Bunch of Parts

Middle of this week I got most of the order to replace the fuel pump and the other parts that sit in the gas tank.  I would have posted earlier but the storms that came through Tuesday knocked out my power until last night.

Anyway got the whole order except for one part the o ring for the sender, which ironically was included with pretty much every other part.  Of course if I didn't order it, it wouldn't have come with any of them and I wouldn't be able to find one anywhere around the area.

Well the plan is to drop the tank and swap out the parts next weekend, so see how that goes.

Also next friday SCCA is doing a PDX on the North Course of the Autobahn so I signed up for that.  Figure some extra time on the track can't hurt, and having someone give me some pointers of how I should try and drive around the track should be helpful too.  If anyone else is doing it be sure to say hi, I'll be driving a Grey Subaru Legacy, or from what I saw last time on the registrations I will be driving the Subaru not an Imprezza of some kind.

Comfy Pit Seats

This is something I've wanted to do the moment we stripped out the interior.  Sadly we ran out of time last year before the race, but since everyone else was busy this weekend and I'm pretty sure trying to drop the fuel tank on my own would end badly, I figured this week would be a good time to do it.

So I went back into my shed which has filled with discard parts from the Cutlass Ciera, and under was stacked up the front split bench seat.

For those unfamiliar with the split bench seat, it allowed you to sit 3 across in the front of the car but still allow the driver and passenger to adjust their seats independently.

Well after searching the shed a bit I found the original bolts for the seat and headed to Menards.  There I found that the GM Seats use the same thread pattern as the table legs you can buy.  Its almost like GM built their seats to do this.

So I bout the 12" table legs since I wanted the seats high enough to be comfortable.

Screw them in the bottom of the seat and yer done.

Now besides being pretty darn comfortable with adjustable headrests the drive seat has some other advantages you won't see on other seats.  You get 1 fold down arm rest that has a flip out cup holder, and inside the arm rest you have a coin holder and place to hold other stuff like snacks or a bottle opener.

Also the back of the driver seat has an ash tray.

There is still the back seat to figure out but this seems like a good start.  It really is just a shame that Oldsmobile no longer made Brougham editions in 89 since I'm pretty sure they just put couches in there for seats.

A bit of progress

Since the ICM and Coils were good we decided the next step was to replace the spark plugs and wires, which we did last Sunday.  ( I know I was slacking on updating here).  being its a fwd v6, half the plugs are easy and half are a pain.  On the first one we went to work on the wire came right out, unfortunately it was the wire and not the boot and we really hadn't pulled anything very hard.

Well that might have had something to do with the engine missing a bit.

Pulled off the boot after that and still had a bit left over.

Got that off and went about pulling the rest, and on the other side had another that did the same thing, except it was on the other side making getting the rest off a lot more difficult.

So we put in the new spark plugs, hooked up the news spark plug wires and go to fire it up, and it runs worse than before.

We accidentally swapped 2 of the wires, luckily sometime in the past someone carved the cylinder order of the coils on the hood latch, and luckily the 2 that were wrong were on the front of the engine, so just swap the wires on the coil and it fired right up and sounded better than it ever had before. Well it sounded better than it ever had before until we gave it some gas which caused it bog down and die again.

So I guess it meant we found a problem, but still had something to fix. Well we called it a day. The following day I started the car up to let it run a bit and try to see if it would do that after it warmed up. So while it was warming up I decided to run the air, cause we never removed it and it was hot outside. I have to say the air in the old 89 cutlass ciera is amazing. The old unmaintained air blows away all the new cars out there, really proves how the old no longer legal freon was way better that the current stuff.

Anyway after cooling off I thought I'd hit the gas to try and figure out how much throttle I could give the car before it started acting up. The answer not much, maybe a 10th. What was more worrying though was that after doing that a couple times it wouldn't start. I thought I'd let it cool but no good.

After it sat a few days and got rained on again I thought I would disconnect the fuel filter to see if the fuel pump was pumping anything out. So I disconnected it on Thursday, and noticed a problem. Last year when we changed the fuel filter, and because we are idiots and didn't unpressurize the system, it shot fuel all over the place we we disconnected it. This time it just leaked it out, pretty much from the pressure created by gravity created from where it leaves the fuel tank. When I cycled the battery it still shot out some fuel through the filter meaning the pump works, I reconnected it and the car started again, but when I disconnect the filter again still very little pressure, definetly not the 35-45 psi that the manual says should be there.

Well it looks to me that the pump might be on its final leg, which unfortunately would mean that we would be dropping the fuel tank soon.

It runs, wait no it doesn't, or maybe it still does

I guess this is a bit late, but today was the first day I wasn't fiddling with the Cutlass Ciera.

So we'll start with Saturday.  We figured we could get the icm and coils back in and go from there.  We connect all the wires and figure we'd start it up before bolting everything back in.  The Cutlass started right up, but we didn't want to run it long since it didn't have a fan on it and everything was just dangling.  So Duff goes to start bolting it in when I heard a zap and saw him jumping back.  We forgot to turn off the kill switch, oops.  Well took care of that and started bolting everything in.  Got 2 bolts in and the 3rd of course is in one of those impossible to actually wrench locations, so while we fiddle with it it starts to rain, and rain and rain.  Finally get it bolted up while getting nice and soaking put the fan back in, and went to start it up again.  Wouldn't start.  Just crank and crank and crank and back fire.

Didn't record it so you'll have to take my verbal reenactment.

RRrr RRrr RRrr RRrrr RRrrrr RRrrrrrr Clunk Clunk Clunk.....................Boom

We checked the wires, make sure we plugged them all in right, made sure everything was right, we had it running a half hour ago, right before we arced it on the starter.....crap, we fried our perfectly good icm.

Fortenantly some people from the A-Body.net stopped by, and while oddly they didn't have an a-body they did show up in a Cultass Supreme with a 3100, the newer larger version of our 2.8.  We hooked up the icm and coils to it and and ran perfectly.

So the ICM is still good, what could it be...... maybe it has to do with all this rain soaking the engine compartment, even as we were talking it was still soaking everything since we had the hood wide open ( no one ever said we were smart enough to come in from the rain)  So we close everything and figure we would let it dry out.

Sunday I go back out in the morning shortly before it started to rain again and unplugged everything to make sure it would have a chance to dry out, and brought the icm and coils inside and gave them a good cleaning and drying off.  Even cleaned off the mounting bracket so its nice and shiny (note judges, cleaned not replaced)

Monday it was nice and sunny out.  I uncovered the cutlass so it could dry in the sun.  After a little while I went out and plugged everything back in and gave it a try.



So it starts but doesn't still like a lot of throttle, and still acting up.

Tuesday I played with it some more, started pulling spark plug wires and it looks like we may just have one cylinder acting up and its freaking out the whole system.  Still not sure if its a spark plug, a wire, or an injector but if it is just the one atleast we will have something to focus on.  Of course while pulling the plugs I burnt my finger, I thinkm the car was getting revenge for Duff trying to short the icm.