battery light

Last night as I was driving home from work in the 944, it looked like the battery light was on ever so slightly, and I thought "oh shit." This morning the battery light was definitely on, and as I thought back over the last few days, it has been taking the car a little longer to start than normal. The last thing I want to deal with is a non-funtioning alternator or starter, so I took the Cadillac to work. It drove so beautifully today! Normally, it feels like I am really trying to coax the car up the mountain in the morning, but today it just shot up it like a rocket.

Porsche weekend

This weekend was spent on the Porsche. On friday one of my headlights went out, so I went to pep boys and got a new one. I was kind of suprised that they carried it, considering they don't even carry oil or air filters for this car. Sat I pulled it into the garage and ended up leaving it in there all day and night. The next day my dad came by, and that motivated me to finish the project. When I went to take the plastic housing off that goes around the lamp, I noticed something odd. it looked like leaves or something had gotten inside the housing. As I was pulling the housing off, I found a huge stash of nuts! The squirrels have been using my headlamp for storage.

Cadillac blog

Blog from the Cadillac division of GM

http://cadillac.gmblogs.com/

exhaust leak

I have a full-blown flu this weekend, so am doing nothing. This week, the '67 Eldo developed an exhaust leak, my dad came by and looked at it, and it turns out one of the bolts on the flange where the exhaust pipes connects to the exhaust manifold was slipping through the hole in the flange. My dad found a washer in the dirt on the side of my driveway (the previous renters left a lot of crap around the house). and used that to keep the bolt from slipping trough the flange. I need to go out and get a grade 8 bolt and washers to replace the one that's in there, which is not a proper automotive grade bolt. I wonder why they didn't use a correct one when it was at A&A.

Photo

I took the car out in the rain last night to get a photo.

these guys are offering 10% off

...on steel rubber products, I do need new weatherstripping on the Eldo, but I can't figure out how to actually order steel rubber products on this web site... I suppose they expect you to use a telephone or something. ;-)

http://www.fenenterprises.com/about_fen.html

Suprise fix

I got in the 67 Eldo last night to put some gas in it and go to the post office, and when I backed out of the driveway, I saw light in the dash! Granted, it was very dim light(you can barely see the instruments in the photo above), but light where there was none before. I guess the new switch also fixed my dash lights, bonus!

vacuum hoses

While taking off the negative battery cable from the frame, I discovered that the vacuum hoses that lead to the passenger side headlamp assembly was split. This might explain why the headlight covers do not go up and down (and why the car was dieseling so badly when I'd shut it off), so I picked up some new hose while we were at the parts store this weekend.

My dad installed the new hose, and also found some other hoses that were disconnected or improperly plugged. Now the passenger side headlamp cover kind of works. and it doesn't diesel nearly so bad when I shut it off. I will add "replace all vacuum hoses" to my list of things to do to this car.

New Battery Cables/Connectors

While working on this car over that last month or so, the battery had gone dead. We hooked up the trickle charger to it overnight hoping that would be enough to charge the battery, but it didn't start. It did however produce a spark coming off of the battery conections. It melted the back of the battery connection right off!

We went to the auto parts store and picked up a new negative battery cable, and new connector for the positive cable along with an auxillary connector for the second wire.

My dad also pointed out to me that I did not have the battery secured with the super-cool battery lock down bar.

Steering wheel Done!

The steering wheel is now on the car and all of the lights are working. Including brake lights! YAY! I can drive it again!

Bird crap

Today a flock of birds decided to hang out in the tree directly above where I park my cars. They left a mess. They wouldn't leave, even when I threw rocks at them. Stupid Birds.

bearing back together

Jim and I were trying to figure out how the bearing assembly went back together, it turns out it just needed to be pushed together really hard. neither of us could do it with our bare hands, so I stood on it. That worked.