Keeping things cool during a hot Memorial Day Weekend.

Even though we are skipping the race in two weeks in Joliet to focus on Road America, we realized that race is sneaking up on us, so thought we should probably start fixing the Cutlass Ciera.

Of course the first step to any repair work for us is to make a huge mess on my driveway.

With that done it was time to start focus on actually doing some actual work.  The main problem we had after the last race was that the in radiator trans cooler started leaking.  So we yank that out and find underneath it were 20 years of dirt, old leaves and dead bugs.

We also figured it was time to finally remove the air conditioning.  I know we should have ditched from the start but we finally had the ac delete pulley so we could get rid of the compressor and still have the water pump work.  So out goes the compressor condenser and other parts that we no longer needed.  Of course to take the compressor out we found out the oil filter was in the way so an oil changed became necessary so a trip to get oil and a filter.  And of course even after that we found out that AC bypass pulley didn't come with nuts which we needed to hold it in place so Ace to get a nut, but eventually we got it all out and the pulley back in.

Of course once we got it out we realized he all that water weighs alot, imagine how much faster we'd be if we ran it without a radiator or water.  So why don't we just do it without any of it and have run the old 2.8 as an air cooled engine.

So then we were done.

Well ok we decided that maybe it wasn't a good idea to run it air cooled since all the good teams seem to have radiators (most of the not good teams also have radiators too) and we had already paid for a replacement one so in the new radiator went.

Nice and shiny and without the condenser it looks pretty significantly further back  than it did with the condenser.  Of course we weren't quite done yet, first someone who remains nameless that likes breaking parts broke the bolt that goes into the dogbone.  The fact that the bolt was rated 10.9 didn't seem to bother him.  So off to True Value since it has a better bolt selection.  We couldn't find a metric bolt that would work but for a Grade 8 bolt that would work.  After that we put the fluids back in and are pretty much ready to race.  Think they would notice an extra car on the track in a couple weeks?

2012 preperations begin

So we took some time on Saturday to do some work on the car.

Took a look at the rear drums, seeing as we haven't looked at those pads at all, they seems to be in ok shape with what looked like a an ok amount of pad left.  We should have taken some pictures, but forgot.

We also started working on taking apart the Air conditioning system, 







We will get the rest of it out when we replace the radiator.

Memorials to the GMs fallen divisions.

Jalopnik posted the 10 worst car company websites.  On the list was Oldsmobile, not because of anything about the site but more questioning the point of the site.  Of course this made me go there and even post it on our facebook page.  This then had a friend Andy post the Ponitac site, and me looking up the rest.

While the sites all have a pretty standardized look the writing is different for each giving each their own bit of personality.  The other thing is they seem to have not bothered with Geo.  Not sure if they never had a website, if geo maybe had a weird site name since Geo.com was taken, or if they are trying to act like it never existed.

Well I'll start with Oldsmobile.  The site has a Bravada sitting on a tree covered lane.  Amazingly the Bravada has aged extremely well.  Styling wise in the pic  it could still hold its own with the newer crossovers, and the Alero that is cruising down the street really makes it seem like Oldsmobile lasted longer than it did.  The text takes a bit of a stand for Oldsmobile.  Basically it was, For over 100 years we were the best thing GM had, winning awards and make awesome cars.  GM closed us down for some lame reason, clearly it didn't stop them from going bankrupt, in fact they were doing better with Oldsmobile than without, but anything that doesn't suck on their current cars is based on the stuff we did for them.

This is a sharp contrast to Pontiac.  They have the Solstice where the Bravada was.  While it looks good still, it seems to have been abandoned in some dark empty building.  Maybe the pontiac plant, maybe an old Pontiac dealer who knows.  Pontiac's text also has a distinctly different tone.  Instead of Oldsmobile's bitter defiance, Pontiac depressingly says, if you were one of the few people who bought one of our cars, we hope you thought it was cool, and hopefully people will remember us for some of our cool liking cars, you know like Kitt from Knight Rider, the good Kitt, not the lame remake.

Hummer took a third approach to this.  They seem to still be advertising, maybe they are still hoping someone will buy the name.  They have one Hummer with canoes, and other ones on the buttons showing off the whole line.  Hummer sales pitch is still, Hummers will take you anywhere in the world, all off road and cool like that.  It can take you places that no other vehicle can, well except Jeeps, and Land Rovers, and......, well anyway, it had a line up of very distinct models that are each different, and no they aren't actually really similiar which caused me to have to say that they are distinct and different.

Finally comes Saturn.  They draw people in with a Sky cruising along with the top down on a long winding road.  They have the Vue shown to but smaller cause it really doesn't stand out well enough.  Their farewell actually seems to call back to Saturn's beginnings.  They tell of how they were a unique little car company, doing things their own way.  They cared about their customers, they made cars that were good for their customers.  But don't worry GM may have made us stop making cars but the spirit of Saturn will live on in anyone who ever drove one, or rode in one, or saw one in the street, or talked to someone who saw one, or visited the website, or even ever heard of the Saturn car company.

Well I guess that is it till GM kills some more brands

A MLK day panic

Today is a day off for me, and being that it is rather warm for January (almost 40 degrees) so I thought it would be a good day to do a couple minor fixes on the Cutlass Ciera. The last time I ran the car I noticed a couple leaks had appeared. The Cutlass was leaking a little trans fluid and good amount of antifreeze. A quick inspection showed that it was just a couple loose hose clamps that were causing the problems. The trans was pretty minor so not sure if we just never noticed before or if it loosened a bit after a couple races. The radiator hose was loose from where it connects to the radiator from the thermostat. Some corrosion go in there making it seem like it was tight when in actuality the hose was barely on. I don't recall removing that hose when I switched the engine back to antifreeze after the race although I do know I removed it when switching over to water. This make me wonder if the car ran the whole race with that hose barely on. Well I guess a barely held on hose is not something to really worry about after the race was is over. A couple turns of screw driver and they're both fixed. So check the fluids and they're all good. Well the trans seems a bit thin and runny but the in radiator trans cooler leak is something that can wait for better weather. Start the car up to let all the fluids flow and cover the stuff that needs covering. It starts right up and I walk away to do something quick. When I walk back I look at the gauges and see its up over 2/3 the gauge, a bit higher than normal but OK, so I turn on the heater to make sure the heater core circulates. This normally drops the temp pretty quick but it seems to do the opposite and puts it right near the red. I real I stick my head over in the engine bay and see the fan hasn't kicked on. Well crap, but this is why we put the switch in the cabin. I flip that and the gauge goes all the way to the right in the bad area. I real quick flip it off worried something awful is happening. fan still spinning I start looking things over. Check the exhaust and there doesn't seem to be water coming out so that is good. Next check the radiator outlet hose and its cold. Did the thermostat break? We got the fail open type but I guess breaking doesn't mean it will break correctly. Touch the engine and its warm but definitely not hot. I check the gauge again and see it wildly swinging back and forth, from the red to slightly less, then all the way past where the guage reads and then back to about 250. Well that doesn't make sense, that the temp would go all over the place when the engine isn't running. Looks like I should check some things. The in hose from the radiator is warm but not hot. I check the oil cooler lines and they're both cold. So either the thermostat, oil filter bypass, and the temp sensor for the ECM which controls the fan all failed at the same time, or the temp sender sensor for the gauge is flaking out. (not sure about how gm does it now but on this engine there is a completely separate sensor/sender that is used just for the gauge which in a case like this is nice since you would have several separate things that would need to fail to really damage the engine> Since we had to swap it out to a sender/sensor I knew exactly where it was. its right under where Duff like to nap.

When looking at it I noticed that the pair of wires run really close to the EGR line. Between the first race I had rerouted it a bit after seeing the wires getting a bit discolored from heat. When I looked at it again it was rather close to the EGR again, and guessing that since that exhaust gases would be hot that it might be messing it up. So I unplug it, blow into the connector since that always worked with Atari games, rerun it again and check the gauge again. The temp dropped straight away and when I start the car again it is down about 100. And while the car ran everything seemed to go as expected. The Temp slowly rose till 185 where it dropped again when the thermostat opened and the hose warmed up. after running a bit more one of the cooler lines warmed up. the line back to the engine didn't really warm but that's probably caused by the fact that the cooler is cooling the oil(go figure). It ran for a while and is back to its normal since the cooler was put on not wanting to warm up much. So I guess I'll have to put the sender on the list of things to look at this spring in case we have to spend the $15 for a new one.

1989 Oldmobile commercials

This week Murilee Martin wrote about a junkyard 1989 Oldsmobile Toronado he found.  While reading it I watched the Ad for the car and found a rather odd theme for their ad campaign that year.

Before I get into the theme I will start with how they launched the 89 model year with ads.  While most people think it was a bad ad campaign you can't really say it wasn't affective since people remember it even though the car company hasn't existed in several years.


Now that was a start but how do you advertise the cars.  Well the people at Oldsmobile decided you should put famous people's children in the car.  In some ways it makes sense cause it is not their fathers oldsmobile, but not all famous people were equal.

We'll start with the Cutlass Ciera with one of the least impressive of the stars.


The Toronado got a nice step up from Frankie Avalon Jr to Deborah Moore.


While the Toronado was suppose to be a sporty coupe, the 88 Royale was suppose to be more of a family car what says family more than Abigal Rockwell's grandfather.

I was only able to find commercials for one more model the Cutlass Supreme, however there are 3 different Celebrities children for this car so it might have stolen the starts from other cars.

We'll start with the guy who has a deal for you and Monty Halls son Richard. They left off his last name so possibly Monty's illegitimate son.

In addition for the coupe they need someone to show how advanced the cutlass supreme was with amazing futuristic features like a computer. Nothing says future like the daughter of a guy who was in a scifi show in the 60s.

For the four door they went a different direction. The Dad in this commercial actually was featured more than their kid. Not only did he take up most of the screen time, but he said one catch phrase and sang the other.

I know some of you are saying with ads like these its no wonder Oldsmobile is no longer with us, but they lasted a long time after this, and its still more entertaining than most of the car commercials know which give you a bunch of facts to make their car seem better than the competition, well as long as you don't look at the other facts that prove its worse.

Thems the Brakes

In a continuation of the I really should have posted this 2 weeks ago series, Here is the autopsy of the front brakes after the race.

For those who didn't make it through the last post (with how long it was I can't blame you) we ran the hour and half with the front brakes squeeling pretty bad.  So the Saturday after the race we decided to see just how bad it was.  When we removed the front wheels this is what we saw.

Probably a good thing I tried to not use the brakes at all last stint.

The pads we used were Hawk HPS.  We used these  last year and they did pretty well and when we inspected them they still had roughly half their material left.  So we figured we were going to the same place and just moving about 100 feet from where we raced last year, how different could it really be.

Well I guess about this different

So I guess we will actually start listening to everyone on the forum and actually look into buying real endurance racing pads, along with decent tires.  The odd part is that both Porterfield and Carbotech seem to actually stock pads for A-bodies.