Ardun hemi-head conversion for the Ford flathead V8? That's a rare and desirable piece of kit, hopefully saved after the car was destroyed. The standard flathead isn't efficient or powerful, but I do enjoy hearing an old Ford with one, they just have that special "blat-blat" sound as they go down the road.

 

I have no idea what rear end the Corvette had but I'm pretty sure it wasn't 5.13; the car was very stock and clearly hadn't been ordered with drag racing in mind since the 327-300 was BOL for the '66 models. It was a nice old car, dead reliable with good brakes and handling but the typical Corvette rattles and mediocre steering. Overall I liked it even if it wasn't really my sort of car, and at the time gas was cheap so the mileage was more of a joke than a serious issue. I did install a brand new and correct Holley carb, we were lucky that Holley made a batch of them for the 327-300 around '90. Someday I might even get it back on the road, but with gas at over $4.00 now I doubt if my sister would use it so much!

 

[fester]

auto tranny repair

The hardest part of building my TH400 was finding the various thickness shims to set clearances. The zit punks at the parts houses couldn't find them and the trans shops wanted to do the job and wouldn't sell them. This was back in the late 80s when only scientists had computers.

FEster

 

[qsd-dan]

simple solenoid tapped into the valve body

Ugh, valve body. Don't remind me.....

 

[hydralique]

Eeek!

I'm glad I prefer manuals, so much simpler to maintain and operate!

 

[qsd-dan]

Eeek!

It actually isn't that bad, just a little time consuming keeping everything in order and keeping parts as clean as possible during re-assembly. If only Ford knew how to half-ass build a slushbox, especially an overdrive unit. (shakes head)

I'm glad I prefer manuals, so much simpler to maintain and operate!

Yeah, I exclusively drove manuals as daily drivers for 17 years, but I hate to admit this (and my younger self would slap the shit out of me for saying this), but I'm starting to get REALLY tired of shifting gears. I've been floating the gears for the past few months in the Accord. Yeah, I know, not good for the syncros in the very long run, but I'm sick of shifting!