State of Play

The last post was all intro, and this post will explain why this car deserves a blog.

We bought a project car. We knew that. It's almost 25 years old, it has almost 100k miles on it, and even a mint condition specimen could stand to use some work if you want to put it on the track, which we do.

This car is not mint. Not even close.

We bought it on a Saturday, in Santa Cruz. Since it was my dream car and the BF is a really nice guy, I got to drive it back home, up Hwy 1, across 84, up Skyline, and over the 92 bridge. Since the A/C didn't work, I had the windows open the whole time. I was in the GT, and the BF was in his 300+ hp sports car following me. It was like a Top Gear special. It was glorious.

I spent dinner alternating between gazing off into space and explaining to the BF how I would completely understand if he decided the car would be too much work and we should sell it and find something else, but that he would have to be the one to make that decision because I had completely fallen in love with this thing and I was willing to do whatever it took to make it run like a dream. He laughed at me all through dinner.

Sunday, I took the motorcycle out on a test ride for an upcoming bachelor party event (which probably deserves its own blog post and I probably won't get to it, so ask me the next time you see me in person) and the BF followed in The Car. Once again, it was sunny and warm and the roads were amazing and twisty and there was no one on them and the scenery was incredible.

And then I pulled over to swap directions and when I looked back, the BF had the hood up.

"I have no oil pressure at idle."

Testing ensued and the conclusion was reached that the car wasn't leaking oil, so he contented himself with theorizing that the previous owner had used the wrong weight oil and mildly revving the engine at stop lights on the way home. Then we put the car up on jack stands and took the wheels off.

That's when we discovered that the car needs two new front tie rods and a new CV joint. Basically, a new front steering rack.

I changed the oil while that was going on (to the correct weight)*.

We pulled the back wheels off and mercifully found nothing wrong there.

Last weekend we did a compression test, discovered the timing belt was incorrectly tensioned (a Very Bad Thing on an interference engine) and found a 90 psi different between the front cylinder bank and the back cylinder bank. This is concerning.

Today, we got results from the company that analyzed our oil sample:

"We're not ready to call this one a lemon yet, but there are some areas of concern. Metals are high, especially copper, lead, and tin (bronze), since they could show bearing wear.  If there's a bearing issue, that could be related to the low oil pressure.  Iron (from steel parts, like shafts) is also high, as is nickel (probably a coating/alloy).  Averages are based on ~2,100 miles of oil use for the 6G72 engine. The viscosity was a bit low for 10W/30, but we don't know if it sheared down or if it was 5W/20 to begin with. The TBN was okay at 3.6.  Check back in 2,000 miles to monitor."

We are desperately hoping this will all be addressed with correctly weighted engine oil.

Tonight, we attempt to manually rectify the timing for long enough that we can do another compression test.

*One of the things I find fascinating about writing is what authors choose to reveal and choose to hide. I can, for instance, just say that I changed the oil on the car like it's no big deal. I do not, just as an example, have to go into all the details about how the oil pan nut is on the side of the pan and how I didn't really appreciate the fluid dynamics implications of that positioning. Nor must you suffer through tedious renditions of hot engine oil shooting out sideways, completely missing the catch pan and drenching my arms up to both elbows. Even the resulting inch-deep pool of dirty engine oil on the visclear we had mercifully laid down can be elided, as can the description of what it's like to clean that stuff up as best one can, generating a small mountain of dirty paper towels in the process, and then having to lie on an oil-soaked piece of plastic for the next hour. Isn't it neat how I didn't have to say any of that?