The weekend before Memorial Day, I took my customary road trip down to “The Vintage” in Asheville, North Carolina. This is the biggest vintage BMW event on the East Coast, with 600 cars in the village of Hot Springs nestled in the mountains north of the city, and the event hotel in Asheville is a non-stop, three-day hoopla where walking round the parking lot is as much fun as the official event itself. I’d missed it last year due to a family health issue, so I was looking forward to returning.

In addition, I decided to drive Hampton, my 49,000-mile survivor BMW 2002. I’ve written quite a bit about Hampton in these pages, describing how I’d bought the car from its original owner in 2019, how I revived it while taking care not to disturb its remarkable originality, how it didn’t sell on Bring a Trailer because people may say that they love survivor cars but what brings the money are shiny powder-coated vapor-honed mirages, and how I gradually warmed to the car’s survivor vibe. It’s not a quick 2002 like my 2002tii, but it’s an incredibly solid car, virtually free of the usual thunks, klunks, and rattles that haunt 50-year-old vehicles.

Even though it appeared that I would be keeping the car, the 50,000-mile rollover strongly affected how I used it. I know, it was stupid; it’s not like it was some ultra-low-mileage vehicle. It was already a survivor car, not some Cosmoline-coated hangar queen, but I still felt that the mileage was something to be hoarded like Bitcoin or virginity or something equally silly. But between one road trip to Vermont a few years ago and the required back-and-forth to the Monson warehouse on the MA/CT border where I store cars, the mileage had crept to 49,900. I had this epiphany: Do you want it to roll over on the way out to Monson, or do you want it to happen when you’re doing something big and fun?

So big and fun it was. Hampton was going to The Vintage. I took it for a shakedown drive, found a sticky front brake caliper, replaced it, drove it again, and by the time I got back, I was within 28 miles of the big rollover.

Then something unexpected happened. Two days before departure, one of my two road-trip companions called me saying that his BMW 2002 had problems and couldn’t make the trip. I thought about how I have these cars in the Monson warehouse gathering dust, and offered him my ’73 BMW Bavaria. After all, the Bavaria ran fine when I used it a few years ago for a mini-road trip to upstate New York to be used in a movie, and in my recent piece about how all my cars seemed to be rising in revolt, the only issues with the Bavaria were a dead battery from sitting and low-rpm buffeting from imperfectly synchronized Webers.

However, something occurred to me. I’m a big proponent of replacing convention mechanical ignition (points and condenser) with an electronic triggering unit such as a Pertronix (you can read about the debate here). The main reasons are A: points can wear down and close up, causing the car to die, and B: the quality of new points and condensers is absolute garbage these days. And yet I was about to head off on a 2,000-mile round trip in my only two vintage cars still running points. Why? Well, when I was trying to sell Hampton, I wanted to keep it original, and now there wasn’t time to order a Pertronix. With the Bavaria, after its first trip to The Vintage in 2014, I tried installing Pertronix, but for reasons unknown, the car didn’t want to rev over 4000 rpm with it installed, and I never figured out why (I’ve never had this happen on any other car), so I reversed back to points. So both of these cars were not only running points, but were still running the points that were in them when I bought them. (Spoiler alert: Point gap would figure prominently in repairs on this road trip, though not in the way I expected.)

So early on a Wednesday morning, my two companions met me at the Monson warehouse. We put a charged battery in the Bavaria and checked the fluids, then I checked the point gap in both cars with a dwell meter and adjusted it. Then we headed south for Asheville.

Oh, Hampton’s big mileage rollover? It happened 30 minutes into the trip. Over and done. I did my best impression of Paul McCartney singing “Let Me Roll It.” She’s a road trip car now.

We made it to the night’s destination Winchester, Virginia, a little over halfway, without incident. Hampton seemed genuinely happy to be free of its cloistered stored-in-a-barn-in-the-Hamptons-for-10-years-then-treated-like-a-wallflower existence.

When we were about to go to dinner, I got a phone call from a friend—professional vintage BMW mechanic Paul Wegweiser. He said that his friend and customer Mike was about 30 minutes south of me with a dead 2002, and asked if I could help. I called Mike and learned that he and the car were safe in a gas station parking lot with several hotels within walking distance. I said that it made the most sense for me to look at the car in the morning (daylight, it’s on my way to Asheville, auto parts stores are open, etc).

So the following morning I found Mike and his 2002. I’ve written over and over about the common things to strand a vintage car on a road trip (ignition, fuel delivery, charging, cooling, belts, and to a lesser extent clutch hydraulics). A car that goes from driving to dead is highly likely to be a victim of one of the first two. You can give a blast of starting fluid down the carb throat to test which it is (if doesn’t start, it’s ignition, but if it starts and runs for a few seconds, it’s fuel delivery), but for some reason I went right for the points—I yanked off the distributor cap and watched them while Mike cranked the engine. They clearly weren’t opening.

Setting the point gap is usually easy, as points usually have a notch that sits between two little bumps on the distributor plate that allows you to put a screwdriver in the notch and lever it against one of the bumps to increase or decrease the gap. However, the nylon block on these points was so badly worn that the slot wasn’t between the two bumps, and they didn’t really fit right on the plate. Plus, these were the unusual left-opening points used on 2002s with vacuum-retard distributors. I didn’t have a spare set of these with me, and the odds of any AutoZone having them was zero. It took quite a bit of fettling to get the point gap dialed in. When it was, Mike tried starting the car. The carb let out such a loud belch-and-backfire that it startled us all. I theorized that Mike had probably flooded it trying to get it to start with closed points. Eventually it started and idled, and a test drive verified that the car appeared happy. Mike joined our caravan, and we made it down to Asheville without further ignition-related issues.

It was a wonderful event. The organizers of The Vintage refer to it as “a gathering, not a car show.” It’s not a concours. There are no trophies. No one “wins” anything. While there certainly are some lovely restored high-dollar vintage BMWs there, it’s far more about shared passion and enthusiasm irrespective of budget. It’s the kind of event where, on the drive down or in the parking lot, if you need a part or expertise because your car is broken, there are hundreds of people who have your back, and that is a beautiful thing. My having helped Mike was part of the spirit that naturally flows out of the event.

There’s also a long history of my friend Paul Wegweiser pranking me at The Vintage. One year, he bombed my Bavaria with yellow chicken feathers that I’m still finding inside the car. Another year, he actually zip-tied burned-out wires under the dash of my 2002 and a burned-out fan motor under the front seat so I’d smell it on the drive home and wonder where the electrical fire is. He has threatened to put zip-ties on my driveshaft and half-axles so he can read about me going crazy trying to find the source of the noise. However, this year, he said that, since Hampton is such a lovely survivor example, he wasn’t going to screw with it. Like an idiot, I believed him.

The drive home hit a bump on our first stop in southern Virginia. Mike’s car had the good fortune of dying literally as we were heading into a gas station parking lot. Again, it was due to the points having closed up, but this time things were worse—the inside of the distributor cap was coated with soot, the points were noticeably more pitted than before, and I found that the thin braided wire grounding the distributor plate to its body had detached from its connector. And, to add insult to injury, we appeared to be parked near a leaking sewage line or septic tank.

My theory was that the detached ground strap was causing a much stronger spark across the points, which in turn caused both the pitting as well as the soot on the inside of the cap. I got everything buttoned back up, and we continued heading north. I rechecked the distributor on Mike’s car whenever we stopped, and it appeared to be soot-free with the point gap holding stable. One of my travel companions noted that another service area was also, uh, fragrant, but we were parked next to a drainage culvert at the time.

We arrived that night in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. While we were unloading our bags from our cars, someone noted that the smell of Virginia rest stops appeared to have followed us. While we were waiting in line to check into the hotel, the red light went on in my head: It was my “friend” Paul. After all, someone who zip-tied burned wiring into my car certainly wasn’t above putting something foul-smelling into my BMW. After I checked in, I went back outside and did the nose test under the hood, along the rocker panels, and at the tailpipe, but nothing jumped out at me. I thought that maybe, whatever he’d done, it was heat-activated. He’s a clever guy.

Before we headed off in the morning, I re-checked Mike’s car. I pulled off the distributor cap and was relieved to see both the absence of soot and that my repair of the little ground strap was holding.

Then I borrowed his key and went to start the car so I could check the dwell. It clicked but didn’t start. I pulled out my voltmeter and measured the battery voltage. It read 13.1 volts. Standard resting voltage of a fully-charged battery is 12.6 volts, so it had plenty of voltage.

To make testing easier and eliminate the car’s ignition switch as the source of the problem, I connected a jumper wire to the starter solenoid. I touched the other end of the jumper to battery positive. Again, click but no start.

The no-start decision tree is pretty easy to follow and usually quite definitive. This was beginning to look like a bad starter motor. Pulling the starter isn’t a 10-minute job like the alternator, and we didn’t have a spare one with us anyway, so I wanted to be sure. I was about to swing my car in front of Mike’s to jump it when one of my other companions said he had a new fully-charged lithium jump pack. We hooked it up, it buzzed, and still… click, but no start. Just in case there was a bad connection in Mike’s battery cables, I used my jumper cables to connect the battery directly to the starter. It made no difference. And Mike’s car is an automatic, so there was no way to push-start it.

I lit the Hack beacon and posted a the “2002 down, 2002 needs starter motor” message on the Facebook page for The Vintage, then began removing the starter. With it out, I did the on-the-asphalt test of connecting it directly to the battery. It did spin, but the spin-up time seemed unusually long. Two people quickly answered the post, one of whom had two used 2002 starters at his repair shop just 20 minutes north. He said that we’d actually met once in the parking lot of a Sheetz convenience store nearby. When I got home after the trip, I looked through my old trip photos to The Vintage and found pics of the meeting. Incredibly, it was 10 years almost to the day, and I was driving the same Bavaria.

I tested both used starters by jumping them with Mike’s car’s battery. They both seemed to spin up a bit slowly, but one was obviously faster than the other. Installation, however, was a bear. The solenoid on the replacement starter was fatter than on the original one, and it couldn’t get past the bracket for the kick-down cable for the automatic transmission. I had to loosen the bracket to move it out of the way. It was the kind of bent-over pulling-up-wrenches work that angers up my aging back, but I seem congenitally unable to say “Good luck with AAA” when there’s a problem I can diagnose and fix.

Finally, with one of the starter’s bolts holding it snug enough to the bell housing to verify the repair, I reconnected the battery cables and again touched the jumper wire to battery positive.

Click, but no crank.

No. NO. Not possible.

My first thought was that the engine was seized or otherwise prevented from turning. I chocked a rear wheel with one of the other starter motors, had Mike put it in neutral, and manually rotated the engine (it’s easy to do this on a BMW 2002 by just grabbing the cooling fan and leaning on the belt with the heel of your hand). It rotated easily.

Stumped, I jumped in my car and swung it nose-to-nose with Mike’s to jump it. Why? Don’t know. Just to try something, I guess.

It spun instantly.

Wait, what?

As I put the car back together, I began to accept the idea that I’d gotten the diagnosis wrong. It probably never needed a starter motor. If it started with a jump, the problem was likely the battery. Just because the battery had more than the necessary 12.6 volts, that doesn’t mean that it was able to deliver the cranking amperage to spin the engine. I hadn’t suspected the battery since it looked new (Mike said he’d installed it when he bought the car last year). But it was a mystery why it didn’t start with my friend’s jump pack.

With the starter fully secured and the ignition switch reconnected, the started instantly with a jump and a twist of the key. I re-checked the point gap using the dwell meter, and it was still fine. I verified with my voltmeter that, with the engine idling, there was about 13.5 volts at the battery, indicating that the alternator was charging it. Mike and I said our goodbyes as he was peeling off to drive home to Pittsburgh, about 250 miles. I advised that, as long as he didn’t shut it off the car, he’d likely be fine.

Does anyone get it? Anyone see what I missed? I’ll give you a hint: It’s as plain as the nose on your face.

A few hours later, this text appeared on my phone: “Update! The good news: I am safe at a rest stop off the turnpike. Bad news: I am kaput! Car puttered out and battery is fried. Smoking and a little stuff coming out. I am 96 miles from home, which puts me within the free 100-mile tow! P.S. I think that [expletive deleted] smell was ME!”

Oh. My. God.

The smell! I can’t believe I missed this.

An old-school voltage regulator is designed to to rapidly open and close (not unlike ignition points), bringing the alternator in and out of the charging circuit so that the average voltage to the battery with the engine running is about 13.5 to 14.2 volts. When a regulator fails, it can fail in two ways. They usual “fail open,” which means they never bring the alternator into the charging circuit, so the battery runs down and eventually the car dies (or won’t start). But if they “fail closed,” they cause the alternator to always feed the so-called full-field voltage (about 17 volts) to the battery. This over-charging boils the sulfuric acid in the battery and produces gaseous sulphur which smells like rotten eggs. THAT’s what we all were smelling. It wasn’t sewage. It was the battery being fried.

If someone had said “I smell sulphur,” or “I smell rotten eggs,” my voltage-regulator-stuck-closed neuron would’ve fired, but I missed it. This is why the car’s resting battery voltage read 13.1 volts instead of 12.6 (I can’t believe I missed this one too). And, most important, this is why the battery wouldn’t crank the starter in the car—it was ruined. It’s also why, when removed, the starter was slow to spin up. Had I dropped my own battery in Mike’s car, or used my battery to bench-test his starter, it would’ve spun fine. It was also likely a contributor to why the points were pitting and the distributor cap was coated with soot.

I think that part of the reason I got it wrong was that it was just a few months ago that I wrote about buying a new battery for Hampton when the problem turned out to be a bad starter motor, but I felt like an absolute idiot. The entire episode could’ve been avoided had I simply jump-started the car like anyone who doesn’t pretend to be a know-it-all would’ve done, and if, once it was running, I checked the battery with a voltmeter both while the engine was idling and while it was revved up. I would’ve seen the over-voltage. I had a spare regulator in my trunk. That and a trip to an auto parts store for a battery… it would’ve been so easy.

I still, though, didn’t understand why the car didn’t start off my friend’s lithium jump pack.

A day after we got home, my friend messaged me:

“So I figured out why the starter didn’t crank with the jump pack. It’s a ‘smart’ jump pack that sensed that the battery was at 13.1 volts. That’s the buzzing we heard when you hooked it up. Per the instructions: ‘HOMPOW [brand] car jump starter with intelligent clamps provides protection against over-charging, over-discharging, surge voltage, overload, over-voltage, short-circuit, reverse polarity, and high-temperature protection, making your devices jump faster in a safe way.’”

Oh, my two cars, with their decades-old points? Flawless. Absolutely flawless.

When you blow a diagnosis, all you can do is learn the lesson, and hope that the consequence of being wrong isn’t too painful in time, effort, money, and the degree to which you’ve caused yourself or someone else a pain in the butt. At least this one made for a good story, and two good arrows in the diagnostic quiver.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Blowing a Diagnosis on a Road Trip appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Sorry to have separated this from Part I by nearly a month, but two other stories—the Cobra story and being a hostage negotiator for Larry Webster’s Ferrari turn signal assembly—were both too good not to tell . . .

When I was last in the warehouse in Monson, on the Massachusetts/Connecticut border, where I store five cars, they all had difficulties starting, or running, or passing inspection, or all three. “Lolita,” my ’74 Lotus Europa Twin Cam Special was the most troublesome, as it was leaking gas from the 50-year-old rubber O-ring and plastic plug at the bottom of both float bowls. I broke one of the plugs removing it, so I needed to procure the part and go back the following week.

With the leak literally plugged, I got the Lotus inspected. The plan was to then drive it home, but as I described in the first installment, dealing with the vagaries of the other cars made the session in Monson run long, and I didn’t want to drive the tiny Lotus home in rush-hour traffic, so I left the car’s retrieval for another trip.

This created the very happy problem of which car to drive out to the Monson warehouse and leave there when I drove the Lotus back home. Of the “fun cars” at my house, my ’73 BMW 3.0CSi has permanent at-home-pampered-in-garage status. I was planning on taking my 49,000-mile survivor BMW 2002 on its first real road trip, so it needed to stay. Normally, my BMW M Coupe (“the clown shoe”) would be the swapper, but I’d loaned it to a friend for a couple of weeks.

So I did something that you’d think would’ve already happened, but was in fact new to me: I drove “Zelda” the Z3 out to the warehouse. I’ve owned the little ’99 BMW Z3 2.5-liter straight-six roadster for 10 years, interrupted by my selling it to a friend, whose son then drove it over a median strip (no crashed sheet metal, just bent suspension components), and I bought it back so her insurance company wouldn’t total it and part out the car. I’d only sold the car to her in the first place because I’d run out of storage spaces, so when I bought it back, it needed to sit outside, under a cover—something I swore I’d never do to a roadster, but I was out of options, and the car really wasn’t worth anything at that point anyway. It worked out pretty well; I found that as long as it sat covered in the part of the driveway that got sun, both the cover and the car would dry out and stay mildew-free. I haven’t used the Z3 much recently, but whenever I do, I’m instantly reminded how wonderful any drop-top car is in terms of giving you that sense of whole-body relaxation, and a zippy responsive little roadster is just sublime.

So I did a mini road-trip in Zelda, keeping off the interstate and staying on local roads out to the Monson warehouse as a dry run for doing the same but in reverse in the Lotus. It was heaven, until I heard a scraping sound from the left front wheel during braking. I had this same thing happen with the Lotus when I was sorting it out, and it turned out to be due to pistons on one side of the caliper being seized and thus shoving the rotor into the caliper itself, making it sound like a lathe cutting metal. I drove Zelda gingerly the rest of the way, and made a note to myself to buy a left front caliper and be prepared to replace it in the warehouse when I want to retrieve the car.

So now it wasn’t just the five original cars in the warehouse that were revolting.

Still, if the cars could talk, Zelda would’ve said, “I’m being pampered with indoor storage!” And Lolita would’ve said, “He’s not only spending time with me, he’s bringing me home!”

Little did I know that Lolita was about to throw a total hissy fit.

This was the first lengthy drive I’d had in the Lotus since I put it in the warehouse last September to wait out a registration issue (a story I’ll save for another day). Other than the fact that the lowering springs and adjustable shocks I’d installed cause the car to bottom out on anything other than glass-smooth roads, the drive began well. The Europa is the kind of car that, when you drive 42 mph in a 35 zone, you feel like you should be arrested for the amount of fun you’re having, and, off the interstate, there were many of those roads between the warehouse and home.

Then, on one of these lovely leafy winding New England two-lanes, I got caught behind a lumbering gravel truck. While I was bemoaning the truck’s harshing of my mellow, the Lotus began to behave strangely. At first it stumbled in a way that made me think that the plugs were fouling, but I eventually realized the car was losing power. The narrow windy road didn’t have a great breakdown lane, so I toughed it out as long as I could. Fortunately a church appeared. The car basically died as I rolled into the parking lot.

Then I recalled that, during a drive in the Lotus last year, something similar had happened, and I solved it by reseating the distributor cap. I did the same thing here. It took me a little while—the cap isn’t easy to get to, as the Lotus-Ford Twin Cam engine has a Ford four-cylinder block with the distributor driven by the “jackshaft” (the engine’s original in-block camshaft), so it’s down underneath the intake manifold. The car started, revved, and drove.

And then, about 10 miles later, it happened again. The car began missing, ran worse and worse, lost power, then died where the small road I was on intersected with a local two-lane. And the engine exhaled its last gasp with a backfire so loud that a nearby road worker looked for the source of the gunshot.

Fortunately, there was a wide shoulder and plenty of visibility, and cars had to come to a full stop at the intersection anyway, so I felt safe troubleshooting there. I poked around under the hood (well, under the boot; mid-engine car and all that), and found what was certainly the problem.

Federal-spec Europas like mine have dual Stromberg carbs, which have a warm-up circuit that utilizes cross-pipes from the exhaust manifold to heat up the carbs, as well as a second set of butterflies between the carbs and the intake manifold.

I, like nearly every other Federal-spec Europa owner, had removed the cross-pipes and wired the secondary butterflies open. Only I hadn’t used wire. I’d used zip ties. And I could see that the zip tie on the linkage to the front secondary butterfly had broken, leaving the thing free to just flap around. You don’t have “Eureka!” moments often while troubleshooting, but this fit the symptom perfectly. If the thing flapped shut, with one carb completely starved for air, of course it ran horribly.

I didn’t have any zip ties with me. I almost cut a piece off one of my shoelaces, but then I realized the bag the Lotus’ cover lives in was in the car. I cut the bag’s drawstring, used a piece of it to tie the front secondary butterfly linkage open, patted myself on the back for my diagnostic skills, and set off to what surely would be an uneventful remainder of the trip.

Of course, I was wrong. It died again, this time in the middle of a four-way intersection. In general, Lolita has been remarkably reliable since the excruciating resurrection and sort-out depicted in my book, The Lotus Chronicles, but on this trip, it was completely justifying the old adage that Lotus stands for “Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious.” I got the car restarted, and with another lunge-and-gunshot-and-die maneuver, got through the intersection and onto a shoulder.

As I sat in the car and thought, I realized that the common thread here was simple: It was time. The car ran fine for a certain amount of time, then ran worse, then died, then revived when I’d waited for a certain amount of more time. What I was doing during that time wasn’t relevant; it was the waiting that was fixing it.

Clogged fuel filter. This is the textbook system of a clogged fuel filter. Contaminants in the gas tank, likely particulate matter like rust or sediment, get carried into the fuel filter. The flow of fuel deposits them against the mesh screen inside the filter. The longer you drive, the more fuel flows, the more blocked the screen gets. When you stop, the contamination doesn’t go away, but enough of it falls off the screen that fuel can flow again. This tends to be worse in fuel-injected cars, where the electric fuel pump delivers 100-psi fuel pressure (typically regulated down to 30 with the surplus sent back to the tank via a return line) that can easily cause contaminants to block either the big visible filter or the tiny mesh screens that are often hidden in vintage fuel-injected cars, but it can also happen in a carbureted car with a mechanical fuel pump delivering 3 or 4 psi of pressure.

The fact that the filter was (apparently) clogged didn’t really surprise me. When I revived the Lotus after its nearly 40-year slumber, I was unable to remove its twin 5-gallon gas tanks to clean them out, so there was no bag of drywall screws dumped in and the tanks thrown into the back of a pickup truck and driven down a bumpy road. There was no taking them to a radiator shop to have them boiled out. There was no rust encapsulation treatment. There was no Red-Kote internal bladder. Instead, I simply took a Scotch-Brite pad and zip-tied it to the end of a rod that I slid around on the bottom of both tanks, then washed them out with gas (hey, you do know what the title of these columns is, right?). Really, the only surprise was that I got five years out of the first filter. But, yeah, I had forgotten about the rusty tanks.

I didn’t feel unsafe where I was, but I was in a highly visible area to be working on a highly visible car. Now that I had the problem nut-shelled—the data showed that I had five to 10 minutes from first-hesitation to dead car—I continued driving to find a better work area. It arrived in the form of the parking lot of a Lowe’s and a BJ’s Wholesale Club. I drove to the edge of the lot, away from prying eyes who might see the amount of gas I was almost certain to dump onto the asphalt.

The fuel filter for the Europa is very difficult to reach. It’s too low and too far forward to easily access from the engine compartment, but the car itself is too low to easily get at it from underneath, unless the car is on a lift. Because the filter is below the tank, I knew that gravity was going to do its thing and cause fuel to go everywhere when I disconnected the lines from the filter. And, of course, because I was lying on the ground and holding the filter in my hand, I also knew that I was going to have the quintessential mechanics’ experience of gas running right into my armpit. As they say in the Army, enjoy the suck.

Fortunately, I had my regular travel tool kit with me (which I throw in the trunk of whatever car I’m running out to Monson), so in addition to grabbing a screwdriver, I readied a pair of quarter-inch ratchet extensions, hoping I could use them to plug the deluge that would certainly flow out of the fuel lines after I pulled them off the filter. I reached up and under, found the filter, found the first clamp, undid it, got the armpit wash, plugged the line with the first extension, then had the repeat experience for the second. Hey, livin’ the dream, right?

With the filter in my hand, I emptied the fuel inside onto a paper towel, expecting to see rust and sediment.

Nothing.

I tapped the filter on the paper towel. Still nothing.

I was stunned. When I’ve had this problem on fuel-injected cars, what’s come out often looks like coffee grounds.

Crap. Had I gotten this wrong?

I wiped off the inlet end of the filter, pursed my lips around it, and blew, like blowing bubbles through a straw.

It wasn’t plugged shut, but I could clearly feel a restriction.

I wiped off the other end and back-blew through it several times. To my delight, I could see a fine gray mist come out. I returned my lips to the inlet side. The restriction appeared to be gone.

Booya!

I re-installed the filter (and re-experienced the armpit enema), verified that the car started, took my bottle of drinking water and rinsed both my actual armpit as well as that of my T-shirt, and drove the remaining 40 miles home, fragrant but satisfied, without incident. Aren’t vintage cars fun?

So, Lolita is home again. I have a lot of work planned for her. I’m going to yank out the suspension, as my attempt to lower the car to Euro specs looks great but produced a car that bottoms out on the smallest of surface imperfections. The plan is to reinstall the springs that were originally on the car, but keep the adjustable shocks.

But not before I replace the fuel filter.

***

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The post My Cars in Storage Are Revolting (Part II) appeared first on Hagerty Media.

In late April, Larry Webster, he who brought me on briefly at Road & Track eleven years ago and then here at Hagerty, contacted me and asked for my help. It began with, “How far are you from Groton?” a question I can’t say I’ve ever been asked before.

The story was that the turn signal assembly (the housing and stalks) for Webster’s Ferrari Dino was being rebuilt by Unobtainium Supply Co., a one-man operation in Groton, Massachusetts, but it had been there for a year without completion. “I’ve talked to him every week for the past six, and it’s been a constant ‘one more step, about a day,’ but I’m starting to think it’s never going to get done,” Webster texted. “I might need you to do a rescue.”

The deeper story is that Webster has been restoring his 1975 Dino 308 GT4 (see part I and part II) for the past three years, and many things have gone wrong or gone long or gone over budget along the way. In addition, there were issues over and above the normal project delays, things like specialists passing away with Webster’s parts still in their possession. The project is nearing the point of the car being whole, so he really wants the turn signal assembly back, but he was beginning to fear that dark fate might strike a third time: He wondered if there was some personal situation, such as a poor turn of health, preventing the gentleman from getting the work done on the assembly. This is a fine line to walk. While you don’t want to be “that guy” who’s a pest in the middle of someone else’s hardship (as the saying goes, be kind—you never know what battles people are fighting), you’d also hate to lose an, um, unobtanium part if things went south.

“The turn signal assembly can be bought,” Webster texted, “but not the housing that is the bulk of the steering column. He is rebuilding #37 in this diagram (the stalks and switches). I can buy a new one which looks not original. That’s the situation I’m in. I would leave #37 with him, as it is useless to me and maybe one day he’ll finish. What I desperately need is #16, the cover.”

In subsequent texts, more frustration came out. “I’ve talked to him every week for the past six. Dude who owns the shop [Verell] is nice and his heart is in the right place, [but] I have no idea if he even knows the status of my switches, even though he’s said for a month ‘Just one more day to finish.’ 75% [of the time] when I call, I get voicemail. When he answers, he’s been great. I spoke with him Tuesday. He [says he’s] recovering from a cold and he’d email me the final estimate on Wednesday. No dice. I emailed back that I want to send somebody by to pick up my parts. No response. I’d appreciate someone simply knocking on the door and putting eyes to what is going on.”

Groton is a pleasant 50-minute drive for me, so I told Webster I was glad to hop in one of the fun cars and shoot out there and see what was what. He texted me “Operation: Save My Parts is now engaged!” along with a representative photo of the piece I needed to rescue.

So on a lovely day a few days after “OSMP” had officially commenced, I drove out to Groton in my white ’73 BMW 2002. The Ferrari sign on the garage indicated that I was clearly in the right place, but unfortunately, my door-knocking at both the garage and the front door went unanswered. I did run into a neighbor, who offered that Verell’s wife’s car was in the driveway but his wasn’t. I tactfully posed the question, “But he’s usually here, right?” and didn’t hear anything back that sounded like a personal crisis. I went into town, grabbed a bite to eat, came back, still no second car, still no one answering the door, though I did see what looked like a content well-cared-for cat through the side glass. I left a note in the mailbox, reported back to Webster, and headed home.

A week later, Webster texted me saying he’d still heard nothing from Verell, and was considering flying out to do an in-person intervention, or at least a friendly stalking.

“Let me try again,” I said. “Really, it’s no hardship for me to take another one of my cars through the twisties on the way back out to Groton.”

So I did, this time letting my ’79 Euro 635CSi enjoy the countryside (like I said, no hardship). And this time, to my surprise, Verell answered the door. I was suddenly face-to-face with a stocky late-70s-looking stone-faced gentleman in overalls. I explained who I was and why I was there, and said as non-confrontationally as possible that Larry Webster had asked me to collect the turn signal assembly for him in whatever condition it was in.

The terse response from Verell’s craggy New England face was, “He’s going to have to pay me first.”

“Um, just a minute,” I said. Figuring that being an intermediary might be more productive than simply dialing party #1 and handing my cell phone to party #2, I went out to the privacy of my car, called Webster, and said that I’d just had a face-to-face with Verell.

“No way!” Webster said. He was thrilled that I’d actually made contact.

Then I explained the “He’ll have to pay me first” part.

“I’ve tried to pay him several times,” he said with some degree of frustration. “I’ve asked for an invoice. I’ve offered half now and half when done. Whatever the delay is isn’t because of payment.”

Webster then repeated Plan B from our initial conversation: “See if you can just get the housing back. If he wants to keep working on the switch, that’s fine.”

I went back inside and proposed this to Verell. He softened a bit. “Well,” he said, “it’s not that simple. There’s a wiring harness that’s still attached to the housing. I have it pulled out just enough to work on the switch. It’s extra work to detach the harness from the housing. Besides,” he said, “I’m almost done. It’ll be done tonight, tomorrow at the latest.”

This was all cordial and to-the-point. I’m a sucker for cordial and to-the-point. I’m also a big fan of “it’s not that simple.” Tell me anything in a reasoned, experienced voice and I’ll believe it. And yet, Webster had sent the part to the guy a year ago, and had given me some pretty specific instructions regarding coming back with some physical goods. It was an awkward position to be in as a middleman.

“I don’t know any of the details of the housing and the switch,” I said, “but I wouldn’t want to cause you extra work.”

Then I joked, “Anything Ferrari-related is way above my pay grade anyway.” Verell’s stone face relaxed a bit.

Then I offered—truthfully: “I actually write for Larry’s magazine, so I owe him several favors. And, I don’t know if you know, but a lot has gone wrong with him putting this car back together. I’m just trying to help him out with this one small part of it.” This wasn’t any sort of a strategy, but afterwards I recalled reading that a technique for dealing with people in charge of their fiefdoms is to candidly explain your need and ask for their help, because deep down, people want to help, but they want you to ask and want to be acknowledged as helping.

“How about this,” I said. “Can you look me in the eye and tell me that it’ll be done in the next few days?”

Verell sighed, then looked me in the eye. “It’ll be done in the next few days, maybe even tonight or tomorrow,” he said. Then he added, “It’s the only thing I’m working on right now.”

“That’ll be a good thing for me to tell Larry,” I said. He smiled. I thanked him, we shook hands, I went back to the car, and reported all this to Webster with the recommendation that he give the gentleman a few more days.

A few evenings later, when I was eating dinner with my wife, I got a text from Webster. It said:

“WOOOOO HOOOOOOOO! I just got a bill from Verell, which I paid. He said he’ll ship it tomorrow. You could definitely be a hostage negotiator!”

Still, the fat turn signal assembly hadn’t sung yet. I recalled the scene in the movie Proof of Life where hostage rescuer Russell Crowe tells Meg Ryan and David Morse “Don’t you DARE celebrate until the wheels of the plane touch down in the United States.”

Five days later, Larry texted me: “Yayssssss! Thank you Rob!” With it was a photo that was not only proof of life, but proof of release.

So there you have it. My new third act in life. Rob Siegel: Hack unobtainium parts hostage negotiator. I’m certain there must be a few BMW 2002tii Kugelfischer mechanical-injection pumps out there in need of my services.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post My New Side Hustle: Hostage Negotiator for Captured Parts appeared first on Hagerty Media.

First, let me rewind the tape about 15 years. I was driving through Brighton (basically West Boston) with my family in the car on the way to a holiday event at my mother’s. Suddenly one of my kids chirped “DAD! DAD! What is THAT?” Coming at us was a little two-seat roadster with massive tires and flared fenders, a mouth like a bass, and an engine note like a line of howitzers.

“That’s a Cobra replica,” I said, giving a thumbnail of my journeyman’s knowledge of what a Cobra is.

One of the kids asked “How do you know it’s a replica?”

“Because,” I dad-splained, “No one would be driving a car worth as much as our house through Boston at 4:00 on a Friday.”

Now, on to the story…

I have a friend, a genteel guy in his early 80s, who owns a 1965 427 Cobra. I’d seen the car once before, a little over 20 years ago, in his modest garage. At the time, I was too jazzed up to ask detailed questions, but I remember faded paint and a dusty interior, so my assumption is that the car was in original unrestored condition and wasn’t currently running. I shivered when I sat in it and experienced what I’d read about—that the drivetrain in a 427 Cobra is so massive that, to accommodate it, the transmission hump pushes the pedals off-center, so when you’re sitting in the driver’s seat, your legs curve off to the left.

Fast-forward to last month, when I ran into this fellow. He said that he had driven the Cobra for the first time in a couple of years, it ran rough, and then lost power. He described a route that he took where the second part was downhill, then said that the car’s fuel pickup was in the front of the fuel tank, so he hypothesized that, from sitting, water had formed in the tank, and that when he drove downhill, the water went to the front of the tank and got sucked into the carbs, which stalled the car. Miraculously, this happened close enough to his house that he literally coasted it into his driveway. He wanted to know if the water-in-the-fuel theory was plausible (“Does the defense’s theory hold water?”), and if so, what would need to be done to fix it. He said that he wasn’t certain whether or not he’d put fuel stabilizer in the tank before it sat.

I concurred that yes, ethanol in fuel does attract water, which is heavier than fuel and thus does settle at the bottom of the tank (and is also highly corrosive, so, yeah, bad), but with all the bugaboo about the evils of ethanol in fuel, I’d never had a starting or running problem in a car that had been sitting that I could say was caused by ethanol / water, even in cars that sat for six months with no fuel stabilizer. I said that I drain a gas tank only when I open up the filler cap and it smells like varnish, and that two years was kind of a funny window. So could this have happened? Sure. But did it happen and was it the cause of his problem? More of a definite “maybe.”

“What’s involved in draining the tank?” he asked. “I have a couple of oil drain catch pans.” I advised that that’s not a great way to do it, as then to dispose of the gas, you have to lift up the drain pan and funnel it into a gas can, and that’s messy and hard on the back. I said that the better way to do it is to suck the gas out with an electric fuel pump and directly spit it into as many 5-gallon cans as necessary to hold it. I offered that I have a small fuel pump wired with a pair of alligator clips that I use expressly for this purpose, and that, if he supplied the gas cans and a fire extinguisher, I’d be glad to come over and drain it for him. We set it up for 3 p.m. the following Wednesday.

A few days later, with my travel tool kit, the fuel pump, a battery, and some hose in the trunk of my E39 BMW, I drove to the house. I recognized neither it nor the garage, and when my friend rolled up the door, I can’t say that I recognized the Cobra, either, as it was now stunningly attractive. He said that he’d had it painted about 20 years ago—likely shortly after I first saw it—but this is a gentleman who’s unpretentious about these sort of things (in other words, his “painted” could well be someone else’s “restored”).

I unloaded my tools and he got the gas cans and the fire extinguisher, but before we began draining the tank, I asked him to again run down what happened when the car died. He repeated the story. For some reason, I was hesitant to set in motion a messy smelly task unless I had more indication that it was necessary. “Let me just look at it for a bit,” I said.

I eyeballed the big 427. As you likely know, I’m mainly a vintage BMW guy. The only American V-8s I’ve been around were the small-block Chevys in the parade of Suburbans I owned. The engine in this car was so far outside my wheelhouse that I might as well have been a blind concussed cyclops interpreting data from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Still, at the basic level, it was just another engine. I put on my Tyvek suit and got down to it, taking care not to scratch the paint.

I noticed—and you can kind of see it in the photo above—some not-inconsequential residue in the valleys on the top of the intake manifold, which I took as evidence that it had been leaking fuel. When I looked closer, I saw what I believed to be active leakage weeping from the base of the forward carb. That might have accounted for the residue in the forward valley, but not the rear one. I took a wrench and snugged down both carbs.

I was curious if the float bowls had anything in them, be it fuel or water, so I asked the owner if I could pull the air cleaners off and verify that the accelerator pumps squirted anything when the linkage was goosed. I worked the linkage and was surprised to see that the front carb’s butterflies opened, but the rear ones didn’t appear to. He explained that this was normal—the linkage was progressive, with the rear carb not being engaged until the front carb was mostly open. I commented that this was like the progressive Weber 32/36s on some of my cars, except they did that between barrels in the same carb, whereas this car progressively engaged an entire carb. I noted that the front carb squirted what looked and smelled like fuel, but the rear one wasn’t squirting anything. Also, the choke setup was unusual, with an owner-installed cable-actuated choke on the front carb, while the rear carb appeared to have the original automatic choke, though it wasn’t closing. Not wanting to break anything, I left that mystery for another day.

Having found the source of one of the two locations of gas residue, I made sure the fire extinguisher was handy and had the owner start the car. It roared to life and began idling as I scrutinized the carbs, fuel hoses, and intake with a flashlight.

Then I saw gas dripping. I barked “SHUT IT OFF!”

The leak was coming from the left corner of the rear float bowl and dripping onto the manifold, almost certainly responsible for the residue in the rear valley. I checked all the screws holding the bowl on. None of them were snug, and the one at the dripping corner was finger-loose. I tightened them all, wiped up all wetness, checked things a second time, and we very carefully tried again.

This time, the engine stayed dry. As it warmed up, the owner blipped the throttle, leaning into it a bit more each time. He smiled.

“This,” he said, “is how it’s supposed to sound.”

I said something about how it wasn’t that I didn’t believe his theory on water in the tank, but that sometimes it’s best to try the smaller, easier things first.

“What do you say we drive to the gas station and put a few gallons of fresh high test in it?” he said.

“Sounds like a plan!” I began walking around to the passenger door when I heard him say something completely unexpected:

“Would you like to drive it?”

Wait, what?

To say that I don’t often have the chance to do things like this is a massive understatement. But at the same time, I long ago developed an adult’s balance of the craving for sensation with both risk and my own comfort level. I thanked him profusely, then politely demurred—unfamiliar car, he should be the one to determine whether or not it’s running right, etc. I don’t regret it in the least.

I pulled closed the feather-light door by its leather strap, then latched the meaty seat belt, its buckle the size of a sandwich. I reflexively looked for a shoulder belt. “There isn’t one,” my friend said. “If you need more stability, grab the dash with both hands.”

By this point, it was maybe quarter to four. It was a cool overcast spring day, just the kind of weather that could have convinced you not to go drive a valuable vintage roadster, because if it rains, putting up the top is like setting up Earnest Shackleton’s tent.

In other words, it made me feel breathtakingly alive.

We ambled our way to the gas station, my friend feeling out the car after its two-year sit and troublesome re-emergence.

Then, on a small road somewhere in New England, without warning, he punched it.

I have never experienced anything so raw and visceral in my life. My genteel octogenarian friend’s blue eyes shone like he was 20 years old.

“This is running great,” he calmly said.

We arrived at the gas station, which was at the intersection of a small local road and a local highway, and not far from an interstate. He put a few gallons of gas in the car, then again asked me if I wanted to drive it. By this time, was 4 p.m., and the traffic density had picked up substantially. Again I thanked him, and again I declined.

“Maybe when it’s not close to rush hour,” he said.

“That would be awesome.”

He pulled away from the pump, but rather than turning around to go back the way we’d come, he positioned the car to turn onto the local highway. I saw that there was an immediate right turn on another local road. I pointed to it and asked “You’re going to take that?”

“Nope,” he deadpanned.

When there was an opening in the traffic, he nailed and wailed. The Cobra exploded forward. Raw passion gushed out of both him and the car as this gentleman, intimately familiar with what the car was and what it could do (oh, did I forget to mention that he is the original owner of the car?), deftly jammed a thumb in the eye of everything ordinary. He slotted the gears, the best WAAAAAAAAA-shift-waaaaaaaa ever known, better than any adolescent boy’s dream of what sex or driving would be like. It was a thing of abject beauty.

Then he pulled onto the interstate, taking the entrance ramp with a ferocity that had me grabbing the dashboard with both hands while I laughed my head off. I commented that traffic was lighter than I would’ve expected at this hour, but his Paul Newman–like eyes just remained laser-focused. Then he took the exit ramp at a speed I would not have thought the car was capable of. The car heard my thoughts and said to me “You know nothing, Rob Siegel.” The Automotive Powers That Be were blessing me with something singular.

This is why we love cars.

When we returned to sedate speeds on local roads and were about a mile from his house, an oncoming car flashed its lights to indicate there was a speed trap up ahead. I happened to glance that the car’s inspection sticker and noticed that it said “21.”

“You know that your sticker’s expired?”

“Oh, it’s way expired,” he said. “If I’m stopped, I’ll say that the car was off the road for a few years and I just now drove it to get gas, which is true.” Then he turned and looked at me and said, “You can get away with a lot when you’re my age and tell the truth.” Words to live by. By chance (at least I think it was by chance), the police officer was parked directly across the street from my friend’s house. My friend pulled the Cobra into his driveway and, from there, slowly into his garage. The officer stayed where he was.

“That,” I said, “is something I’ll remember my entire life.” I offered that I’d be glad to help him with the car again.

“Sure,” he said. “Come back some other time. Then you can drive it.”

When I got home, I looked at the photos I took, and initially was disappointed there weren’t more. Then I realized. Of course. I was living in the moment. It’s burned into my soul. I don’t need no stinking photos.

So, if you witnessed us—a little blue two-seat roadster with massive tires and flared fenders, a mouth like a bass, and an engine note like a line of howitzers, being driven like he stole it by a genteel-looking older man with a glint in his eye and someone who looks like a thin Jerry Garcia in the passenger seat—and if you tell your family “That’s a Cobra replica; no one would be driving a real one through traffic at 4 p.m. on a Wednesday,” don’t be so sure. The universe is full of light, wonder, and unburned hydrocarbons, and if you’re in the right place at the right time, The Cobra Wizard may choose you.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post The Hack and the Cobra appeared first on Hagerty Media.

I’ve written numerous pieces about storing five of my cars in a warehouse in Monson, on the Massachusetts/Connecticut border. The advantage is that it’s cheap—$70/month per car. But the disadvantages are substantial: It’s an hour and ten minutes from my house if there’s zero traffic (which is rare); I have to coordinate access with the owner; my cars are blocked in over the winter by RVs, boats, and trailers; there’s no electricity; and a particularly rainy summer last year caused mildew problems. Last fall, I did a full-on desiccant attack, putting two DampRid containers in each car, plus an industrial desiccant brick used on cargo vessels to help prevent “container rain.” I hadn’t been out there since November and was waiting for the big rigs to vacate the premises so I could deal with the fleet.

At a bare minimum, all five of the cars needed inspection stickers and the desiccant refilled. I expected them all to have needs. I didn’t expect what was perilously close to a full-on revolt.

First on the list was “Lolita” the ’74 Lotus Europa Twin Cam Special. She’d actually been sitting out there since September. I’d finally gotten the car registered in Massachusetts (a long story I’ll tell another time) and was anxious to get her inspected and back home.

The lack of electricity in the warehouse means I can’t put the batteries in the cars on trickle chargers. I used to pull the batteries out and bring them home for the winter, or move a good battery around between cars, but my back no longer allows that. However, my experience has generally been that if I simply unplug the negative battery cables, when I return three months later, the cars usually start up, and if not, I have a battery jump pack I use. The hour-plus drive home usually does a decent job of recharging the battery, and if not, I have chargers and battery testers at the house. Of course, when three months turns to six, things can be more difficult, but the Lotus started up fairly easily.

While the car was idling, I put it through its inspection paces and found nothing wrong. But inspection notwithstanding, part of my post-storage procedure is to check all fluids as well as look under each car for leaks, both stationary and running. I shined a flashlight beneath it and saw fluid dripping into a spreading puddle. I shut the car off and swiped a paper towel through the puddle.

Gas. Damn.

Even under the best of circumstances, fuel leaks are something one should have zero tolerance for, and things are worse on the Lotus, because any leaks from the Stromberg carburetors or the lines feeding them drip directly onto the starter motor, which gives me the heebie-jeebies about restarting the car until I’ve waited long enough that any fuel has evaporated. Plus, for all the just-in-case stuff I’ve accumulated in the trunk of my BMW Bavaria in Monson (tools, paper towels, oil, coolant, jumper cables, starter fluid, etc.), I didn’t have a fire extinguisher. So, everything ground to a halt, especially the idea of getting the car inspected.

If I couldn’t diagnose and repair the source of the leak there, I’d need to tow the car home. It turned out to be coming from the two plastic plugs in the bottoms of the Strombergs’ float bowls. I did a little searching on my phone and learned that the leak is fairly common in Stromberg-equipped British and Swedish cars and can be stanched by simply replacing the O-ring. I unscrewed one bowl, gently squeezed the plug’s plastic prongs together, and popped it out. Suddenly, it seemed that I could rescue my get-the-Lotus-inspected-then-drive-it-home plans by going to a nearby hardware store and matching up the O-rings. Unfortunately, when I tried to pull the 50-year-old O-ring off the 50-year-old plastic plug, one of the prongs broke off in my hand.

Okay. No inspection for Lolita today. There were still four other cars in the queue. I turned my attention to “Sharkie,” the ’79 BMW Euro 635CSi. Like Lolita, Sharkie started up easily when I reconnected its battery. Unfortunately, when I went through the inspection checklist, I found that something was wrong in the handbrake lever’s ratchet—it wouldn’t stay seated. A non-functional handbrake is a certain inspection fail. I pulled up the rubber boot and found that the anchoring bracket for the ratchet had broken off from the transmission hump.

I decided to cut that day’s warehouse adventures short and beat it home in Sharkie, where I had the equipment necessary to fix the handbrake ratchet.

I thought about welding the bracket back in place, but although I own a welder, my skills are poor, and I wasn’t certain if I needed to pull up the carpet, which would be fairly involved. So instead, I settled on pop-riveting the bracket. Three drilled holes and three rivets later, and the job was done, and I got Sharkie stickered.

The plugs for the Strombergs were plentiful enough online that I searched for the lowest-cost vendor (about $18 per plug), clicked, and waited for the shipping confirmation. Unfortunately, the following day, the vendor called me to say that the plugs were out of stock. I then stepped through four vendors in increasing order of cost, calling each one, and finding that they too were out of stock. I eventually climbed to the top of the cost curve and called the venerable Moss Motors in Virginia, from whom, shipped to my house, the two plastic plugs and O-rings set me back 80 bucks. As they say, sometimes you just have to pay the man (or woman).

With float bowl plugs and a fire extinguisher in tow, I piloted Sharkie back out to Monson and again had at Lolita. I snapped the first plug into the already-removed float bowl and reinstalled it.

Since there was no downside if I broke the second original plug, I pried it out of the second bowl without needing to drop it. It came out easily, and I replaced it with the second new one. I re-checked the fuel lines, and with the fire extinguisher at the ready, started the car. No leaks. The Lotus appeared ready for inspection.

I took the car to a nearby inspection station and parked it in front of the service bay like you’re supposed to. The six-foot-tall inspector came out and stared suspiciously at Lolita. I ran down the car-specific details: “The horn button’s not in the middle of the steering wheel; it’s under the dash and to the left. The headlight switch is to the right. You have to pull it out and then turn it clockwise. The wiper and high beam stalks are very fragile. Oh, and you literally need to take off your right shoe to move the car, otherwise you’ll hit the gas and brake pedal at the same time.”

The inspector in this very small town, who, to put it mildly, doesn’t see a lot of Lotus Europas, was not happy with this. He barked “I don’t even think I can get in the (bleep)ing thing. Just drive it in and do the lights-wipers-horn for me.” They’re supposed to drive it in, not you, but I complied. Then, for the jack-up-the-front-wheels-and-check-for-play test, I handed him a hockey puck and told him exactly where to position it and the jack so he didn’t tear up the fiberglass, but advised that the car is so low that if he didn’t have a low-rise jack, he might not be able to get it under the car at all. Rather than take my head off, though, he seemed to warm to my thoroughness and my knowledge of my own car, and offered that they have a similar issue with Corvettes. The Lotus emerged without damage and with a Massachusetts inspection sticker. I celebrated with Lolita’s first-ever fully-legal drive—five miles to the CT border and back.

With Lolita finally stickered, I turned my sights on the three early 1970s BMWs in the warehouse. First was “Louie” the ’72 2002tii (the Ran When Parked car). Its reconnected battery barely had enough juice for two cranks, but the jump pack got it started. While warming it up, I didn’t see any leaking fluids but was astonished to find the brake fluid reservoir essentially empty. The level was down past the feed to the clutch cylinders, so any leakage had to be coming from the brake hydraulics. I crawled under the car with a flashlight and double-checked to see if any fluids were leaking down the tires, and found none.

Then I remembered: This same thing happened last year. At that time, I refilled the reservoir, hammered on the brakes, took the car for a short drive, found no leakage, carefully drove the car home while stopping several times to check, made it without incident, and tried to diagnose the problem. Leak-free vanishing of brake fluid typically means that it’s going into the brake booster, but I dipped a long zip tie down into it and it came up dry. At some point, I put the car back in the warehouse. Here I was, a year later, faced with exactly the same situation, reinforcing the adage that problems like this rarely cure themselves. For now, I did the eyes-on-the-prize thing and simply got the car inspected. The vanishing-brake-fluid-mystery will again have to wait.

Next was “Bertha,” the heavily patinated, massively modified ’75 2002 that my wife and I drove off from our wedding. Even with the negative terminal disconnected, its battery was drained down to 10.5 volts, so the starter solenoid didn’t even click until I connected the jump pack. As I thought about it, I realized I hadn’t rotated Bertha out of Monson and brought it back to my house in a couple of years, so the car didn’t have the benefit of a highway drive to recharge the battery, just an annual run to the CT border and back, so the dead battery didn’t surprise me.

The low brake-fluid reservoir, however, did. This one was down just slightly below the clutch line, indicating that the leak was likely in the clutch hydraulics.

As with Louie, I didn’t see any evidence of fluid beneath the car, so the issue wasn’t acute. It was probably coming from the clutch master and going into the pedal box, but post-1974 2002s like Bertha have a one-piece carpet, so peeling it back to check isn’t trivial. So, as with Louie, I left the mystery for another day. I filled the reservoir, made sure the car wasn’t peeing fluid, and got it inspected. The inspector had warmed to me to the point that he was kind enough to leave Bertha running during the inspection so I wouldn’t need to re-jump the car. Then I tried to take it for the same five-mile-to-the-CT-border run I did with the Lotus, but I quickly found that it ran absolutely horribly. Whenever I bring Bertha home, I may need to do so on a rented U-Haul auto transporter, which would be good in that it’ll help justify the existence of the Nissan Armada.

That left just the ’73 BMW Bavaria. Its battery was the deadest of the bunch, discharged down to a damaging 9 volts. Like Bertha, this was due to the car not having been driven further than to the CT border and back last year. The Bav has typically been hard to start after a winter-long sit, as the original mechanical fuel pump takes a while to fill the Webers’ float bowls. I usually go out there with an electric fuel pump I use to prime the bowls, but I’d forgotten it. No matter, I thought—I keep a can of starting fluid in the trunk for just this purpose. Unfortunately, when I tried squirting it down the throats, I found that the can had no propellant left in it.

I could’ve run to the AutoZone one town over for starting fluid, but I elected instead to put the time into changing the DampRid in all five cars. This process—bringing the two containers from each car outside the warehouse, dumping the water and the desiccant, cleaning the containers, and refilling them—is surprisingly time-consuming. By the time I was done, it was almost 3 p.m., and any window I had for driving the Lotus home before rush hour had vanished (hey, you drive a car with all the crashworthiness of a Pringles can in stop-and-go traffic and see how you feel).

So the Bavaria’s inspection and Lolita’s long journey back home would need to wait until next week, during which I could do some serious thinking about why I continue to own these cars that I’m not driving further than to the inspection station and a 5-mile romp into Connecticut and back.

Of course, it doesn’t mean I’m going to do anything about it.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post My Cars in Storage Are Revolting (Part I) appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Snow-wise, it was an exceedingly mild winter here in Boston. A few weeks ago, I put away the snow blower and rid myself of the winter wheels and rubber. Doing so on both my and my wife’s daily drivers (my 2003 BMW E39 530i manual and her 2013 Honda Fit manual, respectively) is always a joy because the winter rubber just kills the handling on both cars. The BMW, in particular, is wearing a set of used brand X snows that make it feel like it’s cornering on water balloons. Once the three-season rubber is on, it feels like we’re both driving slot cars again.

As I’ve said before, a side benefit to the seasonal wheel swap is that you can give the car a well checkup, particularly under the engine. After all, with the nose in the air, you can skooch under and see what fluids are amassing. In particular, I always look for the tell-tale drips of antifreeze doing the canary-in-a-coal-mine thing, before a water pump or a thermostat grenades.

The other big part of the front-end checkup is to look for play in the steering and wheel bearings. Sit in front of the wheel and grab the tire at 6 and 12 o’clock and pull with one hand while you push with the other. Any play pretty much has to be coming from the wheel bearings. Then do the same at 3 and 9 o’clock. If there was no wheel bearing play, then play here is from the steering, which includes the outer and inner tie rods and whatever other steering components there are. On a car with a steering rack, the play can be internal. On an older car with a steering box, play can be coming from the box, from the center link, or from the idler.

Having said that, it’s rare I find steering or suspension issues during one of these checkups that I wasn’t already aware of by driving the car. I’m usually pretty attuned to wandering steering or thunks and clunks. Of course, as the guy who found two broken springs in the front end of his Armada, I may not have my credibility jar topped off.

Enter the steering check of the 2003 E39 530i, where the 3-and-9-o’clock test revealed substantial play that was easily isolated to the right outer tie rod. When I found it, I recalled that the car did have a bit of a mild clunking sound from the front end, but whether I’d been in denial or whether it was a case of the frog in the slowly heating water pot, it just hadn’t crept onto my radar. I’ve long made a distinction between ball joints and tie rods in terms of urgency of repair, because ball joints sit at the bottom of the struts or wishbone assemblies and thus take all the pothole pounding, whereas tie rods are steering components rather than suspension components and thus are spared much of the violence. On modern cars with camber-maintaining front suspensions, however, the line between the two is blurred. Nonetheless, having found a clearly worn-out tie rod, the thing to do was change it posthaste. I put the E39 up on the mid-rise lift so I wouldn’t be tempted to drive it.

Next, I went inside, sat at the laptop, searched for parts, and put a pair of Lemforder tie-rod assemblies on order. Why Lemforder? I’m virtually certain they’re the manufacturer of most of the original equipment (OE) steering and suspension components in the car, and thus buying the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) Lemforder-branded parts rather than the “genuine” BMW parts saves money while, in theory, preserving quality.

Actually, let me expound on this. As with many repairs, you can allow a job like this to mushroom or contract in both scope and expense. From the scope end, if you so desire, you can take this opportunity to rebuild the entire front end—struts, top bearings, upper and lower control arms, tie rods, sway bar links. Or you can go as minimal as possible and replace only the bad component, which was the right-side outer tie rod. On my previous E39, I took the systemic approach, only to have the car continually break and bleed me, so on this car I’ve been more circumspect about fixing things that aren’t broken. I will replace suspension and steering components in pairs, but I won’t necessarily mission-creep my way into other components. To that end, I replaced the lower control arms years back when one was obviously worn, and I left the upper ones alone until they showed wear three years later.

And expense-wise, how deep are your pockets? Replacing all normal-wear-and-tear suspension and steering components with genuine BMW parts might set you back two or three grand. A Lemforder steering-only kit is about a thousand bucks. Two OE BMW tie-rod assemblies cost about $300. The Lemforder kit with tie rods boots and clamps was $90; that was the right scope and the right amount of scratch to throw at it. But I could’ve gone even cheaper—a single unbranded outer tie rod on eBay is about $17. This is another advantage of finding something like a loose tie rod in your own garage during a well checkup—you can make the choice of which approach to take and not get goaded, guilted, or arm-twisted into a choice you don’t want by a dealer or repair shop.

With the new parts’ arrival slated for the next day, I began removing the old parts. Surprisingly, I’d never replaced tie rods on a car with a steering rack; I’d only done it on old-school steering-box cars where the tie-rod assembly consists of inner and outer tie rods that are identical or nearly so, connected with a threaded metal tube. On cars with steering racks, the outer tie rod may be a conventional one just like on a vintage car with a tapered end that passes through the steering knuckle and a nut threaded onto it, but the inner tie rod lives inside the rubber boot at the end of the steering rack. It has a ball, but there’s no taper—it threads directly into the reciprocating steering rack instead.

OK, outer one first. The impact wrench made short work out of the nut pulling the tapered shaft into the knuckle, so on to the extraction. One of the nice things about working on cars for 45 years and buying tools rather than renting them is that you eventually accumulate a milk crate full of assorted pullers. I found one that fit around E39’s outer tie rods, figured out that I needed to crank the steering all the way to one side to optimally orient things for the puller, tightened it down, and waited for the BANG! when the tapered end released its 21-year grip in the hole.

The inner tie rod came off even easier. I cut off the crimped-on clamps securing the boot, pulled it back, and figured out that I needed to nudge the steering wheel so the inner tie rod’s attachment nut was just clear of the rack housing. Initially I thought that I was seeing both a nut and a lock nut, like there is on the toe adjuster, but it’s just a place to grab it with a thin 32-mm wrench, which fortunately is the same size as the viscous fan clutch on these cars, so I had the exact tool needed.

On a 220K-mile lifelong New England car like this one, the whole “you’re always one broken bolt away from a five-minute repair being a three-day ordeal” thing is particularly true. Fortunately, the fact that the inner tie rod is shielded from the elements by the rubber boot made the 32-mm nut give it up without incident.

As is often the case, having done one side, the other side went a little quicker. The next day, when the parts arrived, I set about the installation. One also similarly expects installation to go quicker than removal (no rusted fasteners and all that). That, however, proved not to be the case.

The problem was threading the inner tie rods into the steering rack. In this situation, getting new threads started during installation was far more difficult than unscrewing old threads during removal. The reason is a combination of angle and tightness.

The movable part of the inner tie rod is the cup of the ball-and-cup assembly with a threaded tip. When the components are well-used, the inner tie rod cup moves on the ball easily. But new components are very stiff, you can barely move them with your hands. You’d think the thing to do is orient everything so the inner end sticks straight out and then use the whole assembly like the handle of a screwdriver to thread the inner end into the steering rack, but you can’t, because the other end (the outer tie rod) hits the strut assembly. So instead, you need to do it sort of like a ratchet wrench, at a 45° angle. However, the inner tie rod is so stiff on the ball that it won’t stay with its threads facing those it needs to mate with in the rack. Oh, and while you’re doing this, you need to hold the rubber boot back from the inner tie rod. As you can imagine, it was maddening.

First, I twisted and rotated the inner tie rod with the wrench until it loosened up enough to be able to move it for installation. Then I used two techniques: On the right side, I employed the wrench to orient the inner tie rod and turn it and get the threads started, but on the right side, I used the turn-the-whole-assembly method. I think it was the difference in strength between my right and left arms that made them different.

Lastly, alignment. If you’re replacing only the outer tie rods, people talk about counting threads, or the number of turns until the old outer one comes off, to install the new one in the same location as the old one. But even a quarter of a turn makes a significant difference in toe-in, so there’s really no question that after tie rod replacement the car needs an alignment. Nonetheless, to get it in the ball park, I tried to get the new assemblies as close as possible to the same length as the old ones by putting them side-by-side, with one end against a wall and the other against a convenient straightedge (what’s shown is actually a shelf bracket), then measuring both sides with a tape measure.

I’ve been doing my own alignment for years, but mostly on vintage cars with skinnier tires. I’d never tried it on a car like this with wide meat. But it worked well enough that I could drive the car, feel that it was toed slightly out, and tweak it until the darty feeling went away. The steering is now tight as a drum, and thunk-and-clunk free.

And, as far as finding that well-checkup coolant drip, funny story …

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post The Daily Driver Needs Tie Rods appeared first on Hagerty Media.

My readers will certainly recall The Case of the Mouse-Infested Truck—the 2008 Silverado I bought from my ex-employer for a song because mice had used it as both a bathroom and a casket (Google “Rob Siegel Hagerty mouse infested truck,” but be sure you don’t have a weak stomach).

So imagine how I felt when I had to admit to myself that my recently-purchased 2008 Nissan Armada—ostensibly the replacement for the Silverado—had a rodent contamination issue.

When I bought the Armada, it had been sitting on the owner’s property for a few months. As I explained here, it had a number of problems that I was aware of and several more that I wasn’t. During the short test drive, I thought I caught a rodent-tinged whiff, but it was nothing close to the gag-inducing stench from the Silverado. There was, however, an obvious climate control issue—a clicking sound emanating from the heater box. This is the characteristic mating call of worn-out plastic gears on the actuator controlling one of the blend doors. But with all the truck’s needs, these two issues didn’t even make it onto the punch list.

Once the Armada was largely sorted out and I began driving it, however, the slightly acrid, rodent-infused background smell was like a thistle thorn in a sock—annoying as hell for short periods. However, when my wife accompanied me on a short errand, she of the exquisitely sensitive sense of smell said that nothing jumped out at her. So I went to my backup position—denial. There is no smell. There. I dealt with it. Done.

Until one night. I had a gig, my daily-driver E39 BMW was sidelined in the garage, and my wife needed her Honda Fit, so I drove the Armada 40 miles in the rain each way. The combination of the closed cabin and the need to run the blower fan with fresh air to defrost the windshield made the eau-de-mouse smell jump to the foreground. My state of denial crumbled.

Damn.

The mouse-infested Silverado had been a nightmare scenario, as mice had crawled up the A-pillars into the headliner, urinated and defecated and died there, and did the same inside the heater box. To deal with it, I removed the headliner, threw it in the garbage, cleaned every metal surface on the roof and pillars with enzyme-based cleaner, and installed a new headliner. Unfortunately, I read that removing and reinstalling the heater box was something like a 12-hour job, and I wasn’t willing to do that, so instead I snaked an inspection camera down the vents and into the box, located the mouse nest, drilled an opening with a hole saw, pulled out the nest and the body of a dead mouse, and tried to clean the box using multiple treatments of pressurized disinfectant that washed out through the drip hole for the A/C condenser. It worked well enough for me to be able to use the truck (and for my wife to even ride in it with me, if necessary), but it also made me think that I would never knowingly buy another mouse-infested vehicle unless it was something I really REALLY wanted and was a smoking-good deal. The Armada was neither of these things, so the fact that I had to admit that I was facing the possibility of going through all this again really frosted my behind.

And then I had a thought: Maybe this time I’d get lucky. Yeah, let’s go with that.

Any vehicle built in the past 30 years has cabin air filters. It’s not uncommon for them to be a poster child for lack of maintenance—that is, for the filters to never be changed, and for all sort of nasty stuff to accumulate on them. Including mouse nests.

So, I said to myself, “Self, don’t panic. Check the cabin air filters.”

The location of cabin air filters varies car-to-car, but they’re usually up high on the inside of the cowl. Thus, it’s not unusual for them, or for one of them, to be above or behind the glove box. That’s where they are in the Armada. On many cars, you can reach the filter with the glovebox installed. On some, you need to unclip the glovebox so it drops further down than it normally does. But in the Armada, you actually need to unscrew and remove the entire glove box assembly, including the frame the glovebox pivots on. It was surprising, but not too bad

Once the glovebox assembly is removed, the filters are accessible. The filter cover is held in place by a single 10mm bolt.

I withdrew the two filters. They were, as we used to say in junior high, grody to the max. If they were ever replaced, it certainly wasn’t recently.

In case you need a close-up, here it is. No wonder the cabin air smelled like rodent. I became very hopeful that this was “it,” and ran inside to the laptop and put a $12 pair of filters on order for next-day delivery.

As Ron Popeil used to say, “But wait! There’s more!” Once the filters were removed, I looked back at the fresh air vent above them.

Jackpot.

This mouse nest appeared to have been completely above the filters, giving me hope that, unlike the situation in the Silverado, contamination hadn’t extended into the heater box. My iPhone inspection camera had stopped working for some reason, so instead I pulled out the blower fan to gain inspection access to the heater box. This was fairly straightforward, as it’s only held in place by three 5.5mm bolts. With the blower fan out, I could stick my phone inside the heater box and photograph it, or at least the core that the fan blows through. I saw a few stray leaves and stems, but no evidence of rodent contamination—no nests, no pellets.

Once I’d confirmed the apparently limited scope of the contamination, instead of doing the full-on pressure-washing with enzyme-based cleaner approach I did with the Silverado, I simply reached in and wiped every surface I could reach with Clorox disinfecting wipes. I also sprayed and wiped each blade of the squirrel cage of the blower fan.

Although I hate the smell of Lysol, this was good time to use it in moderation. Let me be clear about this: If there is a mouse nest, or piles of dung, or an actual carcass inside, unloading a can of Lysol into the vents as some people propose online is never going to make the smell go away. Unless you’ve located and removed the bulk source of the smell, all that spray disinfectant is likely to do is mask it. However, using a bit of spray disinfectant to chase down residual reengage molecules either above or below the actual contamination isn’t unreasonable. I reinstalled the blower fan and the filter cover but didn’t install the filters yet. I then turned the fan on high, set the climate control to fresh air, gave a blast of Lysol into the fresh air inlet in the windshield cowl, and let the blower fan suck it directly into the heater box without the filters blocking it. I let it run in my driveway for 15 minutes. Then I installed the filters and let it run for another 15.

Finally, with trepidation, I took the Armada for a drive. Windows up, fresh air selected, blower on full.

The smell was gone.

It took me a while to notice that something else was gone too—the clicking sound. Either it’s an utter coincidence, or what was happening was that the sound was coming from the fresh air vent being unable to close because it was hitting the mouse nest on top of the filter, and with it gone, it now could move unimpeded.

As I said, sometimes you get lucky.

Next, I need to look at the air conditioning. Maybe I’ll get lucky with that too.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Déjà Vu: The Mouse-Infested Armada appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Back in February, I wrote about troubleshooting a no-start condition. It was, I thought, a useful piece that walked you down the decision tree that delineates car-won’t-crank, car-cranks-slowly, and car-cranks-quickly-but-won’t-start problems, and tells you how to test for each and which component is likely bad.

However, I didn’t delve deeply enough into the issue that a weak battery and a weak starter motor can mimic one another. How do I know? Because I just got bitten by it.

Here’s the deal. As I said in the no-start story, what cranks the engine is the battery, the starter, the cables connecting the two, and the ignition switch that feeds 12 volts to the starter solenoid. If you turn the key and hear weak cranking or nothing at all, the first thing to do is check the voltage at the battery with a voltmeter—that’s exactly what AAA will do if you make a service call. A fully-charged battery should read 12.6 volts, and for every 0.2 volts it drops, it loses about 25 percent of its capacity, so by the time it reaches 12 volts, it’s fully discharged. So if you check the battery voltage and find it’s 12 volts or lower, you’ve definitely found the problem. Or at least you’ve found a problem; you still need to find out why the battery is discharged. If it’s winter, the battery is five years old, and the terminals are badly corroded, replace it. Done. If it was drained because you left the dome light on, recharge it, see if it’s OK, and don’t do that again. But if it’s drained because the alternator wasn’t keeping it charged, the charging system needs to be repaired or the same thing will happen to the new battery.

However, if the battery is fully charged but the engine cranks slowly, the problem is a little harder to diagnose, as it can be caused by the battery (it’s possible for an old battery with sulfated plates to take a full charge but not be able to deliver sustained cranking) or by the starter motor going bad. In my first story, I wrote:

“If the battery posts are clean and the ground paths are good but, even once the battery is recharged, it still won’t crank the car, or only does so for a short amount of time, you can use a battery analyzer that uses resistance as a measure of battery health. I’ve found they work pretty well. But really, the gold-standard test is to remove the old battery, clean the clamps, and install a new or a known-good battery. If the car then cranks and starts, the battery was the problem. Note that, particularly in winter, due to low temperatures sapping battery strength and corrosion on the battery terminals causing high resistance in the contact with the jaws on the jumper cables, the failure of a car to crank with a jump-start can be highly misleading. Time after time I’ve experienced no-crank conditions that vanished immediately when a good battery was dropped directly into the car.”

Later in the piece, I added: “If you’re certain that the battery and the current paths are good, and the starter won’t spin or sounds labored, and it’s hot to the touch, odds are that the starter has reached the end of the line.”

The idea here is that it’s waaaay easier to replace a battery—or at least to drop in a known good one—than it is to replace a starter, so first you rule out the battery and cables, and if slow-cranking persists, then you look at the starter.

I just was faced with this. And I got it wrong. Here’s how.

My 49,000-mile survivor 1973 BMW 2002—the one I call “Hampton”—has had a longstanding hard-starting problem. Whenever I think I’ve solved it, a few weeks later the problem rears its ugly head and laughs in my face. Cranks-but-won’t-start problems are tough on batteries, especially when the battery in the car is some off-brand “EconoPower” battery that’s sat all winter—disconnected, but not on a trickle charger (too many cars, not enough chargers). So it didn’t surprise me when, during trouble-shooting the hard-starting problem, I cranked long enough to hear the characteristic sound of slower and slower cranking that’s characteristic of running the battery down.

I recharged the battery overnight, came back in the morning, and the car fired right up. This had little to do with the battery and more to do with the intermittent nature of the hard-starting problem, which I still haven’t gotten to the bottom of. But a few days later, the hard-starting was back, and repeated cranking again became slower and slower. I again recharged the battery overnight, and in the morning still had the same set of problems.

As I mentioned previously, I have one of those resistance-based battery testers—a CenTech that I bought at Harbor Freight about 10 years ago. My experience with the tester has been positive—charge the battery, put the tester on it, and if it shows that the resistance across the terminals is less than 5 milliohms, the battery is fine. If it’s over 10 milliohms, the battery is bad, meaning its ability to hold a charge is severely diminished. If it’s somewhere between 5 and 10 milliohms, it’s a gray area, as was the case when I was testing the battery on my 95-year-old neighbor’s car last winter.

I used the CenTech tester on Hampton’s battery, and the reading was below 5 milliohms, indicating that the battery was good. However, it seemed to me that the battery was clearly not holding a charge, and besides, it was a five-year-old value-priced battery, so my conclusion was that my 10-year-old moderately-priced Harbor Freight battery tester had gone bad (shocking, I know).

BMW 2002s take a group 42 or group 47 battery, both of which are on the small side by modern standards, but the 2002tii has less room for the battery due to its larger brake booster, so it takes a tiny little group 26R battery. Since I own three 2002s, one of which is a tii and one of which is a modified car with a tii braking system, and since the Group 26R also fits the Lotus, using 26R batteries in all of them makes sense to me. An EverStart Value Group 26R battery was only $69 at WalMart, so I picked one up. (True story: The guy behind me in line asked me how long that little battery lasted for my trolling motor. He seriously didn’t believe me when I told him that it was the correct battery for an early ’70s German sports car.) Since it had been sitting on the rack for an unknown amount of time, I put it on charge in my garage overnight.

That morning, I yanked out the old battery and dropped in the new one. Imagine my surprise when I found that the same thing happened—the car cranked but didn’t start, and with each turn of the key it cranked slower and slower.

What the?

As you’ve undoubtedly guessed, the problem was the starter motor, not the battery. I hadn’t ever checked the starter by putting my hand on it because it seemed so obvious to me that the battery was the problem. And I hadn’t done the “drop a known-good battery into the car” test because neither of the other 2002s nor the Lotus, with their little Group 26R batteries, are here at the house. I would’ve had to have muscled the larger battery from either of the two other cars in the garage (my 3.0CSi or M Coupe), and with my back issues, I really avoid lifting batteries out of their recessed trays unless they’re dead and need to be replaced. The irony was obvious—by not thoroughly testing, I yanked a still-good battery and muscled an unneeded new one off the rack, into my trunk, into the garage, and into place. Really, it’s a wonder y’all believe anything I say.

So. Bad starter. OK. Fortunately, I had a brand-new starter motor in the garage, one of the smaller, lighter, inexpensive Chinese-made gear-reduction starters that became all the rage for installing into vintage BMWs a number of years back. I installed it, and Hampton’s engine spun like the dickens.

And then I remembered why I had this new starter sitting in a box in the garage. Years back, when I thought that Hampton’s 49,000-mile, one-owner survivor vibe was going to rain money on Bring a Trailer, in preparation for listing the car I did a compression test and found that the repeated cranking caused the starter to slow, which resulted in lower compression readings. Of course, when you’re selling a car, low compression readings are bad, so I bought the $90 gear-reduction starter, installed it, did the compression test, photographed the readings, and then reinstalled the original starter, as I thought it better fit the car’s original survivor vibe. I never interpreted the symptoms as the starter slowly dying. It was just old and a little slow, like me. And then I completely forgot about this little episode.

I’d tell the larger story of Hampton’s hard-starting problem, but it’s still a work in progress. On the positive side, I’m almost positive that it’s not the battery or the starter.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Getting a No-Start Diagnosis Wrong appeared first on Hagerty Media.

With all the chop in the water about whether buying my needy 183,000-mile 2008 Nissan Armada was a good move or an awful one, I thought I’d tell a story that shows that I am, in fact, capable of making rational automotive decisions.

In 1990, BMW’s follow-up to its successful, big two-door 6 Series coupe (the 635CSi) was a new model—the E31 8 Series. The new coupe, badged as the 850i through 1992 and the 850ci 1993 through 1997, was intended to be BMW’s new tour de force flagship, featuring its new V-12 engine, electronic throttle, multilink rear end, stability control, and other state-of-the-art features. Not surprisingly, these changes made the car heavy, complex, and expensive. When it debuted, the 850i was stickered at roughly $77,000 base price, rising to about $94,000 by 1997. [As if those figures don’t sound high enough, adjusting for inflation pushes them to more than $180K today.]

The coupe was received by the press and enthusiasts the way the Porsche 928 was viewed: at best, a touring car; at worst, a boulevard cruiser—but not a sports car. The fact that the car is sharp, with its pointy shark nose and hide-away headlamps, and looked a bit like what was then the current Toyota Celica Supra (second-generation A60), didn’t help matters. A less-expensive V-8-powered 840i was offered 1993–95, but it didn’t sell well either. A total of only 6920 E31 8 Series cars were sold in the United States before BMW pulled the plug.

As used vehicles, the 12-cylinder 8 Series cars were viewed as troublesome money pits with no financial upside. The car’s V-12 engine (the 850i’s M70 and its successor, the M73 in the ci) was designed as two M20 inline sixes mated together, and this design included using two of everything—two ECUs, two air flow meters, two throttle bodies, two fuel pumps, etc. If something went wrong, the car went into limp-home mode. Most of E31 8 Series production was before 1996, which is important because that’s when all cars sold in America received the standard OBD-II connector, so it’s not like you could plug a $50 scan tool into an 850i to find out the limp-mode problem—diagnosis generally required an expensive trip to the dealer. Like the V-12-equipped E32 750i sedan of the same era, you couldn’t give a needy 850i away; running cars needing work routinely sold for two- or three-thousand dollars. Dead ones were even less.

However, time and perspective are funny things. With age, the E31 8 Series looks better and better. It’s a true coupe with no B-pillar; roll down the front and rear windows and there’s an unbroken expanse of space, just like in my ’73 E9 3.0CSi coupe. The rear end of the car has that glorious fat planted look that’s all the rage. And no one remembers the whole Celica thing anymore, just like no one remembers how the 10th-generation Ford Thunderbird looked like a 635CSi.

With the size of BMW’s signature double kidneys increasing over the years to the point where they threaten to devour small countries, most classic BMWs with reasonable-sized kidneys look vintage-correct and unencumbered by marketing run rampant, and the kidneys on the 850i are especially thin for a car built in the last 30 years. And, complexity-wise, the V-12’s dual control system notwithstanding, these days any production vehicle is more complicated than an E31 8 Series.

And—here’s the kicker—the 850i was available with a six-speed manual gearbox. According to Wikipedia, it was “the first V-12 engine mated to a six-speed manual transmission on a road car.” [I suspect someone will sculpt a definition of “road car” to allow some Italian exotic to challenge this.] Only 847 V-12 stick cars were imported to the United States, so they’re certainly not common. Worse, the transmission isn’t the Getrag 420G used by V-8 stick BMWs of that era, but a Getrag 560G whose only other application I’m aware of is a Maserati Shamal, so it’s not like there’s a ready supply of them to press into service to convert an automatic car.

(Note that in addition to 850i six-speeds, there is the über-rare M-prepared 850CSi, basically an M8 without the M badge. There were only 225 of these imported, and their value has skyrocketed.)

With all that in mind, in 2015, when gas was two dollars a gallon, I became fixated on the idea of finding a cheap six-speed 850i. It had additional resonance with me because I already owned both an E9 3.0CSi and an E24 635CSi, so the 850i would make for a set of BMW’s big two-door coupe triplets, one of each generation. (Well, yeah, there are other older and newer coupes, but humor me.)

It didn’t take long before I found the following Craigslist ad:

“BMW 850i V-12 six-speed for sale. I’ve owned the car for about 16 years. It has 150K on her. It needs exhaust work. This summer I took it out of storage and it developed an erratic idle when in neutral. Drives fine. Bavarian in Winchester believes it’s a combination of changing manifold gaskets, exhaust leak and/or O2 sensor. Needs shocks, driver’s side door only opens from inside. Eye turner but you need to put some money into her to be perfect. I’m selling for $5000 or best offer.” The photos weren’t great, but the car looked whole and intact. It was white, so in addition to being a unicorn, every white whale and great white shark joke was in bounds. And it was only 30 minutes away.

I spoke with the seller, and he gave me added information about the car’s condition. “Needs shocks” meant that a broken front strut mount was actually smacking the underside of the hood, so it couldn’t be driven far. He added that the exhaust was loud and there was visible oil burning. He said he’d already taken a deposit on the car but had the feeling the buyer wouldn’t complete the deal.

We stayed in touch. About a week later the seller contacted me and offered the car to me for $4000. I contacted a friend who owned an 850i six-speed and asked him what would be the walk-away criteria. He immediately responded, “Buy it. The transmission alone, if it doesn’t munch synchros, is worth that price.” I lightly protested that I already owned too many cars, and his response was a virtual slap: “Name the V-12 six-speed manual coupes on the planet … 850i, 850CSi, Ferrari something, Lamborghini something, Aston Martin Vanquish. That’s pretty much the entire list. [It’s a] $100,000 running V-12 manual unicorn that you will pick up for $4000. These won’t be around a decade from now. Buy the damned car, sir!”

Well, OK then. I made the appointment to see the running 850i six-speed and withdrew $4000 from the bank. Wouldn’t you?

Two nights later I drove up to Woburn, Massachusetts, to see the car. At a first walk-around it looked pretty good. I didn’t see any obvious rust or dents. There was a barely visible dimple where the strut had hit the underside of the hood. The engine compartment was far from immaculate, but it didn’t look like a dumpster fire either. White wasn’t a lust color for me, but fishers in the muddy end of the pond can’t be choosers.

“Can I drive it?” I asked.

“It needs to be jumped,” the seller said. “850s have two batteries. I replaced one, but the other one is dead.” He pulled another car into position, fiddled with jumper cables, and started the big white coupe.

And that’s when I abruptly came face-to-face with the car’s loud exhaust and oil burning. This wasn’t a minor hole in the exhaust like the ones I recently patched in the Armada. This sounded like straight pipes on a dragster. I immediately thought that if I bought the car and started it like this in my driveway, my then-troublesome longtime neighbor would call the cops on me. And the oil burning cast a blue-white fog around the car like something out of a Mad Max film. (“In 2015, when society isn’t crumbling and gas is $2 a gallon, one man considers doing something really stupid.”) As I walked around the car, I noticed that all the smoke was emanating from the V-12’s right tailpipe, indicating that one bank of the V-12 was far worse than the other.

As the car warmed up, it settled into the oscillating idle that was mentioned in the ad. I got in and surveyed the interior. The 8 Series dashboard with its overlapping gauges is quite a break from previous BMWs. It’s not my cup of tea, but it’s part of the landscape. The interior was generally intact apart from an aftermarket stereo that stuck out too far.

Then I found a problem that sounds trivial but was anything but: The electric seat wouldn’t budge. The seller was probably 6-foot-5, and I’m 5-8 in shoes. I had to slouch so far down to reach the pedals that, like the caricatures of “silver-helmeted” elderly drivers, my head barely cleared the steering wheel. So while I did take it for a test drive, the combination of all these factors—the banging front strut, the deafening exhaust, the James Bond-like oil fog, and the seat—made the drive consist of four very careful right turns that brought me back to the house. It was the antithesis of the get-it-on-the-highway-mash-the-pedal experience for which you’d buy a car like this.

It was a Thursday. The seller said he had other people coming to look at the car on Saturday. My window was right now, but I needed to think about it. The seller was my kind of a word-is-your-bond guy—“Just call me and tell me that you want it, and for four grand it’s yours”—but he’d need to know by Friday night so he could cancel the Saturday appointments.

I went home and did what I do—deliberated in front of an Excel spreadsheet. The pros were the lure of the V-12 6-speed 850i, the bragging rights of snagging one for four grand, and the silly business of owning “coupe triplets.” But the cons—the obvious engine work needed to stanch the oil-burning, the broken front strut, the likely-expensive exhaust repair, the rough idle, the car’s general money-pit nature, plus the omnipresent constraints of space, time, and money and the murky issues of “opportunity costs”—that is, if you commit to this car, you pass on something else—made me think that this was a clear “no.”

My incredibly understanding wife, who had heard the peaks and valleys of my excitement and disappointment, weighted in. “So, you’d buy this, drive it for a while, write about it, then sell it?” she asked.

It was, of course, a very good question.

While I am somewhat strategic in terms of buying needy cars that generate content for these pieces that keep y’all entertained, I do pride myself on being fiscally responsible enough to not cause financial harm to my family. The cars I buy need to make sense to both the left and right hemispheres of my brain. That is, I have to both want them and be able to rationally justify them. At this point (in late 2015), I’d recently published my first book, was gainfully employed at Bentley Publishers, and was writing my second book. I was feeling pretty confident having made the jump from engineer to full-time automotive writer, and I’d gone on a bit of a spree—I’d recently bought the Lotus Europa, the BMW Bavaria, the Euro 635CSi, an E30 325is, and two 2002tiis, all of which nudged the car count up to a then-unprecedented 12. My left brain looked at all this, deemed it the excessive behavior that it clearly was, and gave me an edict: You can buy the 850i only if you can make the case that you won’t lose money on it.

And how did that case go? Thrown out before it even came to trial.

Nowadays, you’d be unlikely to find any bargain 850i six-speed, but in 2015, I checked eBay for completed listings and found a well-sorted attractive example with 200K that sold for $10,500, one with minor issues that sold for $8500, and a needy but drivable car that went for $6500. So if I paid $4000 for the white one, I’d need to make the case that I could make it whole and drivable for $2500, and it wasn’t even close. I sent a detailed email to the seller backing away from the purchase. I’d reasoned it through. I was happy with the decision. And that was that.

Until the following night. My wife and I were out to dinner with a friend. I had a few beers in me. I was telling him the story about the Great White Six-Speed Shark. Suddenly, like Hugh Grant in Notting Hill, I realized that I was an idiot. I’d made the wrong decision. Screw my left brain—my right brain wanted the car! [“I’m just a boy … standing before a Shark … asking it to love me.”] When I got home, I contacted the seller and literally sent him a photograph of the stack of hundred-dollar bills that I had not yet re-deposited in the bank. He said that if the fellow coming up from New York didn’t buy the car, it was mine. However, a day later, he texted me a pic of the car loaded on a trailer.

And that really was that.

Interestingly, a few months later, a cheap, needy, black 850i six-speed showed up in New Hampshire. This one was more drivable than the white one, but it munched second and third gear, and the front end shuddered over 40 mph like it was going to fly apart. Recalling what my friend had said about the unavailability of the 560G gearbox, I made the same decision. The Great White Six-Speed Shark and this black one kind of swirled together in my mind as an 850i six-speed yin-yang Zen-like “this is never going to be your fate” symbol.

A few years later I made one more try. As I wrote about in a piece called “The Rules of Attraction,” if you love the exterior lines of a car, love the look of the interior, and love the way it drives, then you’re hooked. I loved the 850i’s exterior look, but the fact was that I was lukewarm about the interior and had still never driven one at highway speeds to see if I’d actually enjoy it. So I contacted a guy who had an 850i automatic for sale and candidly explained that I really wanted a six-speed but offered to pay him for a decent test-drive in his car. To my surprise, he said, “Actually I have a white six-speed that I’m working on, but it’s not yet drivable.”

Somewhere off in the ether, I felt one side of the yin-yang symbol vibrate. “When you bought it,” I asked, “did it have a broken front strut and burn oil out one tail pipe?”

“How could you possibly know that?” the guy asked. I told him the whole story. He’d bought the car from the guy who came up from New York, who bailed out of it, and he’d never fixed it either. We had a good laugh over it. I never wound up driving his automatic and never followed up on the white car. Things sometimes just run their natural course.

The days of the cheap 850i are over—E31 cars, both stick and slush box, have rebounded from their bargain-basement prices. The days of my lying in a dark room, thinking about an 850i V-12 six-speed and waiting for the pain to pass, have ended as well. But whenever I see one at a BMW event, I walk around behind it and think, “Damn, that’s a nice fat planted-looking rear end that looks NOTHING like an A60 Supra.”

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post The Great White Six-Speed Shark appeared first on Hagerty Media.

I’ve made many references over the past 18 months to my back issues. It’s nothing acute—no smoking-gun bulged discs showing up on the MRI—just the usual 65-year-old-man-stuff of easily-triggered low back pain and sciatica. But it’s annoying as hell.

A four-month-long stint of physical therapy to strengthen my core has helped enormously, allowing me to reach the point where I was able to do all that wrenching on the recently-purchased Nissan Armada without reinjuring myself. However, I feel like I’m always one bad decision away from a relapse, so I try not to make those bad decisions. I lift very little without help (as difficult as that is when you’re used to being a lone wolf working by yourself in the garage), and I don’t yank on things when I’m in a bent or crouched position.

The winter/summer wheel swap has become a bellwether for me—e.g., if I can’t do this, I can’t do anything. When my back issues reemerged in 2022, the combination of rolling a floor jack, skooching down to properly position it under the car, working the jack handle to raise it, cracking the lug nuts, dismounting and mounting the wheels, and using a torque wrench in a bent-over position was difficult enough that I was beginning to think that this part of my life might be over. Fortunately, there are back-saving tricks that allow me to cruise through wheel-swapping. Yeah, I know, this sounds like that “one weird trick” online clickbait. But trust me.

First, let me offer a warning that is crucially important. My college physics professor was killed when the car he was working on fell on him. That’s all the more tragic considering he was my mechanics professor, which, in addition to “mechanics” applying to both the physics as well as to working on cars, has the unbearable irony that mechanics is the study of how physical objects move in response to forces on them, and part of mechanics is “statics,” which analyzes the forces on stationary objects that keep them from moving. Ever since that horrible tragedy, I have been assiduously careful never to work under a car that isn’t properly supported by jack stands and a floor jack as backup. Swapping wheels is a gray area where many folks argue that they’re not technically under the car, so they feel that they can jack up one wheel without taking the time to set that corner of the car on jack stands. I see garages and tire-change shops do this all the time. I’ll admit that there have been times when I’ve done it myself, but in what I describe below, it’s absolutely imperative that you support the car on stands, because there’s no question that part of you is under the car, and you don’t want to get your legs crushed if the jack slips.

I’ve identified four aspects of wheel-swapping that are problematic in my AARP years. I’ll address them each below.

Moving the wheels

I keep the off-season wheels for both my and my wife’s daily driver under the back porch, which is on the opposite side of the house from the garage. Both are slightly downhill from street level. So wheel-swapping both cars requires rolling eight wheels up and down the path a total of 16 times. This bending-while-rolling effort eventually triggers back pain. For a while I was asking my kids to do it for me while I grumbled, “You mean I can’t even do this?” but I found that by keeping my back straight and doing a Groucho-Marx-like duck walk (for those old enough to know the reference), I can keep my dignity and move them myself.

Jacking up the car

I have a mid-rise lift, but it’s usually not worth using it for a simple wheel swap. In the first place, there’s always another car parked over it, often in mid-project. Plus, it takes time to position a car on the mid-rise. The vintage cars get lifted by their frames, which allows a lot of slop in their placement, but it’s difficult to lift my daily-driver 2003 5 Series BMW by anything but the jacking points on the rocker panels, and there’s perhaps two inches of positioning leeway for the lift’s arms and sliding jack pads to be able to reach all four. Plus, as I’ll get to below, the low-back-pain key to all this is keeping the car as close to the floor as possible, so the added height capability of the lift is a detriment, not an advantage.

That means that I swap wheels the old-school way—on the garage floor with a floor jack. In the past, I’d raise the nose of the car by putting the jack in the middle of the front subframe, swap both front wheels, then do the same in the back, but for back-pain reasons, it’s easier for me to do one wheel at a time and use the jack points at the corners. That way I don’t need to crouch down to get eyeballs on where the floor jack is contacting a point deep under the car.

Using the jacking points on the corners of the wheel wells has the added advantage that the lever arm of the floor jack is well-clear of the body of the car, which lets me pump it up and down using my foot. This is another big wear-and-tear savings on my back. I can also do this if I use my long-reach floor jack on the middle of the front subframe, but it probably weighs four times as much as my small aluminum jack.

The back-saving key is to raise the wheel just enough to set the corner of the car on a jack stand and swap it. Don’t put the car up any higher than it needs to be.

Loosening the lug nuts

Before you jack up the wheel, if you don’t have an impact wrench, you need to crack the lug nuts the old-fashioned way with a breaker bar. By all means, save your back by putting one foot on the end of the breaker bar and standing on it, but be careful not to lose your balance and twist funny when it lets go. An air-driven or electric impact wrench is a major back-saver, as you can position yourself directly in front of the wheel and zip the nuts off. Leave one nut on finger-tight.

Finally, the “one weird trick.” When you mount or dismount the wheel, don’t ever lift it with your hands, arms, and back—lift it instead with your knees and legs. With the corner of the car safely supported by a jack stand, sit directly in front of the wheel and slide your legs around it. Then slide your feet toward you and raise your knees until some part of your legs contact the tire. It could be your shins, knees, or thighs. Whatever feels comfortable to you. Loosen the last lug nut and tip the wheel onto your legs. Then slide your feet forward, lower your knees, and roll the wheel onto the floor.

Removal is easy because you have gravity working for you. “The trick” is far more important on installation—roll the wheel onto your legs and pull your feet toward you to raise your knees to get it onto the hub. If the hub has studs, rotate the hub or the wheel to get them through the holes. It’s a little tricker if the hub has threaded holes and the studs are part of the lug nuts. Most hubs have a raised ring in the center that the bore in the wheel sits on. You need to use your knees to maneuver the wheel onto it, then rotate it to line up the holes and spin the nuts on.

Use your foot on the torque wrench

Get the lug nuts seated with a ratchet wrench. If you have an impact wrench, you can put it on its lowest setting and give a quick blip of the trigger to snug each nut down. Then lower the car, set a torque wrench to the appropriate setting, and use your foot instead of your back to torque the nuts down. You can hear and feel the click of the torque wrench just as easily as if it’s in your hands. You still need to bend down to move the torque wrench from lug nut to lug nut, and with five per wheel, four wheels, two cars, even this needs to be done with care if your back is sensitive, but it’s still way less wear-and-tear than forcing your upper body to crank the torque wrench.

Although I didn’t have to swap seasonal wheels on the Armada, I did have to pull the front wheels off and put them back on to do the front struts. They’re 20-inch wheels, a full three inches bigger than anything else I’ve ever owned. Using these steps, I got them off and on again without so much as a sidelong glance from my back.

I hope some of you find this as helpful as I have.

Dealing with those four transmissions under the porch, though, is another matter.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post How to Swap Your Wheels Without Wrenching Your Back appeared first on Hagerty Media.

It was early February that I bought the 2008 Nissan Armada with 183,000 miles on it, along with a bunch of known problems—and several unknown ones. If my intent was to buy something that would generate a solid six weeks of content for these columns, it was successful beyond measure. But although I may be strategic, I’m not actively masochistic. Now that I’m through with the big slug of wrenching and I’ve largely gotten the Armada on its feet, I thought I’d step out of the garage and write something a bit more philosophical.

In a world full of inexpensive needy cars, I do have standards. I either buy things that my right brain craves or that my left brain convinces me that I need. This one was squarely in the latter camp. My rationale for buying the Armada was that last September I sold my giant, low-mileage 2008 Chevy Silverado 3500 Duramax duallie because: a) it was way more truck than I ever needed, b) in the 2 ½ years I owned it, I hadn’t used it to drag a single car home anyway, and c) I’d rather have the money than the truck. That all made sense, and I didn’t regret selling it one iota, but as soon as it was gone, I felt that my style had been cramped. So I decided to look at other vehicles capable of towing a car and dragging home other stuff (I did need a workbench). Given the choice between a pickup and a large SUV, I settled on the latter.

I’ve owned six Suburbans, and for a number of reasons, didn’t want a seventh. I was attracted by Toyota Sequoias’ excellent repair record, but the first-generation ones had frame-rot issues, and the second-gen ones were way more than I wanted to spend. I certainly never craved an Armada, but I came to them as the other full-sized Japanese tow-capable SUV, sort of the Pepsi-Burger-King to Toyota’s Coke-McDonalds, and I was thrilled to find that there were a fair number of them in my $4000-ish budget.

I don’t know about you, but when I buy a car, there’s an internal calculus that occurs regarding the asking price, what I paid, and what it took me, time-and-money-wise, to sort the thing out and get it road-worthy. The proportions of these variables depends on whether it’s an enthusiast car or more of a commodity-like daily driver. With enthusiast cars, the older I get, the less I feel like haggling. It’s not that I don’t have the energy. It’s more that, for example, everyone knows that a dead but rust-free, round-taillight BMW 2002 has a lot of value, so do I want to be the person who knows and respects that fact, or do I want to be another time-wasting lowballing jerk? But with daily drivers, most 15-year-old high-mileage needy cars—particularly those with rust (which is ALL OF THEM here in the Northeast)—don’t have a lot of value, and thus it’s reasonable to expect flexibility from the seller to come up with a reasonable price if they really want to move the thing out of their driveway.

Let me zoom in a bit more on that point. In a high winter-salt environment like New England, at some point, most cars that are daily-driven through the winter simply turn into pieces of junk. Some makes and models are better about it, some are worse, but the tin worm catches up with most. Even if there’s no visible rust on the outer body, and the frame and floor pans are solid, every other bit of undercarriage metal—springs, shocks, trailing arms, brake line fittings, and everything down to the hose clamps—rusts, presenting a continuum from minor surface rust, to deeper scale, to full-on rot. Having to replace a single component, like a trailing arm, due to rust-through isn’t that big of a deal, but when there’s an upper and a lower trailing arm on each side, front and back, deciding to go all-in on a project like that on a car that isn’t worth much becomes prohibitive.

So in looking for a vehicle like I was at a $4000 price point, there’s a threshold for rust beyond which, even if the rust itself isn’t catastrophic, the effect it has on the value of the car is. That is, if a vehicle not only has a rust hole in the outer body but also has, say, rotted trailing arms, unless there’s some other big compelling feature about it like a rare color or option package, it probably isn’t worth buying even if the seller drops the price to $800. When you’re looking for a vehicle and are confronted with these things, the choices are to keep looking and hope you get lucky, or raise your budget to find something with fewer rusty miles—or settle.

The Armada was initially listed on Facebook Marketplace for $4500. I liked the look of its black-on-black-leather and the fact that it was an LE with the tow package and wood accent trim. When the seller dropped the listed price to $4000, I went and had a look. The truck was off the road (his family had bought a new Tahoe), so I could only drive it slowly on back roads. This less-than-thorough test drive added a measure of risk, but it ran and drove well, other than banging in the front end likely due to bad struts and less-than-reassuring brakes likely due to rusty rotors, though they did begin to bite more as I stomped on them. I also found an exhaust leak, though I couldn’t tell from where, and plugging in the code reader revealed catalytic converter-based codes from both banks, but when cleared they didn’t immediately re-light. It did have one rust hole in the outer body (you can’t see it unless you open the right rear door), but the truck was only about 40 minutes from my house, and it was big and comfortable and had a small turning radius. I had the feeling that I could end my search by simply buying it and then, rather than continuing to look, I’d have the tow-and-stuff-hauling vehicle I said I wanted, as well as something my wife would drive if the weather turned sour. In other words, it was never about wanting the truck—it was wanting what the truck was for. So I asked the seller my favorite “What do you need to get for it” question. He said $3500, I went home and thought about it, offered him three, and we quickly settled on $3250.

With that in mind, you can see why, after I bought the truck, I felt like I had $750 to play with to get it to the point where I felt comfortable driving it a few hours to tow a car home, or loaning it to my wife if a lot of snow was predicted.

So, how’d I do?

I got out of the leaky exhaust for $46 worth of parts needed to splice a woefully-botched weld joining the muffler to the tailpipe (and I really don’t understand why some of y’all gave me grief for using steel adapters, big U-clamps, and muffler cement to seal it up and pass the second-most-stringent vehicle inspection in the country).

A whining/rumbling serpentine belt tensioner pulley resulted in my replacing the whole tensioner system (belt, tensioner with pulley, and idler pulley) for $115. Rumbling from the power steering pump made me think that it was bad too. I bought a low-mileage used OEM one for $81, but the noise went away after I replaced the tensioner and stanched a power steering fluid leak.

The original radiator’s upper and lower plastic tanks were both leaking. A new aluminum radiator was sourced for $172, which, by the time I added new upper and lower radiator hoses, coolant, and clamps, rose to $248.

I didn’t try to cheap out on the front struts at all, using Bilsteins and replacing every rubber bushing and spacer, setting me back $305. Finding out that both front springs were broken added another $115, for a total of $420.

Added up, the parts bill came to $910—slightly higher than my meaningless mental budget of $750. I could’ve easily kept it in line had I dialed back my choices with the front struts, or replaced only the noisy tensioner pulley instead of the whole tensioner system, but I’m comfortable with those choices, as I am with the repairing the exhaust as opposed to replacing it.

I’ve long said that I don’t know how anyone affords to own a vintage car if they have to pay someone else to do the work, but the same holds true for high-mileage daily drivers. Although doing all of the above tasks took time, none were really that big of a deal (it wasn’t, for example, drivetrain replacement), plaus my labor is free and I enjoy doing it. But it certainly made sense for the previous owner to sell it when he did—if you had to pay someone to do everything I did, it would’ve substantially exceeded the value of the truck.

There still are, of course, some unresolved issues. I haven’t yet looked at the car’s self-leveling rear suspension to see if I can get the back level with the front. There’s an asymptomatic P0011 engine code (“camshaft position timing over-advanced, or system performance bank 1”) that comes back every 40 or so miles. You can generally look up codes on a user forum and get a crowdsourced diagnosis (e.g., “that one’s usually the MAF sensor”), but this appears to be an odd one. I’m not certain whether the car’s A/C is working or not—I haven’t yet hooked up a manifold gauge set or fed 12V directly to the compressor—and there’s a clicking sound that I assume is the blend door inside the climate control box trying to move. And—dare I say it with my history with the mouse-infested truck—I’ve noticed that the car has a faint rodent smell.

Regarding having a 4WD beast that I could give to my wife if she was going on one of her quilting retreats up in New Hampshire, it’s been such a mild winter that that was a complete non-issue.

But, you’re thinking, with it road and tow-worthy, I must’ve hauled home some right-brain-satisfying passion car that’s really worth my wrenching time, right?

Yeah, about that.

I’m sure the Armada’s towing hour will come, but it hasn’t come yet. So far, the only thing I’ve hauled with it has been a free office desk I’m now using as that long-desired workbench in my basement. I suppose you could say that the free workbench cost me $4160. And, in truth, I grabbed it right after I bought the Armada, before I’d done a single repair on it.

But I do feel better having the Armada in the driveway, knowing that if I need to drop everything and take a look some right-priced TVR or Avanti or Fiat 124 Sport Coupe, and need to show up with a truck, trailer, and money and make it go away, I can make a beeline to U-Haul, grab an auto transporter, and hit the road.

Or begin thinking of a place to put another work bench.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

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The post Wrapping Up the Armada appeared first on Hagerty Media.

After sealing up my recently purchased 182,000-mile 2008 Nissan Armada’s exhaust, dealing with a noisy serpentine belt tensioner pulley, squelching power steering leaks, and replacing a leaking radiator, it was time to deal with the banging in the front end and the ox-cart-like ride, both of which were likely caused by worn-out front struts.

First, a quick class in Suspension 101. Basically, a shock absorber is a simple, easily-replaceable damper held in place by a long bolt that goes through a hole at the bottom. The top can be secured by the same kind of eye-bolt or with a threaded stud that protrudes through a shock tower. The main thing to note is that shocks don’t hold up the weight of the car—there’s always a separate spring nearby that does that.

In contrast, a strut assembly is a suspension component that has a spring with a damper going through the center of it, together which bear the weight of the vehicle. A MacPherson strut is a particular type of strut assembly that’s also part of the steering (turning the steering wheel causes the front struts to rotate, and the wheels are mounted to the bottom of the struts). The MacPherson design is more complicated because the front hubs, wheel bearings, rotors, calipers, steering knuckles, and ball joints are all attached to the strut.

The MacPherson struts in my vintage BMWs have a housing that lasts the life of the car and use an integrated stub axle on the bottom, and when you buy “front struts,” you’re buying cartridges that slide into the housings. On later cars, however, the MacPherson strut housings and cartridges are a single unit to which the other components attach.

Struts always have a spring perch to hold the bottom of the spring. During assembly, the spring is placed in the perch, then a variety of rubber bushings, bump-stops, and metal sleeves and spacers slide over the that extends from the strut cartridge. The very tip of the piston is threaded, and some sort of upper-perch “hat” is slid over it and held in place with a nut. On a MacPherson strut, because the whole assembly needs to rotate for steering, the “hat” has a bearing in it, but in a non-MacPherson strut, it’s just a fixed upper perch. With either design, the problem is that during assembly, a spring compressor is needed to compress the spring while the hat is slid over the threaded tip of the piston and the nut is tightened.

The Armada doesn’t have MacPhersons—it has a double-wishbone front suspension, so the front strut assemblies are each held in by three 14mm nuts at the top and one beefy bolt and nut at the bottom. But still, to replace the struts, the whole assembly needs to be removed on both sides, then the springs have to be compressed to remove the tension on the hats, and then the springs, metal spacers and sleeves, and the rubber bushings have to be removed and and transferred onto the new struts.

Because of the supposed difficulty of compressing springs, and the ubiquitous urban legends about people who have had terrible accidents with springs or hats being launched into their face, many DIY mechanics and even some purported pros are afraid to do it. It’s really not a big deal unless you’re an idiot and try to do it using hose clamps. Just buy or rent a spring compressor.

But it’s for these reasons that “quick-struts”—pre-assembled units combining the strut, spring, hat, and all spacers, sleeves, and bushings—have become popular. The appeal is that you remove the old ones, throw them in the recycle bin, and install the new ones without ever having to deal with a spring compressor. A search on eBay shows that a pair of unbranded quick-struts for the Armada can be had for about a hundred bucks shipped. Man, that’s cheap.

One of the interesting things about becoming interested in a new vehicle is that you get to check out a new user forum and see if it, like the car, fits you. I live mainly in forums for vintage BMWs, but also interact quite a bit with the Lotus Europa and Winnebago Rialta forums, all of which are made of my sort of people—kind, patient, and thrifty but not to the point where the go-to position is installing the cheapest-possible parts in the car. So it was interesting to read that the hive-mind opinion on ClubArmada was not to cheap out and buy quick-struts but instead to purchase a proper set of Bilsteins. The Armada has a common problem with bump-steer, and the Bilsteins reportedly solve it. Inexpensive quick-struts reportedly don’t, and you get what you pay for in terms of performance and longevity. I did find some branded quick-struts on eBay and RockAuto—Monroe, Gabriel, and KYB—but several folks on ClubArmada said that after they installed the KYBs, their Armada was several inches higher in the front and looked like a boat on plane.

Now, I’m firmly in the “real men compress their own springs” camp. I own three different spring compressors, I don’t regard it as in the least unsafe, it’s not a back-breaker, the time it takes to swap the springs over onto the new struts isn’t a big deal, and there was a ringing endorsement of Bilsteins (which I use on all my BMWs when it’s suspension-refresh time) from ClubArmada. Comparing that with the low opinion of low-cost unbranded parts in general and the lack of any consensus opinion vis a vis “buy these quick-struts” on the Armada forum made it an easy choice to buy the Bilsteins.

The next choice was between Bilstein 4600s with a fixed lower perch or the more-expensive adjustable 5100s meant for lifted applications. I had zero interest in lifting the Armada, but I found a set of open-box 5100s on Amazon for a great price, even less than the 4600s. I confirmed with the Armada forum that the lowest setting on the 5100s puts the truck at the same height as the 4600s, and ordered them. I also ordered new upper hats and all the rubber bushings, sleeves, and spacers, as the odds of them being reusable in a 183K New England vehicle were slim. All-in, it was about $300, which felt great.

With parts on the way, I positioned the truck in the garage to begin removing the strut assemblies. As I explained in the article on the exhaust work, there’s no way to fit the Armada completely in the garage and jack up the nose without kicking out not one but two cars. I checked the forecast, found a stretch of several days of 40°+ degree snow-free weather, and pulled the Armada inside and canted to the left so I had clearance against the right-hand garage wall.

I jacked up the truck, set it on stands, pulled the left front wheel, began eyeballing the scene, and noticed something that stopped me cold.

The spring was broken and the bottom coil was missing.

I reflexively moved to the right side of the truck to check the other spring. It was broken, too. The banging I was hearing wasn’t due to blown struts. It was from the two broken springs. A simple look would’ve told me that before I ordered parts. Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!

The strut assemblies needed to come out regardless, but I was faced with an immediate choice of whether to buy a pair of springs, or return what I’d bought and go the quick-strut route, which was suddenly had some appeal. Had there been a well-reviewed option on the Armada forum, I probably would’ve done it. However, I found a set of Moog springs on Amazon for $88 for the pair, confirmed on ClubArmada that they’re OEM-equivalent and not lifting springs, and put them on order for next-day delivery.

So, on with the repair itself. The non-MacPherson strut configuration with the big nut and bolt at the bottom and the three 14mm nuts at the top made removal look trivial, but I immediately ran into trouble, as one of the top nuts on each side was seized, and despite soaking them in SiliKroil penetrating oil overnight, putting an impact wrench on them rounded off the corners.

In my first book, I have a chapter on “stuckness,” in which I describe a variety of techniques including heating the nut with a MAPP gas torch and applying wax to the threads, really heating the nut with an oxy-acetylene torch, hammering a smaller-sized hex or Torx socket onto the nut, and cutting off or drilling out bolts. But over and above that, over the years I’ve developed a philosophy where I look at fasteners, think “How deep will the doo-doo be if I snap this off or round its head,” and then act accordingly, and didn’t do that here, as I’d never had anything remotely like this happen to a nut that size on a strut stud. After several oxy-acetylene torchings, the nut on one side came off by hammering a smaller socket onto it, and for the other side, I had to use the trick of carefully positioning a chisel on its circumference and smacking it with a hammer to apply a tangential impact force.

Although I was basically assembling my own not-so-quick struts and didn’t need anything off the old ones, I was curious if the old struts actually were bad, so I disassembled them to check. Because both springs were broken, there was no tension on the hats, so I didn’t need to use a compressor; I could just put the impact wrench on the strut top nut and spin it off. One strut was fine, but the other one was completely blown.

Assembly of the new struts with all-new parts was very satisfying. There were numerous reports on the Armada forum of front-end banging after installation of new Bilsteins due to people misunderstanding the assembly instructions, so I triple-checked the location of all the bushings, sleeves, and washers, and made absolutely certain that I had the adjustable spring perches at their lowest setting.

Installation was a bit challenging. Though there were no stuck fasteners to deal with, the combination of the new stiff springs and the new stiff struts made the strut assemblies difficult to get into position. Even unbolting the sway bar and having one of my kids stand on the lower wishbone, things didn’t want to line up. It took some persuasion with a big lever and smacking the lower bolts with a hammer to get them in place.

With everything buttoned up, I took the Armada for a short drive on a nearby torture-track back road that I use to diagnose rattles, thunks, and clunks. The front-end noise was gone, the truck was blissfully quiet, and it rode and steered great. But when I got back home, parked the truck, and looked at it, there was no ignoring the fact that the space above the front tires was abnormally large, and the nose was high.

I checked the photos I took before the repair, and it definitely wasn’t my imagination.

Now, there’s likely a few things going on. The Armada did have two broken front springs, so it definitely was sitting lower on the nose than it should’ve. Gas-pressurized shocks and struts like Bilsteins do exert an upward force on the body of a vehicle and can make it sit slightly higher than when it’s on fluid-filled shocks and struts. I’m hopeful that it’ll settle down a bit with time and mileage. Of course, the opinion on the Armada forum about both the zero setting of the Bilstein 5100s and the Moog springs being equivalent to stock could simply be wrong. And had I gone with quick-struts, I would’ve likely selected the KYBs, and as folks reported those raised the front, it might have been even worse.

Another possibility involves the truck’s rear suspension. When I was looking at Armadas, friends on social media who do a lot more towing than I do advised me to try to find one with the tow package, as it has a shorter-geared differential, a transmission tow-mode setting, and a pneumatic suspension with air-pressurized shocks that self-levels the rear to deal with the weight of a trailer sitting on the hitch. The one I bought has all that, so imagine my surprise when, now that I own it, I find that most of the talk on the Armada forum about the self-leveling rear suspension is in regards to removing it. I guess that shouldn’t surprise me, as my BMW E39 528i sport wagon had the same dynamic. When I start up the truck, I hear the compressor running to pressurize the rear shocks, but it’s unclear to me whether it’s actually doing anything, so the shocks might be bad or a line might be leaking. I’m going to live with it for a while, then trouble-shoot it to see if anything is wrong. If it’s working, I believe you can adjust the sensor to raise the back a bit.

So we’re now close to the Armada exiting the sort-out phase of our relationship and entering the “let’s do stuff” phase. We’ll see how it goes.

***

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The post The Not-So-Quick Strut appeared first on Hagerty Media.

After sealing up the exhaust in my recently-purchased 183K-mile 2008 Nissan Armada well enough to get it through the second-most stringent state inspection in the country, I dealt with noise from the serpentine belt. The problem turned out to be bad bearings on the timing chain tensioner, but there was also noise from the power steering pump, which led me to fix a leak from one of the PS hoses by replacing the constant-tension spring clamp with a worm-screw type clamp that could be tightened. That wound up slippery-sloping into fixing other under-engine leaks (the power steering uses automatic transmission fluid, so I needed to be certain the leaks were from the PS and not from the transmission), and that led me to a place I didn’t expect to go.

Fluid leaks should be looked at in terms of both substance and severity. That is, for lubricants, you can grossly triage them into drips, patches, puddles, and gushes. Drips are isolated “marking their territory” dots. Patches are fried-egg-sized stains on the garage floor. Puddles are things that have enough depth that you can swipe a finger through them and actually move fluid like Moses parting the red sea. Gushes are where you actually see fluid streaming out of the car and can follow it directly back to its source. Obviously you’d be foolish to drive a car that’s gushing any fluid further than down the driveway and into the garage, but the others are more of a judgement call. Anyone who owns a vintage car knows that it’s in their nature to leak engine oil, gear oil, and transmission fluid, and enforcing a zero-leak policy may not be possible. My Lotus Europa leaks fluid from the transaxle in quantities between a patch and a puddle, and I’ve replaced the transaxle seals twice in a misguided attempt to squelch it, only to learn in the forums that, basically, they all do that, and loving the car means living with its incontinence, placing a drip pan under it, and topping it up with a frequency usually reserved for engine oil.

But substance—which fluid is dripping—is critical. There should be a zero-leak policy with gasoline. Weeping a little gas isn’t acceptable. Any fuel leak should be found and fixed immediately, otherwise you risk your vehicle burning and you dying.

I regard coolant leaks as a big notch back from fuel leaks, but they’re still unacceptable. If coolant is leaking, even dripping, something is failing, and you can be certain that it’ll get worse over time. It won’t kill you, but it can kill your car by depleting the engine of coolant to the point where it overheats and warps or cracks the head. Driving a car that you know is leaking any amount of coolant any more than around town isn’t dangerous, but it’s dumb. Don’t do it. In my BMW-centric world, where I road-trip 50-year-old cars thousands of miles and daily-drive 20-year-old cars with plastic-laten cooling systems that crack at any moment and dump the coolant, I’m hyper-vigilant about cooling leaks. The cause could be a loose hose clamp, or corrosion on a metal coolant neck not allowing a hose to seal, or a bad water pump seal, or an actual hole in the radiator or heater core, or, in a modern car, failure of a plastic component. Visual inspection with the engine running usually reveals the source. Pressure testers that screw in in place of the radiator cap can also be helpful if the leak only occurs at operating temperature.

So, back to the Armada. There were two other places where the rubber PS hoses were leaking where they’re pushed over metal lines and secured with spring clamps. The worst of them was where two lines ran through the engine compartment on top of the left frame leg. It was the lower one that was leaking, and the upper one blocked the access to getting vise grips on the spring clamp. I wound up having to remove the inner fender liner in order to get at it from the side. As with the first PS leak, installing tighten-able worm clamps stanched the leak.

The remaining PS leak took me a while to find. A drip kept forming below the steering rack on the frame. To find the source, I had to lie under the car with the engine running and watch. Unfortunately, it’s coming from where the input shaft goes into the top of the steering rack, and replacement of the seal likely requires removal of the rack, which in turn requires removal of the front differential. Further, the seal is in the middle of—get this—a seven-sided nut for which I’ve yet to locate any reference to a removal tool. Fortunately, it’s a small leak, so for now I’m going to let it go.

But while I was under the Armada’s nose, I found, to my surprise, drops of coolant at the bottom of the radiator and stray ones higher up. When I bought it, I knew about the wetness that was likely from the power steering, but the coolant leak was not something I was aware of.

It turned out to be leaking from two places. The first was from below the radiator cap, where a thin hose attaches that feeds the overflow tank. Like the PS hoses, it was leaking from the spring clamp, so I replaced it with a worm clamp, but it continued to leak from the brass fitting to which the hose was attached. At first, I didn’t understand what I was seeing—the fitting seemed like it swiveled. Then I realized that there had originally been a little plastic coolant neck there, it had snapped off (a very common problem on plastic radiators), someone had jury-rigged it with a screwed-in brass fitting and sealed it with Teflon tape, and it was now loose and leaking.

I first tried Permatex Thread Locker. That leaked, so I went to Gorilla Glue. That leaked too, so I was prepared to go nuclear with J-B Weld when I discovered a second leak.

This one was from someplace more serious—where one of the automatic transmission lines went into the plastic tank at the bottom (the radiator also acts as a transmission cooler, as it does on many vehicles). It wasn’t leaking from the hose, so replacing the spring clamp as I’d done elsewhere wouldn’t matter. It looked like the leak might be coming from a seal behind the fitting that ran through the plastic tank, but my attempt to loosen or tighten the nut only caused the plastic to flex and the leak to increase.

In addition, one of the things I read about the Armada is that the radiator’s internal transmission-cooling plumbing eventually cracks, allowing ATF and coolant to intermix. This creates the dreaded “strawberry milkshake” that causes the transmission to fail. I checked the date code on the radiator, and it was original to the car. Taking these three things together, I would’ve been an idiot to not replace the radiator, and as I often say, I try not to be an idiot. Seriously—it’s one thing for something to break with no warning, and quite another to be stranded and sit there thinking, “Yeah, I should’ve replaced that.”

As with everything I do, I looked at the cost. Folks who routinely tow big trailers install a separate heavy-duty transmission cooler. Others replace the radiator, either with the original Nissan part, or a less-expensive aftermarket choice, or an aluminum one. RockAuto has several cheap radiators, but these things are big, and with shipping they came to about $150. The correct Nissan radiator with its known shortcomings could be had on eBay for as low as $180. These days the world is full of decently-priced Chinese-made aluminum radiators. I’ve used them in a variety of cars. The weld quality varies from decent to cringe-worthy, but I’ve never had one leak. Whether or not to use one is a question of fit and vibe. I think they look completely out of place in my beloved BMW 2002s, and besides, they’re too thick to use without deleting the original cooling fan, which I refuse to do, but I have one in my Lotus Europa and use them in some of the later BMWs. The Armada forum said that there’s plenty of room for a three-row or even a four-row aluminum radiator, but fit-wise, the fan shroud needs to be fettled with.

I would’ve preferred to buy an aluminum radiator on Amazon so that I could return it cost-free if it wouldn’t fit, but the cost there was $250 for the same radiator that was $185 on eBay. Then I found a new eBay vendor with zero feedback selling the same radiator for $165 (drop-shipped from the same port in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, as nearly every other seller). There was the risk that the vendor wasn’t real, or the radiator was damaged or open-box, but I clicked and bought, and I was relieved when an intact new radiator arrived two days later in a sealed box.

As the box sat in my kitchen, I thought, “Damn, this thing is big.”

Replacing a radiator on a vintage car consists of draining it, removing the upper and lower hoses, removing the four bolts holding it to the nose, and done in 15 minutes, tops. But on newer cars, it’s typically far more complicated. On the modern BMWs that I’m familiar with, it’s like one of those interlocking rope-and-ring Chinese puzzles, where an odd dance needs to be done with the fan, the shroud, and the expansion tank. On the Armada, the fan and shroud were straightforward, but it turns out that the power steering fluid cooler and the A/C condenser are attached to the front of the radiator, so the dance involves unbolting the condenser, then tilting the radiator forward so you can unbolt the PS cooler.

Despite its size, I expected the original plastic-tanked radiator to be fairly light, but a combination of fluid remaining in it and it sticking to its rubber mounts made it a “don’t do that” to my 65-year-old back, so I elicited help from one of my kids to muscle it up and out. I test-fit the shroud on the new radiator and did some cutting to get it to seat around its upper tank.

When you replace a radiator, there’s the question of how much of the rest of the cooling system you should prophylactically replace, even if there’s nothing wrong with it. If the water pump or the thermostat or the fan clutch go south on me, I’m certainly going to be pissed that I didn’t just replace them while they were all accessible, but the fan clutch feels fine, there’s no play or leakage in the water pump pulley, and the car warms up perfectly. I did, however, inspect the hoses at the front of the engine and found that the aluminum neck to which the upper radiator hose is attached was badly corroded. I replaced the hose and cleaned the neck. The lower radiator hose looked OK, but for symmetry I replaced it at the same time.

Dropping the new radiator in wasn’t nearly as bad as removing the old one, as I had gravity on my side, but getting the cooler and condenser reattached was challenging. I dropped the condenser attachment bolts down into the nose multiple times and had to fish them out with a magnetic wand.

When the radiator, shroud, and fan were all installed, I spun the fan by hand and heard it hitting the shroud due to lack of clearance on the left side. I could’ve pulled it back out and trimmed that side, but the only bolt-on attachments are at the top, so even if I created clearance, there was nothing to hold it in place. So in true Hack Mechanic fashion, I installed a very stout zip tie at the bottom corner that pulled it where it needed to be.

I did the drive-park-check cycle a few times to be absolutely certain no coolant was leaking and the only remaining leak was the trickle from the steering rack’s input shaft, then deemed it roadworthy.

So in terms of the Armada’s punch list, that leaves the front struts. I’ll get to that next week.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

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The post The Armada Springs a Leak appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The last two weeks, I wrote about repairing the exhaust in my recently-purchased 2008 Nissan Armada and getting the car inspected. With it legal, its intermittent Check Engine Light (CEL) issue faded into the background, and the punch list of needs became: 1) replacement of the front struts (it banged loudly over uneven terrain), 2) diagnosing and addressing a number of minor leaks, and 3) dealing with a loud metallic rattle from the front of the engine, almost certainly associated with the serpentine belt path. As belts are part of my “Big Seven” things likely to strand a car, I addressed this one next.

The so-called serpentine belt on a modern car is a very different beast than the quaint “fan belt” on a vintage car—that old narrow V-profile belt that spins the alternator, water pump, and the pump’s pulley-mounted fan. Unless you own an air-cooled Volkswagen, where belt tension is changed by removing washers to make the groove in the pulley shallower, V-profile fan belts are manually tightened by pivoting the alternator on a tensioning track. Loosen the bolt that holds the ear of the alternator to the track, pivot the alternator to slide it on the track until the belt is snug, tighten the bolt, done. It takes maybe a minute. If the belt snaps, replacing it is trivial. You just need to pass the new belt around the fan, loosen the alternator’s tensioning bolt, put the new belt on the crank, water pump and alternator pulleys, and tension it. If the radiator has a fan shroud, it’s a little more challenging to get the new belt around the fan, but it’s still an easy roadside repair.

Manually-tensioned V-belts are simple, but they do have issues. Both the alternator and the tension track typically have rubber bushings in them, and with age, heat, and oil, they wear out, causing the alternator to cock forward at an angle, which makes it so the belt will never stay tight. At some point the belt may begin to slip, which can cause the water pump to stop spinning and the coolant temperature to head into the red. In addition, cars that had what were then luxury accessories like power steering and air conditioning typically had separate V-belts for each, whose tension needed to be adjusted individually.

In the 1980s, things swung in the direction of cars having a single, wide, automatically-tensioned, grooved serpentine belt—so called because of the snake-like path it takes through all the pulleys. Serpentine belts don’t require tension adjustment. Instead, a spring-loaded or hydraulic tensioner has a pulley that leans against the belt. In addition to the pulley on the tensioner, there may be another idler pulley that routes the belt. Generally, if a car has a serpentine belt, there’s only one and it runs everything, but there are exceptions—my 2003 BMW E39 530i has two, with the second one running the A/C compressor, and each having its own tensioner.

The big advantage of serpentine belts is that they’re maintenance-free (if by maintenance you mean manually adjusting the tension). And, because the alternator doesn’t need to provide the tension adjustment, it mounts rigidly, so it’s far less likely to cock from worn bushings. But as with most things, there’s no free lunch, and a serpentine belt creates several challenges.

The first is that the serp belt, like any belt, is a normal-wear-and-tear part that needs to be replaced, and as is the case with many things on newer cars, that’s far more difficult than with an old-school V-belt due to the tightly-packed nature of components in modern cars and the torturous path the belt often takes. On rear-wheel drive cars with longitudinally-mounted engines, the tight access makes it difficult to even see the belt, much less remove it, without first removing components like the air box.

On front-wheel-drive cars with a transverse-mounted engine, because there isn’t a belt-driven fan aimed at the radiator, electric radiator fans are used. You’d think that would translate to an advantage that the belt isn’t hidden inside a fan shroud, but on our Honda Fit, the belt is so close to the side of the engine compartment that it’s necessary to remove a wheel and the inner fender liner to access the belt and pulleys.

In addition to the belt itself needing to be periodically replaced, the tensioner pulley (and the idler pulley, if there is one) spins on bearings, and over time, they wear out. The indication often starts as a high-pitched whine, transitions into a marbles-whipping-around-a-metal-bowl sound, then settles into a screechy metallic howl as it nears failure. And the tensioner itself can fail, though that’s less common.

The third issue is that replacing the belt requires relieving the tension by rotating the tensioner in the opposite direction it’s using to tension the belt, and that’s often not easy, both because it’s not clear where or how to grab it (some tensioners have a hex-head bolt you put a socket on, others have an Allen key or a Torx socket, and on some you grab the central nut on the pulley itself), and because accessing it and being able to move a long-handled ratchet wrench far enough to de-tension the belt is difficult. You typically need to search an enthusiast forum to find out which technique your car requires.

Another thing to be aware of is that while V-profile belts always sit in the V-groove of a pulley, one of the things that enables serpentine pulleys to be so, uh, serpentine is their ability to wrap around pulleys in either direction. The crankshaft pulley that supply belt power and things that use power (the alternator, power steering pump, A/C compressor) always have a grooved pulley with the belt’s grooves sitting in it, but the tensioner and idler pulley may be grooved or may have a flat surface that presses against the back of the belt, depending on the belt routing that’s required.

I encountered all these issues on the Armada. Something in the belt train was clearly making noise, particularly on cold start. It wasn’t yet at screechy howl; it was more like a hollow metaling ringing. I used my mechanic’s stethoscope and found that both the tensioner pulley and the power steering pump were loud (the steering also groaned when cold, further implicating the PS pump). However, other things in the belt chain—the alternator, the water pump—can certainly make noise as well.

There’s a technique you can use to isolate the problem, or at least get data that corroborates that of the stethoscope. The trick is to de-tension the belt, carefully lay it to the side of one component at a time so you don’t lose the belt routing, and test each component by spinning its pulley by hand as well as grabbing the pulley and checking it for play. I did that and immediately found that the bearing in the tensioner pulley was worn to the point of noise and obvious looseness. Surprisingly, the power steering pump felt fine.

So, what to do?

When you find a bad tensioner pulley, you have several choices. You can replace only the pulley, or you can buy a new tensioner with a new pulley attached, or you can buy a kit with a new belt, tensioner/pulley, and idler pulley if there is one, and do it all. The Armada’s belt looked absolutely fine with no cracks or dry rot, and the idler pulley was quiet. I usually choose the money-saving route, but because there was a break in the weather where I could do the repair, and Amazon could get me a Gates belt-tensioner-idler kit next day for $115 (whereas the a la carte options had longer shipping times), I opted for that.

The only power steering pump I could get next-day was an unbranded Chinese-made one of questionable quality, so even though it made sense to pull the belt off and do the two repairs together, I separated them and ordered a well-priced, low-mileage OEM Hitachi PS pump from a New England recycler, knowing it would take two days to get here.

I’d already figured out how to de-tension the belt to do the component test, so removing it was easy. I first downloaded an image of how the belt routed around all the pulleys, then verified that it was correct for my vehicle. I realized that the Armada is a little unusual in that the mechanical cooling fan (and its viscous clutch) doesn’t ride on the front of the water pump but on its own pulley, essentially creating a second idler pulley, so it wasn’t my imagination that the belt path appeared particularly convoluted. Fortunately, the engine compartment in the Armada is big enough that everything was accessible without having to do anything like removing the fan shroud, so replacing the tensioner assembly and the idler pulley was easy.

What was far more challenging than I expected was getting the new belt on. I foolishly thought that, to thread it onto the pulleys, all I needed to do was pass the belt between the fan and the shroud and pull it over the fan. It took me over an hour to fully understand that the only pulley that’s “inside the fan” is the fan pulley itself, and that the fan pulley was smooth, so it needed to run against the back of the belt, not the grooved part. After several attempts, I learned that the trick to putting the belt on was to take a loop of it oriented with the grooves facing outward, pass it over the fan, then put the flat back of the belt on the fan pulley. Everything else could then be placed on its pulley.

Except, of course, the tensioner. New serpentine belts are typically much tighter than old stretched belts, requiring the tensioner to be rotated much further back than was needed to release the old belt. While I was able to release the old belt using a ratchet placed from the top of the engine compartment, getting enough clearance to put an 18-inch pipe on the end of the ratchet handle required me to do it from beneath the car. I also employed the trick of using strong clothespin-style clamps to hold the belt onto pulleys that it kept sliding off during belt routing.

Getting the belt on was enough work that I didn’t look forward to having to do it again when the replacement power steering pump arrived. Although I was certain that I needed to replace it, I gave the pump a look while I was under the car. I noticed that one of the bolts on the pump bracket was loose, so I tightened it. And, although the whole issue of fluid leaks was a separate task, there was an obvious and non-trivial leak of power steering fluid from where one of the rubber PS hoses mated to a metal line. The Armada uses spring-style, constant-tension clamps for all the coolant and power steering connections. While I understand the theory behind their use, I hate these clamps, as in situations like this, there’s no way to tighten them. I used pliers to loosen the clamp, moved it backward on the hose, took a conventional worm-screw-style clamp, opened it up, slid it over the hose, closed it, and tightened it down.

I then started the Armada. Not only was the ringy rattle from the belt tensioner pulley gone, so was the noise from the power steering pump.

No way!

I thought it was a fluke, so I waited until the following 32°-morning and tried it again.

Quiet as a church mouse.

I’m not certain whether the power steering noise I was hearing through the stethoscope was just a rattle from the bolt loose on the bracket, and whether the groaning on cold turning was due to pressure loss from a little fluid leakage, but for now there’s nothing wrong with it. I need to decide whether to spend the shipping to return the $80 used power steering pump, or put it on the shelf in the garage for when the thing really does fail.

So. Armada exhaust? Done, at least for now. Belt-and-related-accessory noise? Done, at least until the power steering pump rears its head. Next week: fluid leaks.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post The Twisted Task of Replacing Serpentine Belts and Tensioners appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Last week, I wrote about discovering that the exhaust in my just-purchased 182,000-mile 2008 Nissan Armada was leaking in three places—large leaks from a laughably bad weld between the tailpipe and the muffler and from the seam on the top of the muffler, and a small leak at the rear flange of one of the four catalytic converters. I shoveled muffler putty into and around the first two leaks, ignored the third, took it in for inspection, and failed. So now, instead of a useful vehicle, I had a big red “R” sticker on the windshield that could land me a moving violation and add points on my license, and an exhaust whose proper repair was the definition of a slippery slope. Great. Just great.

In addition to the specifics of the vehicle and its exhaust, there’s, well, me. I’ve long said that I have no idea how anyone can afford to own any older high-mileage car, much less a vintage car, if they need to pay someone to fix it. Multiply that by 13 for the number of vehicles I own (shut up), and you can see why none of the cars I own ever gets everything it needs. The day I stop doing all my own work is the day I decide that I need to shed vehicles. Although that day is not today or next week, this is getting more challenging as I get older. I still think of myself as 25 years old, but I turned 65 last summer, have back issues that get triggered by lifting and bending, and have a garage situation where the Armada appeared to be too big to fit without kicking out not one but two of my cars. I do have a mid-rise lift in the garage, but the Armada’s weight is close to the lift’s 6000-pound limit, it’s so wide that I don’t think the swing arms will even reach the jack points on the sills, and the geometry of the truck and the lift make it challenging to get the jack pads somewhere more inboard, like the under frame. For these reasons, any under-truck work likely needs to be done on the garage floor, and even then, figuring out how to get the truck in there so I could close the door and turn the heat on and not freeze my old bones was challenging.

My 38-year-owned ’73 BMW 3.0CSi, 1999 M Coupe, and 49,000-mile ’73 2002 are here in the garage over the winter, with four other vintage BMWs and the Lotus in warehouse storage. The CSi is the definition of a pampered car. With its Karmann-built body, it is never going to sit outside (to repeat the best automotive joke in the world: Karmann invented rust, then licensed the process to the Italians). In contrast, the M Coupe is a modern car that can sit in the driveway for weeks if necessary. The low-mileage 2002 is somewhere between the two. I don’t necessarily think it’s an act of violence to move it outside for a few days, but if the weather turns and it sits in rain or snow while I’ve taken the Armada “down” and rendered it immobile while waiting for parts, I will have made the wrong call.

My garage is 31-feet long, so it easily fits two small cars nose-to-tail. After I bought the mid-rise lift, I discovered that an unintended benefit is that I can put a car on it, lift it, and be able to tuck the nose of another car under it. I didn’t think that would work with the Armada, as its nose is tall enough that I’d need to raise the 2002 so high that I was concerned I’d dent the roof against the ceiling. Plus, a while back I found that one of the lift’s hydraulic cylinders leaks when raising it to the upper position.

I went for it anyway. The cylinder shot out a stream of red fluid, but it got to where I could lower it into the lock-stopped upper position. Hopefully come spring I’ll be able to get the 2002 back down.

So, I had the truck inside the heated garage. I could lift the back end if I needed to, but I had no room to lift the nose. This meant that I could get to the tailpipe, maybe the muffler, but I wouldn’t be able to access the slightly-leaky flange behind the right-hand secondary cat.

I looked on RockAuto and found that there were three aftermarket cat-back exhausts, each less than $200 delivered. One was an ANSA that had an OEM-style muffler with long inlet tubes, one of which bolted directly to the leaky flange.

The other two exhausts—AP (which apparently now owns ANSA) and Walker—both had a muffler with short inlets that are meant to be clamped or welded to intermediate pipes. The Walker was appealing because it’s stainless, but reviews on Amazon reported that it uses 2-inch pipes rather than the stock 2.25-inch, requiring adapters if you want to try to splice a new muffler into the existing pipes. The AP exhaust appeared to have 2.25-inch muffler inlets, however.

I began to formulate an approach—order an AP muffler and tailpipe, cut the old muffler off with a Sawzall, and splice the new one to the existing pipes with butt-joint-style band clamps. If it worked (meaning if it sealed well enough to pass inspection), done (at least for now), but if it didn’t, I could still order the other pieces of the AP exhaust kit and replace everything behind the cats, and a cost comparison showed that there wasn’t a big discount buying the whole exhaust kit as opposed to ordering the pieces a la carte anyway. If the paper-thin leaky cat flange self-destructed when I tried to take it apart, then I’d need to replace the cat, which was another $125. Hopefully the joint between the primary and secondary cats would cooperate.

Before I ordered parts, I wanted to see if this repair could be accomplished with the Armada shoehorned in the garage the way it was. I took my Sawzall, shimmied under the back of the truck, tried to get to the front of the muffler where I’d need to cut the pipes, and found that there wasn’t enough clearance to do it. I’d need to raise the front of the Armada, and there was no way to do that with it stuffed under the tail of the 2002 on the lift. I’d either have to take the 2002 down and give the Armada the entire right side of the garage, or do the repair with the Armada’s butt hanging out of the garage, leaving the place open to the elements.

I checked the weather. There was a Nor’easter predicted to drop about 10 inches of snow two days hence.

Dukes.

I thought about it carefully, and realized that I hadn’t tried to find the exact reason why the exhaust had failed inspection. I clamped a rubber glove back over the tailpipe, started the truck, and did my best to feel along the exhaust for leaks. To my surprise, my patch along the upper seam of the muffler appeared to be holding. The leak from the cat flange was minor. The motherlode was coming from my unsuccessful attempt to seal up the booged weld attaching the tailpipe to the muffler. I was unable to fix it with the soup-can-and-hose-clamps method because the weld (and my putty) created a gall like a walnut inside a garden hose, around which a clamped can had zero hope of sealing.

I thought “What if I cut the lump out with a Sawzall? Couldn’t I then just mate the two sections with a butt-joint band clamp like I was planning on doing to the muffler?”

Hmmmmn.

I crawled under the rear of the car again with the Sawzall. But this time I found that, unlike the front of the muffler, there was ample space to get the Sawzall positioned on the tailpipe, as it was located up in the recess where the spare tire is.

I used my vernier calipers to take some careful measurements of the pipes so I could order the correct band clamp and laughed out loud when I found that the outlet pipe of the muffler was 2.25 inches, but the tailpipe was 2.5. No wonder the thing didn’t seal.

So what I needed wasn’t a butt-joint clamp. I needed a 2.5-to-2.25-inch reducer adapter.

Mindful of the impending Nor’easter and really wanting to get the repair completed before a foot of snow stranded the Armada inside the garage, I drove to five local auto parts stores, but none of them had a 2.5-to-2.25-inch reducer. I looked on Amazon, found one that appeared to fit the bill (2.5-inch inner diameter to 2.25-inch outer diameter) with next-day delivery, clicked, and waited. In the interim, I cut the “walnut” out of the exhaust pipe. It was laughable how misaligned the two different-sized pieces were.

The reducer arrived at about 7 p.m. the night before the snowstorm was predicted to hit. I’d already wire-brushed and sanded the cut ends of the muffler and tailpipe, so I thought all I needed to do was goop up the reducer with muffler cement, slide it on, and clamp it down, but I found that while the 2.5-inch end fit the tailpipe perfectly, the 2.25-inch end was not an inner-diameter fit to the back of the muffler—it was exactly the same size as the back of the muffler. I hightailed it to the O’Reilly Auto Parts a few miles from me before closing time and grabbed a 2.25-to-2.25 adapter and another clamp.

I emptied a good portion of a tube of J-B Weld muffler cement into the three slip-in joints, clamped everything down, backed the truck out of the garage, and drove the M Coupe back in. I had beaten the impending snowstorm, but when I’d be able to get the truck inspected remained to be seen. I also was well aware that between the adapters, the clamps, and the muffler cement, I’d just dropped 50 bucks on a very, um, hacky solution when $200 would’ve bought me something permanent.

In the morning, I was surprised to find that the big Nor’Easter had fizzled. Overnight the meteorologists had massively rolled back the snow prediction. I looked out the window and saw only rain. I started the truck, put a gloved hand over the tailpipe, the exhaust felt tight to me, so I beat it on down to get it re-inspected. As this was a re-test for a failure due to an exhaust leak, I heard them rev it up and down several times as they checked, but it passed.

I have little doubt that I’ll probably need to do a more proper stem-to-stern exhaust replacement sooner rather than later, but damn it’s awfully satisfying to dig the ice axe and the crampons in and say, “Slippery slope? Not today.”

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post The Exhaust Problem (Part 2) appeared first on Hagerty Media.

As I wrote last week, I bought a 2008 Nissan Armada to have as a keep-it-in-the-driveway-until-you-need-it tow vehicle/stuff-hauler/snowmageddon chariot. At $3250, it was cheap, but a few problems were baked into that price, one of which was a leaky exhaust that wasn’t loud enough for me to hear but was apparent when I held my gloved hand over the tailpipe.

A tight exhaust should pretty much push your gloved hand off, but one with substantial leaks one won’t offer any resistance at all. So I bought it knowing it needed exhaust work. The question was, how much? The tried-and-true triage method is to visually examine the entire length of the exhaust as well as block off the tailpipe with a cut-off inner tube and a hose clamp and carefully run your hands close to all exhaust surfaces to feel for leaks, but I was unable to do either of those things on the seller’s muddy dirt-and-gravel driveway.

Let’s put on our rose-colored glasses for a moment. Back in the golden pre-emission-control days, most exhaust systems consisted of a cast-iron exhaust manifold that likely lasted the life of the car, and four normal-wear-and-tear components—the headpipe that bolted to the manifold, the center resonator, the muffler, and possibly a separate tailpipe. These components were interconnected by flanges sealed by either gaskets or crush rings, and held together with simple nuts and bolts. Replacing isolated sections was usually easy. If the exhaust got loud, you crawled under the car, figured out which section was rotted out, bought another one, installed it—boom, done. Yeah, OK, some exhaust sections were fitted by sliding one tube inside another and U-clamping them together, and over time, rust would fuse the sections making replacement difficult, but if you were careful you could usually manage it.

As vintage cars age, though, it’s common for them reach the point where, if one component is rusted through, the smart thing is to “just do it all” and replace the entire exhaust, meaning everything except the manifold. The reason is twofold. First, if one exhaust component is rusty enough to be ventilated, odds are that the others aren’t far behind. Second, it’s often challenging to get new components to seal against old ones. Some of this is unevenness on the sealing surface of the old component, some is that the flange size on a non-original replacement component is subtly different from that which it needs to mate with in the car. If it’s a car you’re keeping for the long term, buying and installing a new exhaust—be it original (if it’s still available), aftermarket, performance, stainless steel, or whatever—is often a good box to check off for a rejuvenation.

The other option is to go to a custom exhaust shop where they measure, bend, and install a system specifically for your car. I’m generally not a fan of this approach, as custom exhausts often have welded joints that make it difficult or impossible to drop the exhaust to, for example, remove a transmission. I had it done a few years ago in my little Winnebago Rialta RV because there was no other option.

Things became more complicated when catalytic converters crept in in the mid-1970s, as the cat was an expensive additional component that could rust out and get loud, and it had an extra set of flanges that needed to seal to make the exhaust tight. V-configuration engines typically have a separate cat for each bank of cylinders. And many cars, including the Armada, are equipped with primary and secondary cats on each bank, for a total of four. This creates six flange joints where the cats can leak (manifold to primary, primary to secondary, secondary to the rest of the exhaust, on each side).

You can see why “just do it all” is not ever my go-to strategy on a modern car. It’s simply too expensive. If an exhaust and one or more cats needs to be replaced in a high-mileage 15-year-old car, the dealer estimate for the repair can easily exceed the car’s value, and the price from an aftermarket or custom shop can easily top a thousand dollars.

So, with that backdrop, let’s look at the Armada. The exhaust was porous enough that a rubber glove clamped over the tailpipe was enough to redirect all the flow through the holes, making them easier to find.

The Armada doesn’t have the ground clearance that my Silverado 3500HD did (which enabled its catalytic converter to get stolen, but also allowed me to replace it without lifting the truck), but the rear section of the exhaust is pretty accessible. I skooched under the back and quickly found a major leak where the tailpipe was attached to the muffler with the world’s worst weld. I bought a decent mig welder about five years ago but have never walked up the learning curve to use it properly, and I’m certain that if I attempted to re-weld the joint, it would look no better. I’ve certainly done my share of soup-can-and-hose-clamp exhaust repairs and tested one here with aluminum flashing, but the big bulge from the misaligned pipes and the weld didn’t give it a hope of sealing.

I’ve occasionally used a local exhaust shop to patch isolated leaks like this, so I took the Armada to them for a quote on fixing the tailpipe, thinking that maybe all it needed was a hundred-dollar splice-and-weld. Unfortunately—and not surprisingly—when they had it on the lift and inspected it, they found that the tailpipe was only one of three leaks. There was also a good-sized leak from the seam on the top of the muffler, and a small leak at the output flange of the right rear (secondary) catalytic converter. Unfortunately, the studs and nuts on that flange were decimated by rust, and the flange itself looked paper-thin. The shop’s recommendation was to cut off the flange and weld a new pipe from the back of the cat to a new muffler and tailpipe. The $1200 estimate wasn’t unreasonable, but it was more than I wanted to spend.

I thought about my options, all of which were limited by winter weather and my workspace. The Armada is big enough that, to fit it in my garage, I’d need to kick not one car outside, but two. That’s fine when the weather’s good, but I’m not going to let my 49,000-mile 1973 BMW 2002 sit outside in rain or snow, and due to the configuration of my narrow suburban driveway, which is hemmed in by my house and my neighbor’s high fence, when we get a lot of snow, there’s nowhere to blow it, so the garage can get snowed in for weeks.

So I tried the easiest path first—muffler paste. This stuff comes in a couple of forms. There’s muffler cement that’s intended to fill gaps and seal joints, and there’s muffler putty that’s intended to be more structural. I had a can of the latter in the garage, so I gave both the tailpipe and the top of the muffler a wire-brushing, then with a nitrile glove on my hand, shoveled the putty into and around the tailpipe weld and into the seam on the top of the muffler.

At this point, I need to explain a few things about Massachusetts’ draconian annual automotive inspection. I love my home state, but not this part of it. You’re required to have a vehicle inspected within seven days of purchase. It doesn’t matter if it already has a valid inspection sticker on the windshield. That’s not your sticker—it’s the previous owner’s. The sticker has the car’s plate number and VIN printed on it in small type, and a bar code that a police officer can scan and call up the registration. So if you’re driving on the old sticker, and you’re stopped for some reason and the officer checks the sticker, you’ll be cited for driving an uninspected vehicle, which is a moving violation that adds points to your license. There are rare reports of people even being ticketed for this when the car is parked. Plus, there is the safety part of the inspection and the emissions part. If you fail the emission part, you get a black “R” sticker with a 60-day grace period for you to get the car repaired, but if you fail for a safety reason, you get a red “R” sticker with no grace period—you can be pulled over any time and ticketed—and an exhaust leak is regarded as a safety issue. I’m uncertain exactly how they check for exhaust leaks, whether they do the hand-over-the-tailpipe test on every single car or only on cars that have loud-sounding exhausts.

So. I’d bought the Armada with a leaky but largely asymptomatic exhaust. The inspection sticker on the car was good through August, but it wasn’t my sticker. Legally I was required to get the beast inspected, but … should I? The risk was that it would fail and I’d lose the valid-looking sticker, be given a big red rejection sticker that’s far more visible (moving violation-wise), and have to spend real money replacing the exhaust.

I thought it over. The exhaust didn’t sound loud to me to begin with, and I’d patched the two big leaks, so it had to be quieter and better-sealed than before. Do it. Get it inspected. Cross it off the list. Be legal about it, as I am with most things these days. I brought it in.

Bad idea. It failed. I’d rolled the dice and lost. The car I’d bought to have around in case I needed to drop everything and buy something big now had a large red “R” on the windshield that could land me an expensive ticket.

To make matters worse, a winter nor’easter was forecast to move in and dump 8–12 inches of snow, effectively cutting off access to my garage. And the logistics of major exhaust surgery on the Armada were daunting, as the vehicle’s weight is uncomfortably close to the 6000-pound limit of my mid-rise lift. I’d likely need to do the whole thing on the garage floor, which, at age 65 with back issues, didn’t sound like a lot of fun.

I still do essentially all my own work, but I realize that there are times when you need to, as they say, just pay the man (or woman). Was this one of those times? I wasn’t sure. It drives me crazy when I’m put in a situation where I need to pay someone 10 times what it would cost for me to do something myself.

I looked on RockAuto (you gotta love RockAuto) and found that there are several well-priced aftermarket cat-back exhausts available for the Armada, two of which are less than $200 shipped to my house. The question was the slippery slope of that secondary catalytic converter’s paper-thin rear-facing flange. Since I don’t weld, if that flange broke or wouldn’t seal, I’d need to replace that cat. I wanted to know what the cat’s front flange looked like (where it mates with the primary cat), but I couldn’t get under the car, so I stuffed my phone under and shot some pics. What I saw was concerning. The idea of a minor exhaust repair potentially cascading into replacing two catalytic converters made me want to consider my next steps very carefully.

What’s a Hack Mechanic to do? Tune in next week in find out.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post The Exhaust Problem (Part 1) appeared first on Hagerty Media.

I’ve written a number of stories about selling the 29,000-mile 2008 Silverado HD3500 Duramax diesel duallie that I bought three years ago from my former employer as a mouse-infested mess, resurrected, but rarely used in the way I expected. In the end, it was a ridiculous overkill vehicle for my needs, so in September 2023 I sold it for windfall money, which never happens to me. I don’t regret it one iota. I needed the money far more than I needed the truck.

However, as soon as the truck was gone, I felt its absence. One issue was that I no longer had a vehicle that I could use when I need to drop everything, drive to a well-priced enthusiast car that just showed up online, and tow it home. It didn’t matter that that this was more an emotional issue than a real one (I never once used the Silverado for that in the time I owned it, and the logistics of having to first rent a U-Haul auto transporter makes this ability quite a bit less turnkey than it sounds). It was how I felt. The more realistic issue was that I no longer owned something big that I could use to haul, well, stuff. The tangible examples were trivial—being unable to snag a free king-size Tempur-Pedic mattress and a well-priced workbench. As with towing cars, if I really wanted to do either of these things, I certainly could’ve—I could have rented a truck, or a small U-Haul trailer and towed it behind my little Winnebago Rialta. But again, this had less to do with reality and more to do with feeling that I’d lost a tool that fit my self-image.

So I had another run at it. As I wrote about here, I carefully considered the truck-versus-SUV question, noted that I have no need to haul plywood or 4×8 sheetrock or construction debris or gravel or dirt, and decided that I’d rather have the interior space of a full-sized SUV that can be apportioned to people if need be. At the same time, although I owned six Suburbans to take extended family on beach vacations, I had to admit that in 2024, with my youngest child now 30, the need to carry eight people and coolers and boogie boards onto soft sand is now just a memory.

The requirements for another vehicle shaped up to be:

• Something big enough to swallow, say, a workbench.
• Have a third-row seat because why wouldn’t you want that blade on the Swiss army knife?
• Four-wheel drive so, if needed, Maire Anne or I could have something to drive if the weather turned poor.
• 6500-ish-pound towing capacity (small light cars and a U-Haul auto transporter).
• No exterior rust holes or Check Engine Light (CEL) issues to make it unable to pass Massachusetts state inspection.
• A target budget of around $4000.
• Oh, and I had to not hate it.

The yang to the budget’s yin was the question of how much work I’d be willing to put into the vehicle. One of my “Hack Mechanic’s Tips for Sane Living” is that it’s not a good thing when your daily driver becomes so needy that it’s essentially a project car. While an SUV/stuff hauler wasn’t going to become either my or my wife’s daily, I wanted it to be a tool, not a project. That reinforced my steering clear of well-priced Suburbans, as the ones I saw advertised cheaply needed to have brake lines replaced or had reported shifting issues or lifter noises. I also had no desire to go German, as despite my love for BMWs, few things are as needy as a depreciated high-mileage German V-8. So no BMW X5 4.4s. No Porsche Cayennes. And hell no, no VW Toureg V10 TDIs.

Lastly, regarding fuel economy, there’s no escaping the physics of a 6000-ish-pound, full-sized SUV with a 300-horsepower V-8 for decent towing capacity. Some are better, some are worse, but fueleconomy.gov lists the combined gas mileage of most full-sized SUVs as in the mid-teens. And none of them are like the Tardis on Doctor Who—none are bigger on the inside. If you want cavernous cargo-and-people space, it adds size and weight, which drops gas mileage.

Having owned a string of Chevys, I decided that this go-round I wanted to try to eat from the Japanese buffet. I zeroed in on Toyota Sequoias due to their excellent frequency-of-repair record, but as I wrote about here, the first-generation Sequoias have frame-rot issues so bad that Toyota issued a recall, and here in New England, the ones that have had their frame replaced also rot in other places. Plus people still want a lot of money for them. Looking outside the rust belt didn’t make sense to me, as you pay a premium for the car and a second one for the shipping. That’s something I’d entertain for an enthusiast car, but not for a tool. While the second-gen Sequoias appear to be clear of the frame-rot issue, the asking price for cars with 200,000 miles appears to start near nine grand, and that was more than twice what I wanted to spend.

So I somewhat reluctantly honed in on Nissan Armadas, Nissan’s full-sized SUV based on the Titan F-Alpha platform (and yes, I’m aware of the joke “The “R” in “Nissan” stands for “Reliability” ”). At 207 inches—about 17.25 feet—Armadas are about the same size as the Sequoia, about 6 inches longer than a 2008 Tahoe, and about a foot shorter than a 2008 Suburban. And there are a lot of used ones out there for a wide range of prices. However, there are some concerning commonly-listed problems on sites like RepairPal and CarComplaints including a vexing braking issue (the ABS switching on and the booster failing while driving). There are multiple threads about it on the Armada forum (ClubArmada) that discuss the failure of the delta brake stroke sensor and the resulting class action settlement for 2004–08 Armadas and Titan trucks. Armadas had a minor facelift for 2008, and it’s unclear whether that marked the end of the braking issue. To be safe, I resolved to look for a 2009 or later vehicle, but if you’re aiming at a price point and looking within a radius, bottom-feeders can’t be choosers. I did rule out a well-priced 127K 2005 Armada in southern Connecticut because the CarFax showed six owners, the kind of thing I could imagine intermittent brake failure being responsible for.

For a number of reasons, one Facebook Marketplace ad kept tugging at me: “Snow ready! 4-wheel drive 2008 Nissan Armada LE good tires, heated seats, heated steering wheel, power windows, locks, rear gate, leather, DVD entertainment, power folding third row seats. 183,000 miles. Great family car. We bought a new car.  $4500 OBO.” The photos showed an intact shiny black Armada with a black leather interior. I don’t like fully murdered-out cars, so I was glad that the wheels were mercifully standard alloys. And there was something about the combination of the black leather and the satin-finish wood trim that called to me.

When the seller dropped the asking price to $4000, I asked for the VIN so I could run the CarFax as well as run it through a Nissan VIN decoder to see what options it had.

The CarFax was clean and showed that the seller was the fourth owner. He’d bought it the summer of 2022 and had pulled it off the road this past fall because his wife’s car died, they bought a new Tahoe, and they swapped the plates off the Armada. However, the last entry in the CarFax was concerning—“Mechanical issue reported, vehicle towed.” I asked the seller, and he laughed. “I ran out of gas,” he said. The VIN decoder showed that the car had the tow package, which includes a 9100-pound tow capacity, heavy-duty radiator, re-mapped shift points, rear self-leveling suspension, and shorter-geared differential (3.36 as opposed to 2.94 for the non-tow-package).

The seller and I exchanged more messages, I liked what I heard, so I drove the 50 minutes from West Newton down to Mendon, Massachusetts, to see it.

The Armada and I sized one another up as I did my walk-around and crouch-down inspection. When I opened up the right rear door, I found some hidden rust, including an actual hole, at the back corner of the door sill. “Here we go,” I thought, recalling the Sequoia I looked at a few weeks ago where holes behind the running board proved to the tip of the rust-berg. However, this was the only rust-through I found anywhere on the car. I crawled under it as best I could on the dirt-and-gravel driveway, examined the frame, floor, and trailing arms, and saw the more-than-surface-rust-but-less-than-rust-holes expected of a 16-year-old, 183K, lifelong New England car, but nothing worse.

I started the car and saw that the Check Engine Light (CEL) was lit. I connected a code reader and found an active “Catalyst system efficiency below threshold” code for bank 2, and a stored code for bank 1. I cleared them to see what would happen when I drove it.

The fact that the car was unregistered and uninsured meant that the only test-drive I could take was a low-speed spin on local roads. Fortunately, the town of Mendon is pretty rural. I carefully drove the car maybe three miles, not exceeding 30 mph. The brakes were initially poor due to the rotors having rusted from sitting outside, but with several stands on the pedal, they began to come back to life. A few speed bumps revealed that the front shocks were likely gone, but other than that, the car ran, drove, and shifted fine. I verified that the 4WD worked. The CEL did not re-light.

When I parked the car at the end of the test drive, I held my gloved hand over the tailpipe. If an exhaust is completely tight, it should push your hand off, but I didn’t even feel any pressure. Clearly the exhaust had a good-sized hole in it, but it wasn’t in the least throaty, which was good—the hole was probably after the cat and muffler. I skooched back under to try to find it, but the uneven gravel driveway impeded my automotive spelunking. I then carefully used my ungloved hand to feel all four wheels to check for sticking calipers. The left front wheel felt just a bit warmer than the right, but it was subtle.

Well, then.

I was interested, so I asked the question that has served me well for years: “What do you need to get for it?” The guy thought about it, and said “$3500. Less than that and it feels like I’m giving it away.” I had cash in my pocket, but the fact that I hadn’t taken a real test drive at highway speeds meant that anything else could be wrong with it—it might not shift into fifth, the diff could whine, it could have a bad wheel bearing, the brakes could pull at speed, on and on. I also wanted to know if the CEL would re-trigger on a longer drive. All of that meant risk, and I explained that I needed to think what that was worth to me. So I left without making an offer.

Two miles down the road I thought, “This is stupid, because what’s going to happen is that when you think about it, you’re going to decide that it’s $500 worth of risk and offer him three grand. He’ll counter with $3250, you’ll accept, and you’ll need to drive back down to pay him and get the title, and then drive back a third time with plates to pick up the car [my tolerance for driving uninsured cars where, if something goes sideways, I could lose my house, is very low]. Why not just cut to the chase now?” But something in me wanted to consider this all very carefully, so I kept driving home.

That evening, I ran over my thought process again. Yes, I wanted a tow/stuff-hauling vehicle. Yes, it should be a full-sized SUV and not a truck. Yes, this go-round it should be Japanese. And hell yes, the budget was important because there was no sense in spending real money for something neither my wife nor I would daily drive; whatever I bought was likely to sit 90 percent of the time. It didn’t really need to be much. This one fit the bill and was within easy striking distance. I could buy it and be done with it.

I’ve long said that I think about automotive risk differently than most people. In the collector car world with online click-bid-buy sites, there’s the conception that risk is low when things get bid up because the car looks like new and there are a lot of eyeballs on it. Me, I think that if I spend $40,000 on a car and I’m half wrong about it (condition, provenance, mileage, whatever), that’s $20,000 worth of risk. In contrast, a car like this I could buy in the low-$3000 range had almost no risk. It ran and drove well and needed a little work, the exact amount of which was in the noise. If it wasn’t what I expected, I could bail out of it easily.

I called the seller and offered him three grand. He said he wanted to think about it.

Ten minutes later he texted me “How about $3250?”

Done. I’m either the smartest man or the dumbest, right?

The next day I drove back down, paid him, picked up the title, drove to my insurance agent’s office, and insured and registered the car. The day after that, my wife drove me back down to Mendon (for the third time, but hey, with a 50-minute drive, that’s no sweat), I picked up the Armada, and drove it home. The CEL did re-light on the drive home (and it’s a different code—“system performance bank 1”), but other than that it was fine. It was more than fine—it’s clearly a far more appropriate vehicle for me than the Silverado, which had the turning radius of a U-boat.

Yesterday I crawled under the car in my driveway and found that the exhaust leak is coming from a really badly welded joint between the muffler and tailpipe. I have an appointment with a muffler shop to see if they can splice it. I’ll get that fixed before I dive into the CEL issue, which may not even matter for vehicle inspection since the 16-year-old car is past the 15-year cutoff for emissions testing. I’m scouring ClubArmada to get information on which front struts to order. So, despite what I said about not wanting a truck that’s a project car, that’s what it’s going to be for a little while. And that’s OK.

This morning I spent 20 minutes in the Armada’s driver’s seat with the owner’s manual. This thing has more bells and whistles than a hundred clones of Bobby McFerrin in Notre Dame. It’s my first car with BlueTooth, an in-dash information display (yuck), nav system (which I’ll never use), and a back-up camera. It has an 11-speaker Bose sound system. Front and rear sonar. Power rear gate and rear seats. And that DVD entertainment system my kids would’ve loved on the way to the beach vacations in the Suburbans 15 years ago.

Hopefully, I’ll soon go back to doing what I said I needed a big vehicle for—hauling home cool enthusiast cars. And doing so in a single unaccompanied bag-and-drag trip, not two. And certainly not three. Though its first trip will likely be to drag home a workbench.

But there’s one thing bothering me.

Didn’t Cortés burn his Armada?

***

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One of the topics I get asked about and over is the “My car won’t start” question. At this point in my life, I have my family pretty well programmed to not say “it won’t start” and to instead give the much more descriptive “it won’t crank” or “it cranks but it won’t start,” as such information is absolutely key to a diagnosis, particularly a remote one. I thought that, on this cold New England winter day, I’d lay out the basic car-won’t-start troubleshooting procedure.

A car needs three things to start: The battery needs to spin the starter motor, the fuel/air mixture must get sucked into the engine, and the spark plugs need to fire. Yes, the engine also needs compression and the ignition has to be timed at least in the ball park, but if the car was starting yesterday and it’s not today, the odds are it’s not due to those last two.

Let’s begin with the battery and the starter motor. The starter has two components—the starter motor itself, and the solenoid, which is an electrical relay that allows you to crank the engine without sending hundreds of amps through the steering column and ignition switch. The solenoid also has a little plunger inside it with a gear at the end that connects the starter to the gear on the outer edge of the flywheel, causing the engine to spin. For electrical connections, the solenoid has a long fat cable that’s directly connected to the positive battery terminal, and a short braided cable connected to the starter motor. The starter/solenoid are grounded by the fact that they’re mounted directly to the grounded engine, either directly to the negative battery terminal or indirectly via chassis ground. When the solenoid receives 12V from the ignition switch, it closes its internal contacts, allowing current to flow through the short braided cable to the starter motor and spin the engine. So if turning the key doesn’t spin the engine, the fault is either in the battery, the starter, the solenoid, the ignition switch, or the wiring between the switch and the solenoid.

By far the most common cause for the starter not spinning the engine, or spinning it too slowly for it to start, is a weak or dead battery. If you turn the key and hear CLICK but there’s little or no engine cranking, that means the battery has enough charge to energize the solenoid, close its internal contacts, and move the plunger/gear moving forward, but not enough for the starter to spin the engine.

The first thing to do is check the battery voltage. Take a multimeter set to measure voltage (and if you don’t own a multimeter, just go buy one; auto-ranging meters can be had for $20 on Amazon), put the red and black leads across the positive and negative battery terminals and see if it reads the 12.6 volts that a fully-charged battery should have. As a rough rule of thumb, for every 0.2 volts the battery drops, the charge is down 25 percent, so by the time it’s under 12 volts, it’s essentially discharged, at least as far as the ability to spin the engine quickly. And if it’s down into the single volts, it’s deeply discharged. Now, it is possible for a just-recharged battery to read 12.6 volts and not be able to deliver sufficient cranking amps to spin the engine, but the best way to think about checking battery voltage is that if you find it’s low, you’ve found the source of the car-won’t-start problem.

If the battery voltage is fine but you turn the key and hear absolutely nothing, or hear one click and then nothing, and if none of the electrical systems in the car are working at all or are barely working (if, for example, the dome light is dim), the problem could be that the battery posts and the clamps at the ends of the battery cables are corroded enough to prevent good contact from being made. So before you pony up the $150+ it takes these days to buy a new battery, clean the posts and clamps with a battery post cleaner and try again. Also be certain to check the ground connections from the negative battery terminal to both the engine block and chassis. If one of these ground connections fails, electricity is forced to take the path through the other one, which can cause a no-crank condition.

If the posts are clean and the ground paths are good but even once the battery is recharged it still won’t crank the car, or only does so for a short amount of time, you can use a battery analyzer that use resistance as a measure of battery health. I’ve found they work pretty well. But really the gold-standard test is to remove the old battery, clean the clamps, and install a new or a known-good battery. If the car then cranks and starts, the battery was the problem. Note that, particularly in winter, due to low temperatures sapping battery strength and corrosion on the battery terminals causing high resistance in the contact with the jaws on the jumper cables, the failure of a car to crank with a jump-start can be highly misleading. Time after time I’ve experienced no-crank conditions that vanished immediately when a good battery was dropped directly into the car.

If the battery is dead, it’s crucially important that you figure out why it’s dead. If it’s winter, the battery is five years old, and the terminals are a corroded mess, then odds are that the battery has simply reached the end of its useful life. But if the battery is recent and it keeps running down to the point where it won’t crank the engine, something is making that happen. The cause can be that the car’s charging system (the alternator and voltage regulator and the wiring connecting them to the battery) isn’t working. As I say over and over, the resting voltage of a car battery is 12.6V, but with the engine running, it should increase by about 1–1.5V to between about 13.5–14.2V. So if you start the car, check the battery voltage, and still see 12.6V, the battery isn’t being recharged while you drive, so it will die on you again.

Other things causing a battery to drain can be that you’re leaving something on without knowing it, such as a trunk light or a power antenna. Or it can be a so-called parasitic drain where something subtle in the car is sucking power. Parasitic drains can be maddening. If the problem rears its head when the car hasn’t been driven for a week, sometimes the easiest thing is simply to install a battery disconnect switch, flip it off when you park the car in your driveway, and flip it on when you need to use the car.

If you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the battery and its connections are good and you hear no CLICK when you turn the key, odds are that the solenoid isn’t receiving voltage from the ignition switch. You can trouble-shoot this in two ways. You can use a multimeter to check for voltage on the quick-connect tab of the solenoid when the key is turned to the crank position. If there’s not voltage there, the ignition switch, or the wiring between it and the solenoid, is suspect. If the car has an automatic transmission, there may be a problem in the lock-out switch that allows the engine to be cranked only if the selector is in the park position.

The other way to check the solenoid is to make a jumper wire with a quick-connect connector on one end, slide it onto the tab on the solenoid, and—after you set the handbrake and make sure the car isn’t in gear—touch the other end to battery positive. If that doesn’t cause the solenoid to click, then either the solenoid is bad or there’s not a ground path between the solenoid and the battery. If the solenoid clicks but the starter doesn’t spin, then either the starter is bad or the positive and negative current paths are corroded. Note that bypassing the ignition like this and feeding 12V directly to the solenoid is exactly what you’re doing when you use one of those trigger-style remote starter switches. Note also that there’s an old-school technique where, instead of using a jumper wire, you take a long screwdriver, touch the tip to the starter’s heavy-duty positive post, and lean it against the solenoid terminal to fire it. I strongly advise not doing this, as it’s way too easy for the screwdriver to slip and short to ground. A jumper wire accomplishes the same thing and is much safer.

If you’re certain that the battery and the current paths are good, and the starter won’t spin or sounds labored, and it’s hot to the touch, odds are that the starter has reached the end of the line. Once you have the starter out of the car, you can test it just to be certain by using jumper cables to connect the fat positive post and any convenient point on the case to a battery, and touching the post on the solenoid to battery positive. Make sure, though, to stand on it, as when it starts to spin, it’ll jump around.

Now that you have the engine cranking, if the car still doesn’t start, you have to deal with fuel and spark. While it’s possible for an engine to have both fuel and spark and still not start, odds are strong that a crank-but-no-start condition is caused by one of them. Let’s deal with spark first.

On an old-school vintage car with a single ignition coil feeding a distributor and plug wires going to the spark plugs at each cylinder, it’s a simple matter to pull the center wire out of the distributor cap, hold it ¼-inch from ground with insulated pliers, and have someone crank the engine while you check for spark. If you see it, then the coil is firing and high voltage is going to the distributor. Do the same test with a plug wire. If there’s spark going into the distributor but none reaching the spark plugs, the problem is in the cap or the rotor. If there’s no spark at all from the coil, odds are that the points have closed up, the condenser isn’t grounded, or one of the wires has come off the coil. There’s really not much to vintage ignition systems, and no-spark problems can always be solved via replacement of components with known-good ones. Suspect the points and the connections first, then the condenser, and the coil last.

On modern cars, it’s much more difficult to directly check for spark. Instead of having a single ignition coil feeding a distributor with exposed plug wires, most cars since the mid-1990s have had a coil-on-plug design (also called “stick coils”) where individual coils sit directly on top of the spark plugs in a recess in the head, so there’s no easy way to directly verify spark. While any number of things can cause a no-spark condition, a likely suspect is the crankshaft position sensor, as without that fiducial, the car’s ECU doesn’t know when to fire the plugs. If it goes bad, hopefully it’ll throw a code that can be read with a scan tool.

If you have spark but the car still won’t start, odds are it’s a fuel delivery issue. A quick and easy test is to take a can of starting fluid and give a blast down the throat of the carb with the throttles open, or in a fuel-injected car, into the throttle body. If the car starts, runs for a few seconds, then dies, you’ve nailed it as a fuel-delivery problem. The time-tested method is, with a fire extinguisher at the ready, to disconnect the fuel line heading into the carburetor and put the end into a clear bottle while cranking the engine. Sometimes you find a bad fuel pump, sometimes you find that a porous gas line is causing air to get sucked instead of fuel, and sometimes you find that the gas tank is full of rust and is clogging up the filter. You need to step through it, back to front, and find the problem.

On a fuel-injected car, care must be taken because the fuel pressures are much higher, but depending on the age of the car, you may still be able to disconnect the fuel line from the fuel rail, energize the fuel pump by cranking the engine, and verify that fuel is squirting out. At some point, though, most fuel-injected cars switched over from simple rubber hoses and hose clamps to dedicated fittings with crimp-on connectors, and instead of putting the hose end in a bottle, it may be necessary to use a fuel pressure gauge with the proper fitting to screw into the test port on the fuel rail. If there’s no pressure, then the fuel pump isn’t running. The problem could be in the pump or the relay that controls it. An enthusiast forum will usually have information on the location of the relay, enabling you to jumper over it (connect pin 30 to pin 87). If that doesn’t bring things to life, the fuel pump itself probably needs to be replaced or at least troubleshot to see if an in-tank hose has fallen off it.

If temperatures are cold and the engine cranks and has both gas and spark but it still won’t start, it’s likely an issue in the cold-start circuit. On a carburetor, this is the choke. The choke plates should rotate closed over the top of the carb, and the carb linkage should settle on the fast-idle cam so the throttle plates are partially open. On a primitive electronically fuel-injected car, there’s usually a cold-start injector in the throttle body that opens up to squirt fuel while the engine is cranking and for some short amount of time afterward. For troubleshooting reasons, it’s fairly common practice to either wire these to a little push-button switch or to connect them directly to the starter solenoid so you know they’re receiving voltage during cranking.

There, that’s most of it.

But don’t message me saying “HELP! My car won’t start!” I hate that. If I can train my wife and kids, I can train you.

***

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The post Troubleshooting a Car That Won’t Start appeared first on Hagerty Media.

By my count, I’ve owned over 70 BMWs since I got bit by the bug back in 1982. Add in the Vanagons, the Suburbans, the onesies and twosies like the 911SC, Alfa Spider,  Lotus Europa, Winnebago Rialta, and (of course) the family vehicles, and it’s over 100 cars. That’s fewer than a pro or a diehard collector, but it’s a pretty good number. I’ve written previously about the best and worst vehicles that stand out, but I thought I’d concentrate for a moment on the purchases and sales, or near-purchases and near-sales, themselves. Some were classic time-wasters, but others were beautiful bits of humanity.

1973 BMW 2002

This was my second 2002, purchased in Austin, Texas, in 1983. I’d just gotten my first one sorted out and repainted, but then I found this one and sold the other one. It had been sitting for years, the Malaga (burgundy) paint was faded, but it was rust-free and had air conditioning. I tried jump-starting it, even putting the battery from my car directly in it, and it clicked once but wouldn’t crank, indicating a dead starter. The seller lived on a hill with an unpaved driveway. I convinced him that the car would likely start if we rolled it down the hill and I popped the clutch to spin the engine. I did, and it didn’t. Now he had a dead car at the bottom of the hill. He was not pleased. I bought it anyway. With a new starter and fresh plugs, it fired right up. I hadn’t fully sorted it out yet when Maire Anne and I left for a scheduled hiking vacation in Colorado in her VW camper. Unfortunately the camper began running badly and we limped it back home. “Can we take the new 2002?” she asked. “That’s risky,” I said. “It burns oil, there’s no spare tire, and a hundred other things.” But with vacation at risk, I threw a case of oil and a can of Fix-o-flat in the truck, and we made the 2000-mile round trip without incident.

1978 BMW 323i

This was a “gray market” model (a car sold in Germany but not in America) that BMW enthusiasts craved because it had the small six-cylinder engine eight years before it was available in an American-issue car. Buying it was straightforward, but when I tried to sell it, it appeared to be cursed. To begin with, the car’s hot-rod nature attracted a callous testosterone-enhanced element. One guy test-drove it weaving dangerously through Boston traffic and cutting people off. “Ever hear of the Skip Barber driver’s school at Lime Rock? I went there,” he said, as if that justified his homicidal behavior. “Then you should know to confine these antics to the track,” I deadpanned. Another guy liked it and said he wanted to buy it, but when he came back with cash, it was less than we’d agreed on and he brought four of his friends to intimidate me. By utter coincidence, while this was playing out, my wife opened the third-floor window and called out “Someone else is calling about the car. Is it still available?” “Yes,” I told her, and went inside, leaving the guy and his muscle at the curb. (To the guy’s credit, 35 years later he found me online and apologized for his sophomoric behavior.)

The fellow who eventually bought it wanted it for his pregnant wife. I thought it was a terrible fit for that role, but he kept increasing his offer price and I relented. The small-six was BMW’s only engine with a timing belt instead of a chain, and I hadn’t replaced the belt yet, so I told the guy to make sure to get it done ASAP. He didn’t, the belt broke, the valves got bent, his mechanic rebuilt the head but couldn’t get the car running, and the guy came back to me threatening legal action. I could’ve told him to pound sand, but I figured that I was buying back a car with a rebuilt head. Turned out the only reason it wouldn’t run was that the distributor cap and plug wires are specific to this Euro model, and a new set of plug wires didn’t make electrical contact with the cap.

1985 Alfa Spider

In 1991, I had my first wave of roadster cravings and bought an ’85 Alfa Spider. Due to needing a head gasket and the nose being dented due to a pickup track backing into it, it was cheap. I fixed it and drove it around for one glorious summer until my wife and I began house shopping and I had to shed some cars. I sold it to a guy about my age who seemed to be a good buyer as, like me, he owned a BMW 2002, but the sale soon went south. First he complained that it was leaking differential fluid out the solid rear axle’s wheel seals, something I was unaware of. To smooth things over, I kicked him back some money to help with the repair. But a month later I received a certified letter containing allegations of odometer tampering and threat of lawsuit if I didn’t refund his money. A lawyer friend advised that, if the allegations were true (and I had no idea if they were or not), I could be hit with treble damages. It worked out OK, as I had the car for the summer at our new home, then sold it to someone who was moving to California.

1987 BMW 325ic

I missed the Alfa, so a few years later I bought a BMW E30 3 Series convertible. I didn’t really have room for it, so the deal with myself was that it had to be my daily driver, even in the winter. Of course this was a stupid idea, so the following summer I put it up for sale. A gentleman who lived on the north shore of Boston called me and made me a very fair offer, but I explained that I don’t really put much stock in sight-unseen offers because when people come and see the car, they usually try to bargain down further (“Oh, I didn’t know about the cracked tail light, the dings on the trim,” etc). The fellow said that that wasn’t going to happen and there was something in his demeanor that made me believe him. So I agreed. And then he upped the ante—he said that he’d pay me $150 to deliver the car to him that weekend. This had all the hallmarks of a fool’s errand, but he said without flash or bravado that he was simply a really busy guy living in a nice beach community and wanted to begin enjoying the car. So that weekend my wife and I drove up there in two cars, he handed me the money, I handed him the title and keys, boom, done. Every sale should go like this.

1991 VW Vanagon Carat

I had six Vanagons back in the day. They were wonderful vehicles when my wife and I had our band, as they swallowed more equipment than any other minivan. However, the air-cooled four-cylinder engines were anemic like the VW busses of yore, and the later water-boxer engines suffered from coolant leakage at the cylinder-to-head interface. I became entranced by the idea of installing a 230-horsepower engine from a Subaru SVX. I found a desirable ’91 Vanagon Carat with the slightly lowered suspension, the front air dam, the Weekender package (the fold-out bed but not the stove or pop-top), and a blown engine for a good price down in Rhode Island. I spoke on the phone with the seller, said I’d be down in an hour with cash, and joked, “Please don’t sell it out from under me before I get there,” never thinking that that would actually happen.

I arrived in the parking lot, found the Vanagon, but the seller was nowhere. I called the number I had for him, and there was no answer. I noticed that the “for sale” sign on the car had a different phone number on it. I called it, and the seller answered. I said, “Hey, this is Rob, I’m here in the parking lot next to the Vanagon.” To my stunned surprise, he said, “I sold it.” I was dumbfounded. The guy was going to ghost me. “I just spoke with you an hour ago.” “Sorry, man” was the best he could muster. Looking at seller reviews on Facebook Marketplace, I see that this happens all the time. As a seller, I would never do that to someone.

1973 VW Bus

This is the humorous companion to the Vanagon story. I really hadn’t been looking for another old-school VW bus, as they’re rust-prone vehicles that must be garaged, but a nice-looking bus showed up on Craigslist about 12 years ago up in New Hampshire for a surprisingly low price. I called the guy and asked if I could come right now. “Yes,” he said, “but someone else is on the way, so it might be sold by the time you get here.” “Warned and understood,” I said, “I’ll risk it,” and drove the 90 miles up to NH. As the GPS had me turning onto the seller’s street, my cell rang. The seller said to me “I just sold it.” Incredibly, just as he told me the news, I arrived at his house and saw him talking on his cell (to me) as the buyer was handing him cash. I swung a continuous-motion 180-degree turn across the top of the driveway, made eye contact with both the seller and the buyer, exchanged waves, laughed, and headed home.

1973 BMW Bavaria

During the winter 10 years ago I answered a Craigslist ad in southern Maine for a Bavaria that the seller claimed was rust-free. “Don’t kid a kidder,” I said when I spoke with him. “There is no such thing as a rust-free Bavaria.” He said that it was a former California car that the previous owner only drove to summer events. “The car is in my warehouse on a lift while I’m doing the brakes,” he said. “You can walk under it and see for yourself.” I had nowhere to store the car, and my engineering job was starting to become unstable, so a car purchase was risky, but you never know unless you look, so I drove up there.

The guy handed me a droplight, and sure enough, there was only the most minor surface oxidation on the floor pans. “I know who you are,” the seller said, “and I’d love the car to go to you.” He named a price well under the one in the ad. I said that I was quite interested, but explained about my precarious professional and space issues. “Tell you what,” he said. “Give me a hundred bucks and I’ll hold it for you here ’til spring.” How are you not supposed to take someone up on that? Come spring, however, my job situation became even worse, and I thought that I should do the right thing and bail out of the car. Then I decided that, no, I should go see it again. When I drove back up, the car was down off the lift, outside in the sun, running, and drivable. One spin around the parking lot and I thought, “Yeah, I’m totally buying this car.” I still own it.

2000 Toyota Tacoma

In 2014, my middle son Kyle graduated from the North Carolina School of the Arts, got his first job in South Carolina, and needed a vehicle. He was interested in a small pickup. My wife, my mother, and I went in together on a graduation present. After having a 2004 Tacoma pickup at a used car lot fall through, I found a 2000 two-door RWD Tacoma as a private Craigslist sale. I told the seller I’d meet his asking price if he helped my son register and insure it, as neither of us had a clue what the procedure was in South Carolina. The gentleman was true to his word—the sale, registration, and insurance went off without a hitch. Kyle’s now a metalworker in Santa Fe, New Mexico, still owns the truck, hauls all manner of sculptures and metal stock in it, and frequently finds notes on the windshield that say  “Call me if you ever want to sell this.”

***

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This is a little story about how, no matter how much you plan, something completely unexpected can mess you up, and the only thing that can save you is a simple act of kindness from a stranger. Such was the case 10 years ago.

In the spring of 2014, I took my 1972 BMW 2002tii on a road trip to “MidAmerica 02Fest” in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Although I’d taken road trips in my ’73 3.0CSi to other events, this was the first one I’d taken in a 2002 in 25 years.

Preparation-wise, it got off to a very rocky start. In a previous trip to “The Vintage” event in 2012, the head gasket in a friend’s BMW 2002tii blew. He and another professional mechanic-friend replaced it in the hotel parking lot, but it raised the question of whether a head gasket is a likely-to-fail part in what was then a 40-year-old car, and I became obsessed with the idea that it’d be better to replace the one in my car in the comfort of my own garage than risk roadside failure on the 3000-mile trip to MidAmerica 02Fest. So I did.

The wisdom of this can be debated. While there’s little doubt that a freshly-resurfaced and rebuilt head on a properly-installed fresh head gasket should all but eliminate the specter that said head gasket will fail in East Awfulgosh, you can usually get some degree of warning that a head gasket is failing by doing a leak-down test, looking for oil in the radiator, and checking for exhaust gasses in the coolant.

But I was a man on a preventive maintenance mission, and in I went. While I was in the process of decapitating the 2002tii, a professional wrench friend warned, “Never pull off a head unless you’re prepared to deal with what you find.” It was great advice that, unfortunately, came a little too late, because I found that the cylinder walls had some score marks on them, and what is seen cannot be unseen. I elected to do a block-in-car refresh—drop the oil pan, undo the rod end caps, pull the pistons and rods out, ball-hone the cylinders, re-ring the pistons, replace the rod bearings while you’re in there, put it all back together.

I did all that, but when I was revving up the engine to set the timing, heard an alarming knocking sound. I had little choice but to pull it all back apart. I found that I hadn’t torqued the #4 rod bearing cap down, and one of the nuts had come completely off. The #4 bearing had clearly gotten hammered, so I replaced it. I took the rod and cap into my regular machine shop to check for damage (they were fine).

In the middle of all this, I broke my left foot while walking down the two steps from my attached garage into the basement. I did it stone-cold sober with a spaz misplacement that caused a folding-under of the foot, resulting in a Jones fracture that looked like I had a golf ball surgically implanted under my skin. I didn’t include this in my recent piece about “when cars attack” because it had nothing to do with the car—it was my own clumsiness.

To secure the fracture, they put a little titanium screw in my left foot, but I still wore “das boot” on it to protect it from the pain that came whenever it was jostled. At this point, I had less than a week until I’d need to leave for MidAmerica 02Fest. Getting things together didn’t seem possible with me hobbling around, but I decided to try. I got the car running a few days before the must-depart date. The traditional rule of thumb for a new rebuild is to put 500 miles on it while varying the speed but laying off wide-open throttle, then change the oil, and then stand on it, but there wasn’t time. I needed to know now if my motor was going to grenade, so in the 270 miles I put on it, I got on it pretty good. And yes, fortunately I found that I could still operate the clutch pedal with “das boot” on.

I changed the oil the night before departure, adjusted the valves in the morning when they were dead cold, and hit the road.

OK, I’ll admit that none of the above really has anything directly to do with the act of grace that happened next, but as a trial lawyer will say, “It goes to frame of mind.”

So here’s what happened. The first day of the trip had a few small hiccups that required minor rest area intervention—a loose fan belt and a loud rumble that I traced to the A/C compressor bracket having loosened up. I stayed that night at a Motel 6 somewhere in Ohio, fueling up first so I wouldn’t have to do it in the morning. So far so good.

Mid-morning of the second day of the trip, I pulled into a convenience store to fuel up, and for the life of me I couldn’t find my wallet. I checked all the reasonable places—in my backpack, in the glovebox, on the floor, under the seats, between the seats and the transmission tunnel—and nothing. I found the receipt for the hotel room the night before and asked if I’d left it in the room, and they said they didn’t have it. I didn’t get a receipt for the gas station the night before, so there was no way to call and ask if I’d left it there. For someone who sweats the details on tools and spare parts for a road trip, I suddenly realized what a precarious situation I was in not having a spare credit card or spare cash located somewhere other than in the AWOL wallet.

My first thought was that I needed to drive to the closest Bank of America (where I have my main account), present my charming but identification-bereft self and say, “I’ll take any ID test you want, but please give me some of my money.” At the time, I think I still had an internet-connected flip phone, the kind where you had to hit a key three times to select a character to spell a word. Here in New England, you can’t throw a 10mm socket without hitting a Bank of America branch, but after I fumbled my way through the branch locator on this not-yet-a-real-smartphone, I found that the nearest one was 250 miles away in Cincinnati. And at present, I didn’t even have the gas to get there.

Well, crap.

I did, however, have my checkbook, as that was in my backpack. I took the checkbook and a copy of my book Memoirs of a Hack Mechanic as it showed me on the cover with the very car I had at the gas pump, went inside, talked with the girl at the register, and held up the book and pointed at the pump as if it was some kind of ID and asked if I could pay for the fill-up by check. (All ginned up on whatever drug the brain secretes when you lose your wallet and realize you’ve got a big problem, I probably said something very close to “Hi. My name’s Rob Siegel. I lost my wallet. But I’m a writer. See? This is me. And that’s the car. So you can trust me.”)

Not surprisingly, the girl looked at me like I was from Mars. Of course, I am from Mars, but there was no way she’d know that.

However, the other cashier—a woman a few years older—heard the near-desperation in my voice and asked, “Can I see the check?” She looked at me and the checkbook, and made a decision. “I can help you,” she said. “Come on outside with me.”

We went to the pump, she took out a credit card, swiped it, and I filled the tank with an even $50 of high-test. I thanked her profusely. I looked at the generic-sounding “Quik Mark” or whatever the sign in front of the building said, cocked my head at it, and asked her, “Do I make the check out to them?”

She surprised me when she said “No, Megan Smith.” [It’s not really Smith; the name has been changed to protect the innocent.]

Slowly the light bulb went on: She wasn’t swiping a business card for the convenience store. It was her credit card. She was personally trusting me and spotting me the tank of gas. I stumbled out a big emotional thank you, hugged her, and in the “For” field on the bottom of the check, wrote “Being a saint.”

We said our goodbyes, and I pulled the 2002tii away from the pump and into a parking spot. Before I drove 250 miles—which wasn’t directly on the way to Eureka Springs—I wanted to be absolutely certain the wallet wasn’t somewhere in the car. I tore everything apart again, probably the fourth time I’d done so. This time, I dumped the entire contents of every compartment of my backpack out onto the floor, and out dropped the wallet. I have no idea what crevice it had been hiding in, but clearly it was not part of the known universe.

With the wallet now in hand, I pulled out $50 in cash, ran back inside, found Megan, gave the universal “God I am such an idiot” eye roll and hand gesture, handed her the cash, and she handed me back the check. I thanked her for the third time, and headed off to Eureka Springs.

But not before taking one of the credit cards out of my wallet and putting it in my glove box, a habit I follow to this day on every road trip.

The rest of the trip, both the drive down, the event itself, and the trip back, were wonderful. If you’ve never attended a car event that’s entirely dedicated to your specific make and model, it’s a thing of beauty, both the snaking line of the cars themselves on a windy road, and a room full of like-minded wackos who all share your peculiar passion.

And, since I’d traveled farther than anyone else, I won the coveted “Iron Butt” trophy.

But the real prize, the thing I’ll remember my entire life, was the interaction at the convenience store. I’ve held onto the check, as it’s a keepsake, one of those lovely reminders of what a wonderful thing it is to the recipient of grace, generosity, kindness, and trust. I’d forgotten where I’d put it, but by utter coincidence, I ran across it this week while looking for … not my wallet, but an infrequently-used credit card that I’d removed from my wallet.

So, Ms. “Smith,” if you read this and recognize the story, and you’re ever in the Boston area and lose your wallet or run out of gas or, really, need anything, I’ve got your back.

***

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Several years ago, I wrote a series of detailed pieces on relays (you can find them here: part 1, 2, 3, and 4). I explained how a relay is nothing more than a remote-controlled switch that turns something on and off without having to have a large amount of current running into the passenger compartment. The common example is the little square headlight or fan relay that turns on the high beams or the A/C condenser fan by pulling the current through a thick wire connected directly to the battery instead of through the thin wires from the toggle switch that turns it on.

To summarize: All relays have a low-current side and a high-current side. The low-current side turns on and off a small electromagnet. The high-current side has the actual switch contacts. As I described in my original pieces, by far the most common type of relay is the single-pole-single-throw (SPST) relay with four terminals. One terminal of the electromagnet is fed 12 volts, the other is grounded. When current flows through the electromagnet, the magnetic field pulls the contacts in the switch together, connecting the two high-current terminals to each other.

There is a numerical shorthand applied to the terminals on a relay. It’s originally a German “DIN” standard notation, but it eventually was adopted by nearly all manufacturers. The DIN standard numbering for a common four-terminal SPST is:

High-current side (the device you want to turn on)

Terminal 30  |  12V from battery (fused)

Terminal 87  |  12V to device

Low-current side (the electromagnet)

Terminal 86  |  12V from switched power

Terminal 85  |  Ground

So, use beefy, high-gauge wires to connect terminal 30 to battery power and terminal 87 to the thing you want to turn on (the electric fan, the fog lights, whatever). Then use thin, low-gauge wires to connect the input of a toggle switch to power and the output to terminal 86. Connect terminal 85 to ground. Flip the toggle switch, and low current will flow through the electromagnet to ground, energizing it. That will pull the connections 30 and 87 together, causing high current to flow to your fan or fog lights. Neat, huh?

What I didn’t include in those articles years back was the neat method to figure out which terminal on the relay is which if the labels are illegible due to age.

It’s very simple. Basically, you determine by trial-and-error which pair of terminals belong to the electromagnet. The other pair are therefore the terminals on the high-current side. Within the low and high-current sides, the terminals are actually interchangeable—that is, it really doesn’t matter if 86 is connected to 12V and 85 goes to ground or vice-versa, and the same is true for 30 and 87.

There are two ways to determine which terminals belong to the electromagnet. In both, you use the fact that if you mentally label the four terminals as 1, 2, 3, and 4, you’ll see that there are a total of six combinations to try (1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 2-3, 2-4, 3-4).

Way 1: Use a multimeter

Take a multimeter, set it to measure resistance, and use the two probes to find the pair of terminals that have continuity between them. That is, if you’re measuring the resistance across anything other than 86 and 85, there should be no internal connection, so there will be zero continuity, so the multimeter will read “0L” for “over limit,” but when measuring across 86 and 85, it’ll measure the resistance of the windings of the electromagnet, which is usually in the 50-to-100-ohm range.

Once you’ve found 86 and 85, the other two terminals are 30 and 87. Note that if you happen to find a pair of terminals whose resistance is very low, like about one ohm, you’ve found the high-current pair, and they’re either stuck in the closed position, or the relay is a “normally closed” type instead of “normally open.”

Way 2: Hear the electromagnet click

If you don’t have a multimeter, take a pair of wires, each with a female quick-connect connector (commonly but mistakenly referred to as a “spade” connector) on one end and exposed wire at the other end. Connect them to any two of the relay’s terminals. Then touch the end of one wire to battery positive, the other to battery negative. It doesn’t matter which goes where, as either polarity will energize the electromagnet. Go through all six combinations. When you find the pair for 86 and 85, you’ll hear the contacts inside the relay click as the little electromagnet pulls them closed and click again when you release the wires.

Testing that you’ve gotten it right: Now that you’ve found the electromagnet contacts 86 and 85, and thus know that the two remaining ones are 30 and 87, you can actually test the relay as follows. You put a multimeter set to measure resistance across 30 and 87, verify that there’s no continuity (that it reads “0L” for “over limit”), touch the wires from 86 and 85 to battery positive and negative to pull the contacts together close the relay’s internal switch, and verify that the resistance between 30 and 87 has dropped to about one ohm.

Note that, as with 86 and 85, in practice, with a simple relay, it really doesn’t matter which one is 30 and which is 87, as it’s just a simple contact switch. If, however, the relay is in a modern computer-controlled fuel-injected car, it may have one or more diodes in it for noise suppression, in which case polarity is important. In this case, though, the relay is unlikely to be 50 years old, and the labels on it are likely to be readable.

The beauty of this technique is that even if the relay is a five-terminal single-pole double-throw relay that toggles between two devices, it still works. There’s still absolutely no internal connection between the low-current and high-current circuits, and there’s still only one internal electromagnet. Once you determine which pair of terminals is 86 and 85, the remaining terminals are for the high-current side, and by checking their resistance in pairs, you can determine which pair is normally open and which is normally closed.

So, if, like me, you have a collection of old relays in a box in the garage and want to install one in your vintage car to turn on a set of new old stock Marchal driving lights—and still have the engine compartment look like it’s free of components purchased from Pep Boys—but you can’t read the numbers, in just a few minutes you can figure it out.

But don’t touch my stuff.

***

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As I’m not wrenching much this winter (a situation caused by not really having a proper winter project, as well as using that as an opportunity to give my nagging back injury a chance to heal), I thought I’d write about the spectrum of wounds, cautionary tactics, near misses, and emergency room visits that the decades of wrenching have produced. Considering the amount of wrenching I’ve done over the past 45 years, I’ve had surprisingly few serious injuries—no ambulances have visited my house. But there has been blood and one near catastrophe.

Cautionary Tactics

Racers talk about losing their judgement when the red mist (adrenaline) flows and they begin doing things they know they shouldn’t do. When you’re removing some stuck bolt or recalcitrant component, it’s easy to get influenced by “mechanic’s red mist” and go all Cole Trickle on it (“This part is goin’ DOWN!”). Because of both impaired judgement and the larger forces at play when you’re pushing or pulling hard, this is when you’re likely to hurt yourself. For example, when gripping on a wrench or a ratchet handle and pushing it to loosen a bolt, if the ratchet slips or the bolt breaks, it’s the back of your hand that’s likely to smack against something sharp or pointy. The tendons back there are very close to the surface; you can plainly see them whenever you flex your fingers. Pushing a wrench or ratchet with the open palm of your hand instead of the closed fist can make the difference between a few stitches versus surgery and months of physical therapy.

Helicoptering up a bit, it’s good to be in the habit of approaching any repair with a degree of situational awareness. What are the hazards in the area you’re about to stick your hands into? Are there jagged edges? Hot hoses? Frayed wires or ends of cables that can cause a painful puncture that gets infected? Are there rotating parts you need to be aware of? Is the thing that you’re removing going to drop down and pin your hand? Simply taking a moment and scoping this stuff out is time well spent.

The phrase “gas and spark” is often used to describe the necessary precursors for an internal combustion engine to run, but it’s also a cautionary phrase, as you really don’t want these things combined outside of the engine’s combustion chamber. Spilled or leaking gas can easily be ignited by a stray spark from either an electrical connection being made or broken, or cutting something with a spinning wheel. So don’t, for example, use a Dremel tool to cut a metal clamp off a fuel hose.

But that’s all small stuff. In my opinion, the most serious vector for automotive injuries is jacking up a car and working under it. I believe I’ve told the story on these pages about how my physics professor for my sophomore mechanics class (and part of mechanics is statics—the study of the forces on things that aren’t moving) was killed when his car fell on him, forever imprinting on me that intelligence and common sense don’t necessarily go hand in hand. To be fair, I don’t know the details of what went wrong, but ever since that event, I’ve “double-jacked” cars. That is, if you’re going to crawl under a car, be sure to put it on a hard level surface (concrete, not asphalt, and definitely not hot asphalt), jack it up, position the jack stands, let it down onto the stands, and then leave the floor jack in place as a backup.

Near-Misses

There are five that stand out.

The lift incident: By far the scariest thing that ever happened to me while fixing cars was the time my mid-rise lift nearly killed me. A chain of three unlikely events—the design of the lift that makes it possible to defeat the safety latch (the thing that supports the weight of the car mechanically instead of relying on the hydraulic pressure in the cylinders), my having flipped that latch and not flipped it back into the auto-lock position, and, while I was under the car, my legs having accidentally kicked one of the car’s removed wheels, by pure chance sending it rolling into the lift’s pressure release lever—caused the hydraulics to depressurize and the lift to slowly drop while I was under it. Fortunately, I was under the back of the car, and due to it coming to a stop on its brake drums, there was enough space that my chest cavity didn’t get crushed. (You can read the details in the link above.)

At the time, I was stoic about it and simply finished the repair, but with hindsight, I could’ve been killed, and I’d be lying if I said that that didn’t rattle me. Obviously I no longer move the latch from its auto-lock position, and I’m assiduously careful to make certain that, when a car is on the lift, the lift is resting on one of the stops and not on hydraulic pressure.

The jack incident: While not nearly as serious as the lift incident, the jack incident viscerally demonstrated the importance of jack safety. On a hot late-summer day, I drove down to Cape Cod to have a look at a BMW 5 Series wagon. I met the seller in a CVS parking lot. I noticed that the lot was asphalt and had a very slight grade but didn’t think too much of it. I’d brought a medium-sized aluminum floor jack to check for front-end play, so I slid it under the nose of the car, found the jack point under the subframe, and gave it a few pumps to get the front wheels high enough to wiggle. As I was checking the first wheel, the seller said, “Look out, look out, LOOK OUT!” The combination of the jack sinking into the hot, malleable asphalt and the slight grade caused the car to topple off the jack and toward me. I was never in real danger—I was wiggling the wheel with no part of me under the car—but it alarmed both of us. Whenever I think about swapping a wheel with a car supported by only a jack, I remember this incident, and reconsider.

The wiper linkage that pinned my wrist: Decades ago, I was troubleshooting the non-functional windshield wipers on my BMW 3.0CSi. Doing so required me to pull the multi-prong plug off the wiper motor, turn the key to the accessories setting, switch on the wipers, and check for voltage and ground at the connector using a multimeter. When I was done, I pushed the connector back onto the wiper motor, which rewarded my efforts by suddenly springing to life. When it spun, it rotated the wiper linkage, which pinned my wrist against the piece of metal that the wiper motor mounts to. I’ve recreated the event in the photo below, which was instructive because the way I remembered it, it was the act of reaching in and plugging the connector back in that put my wrist in a position where it could’ve gotten pinned, but now I see that that’s highly unlikely. Regardless of exactly how it happened, my wrist was pinned, and the motor was still on.

The incident occurred in the late 1980s when my wife and I were still living at my mother’s house in Brighton. I stood there, watching my hand turn white as the unrelenting torque of the wiper motor cut off the blood flow and stood a good chance at slicing open my wrist, but because the garage was on street level and the house was a flight up from the sidewalk and my wife’s and my apartment was up on the third floor, my calls for help went unanswered. Fortunately, while looking around the engine compartment, I saw a wrench within reach, and I was able to use it to undo the negative battery cable, which killed the power to the wiper motor. Even with the power cut, though, it took quite a bit of wiggling to extricate my hand, and when I did, the crease on my wrist looked like a dull guillotine blade had bounced off it.

The vise that attacked my foot: I was installing a new exhaust in my car, replacing every piece except the catalytic converter. Unfortunately, one of the bolts holding the cat to the resonator was frozen in the flange and needed to be drilled out. At the time I didn’t own a drill press, so I put the cat in my car, changed into summer clothes, drove into work, and used the drill press there. I clamped the flange into a vise that sat on the flat surface of the drill-press table. The vise wasn’t secured to the table, though; it was free to move, allowing you to line up the drill bit with its target.

Drilling out a bolt is slow work, I got impatient, the mechanic’s red mist got the best of me, and I leaned a little harder on the drill press lever. I saw a little whisp of smoke, heard a little chirp from the bit, and then the bit grabbed the flange, causing both the catalytic converter and the vise to rotate and throw themselves on the floor. They landed about six inches from my left foot. As I looked down, I saw that I was wearing sandals. IDIOT!

Emergency Room Visits

It’s the two head wounds that rise above the background of hand stitches and metal filings and rust removed from my eye. Head wounds, of course, generate a lot of blood, making them very dramatic. And these two incidents were just so stupid.

Chevy Suburban rear hatch: The gas struts on the rear hatch of my 2000 Suburban were getting weak, resulting in the hatch slowly closing after you raised it. I replaced one of them, smiled to see that the hatch was now holding itself up, reached inside the truck to get the second strut, didn’t expect the hatch to begin sagging during those few seconds, turned around, and the corner of the lowered hatch caught me right across the scalp line. I grabbed a handful of paper towels, mashed it against the wound, and staggered toward the house. A few minutes later my wife and kids arrived home to find me sitting on the front stoop with blood dripping from my face. “Father down!” I said. “Father needs assistance!” My wife looked at it and said, “Hospital, now.” (photo above)

The vicious driveshaft: I don’t work on other people’s cars for money, but I do favors for friends. The problem is that the more often you do this, the more you open up the possibility of something going wrong. In this case, prior to a road trip, one of my traveling companions asked if I could revive the A/C system in his BMW 2002. A pressure test revealed a single bad o-ring, so with a pump-down and a recharge, he had a cold car. But when we test-drove it, I noticed a very large amount of play in the shift lever. Tightening it up is usually a quick repair, so I put the car up on the lift and crawled under it while he moved the shift lever around. There are two metal-and-rubber bushings holding the shift platform to the back of the transmission, and the Allen-head bolt holding one of them had backed its way out. This was the left-hand bolt, which is usually the one that you’re able to get an Allen-key socket onto by using a wobble extension, but there was something about the five-speed installation in this particular car that made accessing that bolt difficult. Plus I could see that the hex hole was stripped. So to get at the bolt and replace it, the front of the driveshaft needed to be dropped.

It was the end of a long day of wrenching, and I was on automatic pilot. I undid the bolts securing the driveshaft’s center support bearing, and the three holding the giubo (the rubber flex disc) to the flange on the back of the transmission. I began lowering the driveshaft but immediately found that it hit the exhaust. Fortunately, the bolts holding the resonator to the exhaust headpipe weren’t seized. Unfortunately, as soon as the resonator was lowered, the center of the driveshaft dropped with it, which freed the front of the driveshaft to swing down and clonk me right in the face, just above my left eye.

Garage wounds fall into three categories (emphasis on the gory): 1. Press on regardless, 2. Non-urgent car ride to urgent care clinic or emergency room, or 3. Ambulance. I asked my wife to triage me. “It’s not awful,” she said, “but it’ll need stitches.” I asked her to call and find out the hours and the co-pay of the nearest urgent care facility and to put a gauze pad and tape over the wound so I could finish the repair, which only took about 15 minutes. My friend graciously paid the quoted $35 co-pay, and we joked about whether a medical facility had a standardized insurance code for “hit in the face by a driveshaft.” (A doctor-friend later told me that the code is likely W20.8xxA, “struck by thrown, projected, or falling object,” along with Y92.015, “private garage of single-family house as the place of occurrence of the external cause.” He then joked, “For completeness sake, I would probably add Z74.3: Need for continuous supervision.”)

That’s most of it. Except for the time I ran over my own foot, but I think I’ll stay mum on the details. I mean a guy has to have some secrets.

***

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There are several strikes against my 1996 Winnebago Rialta (a Volkswagen Eurovan with a Winnebago camper body). The primary one is that early ones like this have the 105-horsepower, five-cylinder Audi engine, making them as snail-slow as the VW Westfalia campers of old. Another is that this particular one is a bit, well, ratty. The white paint and the decals on the metal and fiberglass surfaces are in shabby shape, and it’s missing the spare tire cover and the rear bumper corner pieces.

However, part of its charm is its interior color scheme. Our Rialta is outfitted with a fabric that Winnebago called “Bauhaus,” which I believe was only available in these early five-cylinder rigs. You can argue whether the artistic term Bauhaus, which refers to a rational functional design aesthetic and is best known from architect Walter Gropius’ minimalist houses, really applies to this fabric or whether it has more of a Picasso-Kandinsky-Miro vibe, but it’s certainly unique.

Part of the history of my buying the Rialta is that I wanted a small, inexpensive, fuel-efficient RV, but looking at the cheap end of the market means seeing a lot of ads for rigs with dark paneled interiors that look like a meth lab or a porn studio. When I learned about the Rialta, with its lighter-colored European-feeling interior, then found this Rialta and its Bauhaus fabric in my price range, I loved it, as did my wife Maire Anne.

Unfortunately, the RV’s front seats were torn from road wear. Maire Anne is an avid quilter and seamstress, and she looked for replacement fabric, but it appears to be long out of production, so we put seat covers on them.

Plus, the slipcovers on our twin rear mattresses were missing. So what remains intact of the original Bauhaus interior is the seat at the fold-out table, and the accent pieces on the walls and near the ceiling. Still, it’s very cool.

Fast-forward six years. A week before this past Christmas, Maire Anne saw a Facebook post on the “Newton Free Stuff” page. It said “Well-used loveseat sleep sofa (full-size mattress). Must be out on Thursday.” She showed it to me, and we both gasped, as the sofa was unmistakably covered in Bauhaus fabric. We both had the same thought—it’d be great if we could cherry-pick the back cushions, as we could use them to lean against when watching TV in bed in the RV. Maire Anne messaged the owner “I hope this sofa-bed finds a home, but if no one else wants it, and you’re going to discard it, I would love the two large back pillows. The fabric is identical to something I own. Thanks.”

Two days before Christmas, the owner replied to Maire Anne: “The sofa with pillows is on the curb outside my house. Help yourself!” Out the door I ran.

If I was going to grab the back pillows, it made sense to also grab the bottom cushions as well, even if we weren’t sure what to use them for. I wasn’t sure how big they all were, so I almost drove the Rialta itself, as it’s currently the only large vehicle I own, but it had already become landlocked at the end of the driveway for the winter. So I took my wife’s little Honda Fit, whose rear hatch and fold-down rear seats can swallow a lot.

I drove about 10 minutes to another part of Newton, crested a hill, and there was the sofa, looking like a beached Bauhaus whale by the curb. I wish I’d taken a photo of its unmolested puffy Bauhaus curbside splendor, but I had other Christmas errands to run. The cushions from the loveseat-sized sofa were smaller than I expected and fit easily in the back of the little Honda. I stashed and dashed.

When I got home, I transferred the cushions into the Rialta, and marveled at the absolutely perfect match of the fabric. There wasn’t even a noticeable difference from sun exposure.

I showed this to Maire Anne, and we were both oddly giddy. While there clearly wasn’t enough fabric to make slipcovers for the mattresses (and even if there was, it wasn’t obvious whether we should cover the original mattresses themselves or the deliciously comfortable Tempur-Pedic toppers we had over them), we began thinking about reupholstering the front seats.

And then, like an old married couple who thinks the same thoughts and completes each other’s sentences, we both wondered if maybe we should go and strip more fabric off the sofa before the truck comes to take it to the big dump in the sky. We should at least pull the big piece off the back.

Now, you have to appreciate that this was two days before Christmas, my wife had cardiac surgery this summer, and while she’s doing great, she rations her energy and chooses her activities appropriately. But there was something about this idea that instantly clicked with both car-guy-me and fabric-girl-her. The owner’s “Help yourself” message could’ve been construed as a green light to strip the sofa (the fact that it was out on the curb meant that it was already scheduled for disposal), but in the tony suburb of Newton, you don’t want to be wrong about this. After all, I’d hate to repay an act of generosity by having someone mad at me for leaving a shredded sofa carcass on the sidewalk with its stuffing blowing in the breeze.

So I messaged the owner and confirmed that we could strip the fabric. Maire Anne grabbed her fabric shears (though not “the good ones”), I took a single-edged razor blade and my Swiss army knife, we jumped into the Fit, and shot back over to the curbside couch.

Initially I tried to pry the fabric-upholstered panel off the back, but the density of staples that held it on was formidable. So we both began cutting. It didn’t take long to remove the back piece.

At this point, the owners came out of their house. We explained how the fabric was the same as the “Bauhaus” design of our little Volkswagen Eurovan-based RV. They found this interesting, as the wife’s brother was into vintage VW busses. Rather than being annoyed at someone ripping up their old sofa by the side of the curb, they were gratified by the thought that the fabric would live on.

Although we’d ostensibly come just for the big fabric piece on the back of the sofa, the weather was good and the sun was still up, so we kept going, systematically denuding the couch of the other big pieces.

The odd thing was that, a few weeks prior, I’d watched the Ken Burns two-part series The American Buffalo about the horrific near-extinction of the bison. Images of slaughtered buffalo stripped of their hides and left to rot on the plains were still fresh in my mind as I reached into the couch’s crevices to cut the inner side pieces. Fortunately, this was the closest I’d ever come to skinning something that’s the last of its kind.

It’s still likely not enough fabric to make slipcovers for the mattresses, but it’s enough to recover several sets of seats. That’s important because I posted a photo of the curb-find Bauhaus sofa on a Rialta forum, so I’m now not the only one who has interest in the unobtanium fabric.

Someone on the Rialta forum commented, “What are the odds?” It’s true. Having a) someone local own a Bauhaus-pattern sofa, b) offer it for free, c) Maire Anne see the ad and recognize the fabric, d) her request to take only the pillows acceded to, and e) the owners not balk at our request to strip the fabric off was an astonishingly narrow series of needles to thread.

Of course, looked at another way, absent the Rialta’s connection to the fabric, the odds that owners would tire of a sofa like this, that there would be no takers even for free, and that it would need to be disposed of were pretty high.

But of all the things I’ve parted out, this was the cleanest, the lightest, and the most colorful.

And the only one where my wife was excited to help.

***

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Having written about the purchase of the 2008 Silverado 3500HD duallie Duramax diesel, the de-mousing of the truck, the eventual sale of the truck, and missing the truck once it was gone, you wouldn’t think I could get another column out of it. And you’d be wrong. It’s like the truck equivalent of the Hanukkah menorah—it burned for not one article, but eight.

One last time for those in the cheap seats: I bought the 29,000-mile truck from my former employer when they largely abandoned it with a building closure. Mice had gotten into it and their excretory excesses in the truck’s headliner made for very dramatic photographs of its deteriorated condition. Since it was my former geophysics work vehicle, I knew bloody well what it was, but no one else left in my division of the company did—it was just a line on an inventory sheet for which they balked at paying monthly storage fees. So I made them an insanely low offer. They accepted it, I brought the truck home, largely de-moused it, and had the biggest, baddest tow-vehicle-stuff-mover on the planet.

But I never really used the truck the way I imagined. I towed a few of my own cars back and forth to storage with it but never used it to drop everything and run off, buy, and drag home a barn-find prize before someone else got it. It began to feel ridiculous owning a super-duty vehicle like this when most of its use was running cardboard boxes down to the local recycling depo, and its awful turning radius and low visibility from the wonderful-when-you-use-it-but-in-the-way-when-you-don’t utility body made it feel like using an assault rifle to hunt squirrels. Plus, the combination of the remnant rodent smell, the poor gas mileage, and the high cost of diesel meant that we never used it as a “family vehicle”—it only left the driveway if I needed to move something, which wasn’t often.

So I sold it. All in (purchase, taxes, tires, replacement of the stolen catalytic converter, and lift pump), I had maybe six grand in it, and I sold it for $30K. It is the only time in my life I’ve ever made windfall money on a vehicle. I don’t regret the decision one iota (my bank account thanked me profusely), but almost as soon as the truck was gone, I felt its absence, both in terms of hypothetical towing as well as not being able to do trivial things like run out and pick up a free Tempur-Pedic bed.

The surprising thing is the degree to which I’ve waffled on replacing it. I’m usually very surgical about this sort of thing. I analyze a need, make a decision, and act quickly on it, which generally translates into picking up the cheapest version of what’s available (hey, all this content doesn’t just generate itself). Initially I gravitated toward looking at Honda Ridgelines in the $4000 range, but then the whole thing ran into molasses.

It’s taken me a while to grok why I’ve been so slow on the uptake. I think I’ve got it figured out. And hence you get one more piece on my curious thought process.

Here’s the story. I’ve long joked that a car person needs seven cars. They are: Your daily driver, your spouse’s daily (which is also probably the family hauler), the pampered classic, the tow monster/beach truck, the track go-cart, the ragtop roadster for sunny Sundays, and whatever the current project car happens to be. Makes sense, right?

In truth, that slot for the tow monster/beach truck began as 100 percent beach truck. For almost 30 years, I took my family on a big beach vacation on Nantucket. You need a four-wheel-drive vehicle to reach the fishing spots on the peninsulas of Great Point and Smith Point, so I got into the habit of buying a beat-up Suburban in late spring (nothing comes close to the people-and-cargo-carrying capability of a seventh-generation ’Burb, though I did eventually roll into eighth- and ninth-gen vehicles), doing whatever maintenance was needed, taking it on vacation, selling it when it was over, and repeating the process the following year. Why not hold onto the truck year-round? Well, insurance costs money, driveway space was at a premium in those days, and selling one of our other cars was out of the question because neither my wife nor I wanted to daily-drive something that big. The realization that I could also use the Suburbans to tow came when my garage finally got built in 2006—I suddenly had both garage space and driveway space for more cars, and their numbers began their steady climb.

Not long after that, my old engineering job bought the Silverado 3500HD work truck, so if I was between Suburbans and needed to tow something, it was available for occasional loan. In later years, I did begin keeping a ‘Burb registered year-round and began to appreciate how useful it was if we needed to, say, go down to The Sears Outlet and buy a scratch-and-dent refrigerator, and obviously for smaller stuff-moving like buying Recaro seats or sets of wheels and tires.

The point is that I was never towing a travel trailer, nor was I a track junkie who had a dedicated need to tow a race car every weekend. The Suburbans could haul the U-Haul auto transporters with small to mid-size BMWs on them, and that was fine. I never evaluated my towing needs and went out and researched and purchased a dedicated tow vehicle—it was always either the works-fine Suburban beach vehicle or the borrowed massive-overkill work truck.

So, with that history, what is it that I want NOW? Is it another truck like the one I just sold—something specifically for towing cars and moving stuff and with mileage so low that it’s likely to be reliable for years? Having bought and then sold the Silverado, the odds that I’m going to find another duallie diesel tow monster—with less than 30K miles and a utility body that would hold three refrigerators—for $6000 are less than zero.

No, it isn’t that. If I wanted that, I wouldn’t have sold the truck.

Is it another Suburban, something that i can use to take eight people out onto soft sand and still have room for suitcases and coolers behind the third row seats? No, it isn’t that either. The big family beach vacations are long over. I have no need to haul that many people and cargo on sand or asphalt.

Or is it something more Swiss-army-knife-like, something I can use as a daily driver but also tow with? Maybe, but I tried that before—with the triple-unicorn 2004 BMW X5 six-speed with both the sport package and the tow package that I bought shortly before the pandemic, and I was glad when I sold it and went back to daily-driving my 2003 E39 530i sedan.

Although the X5 experiment failed, it was instructive to look back on what I wrote about buying it. I’d forgotten that one of the things that kicked off the purchase was this comment from my wife: “I miss having a Suburban. The stuff we used to be able to pick up in those things was great.” However, the last Suburban I owned had brake-line rot issues that plague late-1990s through mid-2000s Chevy trucks, and most of the cheap ’Burbs I looked at had the same problem. I briefly looked at inexpensive high-mileage Toyota Sequoia and Nissan Armada SUVs, but I found that they have the same frame and trailing arm rust issues as their Tacoma and Titan truck brethren.

It was that combination of events that sent me to looking at BMW X5s. The V-8s 4.4-liter vehicles are better tow vehicles than the straight six 3.0s, but the sixes were available with a stick, though they’re rare. It was the lightning-strike event of finding a six-speed car that also had both the tow package and the sport package; its interior looked uncannily similar to my 530i. The car had 270,000 miles on it, but fact that it had lived most of its life in North Carolina and Florida, was about 10 miles from me, had had a ton of recent maintenance, and had a $4000 asking price got me to go see it. In person, it looked practically new inside and out, and I snagged it for $3300. In other words, the whole exercise was more “How can I pass up this cool vehicle at this price?” than it was a well-considered solution to a towing problem. Plus, at that point I still could borrow the work truck if I needed it.

If you look above, you’ll notice that what I considered, looked at, and bought were all SUVs. No pickups. That’s not accidental. I’m really not a truck guy. I don’t need a truck. I don’t have repeating needs to move dirt or bricks or gravel or construction debris or 4×8-foot sheets of plywood or drywall. The original vector into towing wasn’t a need to move stuff—it was a need to move people.

Once I understood why my focus on what could replace the Silverado 3500HD was cloudy, I began to think of it another way. My daily is the 530i, which is a rear-wheel drive vehicle. My wife’s is a front-wheel 2013 Honda Fit. Both cars are shod with snows on all four corners in the winter, and thus are fine, as we live in suburban Boston, not northern Vermont. If there’s an honest-to-goodness Biblical snow event (as opposed to the local weather report’s OH GOD RUN FROM THE KILLER SNOWSTORM hype), we wait to go out until our son has shoveled the driveway and the streets have been plowed. It’s not hardship. So on paper it’s a forced fit to say we should own a big tow-capable 4WD SUV so that we’d have something “safe” to drive in winter weather, much less gas one up year-round as a daily driver.

However, maybe the X5 experiment wasn’t a failure after all. I work from home, and my wife is retired, so we don’t have the commuting needs that might tip us toward a more all-weather-capable vehicle. However, my wife is a passionate quilter, and attends regular quilting and sewing events, including winter retreats up in New Hampshire. If a storm moves in, I would feel better with her driving something with 4WD (and yes, something larger than the little Honda Fit). If I bought a truck, she’d be unlikely to drive it, but a mid-size SUV? Maybe that’s the tack to take. Find something like a facelifted first-gen Toyota Sequoia. That’s small enough that she’d feel comfortable driving it, big enough to put stuff in without being Suburban-sized (let’s face it—I’m not muscling any more Sears scratch-and-dent refrigerators into and out of vehicles), and tow-capable without being a tow monster. Maybe I can thread the needle and find one without the frame rust, without crazy mileage on it, and in the same price bracket that the X5 was (I often joke that I do my best work around $4000).

I’m a man with a plan. We’ll see how it plays out.

***

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A few weeks ago I wrote about lessons learned when I stepped outside my usual risk-averse “I generally don’t buy cars I’m not familiar with, and I almost never buy cars I can’t personally inspect” wheelhouse.

I can’t believe that I forgot The Lama.

In 2014, I bought a very nice, very original, nearly rust-free E30 3-Series BMW 325is. I kept it for a few years, did some light sorting on it, and when I lost my job in 2017, I sold it and took a profit. In retrospect, it was too early. E30 prices were really on the upswing. Had I waited, I could’ve taken a really nice profit. I tried to get into another E30 to flip and augment my unemployment, but by that time the word was out.

However, E28 5-Series BMWs were also on the rise and didn’t have quite the same premium as the E30 3-Series cars. So in the summer of 2018, I bought a 1987 BMW E28 535i sight-unseen in Tampa. The ad said, “Unmolested rare 1987 BMW 535i 5 speed transmission, has only 133,000 miles. Rare find, especially with a manual gearbox, Lama interior. This car does run and drive but needs tune up and front brakes. Does have minor surface rust and driver’s seat needs repair, car is all power and everything works. 100% original, no modifications were done to this E28 except for new fuel tank, fuel pump & filter, new sensors were also changed out. Great candidate for full restoration, great bones. No accident history. $2250 obo.” (And yes, BMW spells the interior color “Lama” with one L.)

The cell phone pics in the Craigslist ad were poor, but the car appeared to be intact, other than a few isolated rust bubbles at the bottom of one door and around the sunroof. The seller and I chatted on the phone. He said the car had belonged to a gentleman who passed away. The car then sat in the family’s garage for five years. The seller bought it and began sorting it out (hence the fuel system work) but then found another project. He sent me the VIN, I ran a CarFax, and it came up clean, showing that the car had lived in Florida its entire life.

I told the seller that I’d consider flying down and road-tripping the car home (after all, I’d recently completed the Ran When Parked adventure of buying a dead 2002tii, reviving it, and driving it back). He said that the car was sitting on its original dry-rotted TRX tires, and at a minimum that would need to be addressed. Plus, he said that the car was running rough, that the brake pedal sometimes sank to the floor, and that since he posted the ad, he noticed that the car was leaking a little antifreeze. Still, running and driving beats dead every day and twice on Sunday. I did some reconnaissance—I found that round-trip flights on Spirit were $110 (meaning that I could fly down, look at the car, and fly home if I didn’t like what I saw), and I spoke with an old colleague of mine, who lived in Tampa, about the possibility of camping out there for a few days while I gave the car what it needed.

After a few more calls with the seller (in which I remotely diagnosed the coolant leak as something trivial and joked that I was undercutting my bargaining position) it was clear he just needed the car gone. We put together a deal—I paid him $1400, which included him having the car towed to my friend Al’s house. Al isn’t a car guy, but he was certainly capable of driving the car and telling me what he found. He said that the brake pedal did initially go to the floor, but firmed up with repeated pumping, which sounded like either air in the brake lines or a bad master cylinder. However, he also reported that there was a loud rattling noise.

The gears began turning in my head. It sounded like a mini-Ran-When-Parked was in order. Have a master cylinder, spark plugs, belts, and a just-in-case water pump drop-shipped to Al’s house, buy a round-trip ticket with a three-day return, fly down, go out to dinner a few nights and talk about old times, change the master in his driveway, and drive home if I could or bail and fly home and arrange to ship the car if it got too hairy.

The dry-rotted TRX tires, though, were a problem. TRX was Michelin’s odd metric-sized low-profile tire used during the 1980s on a variety of European cars. They’re mounted on specific TRX metric-sized wheels. So if the car has TRX wheels and needs TRX tires, there are no inexpensive off-brand options. You either pay Coker Tire the $350 per tire for reproductions, or you ditch the whole TRX thing and find a normal set of wheels from a later model. So I combed Craigslist in Tampa, Ocala, and Jacksonville for a set of four used wheels and good tires that I could slap on, but nothing materialized.

Then I did what I do and crunched the numbers for the projected expenses for driving the Lama back. I figured that, at a bare minimum, between the airfare, gas, two nights in a cheap model, and food, it came to $650, excluding the cost of wheels and tires. And that was if nothing went wrong on the 1400-mile drive. When I received a shipping quote from a broker who a friend recommended (and who I’ve used ever since) and the cost came in at $700, I realized I’d be an idiot not to pull the trigger on it.

So I had The Lama shipped home. My friend Al met the transport at his house. Unfortunately, the photo he sent me of the car being loaded showed it engulfed in oil smoke, which was the first I’d heard of this particular problem.

The smoke show was repeated when the car arrived and was dropped off a few streets from my house (my street is too small for multi-level transporters). Once off the transport, the car died in the middle of the street. I got it started, but it ran horribly, smoked like five chimneys, and rattled like a chainsaw. I pumped up the brake pedal and beat it around the block and into my driveway. It was then that I noticed the gas dripping from the back. I put the car up on my mid-rise lift and was glad to find that the gas leak was just a loose clamp on the output hose from the fuel pump, and the chainsaw noise was just a loose exhaust shield. Both issues were fixed in minutes. Was that all? Did I just get lucky?

While the car was up, I bled the brakes, and found that fluid only came out from one caliper, likely due to swelled flexible brake hoses. I put them on order and took the car for a short test drive. This time the car easily started but still ran poorly, still generating clouds of oil smoke. If I was lucky, the smoke was due to stuck rings from the car’s five-year-long sit, and they’d unstick with use, but there’s no knowing which way luck goes until it plays out.

With the chainsaw noise gone, I could hear the engine, and the valve train sounded loud. I did a compression test and found 155 in five cylinders and 135 in cylinder #4. Concerning but not awful. I followed up with a leak-down test and didn’t see any open valves.

But when the engine cooled and I pulled the valve cover to adjust the valves, I was horrified to find a broken intake rocker arm on #4 cylinder. Most of the pieces had collected in the depression on the exhaust side, but looking carefully, I could see where one piece had chipped one of the cam lobes.

So much for luck.

What did I just buy?

The six-cylinder M30 engines in the big BMWs sold in the United States from 1968 through 1991 are, like the four-cylinder M10 engine in the 2002, incredibly stout as long as they’re not overheated, and broken rocker arms are uncommon as long as the engine isn’t raced and over-revved. But the rocker arms run on shafts that are banged into the head. To replace a rocker arm, the rocker shaft passing through it has to be banged out. And to do that, the head has to come off. I was perfectly capable of doing all that (I’ve done it many times), but the problem is that you invariably go from simply yanking the head and replacing the one broken part to sliding down the slippery slope and completely dismantling the head and bringing it to a machine shop to have it resurfaced and have the valves done.

My reaction was to re-evaluate the project before moving further. I put the car back up on the lift, examined it carefully, and found a bit more rust than I’d expected; the inside corner of one of the doors completely rotted out.

Taken together, I sighed and thought, “That’s what I get for buying a car sight-unseen.” I decided to get out of the car. I photographed it, described the condition accurately and honestly (my wife would say TOO honestly), and advertised it locally for what I had in it, but there were no takers. As Thanksgiving rolled into December and the car was still here, I somewhat reluctantly accepted The Lama and its broken rocker arm as a winter project.

So, as the Queen of Hearts said in Alice in Wonderland, off with its head. There was the immediate whiff of a smoking gun when I looked into cylinder #4 and saw a little nick in the piston crown where the intake valve had kissed it. At least I knew why the rocker had broken.

With the head on a fold-up work table, I wondered if I could do the arthroscopic version of the procedure and simply drop in another rocker arm without disturbing anything else. To my surprise, I did succeed in separating the two intake rocker shafts just enough to pull the broken rocker arm out. I thought that, boy, I could pull a used arm out of my parts stash, drop it in, bang the shafts back together, drop the head back on with a new gasket, and be done with it.

Then I decided that, having gotten this far, I should at least lap the valves. So I banged the shafts out, pulled the cam, and did the twisty thing with the wooden valve lapping stick with the suction cup and the end, attached to the valve, its edges coated with grinding compound.

I did this on all 12 valves, but using both solvent and compressed air to check the seals, I was never quite sure that I did a good enough job. So I took it all in to the machine shop, which checked the head for straightness. Of course it was slightly warped; they all are at this age. And the machinist surprised me by saying that not just one intake valve was bent—four of them were. (I told him that that the leak-down test didn’t reveal anything obvious. The seen-it-all machinist deadpanned, “They were obviously bent when I spun them. They must’ve been sealing on carbon.”)

I picked up the minty-fresh head from the machine shop and began reassembling it. To hold costs down, I bought one new rocker arm to replace the broken one, but reused the rest of the original rockers and the shafts. I nearly re-used the cam, as I convinced myself that the broken edge of the lobe wasn’t actually on the rocker’s running surface, but when I carefully inspected the cam, I found that there was a good-sized gouge right in the middle of another lobe. I sourced a good used cam and threw things back together.

With the head reassembled, the valve clatter was gone, but the car still ran horribly. I checked the fuel pressure and it read over a hundred psi. At first I thought that this was due to a bad fuel pressure regulator, but it turned out that the metal part of the fuel return line was clogged, spiking fuel pressure and making the system run incredibly rich. I reamed it out, fuel pressure returned to normal, and the car finally ran decently but not perfectly. Replacing the fuel injectors with a rebuilt set made it cross the line to well-running.

Whew!

Despite having ample opportunity to look for wheels and tires to replace the TRXs while the car was laid up, I never found the cheap set of good wheels and tires I imagined would be thick as snowplows in the Northeast. I did, however, find a nice set of $200 BBS basketweave wheels from an E32 BMW 7-series, and ponied up for new rubber.

I did the full required brake job, knocked a few other items off the punch list—such as the voltage regulator and the blower motor—and then decided to list the car again. This time it had traction. A couple in Alabama who’d heard me speak at a BMW event down there contacted me. I offered to fix a few more things, and we settled on $4250, which was about what I had in it. So if the aim was to make money, I failed miserably.

Of course, the aim in most of my automotive endeavors isn’t really to make money. It’s to buy cars I like, have a relationship with them for the time they sojourn with me, keep them for however long it feels right, and move them on to the next owner when it’s time. Nevertheless, there were three big lessons from the Lama.

The first was the one I already knew—unless you or another knowledgeable car person you trust lays eyeballs and hands on the car, there’s a lot of risk. People can lie three ways: They can lie through their teeth, they can lie by omission, and they can lie passively because they assume but don’t know for sure. It’s unclear which was the case here; I don’t know whether or not the seller knew about the broken rocker shaft. But had I or a knowledgeable friend looked at the car, the combination of the oil burning, the rough running, and the valve train noise might have warned me off.

The second was that I’ve long said that dead cars pose a lot of risk as well as a lot of potential reward. If you can revive a car easily, you can either have a nice driver for yourself or a potential moneymaker, but if you can’t drive it, anything can be wrong and you won’t know. Even if it’s not a remote purchase—hell, even if a car is local and free—there’s no way to drive risk down to zero. These older BMW engines tend to be very robust and seem to like being revived, so I thought the risk of the car acutely needing engine work was low, and even after having done a compression and a leak-down test, I didn’t expect a broken rocker arm. I thought that the Lama’s $1400 purchase price was low enough that it had the risk baked into it, but I was wrong.

The third was that there’s a huge distinction between a car like, say, a vintage Porsche 911 or a split-windowed ‘Vette that’s worth gobs of money in any condition, and a car like a BMW E28 5-Series sedan that’s worth moderate money if it’s in great shape and less than you’d think if it’s not. So if you’re actually trying to make a little coin, it’s better to pick a car whose value isn’t so condition-dependent.

Live and learn. Well, at least live.

***

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One of the dynamics in the Hack Mechanic household is that the number of guitars rivals the number of cars. Fortunately, the guitars are considerably less greasy and a lot smaller, all fitting in one room. While I haven’t bought any new cars recently, I have bought two more guitars. I didn’t need either, but sometimes, like with cars, circumstances present themselves—an instrument speaks to you, you bond with it, and you act. (Which is, of course, a heartfelt and carefully-crafted description of an utter lack of self-control.)

To free up funds and make it seem like it’s a zero-sum game, I sold a few rare BMW parts. I had a pair of new-in-the-bags European-style flush turn signals for a BMW 2002. They’re no longer available and highly sought-after. I priced them slightly under the last available retail price, and they were snatched up immediately, which was the intent. Ditto with a pair of original chrome BMW 1600 front grills.

The last item intended to help fill the two-guitar-shaped hole in the bank account is a lovely wood-grained four-pod instrument cluster from a BMW 2800CS E9 coupe that I parted out over 35 years ago. It had been sitting in clean dry storage in my basement ever since. As with the other parts, I photographed it and researched the asking prices on eBay and enthusiast forums.

However, an instrument cluster is different from trim. It has electronics and moving parts. The descriptions I read for clusters with higher asking prices said that they’re tested and functional. My knee-jerk reaction was “I have no way to do that.” Unlike on a BMW 2002, where swapping out the cluster takes maybe 10 minutes, it is very difficult to get the cluster out of an E9 coupe.

And then a series of epiphanies occurred to me that enabled me to test the whole thing. The biggest one involves my steadfast belief that most of the time, you don’t need a wiring diagram, but we’ll get to that.

The speedometer

If the speedometer in the cluster is an old-school mechanically-driven unit, and you have a spare cable, odds are it can be easily tested by connecting the cable to back, gently clamping the transmission end into the chuck of an electric drill, and spinning it. Be certain to first check on an enthusiast forum for which direction to spin the drill, as you can damage the speedo if you spin it the wrong way. On a vintage BMW, you spin the drill in reverse. The whole thing took just a few minutes.

My rant about wiring diagrams

As I’ve said before, my experience is that the need for wiring diagrams on vintage cars is overblown. Sure, there are times when you do need to know what the green-and-red-striped wire in the multi-pin connector goes to, but most of the time you’re working from a PDF of a scan of a 55-year-old piece of paper in a shop manual, and it’s very difficult to read. On German cars, the wiring diagrams generally label the wire colors and the so-called “DIN” standard numbering of the terminals, but the components, much less the common-sense functions of the individual connectors, may not even be labeled, and if they are, they’re likely in German. If you need to know—oh, let’s just pick some example at random—the individual connections on the back of a gauge cluster, it’s often easier to look on an enthusiast forum and find a photo where some kind soul has labeled them with their actual useful names. Below, I’ll explain why not even that was necessary for me to test the gauges.

The tachometer

Tachs on vintage cars generally have three wires—power, ground, and a signal from the negative side of the coil (the side connected to the distributor, often stamped “1” or “-”). I could tell which of the three connections on the back of the E9’s tach were which because the power and ground connections were labeled as “+” and “-“ and were shared with other gauges, and the wires on the ground connection were the standard German brown, which left the third unshared unlabeled connection as signal.

For this test, I opened up the hood of my E9 coupe in the garage, laid the spare cluster on a pad, took the red and black test wires I carry with me on every road trip that have small battery clamps at one end and female spade connectors at the other, connected them to the car’s battery, and connected the ends to the power and ground male spades on the back of the tachometer. Then I took another wire with female spades and both ends, connected one end to the negative side of the coil, and the other to the signal input spade on the tach, and started the car. The tach sprang to life.

Fuel and temperature gauges

As is the case on many cars, the fuel and temperature gauges on the E9 are part of a gauge pod with other functions such as the high beam, brake, oil pressure, and battery warning lights. Initially, when you look at the back of the gauge, you think “How do I tell which connection is which, much less test things?”

But it’s actually not that hard. The trick is to simply look at the front of the gauge, note which function is where, flip the gauge around, and match things up. In the composite photo below, you can see that the gas gauge is on the left, so when you turn the cluster around, it’s actually very clear where the wires and connectors on the right for the gas gauge are. It’s obvious that the big circular one is the bulb. The multiple wires on the spade connector above it are the shared power (there’s also a little “+” above it). That means that the single wire on the spade connector below the bulb is the signal for the gas gauge. The same is true for the temperature gauge on the left, but its terminals are obscured by the bend of the wires in the harness.

The ground is a bit harder to see in the photo. The metal cases themselves are ground for each of the gauges. There are two male spade connectors that stand upright from the back of the case. The one at the upper left has chassis ground passed to it through the wiring harness. The one at lower center is unused, making it a convenient attachment point.

The last trick you need to know for this benchtop test is that temperature and fuel gauges and senders typically work by having the gauge interpret a variable resistance between it and ground. If there’s infinite resistance—no connection to the sender—then the needle doesn’t move, so the fuel gauge reads empty, the temperature gauge stays at the bottom. But if there’s low resistance connection between the gauge and ground, then the needle pegs (full fuel tank, temperature high in the red). The lowest resistance is continuity—grounding the signal connection. So to check functionality of these gauges, all you need to do is apply power and ground and make sure the needles are sitting at the bottom, then ground the signal connector. In the photo below, the bundle of green and white wires have been pulled off their male spade post, replaced by a thick red wire connected to battery positive. A Y-adapter has been connected to the spade for the case ground. The thick black wire is connected to battery negative. A white jumper wire connects the fuel gauge’s signal input to ground.

And … ta-DA!

I repeated all this to test the temperature gauge, with the same results.

With the gauges all tested, the only task remaining was to turn the cluster lights on. This was less to test them than it was to get the pic of the glowing instrument cluster because a) it would carry visual impact that the cluster was tested and worked, and b) it would be cool. For this, since the bulbs are all tied together, the easiest way to do it was to look at the wire color they used (gray and blue), find the pin on the harness connector using that color, feed it 12V, and use a shared ground for the instrument cases.

So, I now have a tested E9 gauge cluster. It hasn’t sold yet, so no more guitars (or cars) for this guy. Unless I find one that, you know, really speaks to me.

***

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If you’ve been reading this space for some time, you probably have gleaned that my unhinged Hack Mechanic persona is not the only thing bubbling inside my cranium. Underneath I’m actually a very rational, deliberative guy who really tries to think things through, not make decisions or take on risks he’s going to regret, and if he does, at least learn the lesson so it’s less likely to happen again. I thought that this week I’d highlight five vehicles where I leaped and wound up in trouble, and disclose what the lessons learned were.

1999 BMW 528iT Sport Wagon

We like what we like. I like rear wheel-drive cars. Having front wheels that steer and deliver power never feels quite right to me, even with cars where the long-standing torque steer problem has been solved. Rear wheel-drive BMWs have been my daily-driver jam for 40 years. About 10 years ago, it made sense to me to move to an E39-body 5 Series wagon. I found one locally with about 150,000 miles on it. It was black with a black interior, and it had the rare combination of the five-speed manual box and the sport package that slightly hunkered-down the car. Initially I loved it, but it turned out to be one of these cars whose purchase puts you on the repair-of-the-week plan without your knowing it. And on this car, it wasn’t just the usual parade of cooling system, fuel delivery, and charging problems. Nor was it having to rebuild the cool-but-troublesome self-leveling rear suspension, as it’s a known trouble spot. In addition to all that, weird things broke. In frigid weather, the oil separator froze and nearly hydro-locked the engine. A front coil spring broke and punctured the tire. Simply getting the rear hatch to work reliably was a battle. As Rosanne Rosannadanna said on Saturday Night Live, it was always something. I was relieved when I sold it.

Lessons learned: The car’s constant neediness made me realize that it was actually an enthusiast car when I needed it to be something more pedestrian. It was from this I learned not to confuse your daily driver and your project cars.

1972 BMW 2002tii

In 2016, when my long-time engineering career ended, I became obsessed with the idea of buying a dead car in some far-flung corner of the country, swooping in, getting it running, and road-tripping it home. It needed to be a car that I knew well, so a BMW 2002 made the most sense. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this romantic image of casting all caution to the wind and pitting man against machine and road wasn’t practical. I mean, how exactly are you going to do it? Show up at the seller’s house with a toolbox, a tent, and a sleeping bag and say, “I’m going to camp out here until I get this running and oh, can I use your shower for a week?” At a minimum, the car either needs to be capable of driving off the seller’s property, or you need to tow it a friend or relative’s house where you can do at least the first level of repair and sorting. I did the latter, buying the decade-dead 2002tii sight unseen and accepting an invitation from a guy I’d met once for 10 minutes at a BMW event to stay with him and his wife and wrench on the car in his pole barn. In addition, this fellow scoped out the car for me and gave me a heads-up on what some of its needs were, enabling me to go down there in a rented SUV with parts and tools. (If you’re curious, I wrote about the whole adventure in my book Ran When Parked.)

Lessons learned: You can do this kind of thing, but you really need to have eyes on the car first, come prepared, and then be absolutely merciless in your delineation of what’s truly required to get the car home versus what can wait until you’re in the comfort of your own garage. Otherwise you’ll be on the road for a month.

1976 BMW 2002

A close friend let me know of a mutual acquaintance one town over from me (in Massachusetts) who was selling his ran-when-parked BMW 2002 due to an impending home renovation project. I contacted the fellow, went over and had a look, was surprised and impressed at the car’s nearly rust-free condition. I got it running with a jump start and starting fluid, made a low cash-on-the-table offer, and bought it. I was positively giddy at my being at the right place at the right time. However, when I drove it home a few days later, the car exhibited an alarming amount of engine noise above around 2500 rpm. Poking around with a mechanic’s stethoscope revealed the noise coming from the oil pan. When I dropped the pan, sure enough, the rod bearings were shot.

Lessons learned: Replacing the rod bearings wasn’t difficult or expensive, and I did fine in the resurrection and re-sale of the car. But while it is well-known that if you can’t test-drive a car, anything can be wrong with it and you won’t know, it was a reminder that hearing an engine run isn’t the same thing as a test drive.

1974 Lotus Europa Twin Cam Special

I’ve written quite a bit about the Lotus in this space. When I was in junior high school, I worked for a guy who owned one—it was the first exotic, impossibly low, and angular car that I saw in person, and it hit me right in that special adolescent automotive place. I bought this one sight unseen in 2013 in Chicago; it had 23K on the odometer, but it had been dead since 1979, with an engine that had seized from sitting. I’d revived many dead BMWs but knew nothing about old Lotuses, and this odd, 1600-pound British thing with an engine that had a Ford block and a boutique Lotus head was way more troublesome to resurrect than I’d ever imagined. Even once I got the engine rebuilt, installed, and running, the steps from there to get the car moving, then driving around the block, then driving on the highway, then behaving well enough that I felt I could explore its Lotus-ness, were all waaaaay bigger than in the vintage BMW world I was familiar with. Still, the amount of pleasure I get out of this crazy little thing seems barely legal. (See The Lotus Chronicles for more detail.)

Lessons learned: Oh, many. First, stepping outside your zone of expertise is exciting, but very time consuming. Second, if the goal is to make a Lotus handle like a Lotus is supposed to, that’s a far tougher goal than simply limping it a few miles to a Cars and Coffee. It’s going to cost whatever it’s going to cost, and once you’re in pursuit of that goal, it’s really difficult to shut off the spending tap. Third, even though everyone tells you not to, I did add up the costs, and I’ve got over 20 grand in the car, which is well in excess of what it’s worth. I’m usually not one to do the “underwater” calculation, but it’s important knowing that if I find another basket-case Lotus, it’d cost me similar to get it to the point where it performs like a Lotus should.

1996 Winnebago Rialta

My wife and I used to take the family on beach vacations every summer, for which I’d typically buy a beat-up Suburban and use it as a beach assault vehicle. When the kids fledged and that ended, I floated the idea of buying a small RV, something just slightly larger than the VW campers we had when we were younger. Our middle son lives in Santa Fe, and the idea of road-tripping out there and taking in some national parks on the way was appealing. I wanted something small, parkable, and fuel-efficient, and the used Sprinter-based RVs were all way too expensive. I learned about the Winnebago Rialta—the Volkswagen Eurovan conversion that’s sort of a Westfalia camper on steroids, with a bathroom and a real bed. Even as 25-year-old vehicles, the Rialtas with the VR6 engine are pricey, but the 1995 and ’96 vehicles with the 110-horsepower, five-cylinder Audi engine are more affordable, and when I found a needy one for crapcan Celica money, I jumped on it. Unfortunately, with a 110-hp engine in a 7000-pound vehicle, they’re as slow as the VW campers of yore. For this reason, we’ve never taken it on a big road trip, as I’m sure that on the big western hill climbs we’d be doing 35 mph in the right lane. Instead, we use it for weekends on Cape Cod, where state campgrounds are about $40 a night. There’s been a steady cavalcade of plumbing and electrical issues, but even the beach use notwithstanding, as we’re both now in our 60s, owning a vehicle with a bathroom in it is awesome.

Lessons learned: Bargain RVs have all of the problems of a car and a house, and if you’re traveling with your spouse, it becomes not just your tolerance for imperfection, but theirs as well. Fortunately my wife rolls with it. Due to the Rialta being both too under-powered and a bit too small, I doubt we’ll ever do a real road trip in it, but I don’t think I could’ve learned that lesson without owning it. In that way, it’s been a great starter RV.

As Mark Twain said, “Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from making bad decisions.” I don’t really think any of these decisions were bad, but I really do try to learn from them nonetheless. I don’t believe that Bob Dylan is a car guy, but I think of his line “And here I sit so patiently / waiting to find out what price / you have to pay to get out of / going through all these things twice” and think he’d be right at home with us.

***

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David S. writes:

Do you have any thoughts/rules of thumb when it comes to replacing things before they break? I’m thinking about replacing the original, trouble-free radiator in my 1990 Mazda Miata as preventive maintenance. Am I being proactive or just wasting money?

Rob Siegel answers:

I used to be big on prophylactic replacement of parts in the “Big Seven” systems most likely to fail (if you’re new to reading this column, those are: cooling, fuel delivery, ignition, charging, belts, clutch hydraulics, and ball joints). The problem is that these days, there’s the very real possibility that you’ll remove an old, high-quality original part and replace it with something that’s new but of lower quality. When cars are under warranty, manufacturers work with the vendors who supplied the Original Equipment (OE) or “genuine” parts that were originally in the car. The dealership charges top dollar for these parts precisely because they pass quality control standards intended to help avoid repeat failures. As the cars age out of warranty, there’s little incentive for the manufacturer to police the quality standards of these OE parts. They may still be supplied by the same manufacturer, but production may be shifted to a different country, or the part may be made out of cheaper materials. Thus, the part you still pay top dollar for at the dealership may no longer be identical to what was originally in the car. It’s even worse when you move from “genuine” parts to aftermarket parts (the advertising phrase “OEM quality” is not an actual standard).

Obviously, cracked belts and rattling idler pulleys should be replaced before they full-on fail, but whether to replace an “it ain’t broke” part, and what to replace it with, has become a fuzzy calculation based on the perceived likelihood of failure, the difficulty of the repair, the cost, and whether you’ll feel like more of an idiot if the original part breaks and strands you or the replacement does. The best you can do is read up on candidate parts on enthusiast forums and make an informed decision.

I recently faced your specific problem. Although there was nothing wrong with the cooling system in my 200,000-mile 2003 BMW, I replaced most of it for exactly the reason you list—the aging plastic is known to crack. However, within a month, the brand-new water pump began to weep coolant (the vendor exchanged it). On a 200K daily driver, I’d make the same call again.

Nelson W. writes:

We all know that rust and accident damage are things to avoid when buying a classic car. But is there any mechanical telltale that will make you run for the hills, regardless of asking price? (Not an idle question: I’m considering buying a rust-free 1988 Camaro that clearly has some cooling problems. Owner admits he’s topping off the radiator constantly, and the heater core has been bypassed.)

Rob Siegel answers:

Mechanical? Not really. The more mechanical issues a car has, the better. If it’s dead and being sold at a third of its market value because of it, I welcome dead. Dead I can fix. Rust I can’t. But be aware of just how bad the worst-case scenario can be. For instance, the coolant loss in your candidate Camaro could be rotting hoses—or it could be a cracked head or block. If you feel that that possibility has been baked into the asking price, that you have the time to deal with it, and that you love the car in other ways (e.g., color, condition), fine, but be brutally honest with yourself about the downside.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

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My sister and I drove down to Long Island (New York) last week to see an old friend. While I normally wouldn’t have qualms about taking my generally well-sorted 220,000-mile 2003 BMW 530i stick sport, the car recently developed a quirk where, in cold weather, it misfires during start-up and warm-up. The Check Engine light usually clears simply by restarting the engine, but I wouldn’t want to be in a situation where it keeps misfiring and I knowingly drove the car that way hundreds of miles, as the unburnt fuel is bad for the cylinder walls and the catalytic converter. I haven’t yet had the chance to swap out whichever stick coil is bad, and my wife needed her 2014 Honda Fit, so I asked my sister if we could take her car, a 120K-mile 2012 Honda Civic.

Now, my sister is about the kindest person on the planet and would never even consider a retort such as “What, none of Mr. Hack Mechanic’s fleet of cars will make the trip?” My readers, of course, might not all be so genteel. Even our old friend on Long Island quipped, when we pulled up in the Civic, “Why didn’t you drive one of your fun cars?” So, before I get peppered with barbs from the peanut gallery, I thought I’d write something that’s been banging around in the mental bin for a while about the tradeoffs between driving new, used, well-used, and vintage cars.

New Cars: When you buy a new car, you’re paying for technology, safety, smoothness, quiet, and other things, but for many people, the primary reason for the purchase is the peace of mind generated by reliability that comes with newness. Maybe the repair bills on their old ride convinced them that it was time. Or worse, maybe the car died on them, and the whole aura of trust was punctured. Whatever the reason, buying a new car is a massive exercise in choice—propulsion (gas, electric, or hybrid), body style, make, model, options, and financing. Plus, of course, these days fewer and fewer people actually buy new cars. Many folks lease, in which case you’re paying for “ownership experience”—manufacturers want you to have a trouble-free four years and 48,000 miles, turn the car in at the end, and then lease something else from them. If you can afford this, there’s nothing wrong with it, but between the purchase, the sales tax, the monthly payments, the insurance, and depending on the state you live in, the annual excise taxes, new cars are bloody expensive.

Lightly Used Cars: Of course, really, I’m the last person who should be saying anything about new cars, as I’ve never bought one. For my wife and family, I had a series of quasi-responsible five-ish-year-old 60K-ish mileage cars that I sold when they got too needy, or began rusting, or I saw desirable safety features like ABS becoming attainable in the used market. But when my wife began driving more for her business, I did the responsible thing and bought something much newer—a two-year-old 2014 Honda Fit with 7K miles on the odometer, well-priced due to a rebuilt title (a curb strike that dragged along the floor pan was enough to total it). Seven years later, the Honda has been everything it was supposed to be—I’ve done nothing to it other than oil, tires, brake pads, and a battery. It now has 70K on it, which makes it due for a timing belt. The Fit’s rebuilt title notwithstanding, in general, when people talk about buying used cars, this is the kind of thing they usually want—something where the previous owner has paid for the depreciation, but the car is still in the sweet spot of not needing money thrown at it regularly.

I’ve written multiple articles about what I call “The Big Seven” things likely to strand a car (fuel delivery issues, ignition issues, cooling system issues, charging system issues, belts, clutch hydraulics, and ball joints). I originally meant it to refer to vintage cars, but the first five apply equally well to modern daily drivers. A car may not need attention in any of these areas within the first 100,000 miles—like our Honda Fit, it may need nothing more than oil, tires, brake pads, and a battery. But eventually parts in these five systems start to go, and when they do, they cause a running car to wind up dead in the breakdown lane, which is no fun at all. I’ve written about how one would think you can address this proactively by replacing parts like the fuel pump, water pump, and alternator before they break, and how that’s challenging because of the declining quality of many OE, OEM, and aftermarket parts these days—that is, you might well be removing a perfectly-functioning high-quality part and replacing it with something inferior. Even if the car never strands you and instead you’re gobsmacked by a couple of thousand-dollar repair bills for brakes, shocks, and exhaust, selling a car when it reaches this point is not an unreasonable decision for most people.

Well-Used Cars: As far as what I drive, everything automotive I’ve done for the last 40 years has been enabled by a) having a short commute that allowed me to drive back and forth to work in just about anything that started and lumbered under its own power, and b) being able to fix it when it broke or was about to. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had to paid someone to fix one of my cars. OK, maybe on seven fingers. This in turn allowed me to buy cars that would’ve normally been outside the envelope of what I could afford but were within my grasp because they needed work and I could fix them. Over the years, this morphed into owning multiple interesting cars. I mean, why have just one cool-but-needy car when you can have two or three or five or eight or 13?

This takes us into a vehicle category that’s distinct from the lightly-used cars I was buying for the family. The cars I’ve generally bought for myself to daily drive have been closer to “used up” than merely “used”—cars that are cheap because they have 150,000–200,000 miles or more and are in immediate need of repair either to be roadworthy or to pass inspection or both. The 2003 BMW 530i I bought nearly eight years ago and am still daily driving is a perfect example. It had reportedly been sitting for a year and a half because it wouldn’t crank with a jump-start. The seller thought it either needed a starter or had some electrical issue, but I came down with a fully-charged battery, dropped it in, and the car started and ran fine. The Check Engine Light was on, but this turned out to be due to a small rotted section of rubber evaporative control line. Of course, the car did have 180,000 miles on it and needed brakes from sitting. And when you buy a car with that kind of mileage, if you don’t know its repair history, you ignore the first five of “The Big Seven” at your peril. And, of course, on high-mileage cars, there’s the usual cavalcade of bad CV joints, burned-out cooling fans, broken window regulators, on and on. I was a bit slower on the uptake than I should’ve been—a dying fuel pump nearly stranded me, and a bad alternator did strand me—but since sorting it out, I generally feel good about distance driving the car. Even still, not having had the chance yet to replace an intermittent ignition coil throwing a misfire code, taking my sister’s 10-years-newer, 100K-fewer-miles Civic to New York seemed a better bet.

Pre-OBD-II but Not Yet Vintage Cars: There’s a roughly 20-year period between the last of the simple pre-emission-control carbureted cars and the rollout of standardized onboard diagnostics. The so-called OBD-II system on every car sold in America since 1996 allows you or a mechanic to plug in a universal code reader, providing quick and easy diagnostic reporting of many engine management components. Yeah, it’s more complicated than that, as there’s a distinction between the federally-mandated universal emissions-related codes and the manufacturer-specific ones, but still, plug-in diagnostics are a good thing, as the amount of electronics and sensors in cars has increased dramatically over the years, and getting a code that your air-flow sensor is bad is generally quicker and easier than trying to test individual components. The not-so-good thing is that OBD-II has created a generation of mechanics who can’t troubleshoot without plugging in a scan tool. Some cars of this in-between era have an arcane magic-decoder-ring-like system where you turn the key to ignition, mash the gas pedal a specific number of times, count the flashes of a small indicator light on the dash, and look the result up in a table, but the average repair shop certainly isn’t going to know about it. So if you own a fuel-injected car built between the mid-1970s and 1995, and it sputters and dies on a road trip, and the problem isn’t the fuel pump, and there’s not a known repair shop that specializes in that marque within easy towing distance, you may have trouble getting it repaired on the road.

Vintage Cars: For the sake of this discussion, I’ll define “vintage cars” as anything carbureted. Obviously the big appeal of classics is the design aesthetic of the unique shapes of pre-wind-tunnel cars before aerodynamics forced them to all look alike, as well as the attractiveness of small chrome bumpers before the D.O.T. instituted 5-mph impact standards, the period-correct interiors, and the utter simplicity of pre-smog engines—where if the car sputters to a halt, you can easily diagnose the problem as gas or spark, and likely repair it in a few minutes if you have a screwdriver, a spare set of points, a condenser, and a fuel pump in your trunk.

But the downsides of daily-driving a vintage car are substantial. Last year I wrote a piece about the pros and cons of daily-driving a classic. I may proselytize about “The Big Seven,” but on a 50-year-old car, other things can happen. Head gaskets can blow, brake calipers can seize, wheel and driveshaft bearings can begin howling,  and on and on. These generally are acceptable risks when you’re pleasure driving the car on weekends or taking it on its twice-yearly road trip to events, but when you subject an old car to all the vagaries of daily-driven life, make no mistake, you’re using it as a consumable, and it will eventually require a body and mechanical refresh.

It’s your car, and you should drive it however you want, but there are certain realities that simply can’t be avoided. If you live in a snowy climate, particularly one where they salt the roads, the car is going to rust quicker than you can say dreikugelförmige brennkammer. Driving it regularly in the rain is likely to rust it as well. Parking it on city streets will likely render it unrecognizable in a matter of months due to dents and vandalism. And there’s no getting around the fact that it’s 50 years old. Wind noise and climate control in vintage cars, even rejuvenated ones, is typically much worse than even a 200K-mile 20-year-old car. The same can be said about creaks, rattles, thunks, clunks, and groans from the body and interior. And the combination of cold-weather starting and warm-up, drivability, power, and fuel economy usually can’t hold a candle to a modern fuel-injected car. Even if you live someplace temperate, it takes a special bond between owner and car to genuinely enjoy daily-driving a classic—commuting, trips, everything—over a span of time.

The safety side of dailying a classic is a complicated issue. Personally, I think that short of playing dodgeball with trucks by driving an 800-pound microcar at 40 mph on interstates, binary labels like “safe” or “unsafe” are misleading, and instead it’s a continuum of shades of gray. Most cars didn’t receive engineered crumple zones until about the mid-’90s, but that’s not going to keep me from road-tripping my 1970s-era BMWs. However, I’d never drive without seat belts and integrated shoulder harnesses. Regarding airbags, despite the popular “No airbag, we die like real men” bumper stickers, steering-column airbags were originally designed to protect unbelted passengers, so I don’t think it’s suicidal to drive a non-airbag car provided you’re properly belted. I’ve relaxed my opinions about non-ABS cars, as the fact that the main advantage of ABS is you can steer while your foot is planted on the brake pedal is most applicable in slick conditions, and I usually keep my vintage cars out of them. However, when it does rain, the combination of the lack of ABS, traction control, and a modern multilink suspension, along with an old, pitted windshield and wipers that move at the speed of a sloth, can make driving a vintage car pretty harrowing, particularly in stop-and-go highway traffic.

So, yeah, I drove my sister’s Civic when I wanted an uneventful 500-mile round trip from Boston to Long Island. I drive my 1970s BMWs when I want an eventful 2000-mile round trip to the vintage car festivals I attend on the East Coast. I can live with the dichotomy and the shame.

***

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Although I have a demonstrated track record of undertaking and completing lengthy challenging projects—swapping the drivetrain and installing fuel injection in the 3.0CSi, retrofitting air conditioning into multiple cars, taking six years to rebuild the engine in the Lotus Europa—I have a particular fondness for simple “quick hit and run” repairs.

I’ve long said that in a world of intractable problems, few things are as satisfying as diagnosing a problem in a car, then fixing it. Clear beginning, clear metric for success, clear end—it really doesn’t get better than that. Routine maintenance like changing the oil doesn’t really qualify for this merit badge of satisfaction, but doing something like replacing the windshield washer pump—taking something that was driving you nuts because it wasn’t working and make it work—certainly does. Sometimes, the more trivial the thing you fix and the less time it takes to do it, the more you enjoy the end product, as that maximizes the effort-to-reward ratio.

So, with that in mind, I’d been saving an easy repair for the right moment. For the entirety of the nearly eight years I’ve owned my daily-driver 2003 BMW E39 530i stick sport, the trunk lock actuator hasn’t worked. This meant that in order to open the truck, I had to use the key; I could use neither the pop-the-trunk button above my left knee, nor trip the microswitch behind the soft rubber panel on the trunk lid itself. The trunk release on the key? Fugetaboudit. I was reminded of this every time I needed to pick up or drop off someone at the airport—I had to shut the car off, pull the keys out of the ignition, get out of the car, and walk around to the trunk to unlock it so they could get their luggage out. Actually, I was reminded of it every time I started the car, as the failure generated an incorrect “truck open” message on my dashboard.

I’ve replaced several door and trunk lock actuators over the years. The ones for the trunk are generally easier, as you don’t need to remove a door panel. Pop off an electrical connector, remove a few screws, disconnect a rod, installation is the reverse of disassembly, yadda, yadda, yadda … maybe 10 minutes, done. And the part is usually reasonably priced—for the E39, an OEM actuator costs $42, with no-brand aftermarket parts under $20. With the calendar rapidly ticking off the fall days, I decided to reward myself by eating this bit of candy. I ordered the $42 VDO actuator.

On a 60-degree day in late October, I opened up the trunk and removed the three clips holding on the access panel. On this car, the trunk latch mechanism had to come out before you could unscrew the actuator from it, but that was just three Torx-head fasteners. It took perhaps 20 minutes, not 10, for me to install the new actuator, but hey, I didn’t need to crawl under a car to do it. I was positively giddy in anticipation of the utterly trivial act of remote trunk unlocking.

Ready to savor my easy triumph, I closed the trunk and reached for the rubber-padded microswitch on the underside of the lid.

Nothing.

I went inside the car and pushed the trunk release button under the dash.

Crickets.

Hmmmmn.

I thought that perhaps a fuse had blown. I looked at the fuse card and didn’t see one specifically for the actuator, but I saw three for the central locking system. All were fine. I did some reading and verified that the car doesn’t have a “valet mode” that disables the trunk actuator.

As I poked around inside the trunk with the lid up, the light bulb went on—that is, the one in my head. In a remarkable instance of symmetry, it was triggered by the fact that the light bulb in the trunk did not go on. My mind suddenly shot to the “trunk open” message I’ve seen on the dashboard for eight years. I realized that the actuator not working wasn’t the only issue. The problem was systemic, involving all things on the bendy little wiring harness connecting the trunk lid to the body.

Oh crap. So much for the joy-enabling quick-hit-and-run repair.

To appreciate how badly I’d gotten this wrong, I need to rewind the tape to a few months ago when I was giving a talk about automotive electrical systems at the Larz Anderson Auto Museum in Brookline, Massachusetts, and discussed the five types of circuit failures. In the talk, I said that while it’s possible for wires to break in the middle, it’s far more likely for an open circuit to be caused by a connector pulling off a component, or by a wire pulling out of the back of a connector. However, in the talk I noted that the exception is in wiring harnesses that experience a lot of flex such as those connecting doors, trunk lids, and hatches. I’d never experienced broken trunk lid wires before, but I dealt with broken wires in the hatch harness in both my BMW E39 and E46 wagons. And now that I realized that the actuator and the trunk light and the latch warning indicator all weren’t working, when I pulled back the rubber boot on the sheath leading to the trunk lid, I wasn’t surprised what I found.

Using a small pair of scissors, I carefully slit open the rubber sheath, revealing the extent of the problem. Five wires were broken up near the top.

But wait! There’s more! To be certain I had fully scoped things out, I looked at the bottom end of the rubber sheath and found one more broken wire and three more whose insulation was cracked 360 degrees around.

When wires are broken at a connector, you simply strip the ends and crimp on new connectors. But when they’re broken in the middle like this, they need to be spliced. That can be done by using crimp-on butt-splice connectors, by using heat-shrink solder-splice connectors, or by soldering the wires manually. I wrote about this in detail in the electrical book I wrote when I worked at Bentley Publishers, but here’s the short version.

The quickest way to repair a broken wire is by crimping a butt-splice connector between the pieces. Strip both ends, insert them into the connector, crimp, done. The advantages are speed, no soldering, and the fact that it preserves the length of the wire since you don’t need to overlap the ends. The disadvantages are the physical size of the connector, their rigidness, and lack of weatherproofing.

Heat-shrink solder-splice connectors (a piece of transparent heat-shrink tubing with an internal solder ring that melts when heat is applied) also work well. Strip both ends of the wire, insert them into the connector with both ends inside the ring of solder, and heat it with a heat gun until the solder melts. The integrated heat-shrink tubing makes the connection weathertight, as well as making it smaller in diameter than a traditional crimp-on butt-splice connector. A disadvantage is that needing to overlap the ends of the wire inside the solder ring shortens the wire slightly.

In a case like mine, where multiple wires in a harness are broken, butt-splice connectors like the one pictured above aren’t a great solution due to their physical size and rigidness. At a minimum, they’d need to be spaced out from each other and surrounded with heat-shrink tubing to keep water out. Heat-shrink solder-splice connectors can work, but because they shorten the length of the wire, you’re likely to need to splice in a few extra inches of wire, meaning that you’re making not one but two splice connections on each wire.

When I’ve encountered this situation, I tend to splice in a few extra inches of wire, manually solder each end, and cover the solder joints with heat-shrink tubing. Despite writing an electrical systems book, I don’t do this kind of work often, so you’re welcome to laugh at my soldering skills, but here’s how I do it.

• If you’re splicing in extra wire, identify the gauge (thickness) of the wires you’re repairing, and make sure to use wire of at least the same gauge. In my case, I found that two of the ground wires were actually of a thicker gauge than the rest.
• Cut the requisite number of splice wires all to the same length and strip their ends. It’s up to you whether you use different colors of wire or not.
• Strip one end of the wire being repaired and slide a piece of heat-shrink tubing over it and several inches past it.
• Bend a right-angle hook in the ends of the broken wire and the splice wire, put them together, fold over both hooks, and smooth it down to as small a diameter as possible.

• Heat the little bundle of wire with a soldering iron and touch the solder to the wire until it flows into the strands. As with any soldering, you don’t want to “cold-solder” it so the solder sits on top instead of flowing in.
  • Note that, in the case of old wiring with a coating of oxidation or corrosion on it, it may be necessary to use flux on the wires in order to get the solder to melt and flow.
  • Note that some people like to “tin” the ends of the wire first with solder, then twist them together, then flow solder into them.

• Once the splice has been soldered and has cooled, slide the heat-shrink tubing down over it, and use a heat gun to shrink it in place.

• Repeat for the other end of the wire, then for any other broken wires.

***

I don’t do work like this often, so I proceeded slowly and broke the work into two sessions. I also ignored advice on BMW forums to cut and splice all the wires (meaning including the ones that aren’t broken) to keep them all the same length. The solder melted easily on the new spliced-in sections, but not on the 20-year-old stripped-off wire ends that I was trying to reattach. Using flux and having it carry the solder into the joints was essential to making good soldered connections.

With the wire splicing complete, I gently closed the trunk and curled my hand under the lid to trigger the rubber-padded release button.

Pop!

I then did the same from inside the car.

Pop!

And yes, the trunk light went on.

Lastly, I stuffed the wires back inside the now-slit rubber sheath, wrapped it in the stick-to-itself cloth tape that wraps old BMW wiring harnesses, and fit the sheath back in place. I still need to seal up the still-slit rubber boot with some adhesive or tape.

The next time I drove the car, I got the cherry on the sundae of the repair—when I started the car, for the first time in the eight years I’ve owned it, the “trunk open” message didn’t appear.

So it wasn’t the “quick hit-and-run” repair I’d envisioned, but it was still extremely satisfying. The wiring repair cost me two additional repair sessions, but no money.

And yes, I’m as curious as you are if that actuator I replaced was, um, actually bad. Hey, 42 bucks is 42 bucks.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post The easy repair that got hard: Fixing broken wires inside a harness appeared first on Hagerty Media.

As I wrote last month, I sold the 2008 Chevy 3500 Duramax diesel truck with the utility body on it. This was the truck that my old engineering job bought new in 2008, that had been our work vehicle during the years when my field geophysics career wound down, and that I purchased from the company for a song after the build had closed. By then the truck was largely forgotten about, and it became a rodent-infested mess.

Before I bought it, I had employee-favor-level use of the truck for years. I borrowed it to move my kids in and out of college, and towed cars with it multiple times. So my ownership of it, while extremely useful, wasn’t really that much more than a karmic extension of the access I already had anyway, but it became my financial responsibility to repair and maintain it—in other words, paying for what I’d previously been getting for free. But, yes, it was very convenient having the truck in my driveway instead of needing to drive 20 miles to where it was stored, and that was a godsend when my sister and I were emptying our mother’s house prior to sale and a seemingly endless stream of items needed to be delivered to other relatives or donated.

But let’s talk about towing cars. For many years, I was a serial user of beat-up high-mileage Suburbans. Their main utility was to take the family on the big annual Nantucket beach vacation and be able to drive on sand to the prime fishing spots at Smith Point and Great Point. The realization that I could also use the ’Burbs to tow cars home dawned on me slowly, but it was life-changing when it came. So, for a time, towing cars with the still-owned-by-work-truck was only when I was between Suburbans.

The utility of being prepared to tow a car you’re interested in buying isn’t just the original Bring a Trailer paradigm, where the car is a dead, needy, well-priced project, nor is it the more recent Bring a Trailer paradigm where the car is ungodly expensive and too mint and low-mileage to do something so banal as actually driving it home. No, the big advantage of having a tow setup is twofold. First, you can strike quickly and show unmistakable intent, purpose, and confidence—nothing says “I am here to do business and can end your Craigslist / Facebook Marketplace nightmare of deadbeats and no-shows right freaking now” than rolling into the driveway with a truck and a trailer. But second, it makes it so you don’t need to rely on anyone but yourself, another arrow in the quiver of the whole car-buyer-as-lone-wolf thing. My wonderful wife certainly has driven me to dozens of car pick-ups over the decades and would continue to do so if asked, but there’s an ineffable sense of independence that comes from doing it all by yourself. To paraphrase Carson McCullers, the truck and trailer owner is a lonely hunter.

Plus, there’s the distance part of the calculation. As I said a few weeks ago, if a car is an hour away, it’s easy enough to just drive there, check it out, decide if you want to buy it, and if you do, come back with either a second driver or a truck and a trailer. If a car is hundreds of miles away, however,  it really makes sense to go there prepared to do it all in one trip and not have to rope your spouse into giving up a Saturday to drive you back there to pick it up. Plus, loading the car onto a trailer removes the often legally gray issue of driving it home without registration and insurance (in Massachusetts, the legality of temporarily slapping another plate on the car requires a set of circumstances so thin as to be nearly impossible outside of trading a car in at a dealership). Unfortunately, I’ve never owned a trailer and thus needed to go to U-Haul and rent and return an auto transporter, so whether it was with the Suburban or the borrowed Silverado or the owned Silverado, the idea that I could drop everything and simply walk out to the driveway and drive off and bag dead cheap desirable cars never really materialized into reality.

But just because I didn’t wind up using the truck that way didn’t obviate the constant feeling that I might, or that I should. During the two-and-a-half years I owned the truck, the amount of time I spent online looking at cars was obsessive, compulsive, and unhealthy—a step change from previous years where it was merely excessive. Granted, the fact that I’m self-employed, work from home, and nearly all my income comes from writing tends to plant me in front of the computer in a quasi-professional mode for much of the day, and there’s a thin line between banging out content for my paying gigs versus time spent on social media, where I’m less verbose but perhaps even more entertaining. The point is that buying the truck and having it in the driveway seemed to kick what was already a high-OCD car-searching habit into overdrive, injecting methamphetamine straight into my automotive brain, but it was justifiable because the acts of searching online—for reference material for something I was writing, finding ridiculous cars I could make fun of on my Facebook page, and endlessly pounding the interwebs looking for that elusive rust-free Series 2 Fiat 124 Sport Coupe (or whatever I was infatuated with at the time)—all blended into one another.

When I wrote that I sold the truck but kept the little Winnebago Rialta RV (the VW Eurovan with a Winnebago camper body on it), a number of folks asked me why I didn’t instead sell the Rialta, keep the truck, and buy a travel trailer and a car-towing trailer if that’s what I kept saying I needed? It’s a reasonable question. Some of it was driveway space (I simply don’t have the room here in Newton, Massachusetts, for trailers), but the larger part is that my wife and I like the little 21-foot Rialta. We like the fact that it’s closer to an old-school VW camper than to a real RV, and we appreciate the ability to drive and park it nearly anywhere. We’ve used it mainly to do a few days at a time at the beach. We’ve never done any real long-haul RVing in it. So thinking of using the truck to tow a well-appointed travel trailer was like opening up a blade on a Swiss Army knife that you never really have any intention of using.

Going back to the Suburban for a bit, you’d think that owning both the truck and the Rialta, I’d have covered all the bases of what the ’Burb did in a single vehicle, but that’s not accurate. I owned the Suburbans because I could fit nine people, coolers, a Coleman grill, chairs, plus boogie boards, fishing rods, a surfboard, and a windsurfer strapped to the roof and drive it all onto soft sand. ’Burbs did this astonishingly well. The RV certainly can’t do this, and it’s a forced fit for the truck. I had one geophysical survey in 2011 looking for unexploded ordnance on Martha’s Vineyard’s Cape Pogue where I had to put the truck on sand, requiring me to deflate the duallie rear tires, and it was not exactly convenient. And as a people-mover, the truck’s extended cab could fit five, but that was all. The RV appears cavernous inside, but it only has seat belts for three (the two front seats and a single seat in the coach).

Looking at it cargo-wise, obviously nothing came close to the truck with its 8-foot bed and utility body. But once my mother’s house was sold, the window of its use largely passed. Still, I kept thinking that, if I sold it, how would I snag a Honda tracked snow blower being sold way below market value in August? But then summer passed. And besides, there was no way to get a snowblower into the back without ramps, and I didn’t own them. Then I realized that if I was going to need to rent a little trailer to move a snowblower, I could use the Rialta, as that’s just about all its trailer hitch can handle.

I laughed when, two days after I sold the truck, my oldest son asked me about driving 80 miles each way to Springfield to buy a mattress, bed frame, drawers, and a nightstand. Although the Rialta has a full-time queen-sized bed inside, all that space has to be accessed through the small side door (that big rear window isn’t on a hatch and doesn’t open up). The Rialta did swallow the bed, but it had to be forced down its throat.

Of course, towing-wise, while the Suburbans were capable of hauling home a car on a U-Haul trailer, the Silverado with its Duramax diesel could’ve easily towed a ramp truck with five Suburbans on it across the country, and the fact that it was such massive overkill for the pedestrian tasks I subjected it to was one of the reasons I let it go. The final time I used the truck was when my wife said that a friend of hers was getting rid of all of her tomato grow boxes and related supplies. Maire Anne grows tomatoes on the garage roof and, like me when I see a well-priced car or guitar, wanted to pounce before someone else grabbed the goods. She wasn’t sure if she could squeeze it all into her little Honda Fit hatchback, so we took the truck. Hauling tomato boxes was one final example of what massive overkill this vehicle—which my old job had bought to tow a 32-foot trailer cross country—was for this kind of leafy-suburb errand-running.

But with all that rationalization of why I should let it go, immediately after I sold the truck I felt viscerally hobbled. I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I found a cool must-buy vehicle, I was at a significant disadvantage, as I couldn’t show up in the hunt-and-kill position of power. Never mind the fact that I had the opportunity in August to do exactly that with a well-priced TVR 2500M on Long Island and bailed on the trip, a decision I now regret (in my defense, my wife’s recent cardiac surgery and the impending sale of my mother’s house were significant pre-occupying factors).

For a few weeks after the sale, I put a lot of effort into looking for a replacement truck. Rather than another Suburban, I gravitated toward Honda Ridgelines, as the fact that they’re unibody vehicles (the same platform as the Odyssey minivan and the Pilot SUV, and front-wheel drive until they need four-wheel-drive traction) with a significantly more car-like ride was appealing to someone who has infrequent towing needs. Used Ridgelines are as thick as flies on poo, and 200K examples show up as low as $3500, but as with any vehicle, finding one that’s at the knee of the curve of cost and mileage, and appears to be in decent condition, and is nearby (since, of course, I no longer have a truck to use to tow home a truck), made it a narrow needle to thread. At some point I had the epiphany that I was spending obsessive time looking for a truck I didn’t really want or need since I sold the last truck because I didn’t really need it. I put the whole matter on the back burner, at least for now.

So, I’m truck-less, in some sense for the first time since 2008. And I’m OK with that.

But if I see an ad that says “1963 Jaguar E-Type ran when parked five years ago no rust stored indoors sold house must go $5300 to the first one who shows up with truck and trailer,” hooo boy, am I going to be pissed.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Living without the truck appeared first on Hagerty Media.

My arrest-me-Signal-Red 1973 BMW E9 3.0CSi coupe is the unmistakable jewel in the crown of my not-a-collection. I never keep it in my rented more-humid-than-I’d-like storage—it’s always safe and sound in the garage at my house. In addition, I regard it as the best-sorted of any of my vintage cars. So when I needed to take it to BMW CCA Oktoberfest in Warwick, Rhode Island, a scant 70 miles south of my Boston-area home, I didn’t think twice about just checking the oil and the tires, reconnecting the battery, twisting the key, and driving it.

And when I did, the car lurched backwards. I’m lucky it didn’t crash into the back wall of the garage and incur tens of thousands of dollars of sheet metal damage.

I was so jarred by the event that it took me a moment to put the mechanics of it together. The shift lever was in reverse—I’d obviously left it there when I’d backed the car in—but I was certain that I’d stepped on the clutch. Or not? Regardless, the first thing I needed to do was shift it into neutral and try it again.

I couldn’t. The shift lever wouldn’t budge.

Hmmmmn.

The lever was so stuck in reverse that I began to think it might be a linkage issue, but I realized that, when coupled with the fact that the car lurched backward when I was sure I had my foot on the clutch, it was more likely that the clutch was the culprit. By applying an amount of brute force on the shift lever sufficient for me to worry about bending it or the linkage, I eventually popped it out of reverse and into neutral (in retrospect, I should’ve jacked up the back of the car to relieve the twist on the transmission likely being transmitted through the drivetrain). But when I tried rowing it engine-off-clutch-down through the gears, it took far more effort than usual.

I triple-checked that the gearbox was in neutral and I had the clutch pedal depressed (and the brake pedal too as insurance) and again started the car. As expected, it started without trying to take off anywhere, but with the engine running and the clutch depressed, I could not get it into any gear.

Clearly the clutch wasn’t working. But that can mean two very different things. It can mean that there’s a hydraulic or a mechanical failure. Or it can mean that the clutch disc is frozen between the flywheel and the clutch plate. And it’s surprisingly challenging to tell which it is.

Let’s back up (smoothly; no lurching) and enroll in Hack Mechanic Clutch 101 for a moment. The clutches in most manual-transmission cars work in pretty much the same way. The clutch itself has two pieces—the clutch plate and the clutch disc. The disc has a two-sided sacrificial surface made from material that’s not unlike a brake pad or shoe. In the center it has a splined hole through which the transmission input shaft passes. The disc is held against the flywheel by the clutch plate, which like the flywheel has a machined metal surface. The clutch plate assembly is bolted to the flywheel, but when the sprung “fingers” on the back of the clutch are pressed inward, the machined plate surface retracts backward, freeing the disc (I know, it’s counterintuitive).

Separate from but intimately related to the clutch itself is the clutch release mechanism, which consists of the release lever, the sleeve, and the throwout bearing. The throwout bearing is what actually presses against the clutch plate’s fingers. It slides up and down on a cylindrical sleeve inside the transmission bell housing. It’s called a release “bearing” because since the clutch plate is bolted to the flywheel, it and its fingers are always spinning, so in order for something to depress those rotating fingers, it needs to touch them and then spin with them. The throwout bearing is moved fore and aft by the release lever, which may use a see-saw design or a simple forward-throw configuration.

Lastly is the linkage connecting the clutch pedal to the release lever. Although some old cars have purely mechanical clutch linkages, and others—like vintage Volkswagens, Porsches, and my Lotus Europa—have a cable-actuated clutch, most cars have a hydraulic clutch linkage, where a clutch master cylinder behind the pedal is connected to a clutch slave cylinder on or in the bell housing.

Now that we’ve identified the actors, we can start the play. When your foot is off the clutch pedal, the sprung pressure in the clutch plate causes the clutch disc to be sandwiched between the plate and the flywheel, making them essentially a single unit. So as the flywheel turns, the disc turns. The splined fit between the disc and the transmission input shaft causes the shaft to rotate, which in turn sends power to the wheels via whatever gear the transmission is in, or idles in neutral.

When you depress the clutch pedal, that moves a piston in the clutch master cylinder. Fluid under pressure is sent to the clutch slave cylinder, which causes a piston inside it to move, which moves a rod sticking out the end. This pushes the release lever, which in turn slides the throwout bearing along the sleeve. The throwout bearing contacts the fingers on the back of the spinning clutch plate. It presses against them, retracting the machined surface of the plate. This frees the clutch disc. With the disc no longer sandwiched against the flywheel, the spinning engine is no longer coupled to the transmission, allowing the gears to be shifted.

Got it? This concludes Clutch 101. But there will be homework.

A number of things can go wrong with all this. As I’ve written, failed clutch hydraulics are one of the “Big Seven” things that frequently strand a vintage car. A bad clutch slave or clutch master cylinder usually manifests itself as a pedal that goes all the way to the floor, usually accompanied by visible fluid leakage. However, sometimes there’s no leakage and the pedal stills feels fine, but there’s a problem building hydraulic pressure. Other non-hydraulic issues are that the throwout bearing can go bad, sounding like a little lathe inside the bell housing. Or the release mechanism itself can fail, either jamming the pedal or making it floppy, as were the respective cases on two separate occasions with my 1970 Triumph GT6+ 45 years ago—once when the sleeve broke and again when the pivot broke through the release lever (ah, the joy of cars built from recycled WWII metal). And, of course, eventually the clutch disc wears down, resulting in the clutch slipping when power is applied. The clutch can also chatter if it’s contaminated with oil from a leaking rear main engine seal.

But the other thing that can happen on a car that’s been sitting is that the clutch can stick. Just like brake pads and shoes will stick to the rotors and drums if a car isn’t driven, the clutch disc can stick to the flywheel and/or the clutch plate. The standard methods of freeing it are letting the engine run for a while to warm things up, then cranking the starter with the transmission in gear and your foot on the clutch and brake pedals. Or jacking up the back of the car, starting it in gear, revving it up, then having someone drop the jack. Or spraying brake cleaner into the timing inspection hole (at least on BMWs) to try to break the bond of corrosion. I read one very clever solution in an Alfa forum from a guy who had a spare transmission and clutch assembly and figured out exactly where to drill a quarter-inch hole to reach in with a thin screwdriver and tap the surfaces apart, but most of us can’t do that.

I had the “frozen clutch or bad hydraulics” thing happen when my 1972 BMW 2002tii “Louie” was part of an exhibit in the BMW CCA Foundation museum. As the exhibit was ending and I was planning to fly down to pick up the car, the museum staff told me that the car would no longer go into gear when running. As part of sorting out the car just a year prior, I’d replaced both the clutch master and slave cylinders, so my brain automatically checked the “well, it can’t be that” box and I thus assumed the problem must be a frozen clutch, but nonetheless I went down with spare hydraulics just in case. When I got there, the clutch pedal felt fine to me and I saw no evidence of fluid leaking, further reinforcing the diagnosis that the clutch must be stuck. I did everything you’re supposed to do to free it, but it remained stuck. Finally I jacked up the car, put it on stands, crawled under it, had someone depress the clutch pedal, and watched the action of the slave cylinder and the clutch release lever—which is possible because, as per the photo above, on a stock BMW 2002 four-speed gearbox, the release lever protrudes through the side of the bellhousing.

To my surprise, I found that, although the pedal felt just fine, the release lever moved a little, then retreated back, indicating a hydraulic pressure-loss issue. The video of this can be seen here. Was the clutch slave cylinder bad, or was it the master? I didn’t know, so I replaced the year-old slave cylinder first because that was easier. Unfortunately, that didn’t fix it, but replacing the year-old master cylinder did. The correct release lever action can be seen here.

Unfortunately, the transmission in my 3.0CSi is different from that on the 2002—the release lever is wholly contained inside the bellhousing, so you can’t watch it in action. The real lesson from Louie was that if you can’t actually see what the hydraulics are doing, there’s not really a way to tell bad hydraulics from a frozen clutch. You need to try and rule one out as best as you can, and then go down the road of the other and hope that you’re not wrong.

I’ve only had stuck clutches twice before. One was on my Z3 after it sat outside all winter. It freed up fairly easily after I started the car in gear with my feet on the brake and clutch pedals. The other was a long-dead 2002 I’d hauled home. For that one, I had to use the blast-brake-cleaner-down-the-timing-inspection-hole trick to let it seep between the clutch plate, disc, and flywheel and soften the bond of corrosion that had formed. And then start it in gear.

Now, my pampered 3.0CSi certainly hadn’t been sitting out in the elements all winter—it was in my garage and had last been driven just three or four months ago. But it had been a rainy summer, and my garage certainly isn’t a humidity-controlled environment. So I tried cranking the starter with my foot on the clutch and the brake pedal pinned but had no success. I was about to try spraying brake cleaner down the timing inspection hole, but to my amazement, I couldn’t find any in the garage (inconceivable!).

So I had a look at the hydraulics. I jacked up the car, set it on stands, crawled beneath it, and inspected things closely. I saw no sign of fluid leakage. Although there was no way to directly visualize the motion of the release lever, I unbolted the clutch slave from the side of the gearbox, roped one of my kids into service, and had him gently depress the clutch pedal while I pressed the slave cylinder’s rod against the side of the gearbox to simulate the push-back from the clutch’s sprung fingers. I couldn’t find a spec for exactly how far the rod should extend, but it moved about an inch and stayed out as long as the clutch was depressed. Hack Mechanic verdict: There was nothing obviously wrong with the clutch hydraulics.

In the morning, I reattached the slave and set the car back down on the ground. I was about to run out for brake cleaner but thought I’d give another try at cranking the starter. This time I did it with the car in third gear, foot on the clutch, and the brake pedal mashed so hard I thought I might break the back of the Recaro. Mercifully, the clutch broke free. So it was a stuck clutch.

But even though the problem was solved, I couldn’t let go of the idea that there must be some way of telling a frozen clutch from bad hydraulics. I asked the question of two friends of mine, both professional wrenches on vintage European cars. Both offered the same “if it quacks like a duck” diagnostic approaches I’d already followed.

So I thought about it quite a bit. I wondered if there’s a difference between the disc being frozen to the flywheel versus to the clutch plate versus to both. I don’t think there is. The clutch plate is bolted to the flywheel, so the two always rotate together. The disc is always coupled directly to the transmission input shaft via the splines. So whether it’s stuck to one machined surface or the other or both, I think the effect is the same.

Then I wondered if you should be able to feel a stuck clutch as lack of motion in the pedal. Intuitively you’d think you could, as we’re trained to make sure that, during installation, the clutch disc slides smoothly on the transmission input shaft’s splines. Hell, you even put a dab of special lube on the splines to make sure it does. So if the clutch is seized, shouldn’t you feel the disc not sliding?

Surprisingly, no. Once you’ve bench-pressed the transmission upward, positioned the input shaft in the hole in the clutch disc, aligned the two with the precision of lenses on an optical bench, rotated the flange on the back of the transmission to get the splines to mesh, uttered a foul streak of blue language that no matter what you do it’s not going in, prayed to whatever god you believe in, then finally slid the transmission forward and heard that reassuring THOCK that indicates it’s in place, the disc really doesn’t move much on the shaft other than floating slightly away from the flywheel when the clutch is depressed in the same way that brake pads move slightly off a rotor. It should also move slightly closer to the flywheel as the disc wears down. But more to the point, what you feel when you depress the clutch pedal isn’t the disc sliding on the splines—it’s the throwout bearing pushing the clutch fingers and moving the plate backward.

On a closely related note, I’ve heard of a malady where the clutch disc sticks not to the flywheel but to the splines on the transmission shaft. This causes the disc to drag against the flywheel, creating hard shifting until things warm up.

So, no, I don’t think there’s an easy definitive frozen-clutch-versus-hydraulics test. If it happens to you, I’d say do what I did and try to rule out the hydraulics. See if the clutch pedal feels normal. Check if the clutch reservoir has lost any fluid and if the hydraulics are leaking. If the release lever is visible, watch it while someone depresses the clutch pedal. If it’s not, pull out the slave and put the rod under pressure while someone pushes fluid into it. If it passes all those tests, it’s probably a seized clutch. So try to free it. If you can’t despite doing everything, you’re faced with either pulling the transmission to get direct evidence that it’s seized, or replacing the hydraulics even though there’s nothing obviously wrong. Which one do you want to try first? I thought so.

But if anyone knows of a secret test, I’d love to hear it.

And yes, from now on, I won’t simply mash the clutch pedal when I start a car—I’ll shift it to neutral and then mash the clutch pedal.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Frozen clutch or bad hydraulics? appeared first on Hagerty Media.

My garage is attached to the back corner of my house, as that was the only way to build it and respect the town’s requirement of a four-foot setback from the property line. Its 31- x 17-foot size was the maximum allowable under a different building code that puts a limit on the ratio of the home’s square footage to that of the property. The garage’s low ceiling, which precludes having a real walk-under post lift, is due to the fact that a high ceiling would’ve obstructed the view out the dining room window.

In other words, the garage is a compromise solution that navigated a number of obstacles on its way to fruition. It is a triumph of the good over the perfect. From the suburban streets of Newton, Massachusetts, you don’t see the garage at all. From the backyard, it sticks out like an ovipositor on the butt of a wasp.

Although I love my garage and am blessed to have it, there are a number of issues with it. All access is through a single roll-up door at the front. There’s a double-width roll-up door on the rear side, intended to allow a big hooked J-turn into the garage and put one car cross-wise in the back, but I’ve never used it that way. Instead, even though we didn’t design it for this, I discovered early on that, since most of my vintage cars are short (a BMW 2002 is a little under 14 feet), I can fit two of them straight-in nose-to-tail, obviating the need for the awkward car-crosswise-in-the-rear thing. I back a third car in, do a dog-leg turn, and put it in the left rear of the garage. This fits three cars and leaves an empty space on the front left.

I can and have squeezed a fourth car in there by sliding it sideways on wheel dollies, but \for several reasons I haven’t done so in a few years. It takes a bit of work to pull off the maneuver. The floor slopes slightly toward the back for drainage, which means that a car on roller dollies will tend to drift rearward. To stop it, I have a wooden runner screwed into the floor, but the wheels of the roller dollies jam up against it. And with four cars sardined in there, it becomes difficult to get any serious mechanical work done over the winter, as there’s very little room to move. I know I constantly complain about my warehouse storage in Monson, but since it’s expandable, it’s just easier to cap the number of cars in my garage at three.

What’s clearly missing in the garage is a workbench to act as both a general-purpose table as well as to hold the bench vise, the table-top grinder, the Scotch-Brite wheel, the band saw, and the drill press that all instead sit on my basement floor. Since I don’t have one, when I’ve needed a work surface, I’ve used a fold-up card table that can barely support the cylinder head I’m working on, much less host a bench vise. Because there’s no broad horizontal work surface, the fourth open space on the garage floor becomes a magnet for, well, everything—tools, new parts I’ve bought that are waiting to be installed, things I’m in the middle of rebuilding, etc. And in order to drive the car that’s in the third space, I need to move all of it.

A separate but overlapping issue is the problem of boxes. For a while, the boxes littering the floor were predominantly full of parts I’ve been gifted from people who’d sold their (or their departed family member’s) BMW 2002, but recently also came to include stuff from selling my mother’s house (I mean, how am I supposed to leave boxes of new light bulbs and painting supplies behind?) and selling my truck (I mean, how am I supposed to leave behind all those tools that were in the truck’s utility body from when it was my geophysics field vehicle?). All of this winds up on the floor in the fourth space along with the welder I never use and the floor jacks.

The fundamental problem is that the garage is just a little too small for the way I try to use it (of course, the fact that I’m a tornado of chaos contributes immensely). I’m thrilled that the garage’s dimensions make it possible to fit three cars and squeeze in four, but it’s challenging to put a workbench inside. There’s zero room along the right wall. There’s barely room along the back part of the left wall. I do have a small parts washer there, but the car in the third space comes within 18 inches of it; I doubt I could put a workbench and a chair there. There’s a door to an under-deck storage closet along the front left wall that I don’t want to block. It’s possible that a bench could go in the left rear, behind the third space, but the floor of that area is still full of stuff.

Now, I’ve tried several times before to do a better job of organizing the garage, but I always lose momentum and fall back to doing the bare minimum that’s necessary to do whatever it was that I really needed to do, which is usually clearing the floor so I can simply get the third car out of the back space and drive it. I decided to take another run at it, this time with the realistic goal of doing enough organization and configuration to keep the fourth space clear so I can pull the car in the third space in and out without making it a floor-clearing project each time, as well as enabling the possibility of a workbench in the back.

If I haven’t made it clear, stuff on the floor is death to efficient use of space not only because it takes up the space on the floor, not only because you can’t drive over it, but because it essentially occupies all the space above it as well—unless it’s stackable crates, little else can be put on top of it. The obvious solution is shelving. Over the decades, I’ve shelved most of the available wall space in both the basement and the garage. Most of this is wire shelving on wall-mounted brackets and standards, but a few years ago I bought two rolling wire shelving units. There’s a sliding door on the left wall that opens up under the back porch where I have big items like the engine hoist stored. By having rolling shelves instead of wall-mounted ones, it allows the possibility (the slim possibility, but the possibility nevertheless) of rolling the shelves out of the way in case I need access to these items. I ordered two more of these rolling shelf units on Amazon and tackled the boxes of junk that were in the way of where I wanted to put them.

Getting boxes out of the way of where you want to put shelving is definitely a case of things getting much worse before they get better. One by one, I disgorged the contents of boxes (many of which had rotted bottoms) directly onto the garage floor, threw things out, tossed other things in the scrap metal pile, combined like with like, put them in new boxes, and put them up on the shelves.

But boy, it’s easy to get sidetracked. I accumulated all the BMW 2002 shift platforms and related transmission and clutch parts left over from when I’d performed five-speed conversions in several cars. I had four shift platforms. Did I need to keep all of them? No. The platform itself is not a rare part that wears out; only the detachable rubber bushings do, and they’re readily available. Still, someone might one to shorten it for a five-speed conversion. Should I give them away? I’ve done a lot of this in the past, and it takes time. I fought my tendency for analysis/paralysis and instead kept two of the good ones and threw the two grimy ones in the scrap metal heap.

Then I went through the same thing with old cooling system parts. I had seven 2002 thermostats. Granted, there’s some value in saving these things when a) thermostats go bad far less often than we’ve been led to believe, and b) the old ones may be of higher quality than the new ones, but seven? I picked two OE-manufacturer thermostats with low opening temperatures and recycled the rest.

Another issue has been my tendency to keep donated parts together in their original boxes. I’ve been the beneficiary of a number of BMW 2002 parts hoards over the years, several donated by the spouses of their deceased husbands. One fellow was fastidious in his accumulation and bagging of small interior parts. Another had a fine assortment of barely-used under-hood ignition parts that were replaced with higher-performance versions. I’ve kept these collections intact for years, but the time had come to organize by functionality rather than by donor.

If I may continue for a moment longer on the issue of boxes, if the floor is death, boxes are death, too. The problem with boxes is that while they’re necessary for organization and storage, their very presence legitimizes their contents. Just because a box is clearly labeled “Old BMW 2002 ignition parts” doesn’t mean that it isn’t all just junk. A time comes when it’s necessary to dump the contents on the floor, give everything a good hard look, separate the wheat from the chaff, pitch the junk, and redistribute the good stuff. I was particularly merciless with the box of parts from the rebuild of the Lotus Europa’s engine. I mean, used rings, bearings, valves, and timing chain? Out it all went. The edge of silliness of this curve was encountered when I found a box that contained the cleaned-out contents of a car before I sold it. It wasn’t even my car—this was a favor I did for a friend six years ago. So this wasn’t even my stuff. I shredded the old registration and threw the rest away.

In addition to shelving, I have an endless need for drawers and find the plastic multi-drawer storage units very handy. The tall seven-drawer units were a little more expensive on Amazon than I expected, but I found someone on Facebook Marketplace who has a side hustle selling used furniture and delivered one to my house for $45. A few hours and a bunch of plastic take-out containers later, and I had a decently-organized set of drawers with metal and plastic trim clips, small interior screws, zip ties, gaskets, rubber seals and grommets, BMW 2002tii fuel injection parts, and the like.

One of the toughest things to deal with has been the tools, as I’ve accumulated redundant sets of them from different sources. The most recent motherlode came from the work truck I just sold—full SAE and metric toolboxes, as well as several ratchet sets in small fold-open plastic cases, were left in it when the truck was largely abandoned when the company I worked for closed the building where it was based. At some point I need to do the full-on anal-retentive organization of, for example, grouping all the ½-inch tall metric sockets together on a socket rail, repeating for all the different socket sizes and types, making one high-quality master tool box, one house tool box, and two road tool boxes, and then taking whatever’s left over down to my local used tool store to sell for pennies on the dollar. But in the meantime, I simply needed this stuff off the floor. My brain and my search patterns were in wire-shelving-mode, so what I found on Amazon was a three-tier wire shelf cart for $80. It does the job. But much of online purchases hinges on using the correct search terms, and in retrospect, looking at “tool carts” would’ve yielded a better solution. Still, several tool boxes and big stuff like sledgehammers and crowbars are now off the ground and roll-able.

As the garage got way more organized and the fourth space was cleared, the need for a table or workbench made itself known in a funny way. There’s a tall wastebasket in the garage that I’d filled with trash but hadn’t emptied yet. At one point, while dealing with empty boxes I’d slated for recycling, a shallow cardboard tray that originally held a case of carbonated water wound up sitting on top of the wastebasket. Before I knew what had happened, it filled up with stuff—hats, flashlights, T-shirts, a metal box filled with old keys—that I wasn’t sure what to do with. In other words, I began using the first available horizontal surface as a table. “No!” I said to myself. I recycled the box and found longer-term homes for these things or threw them out. As I continued dealing with smaller groupings of stuff—a few electrical components, some molding clips—they naturally found their way onto … other horizonal surfaces, like the tops of toolboxes. The point is that whether you have a table or a workbench or not, one is going to invent itself because the need is never going to go away.

So, no, I don’t have a workbench in the garage yet, but I do now have everything off the floor in the fourth space. I won’t be storing another car in it, but that wasn’t the goal—the goal was making it so I can easily drive the car into space #3. I’m there. Regarding the workbench, I can see light at the end of the tunnel. Once I clean out the stuff behind space #3, I can put a workbench back there.

The only problem is … I sold the truck that I would’ve used to drag home an inexpensive, used work bench.

Damn. Why don’t I ever think these things through?

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post My garage needs a workbench, but where? appeared first on Hagerty Media.

I’ve made no secret of my strategy that the legs of the tripod of my ability to own 13 cars are a wonderful understanding and tolerant spouse, affordable insurance through Hagerty, and affordable storage. Regarding the storage leg, I’ve written pieces about how I progressed from having access to the two-car garage at my mother’s house … to moving to Newton (Massachusetts) to a property with a rusty corrugated metal one-car garage, to building a three-and-sort-of-four-car garage … to leeching off the fact that for years my engineering job had me working in a cavernous warehouse where I could stash cars … to renting five affordable, individual 24-hour access roll-up garage bays … to losing those and thinking that the solution was to sell our house in the suburbs and move to a car-centric property … to accepting that that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon … and, finally, finding other affordable storage in a giant but somewhat odd warehouse 70 miles away in the town of Monson on the Massachusetts/Connecticut line.

I have a love-hate relationship with the Monson warehouse arrangement. On the positive side, it’s cheap—$70/month per car—and expandable. If I happened into another car I couldn’t pass up, I’d have somewhere to put it. But the downsides are significant. It’s far less convenient than having individual garages with my roll-up doors. And once I’m inside, I sometimes find my cars are blocked in, and I have to find someone who works there to move the offending vehicle (it’s not a dedicated car storage facility). Plus, the landlord rents over-winter storage to RV, trailer, and boat owners, so once the big boys roll in, my cars aren’t going anywhere until spring. Additionally, traffic on the Mass Pike (I-90) has stepped up considerably in recent years, so the drive that Google Maps says should take a bit over an hour is rarely accomplished in less than 90 minutes; it can be two hours if I get caught on a leaf-peeping or college move-in weekend.

Still, $350/month to store five cars is dirt cheap—less than half what I’ve found anywhere else—and the hour-and-a-half-ish drive time is sort of workable, so I continue to go with the devil I’ve come to know.

But now there’s a new factor.

Mold.

It was a very wet summer here in Boston, with drenching rain causing catastrophic flooding in parts of central Massachusetts and Vermont. One of the times I was out in Monson, I found that one of my cars—which are parked in two rows near one of the warehouse walls—was being directly dripped on. I looked up and saw where the leak was causing insulation to pull away from the ceiling. I moved the car one space forward to get it out from both the drip and the potential dropping of insulation, but I didn’t really think too much of it. Big old metal buildings like this often leak. The storage cost is cheap. You get what you pay for.

But when I went out there a few weeks ago to swap cars, there were numerous puddles of standing water inside the warehouse, including one spreading under several of my cars. When I pulled the cover off the car I wanted to drive, I was greeted by a substantial bloom of mold on the seats and steering wheel. Concerned, I uncovered and examined all five cars.

All of the cars had some degree of mold, ranging from near-trivial to no no no no NO! I realized that, on some of the cars, I’d left the windows cracked open, and I found that the correlation was pretty clear—the car with the smallest amount of mold was the furthest from the water and had been left with the windows all the way up. The moldiest car—my ’74 Lotus Europa Twin Cam Special—was sitting in a puddle with the windows rolled partially down (it gets a little mousey-smelling inside the Lotus if you leave it with the windows up).

For years, I’ve left a 10-ounce refillable DampRid moisture-absorbing container on the floor of each stored car. These containers have a plastic sink-strainer-like basket that sits in the top. You pour the humidity-absorbent white flakey DampRid crystals into the basket. As the crystals get saturated with water, it drains through the basket into the bottom of the container. As I moved from car to car and emptied the water out of each container, I realized that all of the crystals were gone. In other words, I’d gone too long without visiting the cars and refilling the DampRid containers with fresh desiccant, and the amount of humidity from the rainy summer, the leaky roof, and the water on the floor had overwhelmed them and used them up. So of course the cars were moldy.

I had other constraints on my time and wasn’t able to spend the entire day dealing with the issue, so I did what was efficient and possible. First, there are no assigned marked spaces in the warehouse, so I pulled the cars that were sitting in water one row forward. Next, I keep a gallon of DampRid crystals in the trunk of one of the cars in Monson that I use to refill the containers, but I had nothing to clean the mold with. So I drove to a local hardware store, bought some cleaning wipes, refilled the containers, and wiped off most of the mold. On one of my 2002s, the mold had only bloomed on the hard surfaces of the steering wheel and center console, but on others it had settled onto the rugs. My Bavaria had visible rust blooms on the floor. Fortunately, both the aftermarket Coco mats, as well as the original snap-in floor carpet pieces, were easily removable, so I took them with me for cleaning.

My ’79 Euro 635CSi, however, had a large ugly rust bloom on the passenger-side rug, and it’s a newer-style one-piece rug that can’t be removed without disassembling much of the interior of the car. I wiped the mold off with the cleaning wipes and resolved to come back soon and do a more complete job.

When I got home with the Bavaria’s removable mats and rug pieces, it was easy enough to blast the mold off with a pressure washer and leave them to dry in the sun, but the Monson mold event jarred me. I joke that I don’t consider myself a “collector” because a) I don’t chase investment by buying the most expensive cars in the best condition possible, and b) I sure as hell don’t have climate-controlled storage. But seeing my cars coated in mold in leaky storage was enough to make me think that I’d crossed the line from quirky automotive accumulator to negligent hoarder. I again began pounding on Zillow and doing a deep dive into looking for car-centric properties, but I stopped, as my wife and I never fully agreed on where we would move, and so we’ve stayed put where we are just west of Boston. And that’s OK. Part of my secret to happiness is not craving things I can’t have—don’t ask me about Italian exotics or what some ridiculously mint low-mileage car went for on Bring a Trailer; I pay zero attention.

About a week later, I returned to the Monson warehouse with a second set of five DampRid cannisters and some mold treat/block spray. My plan was to double up on the moisture-absorbing capacity present in each car and spend the better part of the day cleaning them and driving each one to get some fresh air inside. When I got there, I found that two things had changed. First, the puddles had largely dried up. Second, when I checked the existing DampRid in each car, I found that unlike the previous week where the crystals were gone and the canisters had only water in them, this time there was a crust on the DampRid, but no water. More important, I didn’t see any new mold. In other words, with less humidity and ample desiccant, the mold was kept at bay.

Nonetheless, I followed through with the plan. I went through each car one by one. I used the mold cleaner/blocker spray as per the directions—spray it on and wipe off any existing mold. I took each car for a glorious windows-down 30-ish-minute autumn drive, which obviously was not exactly hardship. When I returned to the warehouse, I sprayed the mold cleaner/blocker again to lay down a protective layer. I paid particular attention to spraying all the rug surfaces.

But during all the uncovering-covering action, I noticed something else. One of the covers had evidence of a brown tarry substance dripping on it. I looked up and could see drips of it forming on the undersides of the insulation batting hanging from the metal roof. It was everywhere, but it was worse at the edge of the roof near where it had been leaking.

I took two actions. The car with the goo on the cover was the last one that I had parked near the warehouse wall, so I moved it forward. Next, I noticed that many of the other cars in the warehouse had disposable clear plastic covers over them. I always regarded these as a poor substitute for a real indoor cover, but I suddenly understood their utility in helping prevent anything that might drip from the roof from getting through a porous cover and onto the paint. When I got home, I jumped on Amazon and found dozens of choices. I selected the pack that had five covers for $35. The next time I’m out in Monson, I’ll lay them on.

So, I’ve walked myself back from the ledge. I’m not a negligent hoarder. The mold was mostly due to the biblically wet summer, proximity to standing water, and my leaving the cars for too long without changing the desiccant. The simple measures of moving the cars forward, doubling-up on the DampRid, buying a $7 plastic cover for each car, and a commitment to a once-a-month trip to Monson to check on the cars should get me through ’til spring, at which time I can re-evaluate the whole thing again.

After all, this property is waiting for me in western Massachusetts:

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Storage Problems. Again. appeared first on Hagerty Media.

I recently sold my 29,000-mile 2008 Chevy Silverado 3500HD dually Duramax diesel (a.k.a., the sort-of formerly mouse-infested truck). Like most automotive moves. I thought it through very carefully. It was not an easy decision.

I had a long and curious history with the truck. It was my former work vehicle when I used to do field geophysics (detection of unexploded shells on old military training ranges). The company I worked for bought it new in 2008 and spec’d it to tow a 32-foot trailer containing a geophysical survey system (a small Gator-like UTV that towed what looked like a carbon fiber boat trailer loaded of metal detectors and high-resolution GPS). We ordered the truck with a utility body on it to house tools and parts and provide a work space if need be. As I was the one who designed the geophysical equipment and kept it running, I needed to be in the field with it. Initially we had a guy with a commercial driver’s license (CDL) who drove the truck for us, but I eventually took the helm. I was never able to do the block-traffic-and-back-up-to-the-loading-dock-in-one-try thing, but then again I never needed to. Nearly all the driving was interstates and very rural areas.

Unfortunately, the bulk of the geophysical work went away by 2013, leaving the truck with only 22,000 miles on it. The company closed the big building I worked in and relocated my group to much smaller industrial space. We parked the truck and trailer in the parking lot, but it turned out the landlord didn’t have permits needed from the city for overnight parking of commercial vehicles. This kicked off a repeating annual cycle of my needing to find new digs for the truck and trailer, then getting kicked out of it when the landlord needed the lot space. Around that time, the company I worked for split in two, its paperwork was never transferred to the half of the company the truck actually belonged to, and I was the only one who paid attention to its annual insurance, registration, and inspection needs.

In the meantime, my work load at my old engineering job spiraled down to near nothing. I left in 2015 and became a full-time automotive writer but remained a consulting employee and had an unofficial quid pro quo with them regarding the truck. I kept it legal for them by taking it in for its annual Massachusetts inspections and renewing its registration. In return, they let me use it for occasional errand-running, such as moving my kids into and out of college and hauling cars, as these uses also helped keep the truck exercised. I sometimes emptied the 32-foot trailer of geophysical equipment and strapped a car inside, but it was way more trailer than I wanted to be towing, and I usually opted for renting a U-Haul auto transporter (open trailer) instead.

When there was only one employee left in the small industrial space, the company closed it and liquidated the equipment inside. Since the truck and trailer were parked elsewhere, they were spared the liquidation axe. The truck, incredibly, had only 28,000 miles on it. However, it had been sitting at the edge of a parking lot that backed onto a wooded area, and by that time, mice had gotten into it and done a lot of damage, infesting the headliner and the heater box.

Knowing the large amount of work necessary to abate the gag-inducing smell, I sent the company photographs of the rodent damage and made them an insultingly-low offer for the truck. The combination of the fact that I appeared to be the only one left who knew exactly what the truck was, the old paperwork snafu over which part of the company owned it, and the 100-percent-accurate photos of the mouse damage worked to my favor. It took a few months, but eventually I was the owner of a running, driving, rust-free, dent-free, 28,000-mile 2008 Silverado 3500HD dually Duramax diesel with a utility body for a practically-stole-it price. Except, of course, for the fact that it smelled like that episode of Mythbusters where they put a dead pig in a Corvette and left it in a cargo trailer for six months to see if anyone would still buy it.

I wrote several pieces about the abatement of the mouse damage. Serious trigger warning: I don’t recommend that you click on any of the following links unless you have a strong stomach. The first piece was on the purchase of the truck and the overview of the rodent problem. The second dealt specifically with replacing the headliner (I found a used headliner at a junkyard in Woonsocket Rhode Island, about 45 minutes south of me for $150,  drove there in my little Winnebago Rialta RV, and picked it up).

The third piece detailed my efforts at cleaning out the contaminated heater box without taking the quoted 20 hours needed to pull the dash to get at it. Instead, I bought another heater box to use as a test mule, figured out where to drill inspection and cleaning holes, snaked in an inspection camera, and located and removed the nest and mouse carcass. This was never going to be as complete a decontamination as would be achieved with the box removed and disassembled, but with repeated flushing with enzyme-based cleaner, occasional running of an ozone generator, and lots of fresh air and sun, the smell abated to the point where my wife—she of the exquisitely sensitive nose—would ride with me with the windows up and the A/C on. The heat was a big more fragrant, but it was easily tolerable.

With the bouquet of the abattoir largely gone, and with the truck’s original dry-rotted tires replaced with a not-inexpensive set of Michelin LTX Defenders, I was a man with a big bad and presumably highly-reliable truck. Naturally I assumed that I’d become a towing madman, dragging home any number of sweet, new, hunted-and-killed automotive prizes. At a minimum, I knew that my long-time storage of five cars in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, was ending, and that I’d need to move them to a new home, possibly in winter.

Make no mistake, it was incredibly handy owning a truck like this. Some friends dissed the utility body, but when it was pouring rain and I needed to move my niece into her new apartment, it was fabulous. During the period when my sister and I were cleaning out our mother’s house prior to its sale, the truck was in near-constant use. My sister would say, “Ariana wants the sofa and chairs, and Elena wants the swing set,” and my sons and I and the truck would make it happen. Plus, the body’s shelves and cabinets swallowed multitudes of car parts given to me by estates of deceased motorheads.

But with regard to the truck being an enabler to me buying and dragging home every stupid car that caught my eye, it just didn’t turn out like I expected. There were a few reasons why.

Understand that, in addition to having access to the Silverado before I bought it, I’ve owned six Suburbans, so I’m familiar with both the flexibility and limitations of owning a vehicle you can tow a car with. I’ve generally followed the framework that, on the short-haul end, buying a long-dead car with flat tires and seized wheels 10 miles away is usually worth throwing a hundred bucks to someone on Craigslist moonlighting with their employer’s roll-back flatbed, and on the long-haul end, it’s hard to make the economics of towing a car a thousand miles work, but for a running vehicle a few hours from home, sure, rent the U-Haul auto transporter for 60 bucks, show up, drive the car onto it, and drag it back. But the problem is that a) U-Haul is sometimes sold out of auto transporters the weekend you need one, and b) the logistics of going to U-Haul, waiting in line, hooking the thing up, then having to off-load the car and return the trailer by the end of the day adds a surprising number of hours to the exercise, enough that one begins to think that, unless they can own a truck and a trailer (for which I simply don’t have the room), the car-towing utility of the truck alone is less than you’d think.

In the two-and-a-half years since I bought the truck, I’ve used it exactly three times to tow cars. And none of those were new purchases. Two were moving my own cars between storage areas. The other was taking delivery of a widow’s car that I was helping her sell.

But even if I did suddenly increase my use of the truck to buy cars, the dually Duramax would still be massive overkill. This is the kind of truck you use to tow a ramp trailer with six cars on it. I have no need for a tow monster like this. I could do occasional short-run towing with just about anything.

A few other things factored into my thought process. One was that, despite my history with the truck, I didn’t really enjoy driving it. I often say that part of the joy of owning a vintage car is simply using it to run errands—it turns the mundane into an event. The truck was the opposite. If I needed to run out on a Sunday morning to buy milk and the truck was at the top of the driveway and I took it, I’d think, “This is a completely ridiculous vehicle to be driving.” Between its length, its horrible turning radius, and the extra width and poor visibility imparted by the utility body, it certainly wasn’t the vehicle of choice for parallel parking or tight parking lots.

Another was that, although its oodles of ground clearance provided ample access when I needed to replace its stolen catalytic converter, in general the truck’s size and weight was daunting to this guy whose soft spot is 1500- to 3000-pound 1970s European cars. I didn’t own a floor jack that I felt safe using to lift it, and even if I did, thinking about dealing with the torque on the lug nuts and the size and the weight of the wheels felt like stretching what my 65-year-old body could comfortably do. I realized that, when the time came for pads and rotors or front-end work, I’d probably need to pay someone else. I’d be happy to do that if there was a good reason for me to own the vehicle, but the more I thought about it, there wasn’t.

Lastly, despite the truck’s low mileage potentially buying me trouble-free towing, there was the specter that if and when it needed work on the injection pump or the injectors replaced, I’d cry.

So I thought about it carefully. With the sale of my mother’s house, the truck’s window of usefulness had passed. If my wife and I resurrected our desire to find a car-centric property out in the country, the truck would again be a godsend. Was that more likely or less likely to happen within the next year? The answer seemed to be the latter.

As far as value, when I bought the 28,000-mile 2008 Diesel Emission Fluid (DEF)-free Silverado with the utility body during the pandemic, I had folks telling me that supply chain issues made it so you couldn’t buy a new truck like this if you wanted to, so if I could make the mouse smell livable, it was worth crazy money. I’d only put a thousand miles on it, and between the purchase price, Massachusetts taxes and fees, the new Michelins, the lift pump, and some other odds and ends, I only had seven grand in it.

So I cleaned it, shot it, wrote up a highly-detailed ad documenting the low mileage and fully disclosing the rodent history, and put the truck on eBay with a $25,000 opening price, a $37,500 Buy It Now price, and a $32,500 reserve. I linked to the eBay ad on both Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. I had no bids and only a handful of interested messages. I began to think that if I had to sell it for less than $25K, I’d just keep it until it needed work.

But then I was contacted by a local guy up in Gloucester, Massachusetts, who owns a concrete and gravel company and has two other Duramax diesel work trucks. He was the kind of buyer you just wanted to hug—messaged in complete sentences, showed up exactly when he said he would, followed through on every part of the process with great communication. When he test-drove it, we rolled up the windows and turned on the A/C, then the heat. I nervously awaited the odor verdict. He shrugged and said, “Smells like every other work truck I’ve ever owned.” A few days later he offered me 30 grand for it. I realized I’d be out of my tree not to take it. The deal is done.

The truck is still in my driveway, but money and papers have been exchanged. The buyer is coming this weekend to drive it off to a life of real labor. Maybe it’ll love that. Or maybe it’ll think, “Remember that guy who rescued us and de-moused us and then just left us alone in his driveway most of the time? That was awesome.”

We’ll see whether or not I buy something better suited to my habits. For now, the little Winnebago Rialta RV has enough interior room to move things, provided they’ll fit through the narrow side door, but it has zero towing capability.

I’ll miss the truck, but what I’ll miss more is the idea that I could use it whenever I needed it. I think I may have liked that part even more before I actually owned it.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post My Silverado 3500HD has found a new home, hopefully one that’s mouse-free appeared first on Hagerty Media.

If you’re tooling around close to home in a vintage car, breakdowns aren’t really that big of a deal. Your Hagerty or AAA coverage will probably tow the car home for free or close enough, and you can fix it there. But if you’re road-tripping a car, breakdowns are a much bigger deal. Even if the cause is something you think you can fix, you really don’t want to be in a situation where you need to be under a car when trucks are whipping past only 10 feet away. Anything you know is wrong with a car that is likely to put it in the breakdown lane really should be fixed before a trip.

That having been said, breakdowns happen, and when the cause is obvious and easily addressable, roadside repairs get made. To be clear, whenever possible, don’t literally repair it roadside—if you’re on the highway, limp the car to an exit and find a parking lot instead. Cooling system and oil pressure issues, however, carry a special urgency, as failure to act immediately can result in a cracked head or a lunched engine.

When a roadside repair is ingenious or difficult, it turns into the stuff of legend. I’ve heard stories about broken fan belts in Volkswagens being addressed (or undressed) by convincing a female companion to surrender her panty hose and fashioning a belt out of it (likely a relationship-cementing or a relationship-ending event). One South African friend told me a story about engine failure in a remote area and a weeks-long process of walking miles and hitchhiking while carrying a cylinder head to and from a machine shop. And I witnessed two good friends of mine replace a BMW 2002’s blown head gasket in a hotel parking lot in under an hour and a half.

Now, nothing I’ve done approaches these feats. But after 47 years of wrenching, these are the roadside repairs that stand out above the usual wiring-up of hanging exhausts, reseated distributor caps, “your alternator won’t charge without excitation current from the battery warning light” fixes, and getting a car to start by tapping on the positive battery clamp, the starter, or the electric fuel pump, then going “Ayyyy” like Fonzie.

1. Water pump failure in the Triumph GT6+

In high school, I had been a bicycle guy—riding bikes, fixing bikes, pulling bikes out of the trash and rejuvenating them with parts from other bikes. The summer before college, I was planning on cycling cross-country, which scared the bejesus out of my mother. She blatantly bribed me by offering to buy me a car. I took the bribe and bought the then-six-year-old 1970 Triumph GT6+, easily the worst car I’ve ever owned.

The first of many failures occurred when the car overheated in the hill country north of Amherst, Massachusetts. I limped it to that night’s destination, a friend’s father’s house. I didn’t know much about cars, but knowing bikes, to me the car was just another mechanical system. I could see that the part where water was streaming out had a pulley and a belt on it, and deduced that it was the water pump. I made a few phone calls, found a shop in nearby Hadley that had one, hitchhiked there, and bought it … and the gasket … and the sealant … and the antifreeze.

My friend’s father had enough tools for me to do the job. I had my first taste of the joy of getting myself out of trouble. There were other more devastating mechanical failures to come, and of course the requisite Lucas electrical system problems, but if anything is ground zero for me becoming The Hack Mechanic, it was this.

2. Points closing up in the VW Bus

In early January 1982, my then-girlfriend and now-wife Maire Anne and I moved from Boston down to Austin, Texas, in her rotted 1971 VW Bus with no heat. After surviving an ice storm in Pennsylvania, we finally made it to warmer climes, but somewhere in Arkansas, the bus lost power and sputtered into the breakdown lane. As the de-facto mechanic of my girlfriend’s car, I’d read John Muir’s classic How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step-By-Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot cover-to-cover. This was my first “it’s almost always the points” experience—due to pitting on the point faces and wear in the little nylon block that runs on the distributor shaft, the point gap had closed up until it no longer triggered the coil. I pulled the points, filed them, did the trick of gapping them with a matchbook cover (which is about the 0.016-inch needed), and voila. I think this is why Maire Anne later married me.

3. Fixing the 2800CS in the middle of a busy intersection

In 1988, I looked at two BMW 2800CS E9 coupes from a salvage yard north of Boston. One was a wrecked picked-over parts car, but the other surprised me by being rusty but whole, and starting and running. I bought them and decided to drive the good one home, use it as a winter beater, and part it out the following spring (I had two other E9 coupes). A few days later, Maire Anne drove me over to the junkyard in our 1983 Volvo 245GLT wagon. I slapped a plate from my daily driver on the 2800CS, jump-started its doornail-dead battery with the Volvo (incredibly foolish—I should’ve brought a fully-charged battery from another car instead), verified that no fluid was gushing out from under the engine compartment, and off we went. Through traffic. At rush hour. Ah, youth. When I was trying to get through the very busy intersection of Rt. 28 and Memorial Drive, I didn’t feed enough gas coming off the clutch, and the car stalled. Since the battery was dead, there was no re-starting it.

So, there I am in the middle of a city intersection at rush hour in a dead, rusty, uninsured, unregistered old car that looked like Beatrix Kiddo in Kill Bill II when she escaped from being buried alive. With it nearly impossible to position the Volvo nose-to-nose to the 2800CS to jump it, I motioned Maire Anne to drive the Volvo to the curb. I ran over, popped open the Volvo’s hood, yanked out its battery (also foolish, as doing so on a running car risks blowing the diodes in the alternator, but necessary), wrapped the positive battery cable in a glove so it wouldn’t short to ground, said to Maire Anne, “Whatever you do, don’t stall,” ran into the intersection with the Volvo’s battery, threw it in the 2800, started it, and drove home. Certainly not one of my smarter moves, but a good story.

4. Reconnecting the half-axle on the Vanagon

Before I began my serial relationship with Suburbans, I had Vanagons. They were weird cars but cavernous inside. I think I went through half a dozen of them before we finally bought the Toyota Previa, which also was weird but was more reliable. When I bought the first Vanagon, the clutch was slipping badly. I dropped the engine (very similar to the old VW busses—support it on blocks, unbolt the bumper, unbolt the engine, roll the bus forward) and replaced the clutch. A few days later, my sister needed to borrow the Vanagon to pick up a piece of furniture. That afternoon, I got a call from her from a payphone (this was pre-cell-phone days) saying that the Vanagon began making a loud rumble, then very loud whacking sounds came from the back.

She and the car were a few miles away. I shot over there with my tools and found that one end of one of the half-axles was flopping in the breeze. Apparently I hadn’t torqued down the ring of Allen-head bolts holding it to the flange on the transaxle. I crawled under the car, tightened things up, and sent my sister on her way. Some 35 years later, she will still sometimes needle me, “Remember when the axle fell off the Vanagon you leant me?” I, of course, will correct her and say, “It wasn’t ‘the axle.’ It was one of the half-axles. And it didn’t fall off—one end just got loose. And I came immediately and tightened it back up, didn’t I?” The funny thing is that, looking back on it, I can’t remember why I had to detach the half-axles at all. Maybe there was some reason why I needed to pull the engine and transaxle together.

5. Unadjustable fan belt on a 635CSi

I had a 1985 BMW 635CSi that had been gifted to me by my son’s girlfriend’s father. He was mainly a Mercedes guy, and his Mercedes mechanic couldn’t figure out why the 635 wouldn’t start. It turned out to simply be a bad distributor cap. That, an air flow meter, and new injectors got the car running well, but it was by no means well-sorted, and the young man who bought it from me surprised by saying that he wanted to join my convoy on the 2000-mile round trip to The Vintage in Asheville. I warned him that this was risky. He said that he understood that I wasn’t his traveling mechanic, but I couldn’t help but feel a sense of responsibility for both him and the car. Sure enough, on the drive down, the car’s temperature began creeping up and eventually headed for the red zone.

We took the next exit. I found that the belt was slipping even though there was no audible squealing, and the slippage resulted in the water pump not continuously spinning. I tried to adjust the belt, but the bolt in the adjuster track was at the end of the slot, indicating either that the belt was wrong to begin with or had stretched. I was afraid that, if he drove the car hot, he’d crack the head, and I was about to search for the nearest auto parts store when I noticed that next door to the convenience store we’d pulled into was a machine shop where we were able to borrow a round file. I removed the bracket, and Jordan (“the kid”) did the hard work extending the adjustment slot (hey, it was his car). It worked like a charm. We later found a shorter belt, but never needed to install it.

6. Cracked fan on a Euro 635CSi

I was driving my ’79 Euro 635CSi on the return trip from The Vintage—the same trip where I fixed the kid’s unadjustable fan belt. During a rest stop, I opened up the hood to check the oil and was stunned to see that two blades had flown off the belt-driven cooling fan. The 635CSi’s six-cylinder M30 engine was used in BMWs from 1968 through ’95, but it went through three different water pump, fan clutch, and fan configurations, and new parts are no longer available for anything other than the final configuration. I put out the call to friends on Facebook, but unless someone had an old fan, I’d need to replace not just the fan but also update the water pump, the fan clutch, and the pulley.

I removed the fan lest it lose another blade and slice open a coolant hose. This required removing the radiator, which in turn required dumping the coolant. Fortunately I was able to send one of my road trip companions to a nearby Autozone for a catch basin and a few gallons of antifreeze. Driving without a belt-driven cooling fan is usually fine when cruising at highway speeds, but if there’s not enough air flow over the radiator at low speeds or in traffic, it can send temperatures into the red and crack the head. I made a quick wiring mod that allowed me to run the electric pusher fan that’s in front of the A/C condenser without turning on the A/C, and let the car idle in the parking lot to test it. The temperature seemed to top out at about 3/4 of the way up the gauge, so I felt pretty good about making a run for it.

In the meantime, a friend about 150 miles north and on the way home messaged me that he had every part to do the full water pump/clutch/fan/pulley upgrade. We made it to his garage without incident, where I installed the newer-style cooling components. The car’s cooling system was fine until…

7. Leaky heater hose on the same car

A few years later, again on the way to The Vintage and driving the same ’79 Euro 635CSi, I had another cooling system issue. The irony was that, having experienced cooling system issues the last time I road-tripped the car, I wanted to be certain everything was copasetic, so I inspected the cooling system. I found a heater hose that was obviously ballooned and soft. The hose was listed as no longer available from BMW, but I found one as new old stock (NOS) on eBay. I clicked and bought it, but wasn’t certain it would arrive in time, so I hunted around on my parts shelves for a replacement. I found what appeared to be a perfectly good used heater hose. It was clearly better than the ballooned one in the car, so I installed it.

When the NOS hose arrived, I tossed it in the trunk as a spare. On the way to The Vintage, the car’s temp crept up, but did so slowly enough that I thought it was just due to the outside temperature increasing as we headed south, combined with the car rolling up and down the Blue Ridge mountains, but when it tickled the red, I pulled over. I-81 is one of the most heavily trucked routes in the country, so I made it a point to get the car as far off the breakdown lane as I could. Sure enough, the engine was peeing coolant … out the hose I’d just replaced.

Fortunately, I had the NOS hose in the trunk. While I was waiting for the engine to cool down, I sent my travel companions for antifreeze, at which we all had a serious déjà vu, as the same thing happened with the car and the same people three years prior. It was yet another reminder how much easier these things are when you’re not trying to act like a lone wolf.

8. High beam stalk disintegrates on the Merritt Parkway

The Merritt Parkway is a windy two-lane road north of New York City with a lot of elevation changes. When I was younger, I used to love the Merritt for that reason, but in my dotage I find it stressful due to the 85-mph traffic, the sudden squeezing of two lanes down to one due to construction, the lack of illumination at night, and the repeated experience of coming over one of the rises and having to jam on the brakes due to the sudden sea of red lights. As such, I usually avoid it, but sometimes I’ll just do whatever Waze says, and if it takes me via the Merritt, so be it. Such was the case on one of my trips to The Vintage in a 2002tii.

It was night. Traffic was light to moderate, so there was a lot of toggling the stalk between low and high beams. During one such flick, the stalk fell apart in my hand. What’s the big deal, you might say? Did it fail in the low or high beam position? That was the problem. Neither—my headlights went completely out. With the Merritt Parkway’s lack of lighting, I was abruptly plunged into darkness. I slowed down while fumbling with the stalk to see if I could restore lighting. Fortunately I found one fragile position where the lights came back on, but they went out if I deviated in the slightest. I drove very carefully that way—one hand on the wheel, the other on the stalk—until I came to a rest area. On road trips, I always pack a roll of wire, a variety of connectors, and a crimping tool, so I had no question that, if necessary, I would wire the lights directly to the fuse box, but I thought that I’d first try fixing the stalk. I took the upper and lower panels off the steering column to expose the stalks and found that the potted metal tabs holding the Bakelite back of the stalk in place had broken off.

I carefully put the stalk back together, held it together with zip ties, re-attached it, and tested it. It held. For the rest of the trip, I flicked the stalk very carefully lest it fall apart again, but it’s now eight years later, and those zip ties are still in place.

9. J-B Welding a cracked head

I’d say that I’m saving the best for last, but I already wrote about the time that I J-B Welded a cracked cylinder head in a lot of detail here. It almost doesn’t count as a roadside repair, as it didn’t technically fail on the road, and as it certainly wasn’t fixed roadside—I was in a first-class repair shop with the advice of a seen-it-all mechanic—but it was still enormously satisfying to stop the dripping of oil out a crack at the top of the head onto the exhaust manifold using J-B Weld and be driving home a few hours later.

How about you folks? What was your favorite roadside repair? Wipers pulled back and forth with rope? Throttle controlled with a hand-yanked cable? Tell me what you’ve got.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post 9 roadside repairs that tested my DIY limits appeared first on Hagerty Media.

I had hoped to write about the sale of my truck this week, but events have not yet played out. So instead I’m going to give you my odd history with automotive sound systems. Note that in 2017 I wrote a five-part series for Hagerty on the history of obsolete automotive audio (here are links to part 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5), but this will be far more personal.

When I was growing up on Long Island in the 1960s, my father had a monophonic hi-fi sound system in the living room with a Heathkit AA13 amp that he’d built (he was an electrical engineer), a Garrard turntable, a Lafayette tuner, and a single AR-4 speaker. While he was alive, it was used mainly to play Broadway soundtracks. The standard ’60s stuff … you know—Fiddler on the Roof, Man of La Mancha, The Fantasticks, Camelot. When I was nine years old, I remember asking him what the bass and the treble knobs did. He explained and twisted them for me to demonstrate, but I couldn’t hear their effect. Of course, the soundtrack of Camelot didn’t exactly have the snap or the frequency range of, say, Paul McCartney’s bass and George Harrison’s sitar on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and I have no recollection of rock and roll like that finding its way via the tuner into the house to educate me. Likewise, if there was a radio in my parents’ 1963 Ford Fairlane, I have no recollection of it pumping scratchy music into the Long Island air. To be clear, it wasn’t as if my father clamped down on music in any way. The lack of happenin’ tunes in the Siegel ancestral household to grab me and make me pay attention to audio was just a generational thing.

After my father passed, my mother bought ’69 Plymouth Satellite. My earliest recollection of listening to music in a car is hearing Cousin Brucie on WABC spin songs on the AM radio in the Satellite. Perhaps it was the fact that the Satellite was the first family car with air conditioning, allowing windows-up driving that didn’t drown out the tunes. Whatever the reason, I have sharp clear memories of my sister and I fighting for control of the radio dial and hearing songs as disparate as Neil Young’s “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky,” and Desmond Dekker’s “Israelites.” Toto, I don’t think we’re in Camelot anymore.

After we moved up to Amherst, Massachusetts, I briefly worked in a stereo store when I was in the 8th grade. In addition to being the place I first saw a Lotus Europa, it’s where I developed an understanding of audio. If someone was interested in a pair of big expensive speakers, the store’s owner would crank Emerson Lake and Palmer’s “Lucky Man.” The combination of the jangly twin acoustic guitars, the crisp snare crack, the woofy electric bass, and the thunderous 36.71 Hz low D synthesizer note at the end of the song literally moved product.

A few years later, when I was in high school, I learned to drive in the Satellite, but when the car’s repair bills mounted, and when the Arab oil embargo hit in 1974 causing gas prices to spike, my mother went shopping for a small car. I, who had been bitten by the BMW 2002 bug as a 13-year-old when a 2002-owning college student lived with us for the summer, begged her to buy one, but they were too pricey, so she bought a brand-new ’74 Fiat 128 two-door instead. It was a stripped car with no radio and no A/C, but it had a four-speed standard transmission. My mother taught me how to drive a stick, and as soon as I got my license, I had fairly free run of the Fiat. In return, I pretended it was a 2002 and beat on it mercilessly.

Having a driver’s license and a car with four-on-the-floor was awesome, but one thing was missing—tunes. I begged my mother to let me install a sound system in the Fiat. I think she gave me a $20 budget. Presaging the Hack Mechanic that I would become, I bought a used monophonic FM radio, hung it from the underside of the dash with furniture brackets and drywall screws, and laid the no-longer-used AR-4 speaker from my father’s sound system on the back seat. The car had no tach, but there was so much ignition interference on the radio that you could estimate engine rpm from the whine. I didn’t care. I was driving a stick with tunes. I was in absolute heaven.

I bought the 1970 Triumph GT6+ the summer of ’76 after I graduated high school. The previous owner had stuffed both an 8-track player and a cassette player into that tiny interior (the cassette in the console, the 8-track hanging down from the left under-dash). When I bought it, the car came with two 8-track tapes. In the glove box was Eagles Greatest Hits, which I think was a legislatively mandated requirement for any car in 1976, along with ridiculously large bumpers and crushing levels of hastily-integrated emission controls. But the album that was already queued up in the 8-track player was Gary Wright’s Dream Weaver. When I drove the car home after the purchase, the song “Love is Alive” began cranking over the car’s decent aftermarket sound system. I’m not sure that any other piece of music roots me so completely to an automotive-specific time and place. When Gary Wright passed away in early September, I went back and listened to “Love is Alive,” and confirmed that a) it’s still a killer song, and b) it still puts my 18-year-old butt right back into the GT6’s seat. The summer of 1978, a few months before I sold the Triumph, The Cars’ debut album broke on the radio, and like Gary Wright, I can’t hear “Just What I Needed” (or anything else off that album) without imagining myself in the car.

Fast-forward to winter 1981. When my then-girlfriend Maire Anne and I were preparing to move down to Austin, Texas (her job running an animal lab at Harvard had been transferred there), outfitting her 1971 VW Bus with tunes for the four-day drive was a necessity. My ex-boss—the guy who’d had the 2002 when I was in junior high school—gifted us a Fosgate Punch 100-watt power amp he’d pulled out of a car before selling it. I, who had no job waiting for me in Austin, spent most of my remaining cash on a Craig “Road-Rated” cassette deck with a pair of RCA output jacks to feed the Punch power amp. For speakers, I continued the fine tradition I’d begun with placing my father’s AR-4 on the Fiat’s back seat and used my two massive ESS AMT9s home stereo speakers. I installed them in the back of the bus (hey, we had to move them anyway, right?) and put a plywood board and a mattress on top of them so one of us could sleep while the other one was driving. When I showed this system to friends, the uniform response was “You’ve got to be kidding me,” only they didn’t say “kidding.” You could’ve faced the speakers backward and used the music as propulsion.

Once we were settled in Austin and I bought my first project BMW 2002, I mounted in it the Craig tape deck, the Fosgate power amp, and a pair of ADS 200s (speakers in little Kleenex-box-sized metal die-cast boxes) that I’d bought at a pawn shop. When I first drove the revived car with its freshly-rebuilt transmission, brand-new Pirelli P3 tires, and killer stereo through the Texas hill country—winding it up, shifting the no-longer-crunching transmission through the gears, cornering on the new rubber, and listening to The Psychedelic Furs’ “The Ghost in You” jumping off a fresh Maxell UDXLII tape—I was the happiest guy on the planet. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever felt that my needs in life were so completely satisfied.

The ADS 200s had two versions—standard home bookshelf speakers and versions that had threaded holes for brackets meant to be mounted on a car’s back deck. These were the bookshelf versions, so there was no obvious mounting method. I found that they wedged nicely on the back deck under the rear windshield and didn’t move around while driving, but they were also highly visible and thus likely to be stolen, so I took a couple of ¼-inch guitar-style plugs and jacks, installed a jack panel on the back deck, wired it to the power amp, and made the speakers un-pluggable so they could be removed and put in the trunk. It was my first of several steps toward non-permanent stereo installations. Of course, as BMW informally stood for “Break My Window” because of both stereo theft as well as theft of the entire car, that’s the way the industry was moving anyway.

When we moved back to Boston, one of the 2002 parts cars I bought had a high-dollar sound system with an Alpine deck, an ADS power amp, and a pair of ADS 300i flush-mount speakers. This system found its way into several cars, including my ’73 E9 3.0CSi, with the Alpine in a slide-mount-removable “Benzi Box.” Although I didn’t mutilate the door panels by cutting holes for speakers, I did cut rectangular holes in the back deck for the 300i speakers and cut a second set of holes in the rear seat’s kick panel for a pair of subwoofers, decisions that are now commonly regarded as an act of cruelty against a vintage car.

As part of replacing the console when I retrofitted air conditioning into the E9 in 2000, I swapped out the Alpine cassette deck for a Pioneer CD player. Although I specifically tried to find a deck with a very simple design (that is, no Star Trek The Motion Picture graphics), it still clearly looked like it teleported in from the wrong millennium. Surprisingly but perhaps mercifully, I can’t find a single photo of the system in the car, a cosmic indictment of the fact that it wasn’t supposed to be there. I didn’t really use it that much, as there was something about the placement of the ADS 300i speakers in the back deck that set up an unpleasant resonance. It probably could’ve been tuned out with proper equalization, but I wound up removing the 300is and installing them into another car.

As the number of cars multiplied, I moved away from direct installations in favor of portable systems that I could throw in a car before a road trip. Initially I used a Cambridge Soundworks PC Works system with two small satellite speakers and a small, powered subwoofer. As the name implies, it was meant for use with a desktop computer, but its advantages were that a) you could plug in an aux cable from your iPod (and later your phone), b) it sounded surprisingly good, c) the powered subwoofer had a 12-volt jack that you could power directly off the car’s cigarette lighter socket, and d) for the $30 a used system cost you, if it got stolen from the car, who cared?

Once I went down the Cambridge Soundworks rabbit hole, I found the then-way-cool but now-laughably-clunky Cambridge Soundworks Model 12 that had a small, old-school stereo amplifier and two removable satellite speakers inside a little road case that also held an integral subwoofer. Like the PC Works system, the Model 12 runs off a cigarette lighter, but it sounds much better. When I found one of these locally for $150, I jumped at it. I used it for a few road trips, jamming the case with the sub behind the driver’s seat, sticking the satellites to the back deck with Velcro and balancing the little amp on the transmission hump. It sounded great, but it wasn’t really a very good solution, as it was a bit too valuable for the “go ahead and steal me” approach of its PC Works brother, and the pack-up and re-deploy time to pull it in and out of the car was non-trivial.

Because the Pioneer CD player in the E9 was too old to have an aux port, for a while when I was annually road-tripping the E9 coupe to The Vintage in Asheville, North Carolina, I resurrected the ADS Power Plate amp that’s still mounted in the trunk, fed it music directly from my phone via an aux-to-RCA adapter, and tried the old Fiat / VW Bus / BMW 2002 approach of pumping the sound into stereo speakers like the ADS 200s. However, over the years I found the high-volume levels needed to overcome the wind noise in the vintage cars fatiguing and began the road-trip in thought-provoking silence instead. The exception is my 2003 E39 530i— compared with the vintage cars, it’s very quiet, and its bone-stock sound system is astonishingly good.

Of course, with vintage cars, what the market values is the original in-dash radio. I’m responsible for the violence committed against my E9 in the name of tunes, but in my defense, two of my BMW 2002s have never had their interiors cut up for a sound system and are still wearing their original functional Blaupunkt mono FM units, and those things will only change over my dead body. I’ll sometimes twiddle the tuner knob just for the novelty of it if I’m at a traffic light running an errand on a Sunday morning. I’m well aware that I could send these units out and have them retrofitted for Bluetooth, but I don’t see the point. It’s doubtful it would make me listen to them more. I have a period-correct mono Blaupunkt for the E9 too. I’ll install it the next time I need to pull apart the console.

I don’t know if it’s the fact that, at age 65, I’m now officially a get-off-my-lawn senior citizen, but my days of in-car audio seem to have naturally ended. These days, when a car with a big woofing sound system rolls by pumping out oodles of Lucky Man-ending bass, I have a reaction where I feel physically ill.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that if, during one of the short periods I have the monophonic Blaupunkt turned on in one of the 2002s, something from Camelot came on, I’d probably enjoy it. My father would be so pleased.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Moving in mono: Cruising to music by any means necessary appeared first on Hagerty Media.

If you watch too many automotive cable shows and read too many articles on collecting, the mantra that gets beaten into your brain is to buy the best car in the best possible condition, as that’s what’s likely to appreciate the most. Another way this sometimes gets phrased is, “You can’t spend too much—you can only buy too soon.”

That’s all well and fine if you have the disposable income to spring for the best of the best. However, many of us don’t.

One way out of this trap of a surplus of passion and a deficit of funds is to buy a car that doesn’t even attempt to be a shiny lust object and instead is one that proudly wears its age and experience out in the open.

I’m talking about patina.

If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably aware that patina can be desirable. Battered-looking goods have their own appeal, even apart from the monetary value that untouched originality occasionally brings. That’s why home furnishing stores are full of new cabinets that have that distressed French farmhouse look and why Fender sells a “Time Machine” line—new electric guitars pre-distressed at the factory to simulate decades of stage wear. This “relic-ing” has spread into the car world as well. Some of it may have been kick-started by the rat-rod movement that began in the hot-rod world 30 years ago, where a backlash against the cost of shiny customs resulted in home-built cars with oxidized body panels, no chrome, and steel wheels. Ironically, the term “rat rod” has now morphed into a moniker for any car with an outrageously distressed finish, even if it’s sitting atop expensive oversize alloys.

Yet one of the biggest selling points of patina—the “real” kind, at least—comes down to dollars and sense: Worn cars are usually significantly less expensive than those in excellent condition and a bargain compared with those where every inch of the car has been brought up to like-new standards. This makes it possible for someone of modest means to buy their dream.

I’ll caution, though, that if you go this route, you need to be absolutely honest with yourself and aware of the fact that if you’ll never be happy unless you own a car in condition A, you should buy a car in condition A and not buy one in condition C and try to put it into condition A. Aside from the financial havoc that will likely cause, there’s a very real risk of mucking up the car.

Here’s the deal: A car’s appearance is a synergistic thing where the condition of the paint, the brightwork (the exterior chrome), and the interior all hang together and project a certain image. If you have a well-patinaed car that you want to “restore” (and I use that word in quotes because it means so many different things), you slide down an expensive slippery slope because you need to address all of the items that project that image. If you just paint the car, all the old chrome looks like hell. Replace the bumpers and trim with new, and all the rubber and glass look old. Complete the exterior refurbishment, and the interior shows its age.

It’s much easier—and less expensive—to live with a car where both exterior and interior already have a certain amount of wear on them. Since the car is nowhere near perfect, you’re not constantly chasing perfection because you’re not under the illusion that you’re going to reach it. And, since you’re less worried about dings from driving and parking, you’re more likely to use the car.

For these reasons, I’m a big believer in cars with patina. My 1973 BMW 3.0CSi is the only car I’ve ever had an outer-body restoration done on. All my other vintage cars have some degree of patina. My ’73 2002 and my Bavaria are lightly dinged survivors wearing original paint. The previous owner of my ’72 2002tii sanded off the rust spots and touched them up with doesn’t-quite-match, rattle-can Rust-Oleum. My ’75 2002—known as “Bertha”—has rust spots the size of dinner plates on the hood. My ’74 Lotus Europa Twin Cam Special was stored under a tarp in a storage container for over 30 years, which carved some interesting patterns into the dried-out, fragile paint.

Personally, I love the look of surface rust blooms against light-colored paint. It looks so organic—like flaming but done by nature. Of course, there’s a line between patina and just plain beat up, but most of us know that line when we see it. When it’s at its best, patina has the natural sensibility of Monet’s Water Lilies or the inherent rhythm of a Jackson Pollock abstract.

One misnomer about patina is that, since the car is already imperfect, you can drive it in any kind of weather. Any vintage car is inherently rust-prone, and a car that already has exposed patches of surface rust is even more so, so storing it outside, driving it in the rain, or—God forbid—in the snow and salt is likely to cause the rust to explode.

But this does raise the reasonable question of how to protect the surface rust that’s already there and prevent it from spreading or deepening. There are four basic approaches. Be aware that only the last won’t alter the patina’s original, baked-in-the-Arizona-sun look.

The first is to sand down any scaly rust that will fester, then spray clear coat. Make no mistake—this is painting, and as such, the quality is proportional to the amount of preparation. If the surface isn’t clean, the clear coat won’t adhere well and will eventually start to peel (hey, maybe you want peeling clear coat as part of the patina). And presumably you’re clear-coating the entire car, not only the surface-rusty area you want to preserve. If there’s flaking paint in addition to the rust, you can’t just clear-coat over it and trap it like a fly in amber; you’re going to need to sand it. Personally, I’m not a big fan of clear-coating patina, as it seems to me that if you’re going to prep a car and then shoot a hard coat of anything, you might as well go all in and paint it. Plus, “shiny patina” seems like an oxymoron.

The second and widely popular approach is to wipe on an oil-based product such as boiled linseed oil (mainly a wood preservation product) cut with mineral spirits, or Penetrol (an additive for oil-based paints to help lessen brush and roller marks). Both work as rust inhibitors by providing a layer of oily protection and helping the surface to shed water. After treatment, the surface looks wetter, shinier, and darker, which can make both the paint and the rust colors pop more, though all these effects will fade within months, depending on the level of exposure.

Be aware, though, that this approach has downsides. The creeping nature of oil is good for getting into rust pores and inhibiting corrosion, but if in the future you want to have the car painted, it can be difficult to get the surface oil-free. Linseed oil and Penetrol will eventually harden, but until they do, they can be gooey, so don’t wipe them on when the pollen count is high. Even after hardening, they can get tacky on a hot day.

The third approach is to do what you’d do on a car whose paint was simply faded—compound it and wax it. The idea is that the compounding will bring out the shine on the remaining paint, and the wax offers rusted areas some of the same moisture protection and water-shedding as the oil-based products while not penetrating as deeply into the metal and thus not being potentially troublesome if you later wish to paint the car.

After reading the above approaches, you can appreciate that, when you see a heavily patinaed car that’s shiny and whose colors pop like an exotic bird’s plumage, that’s not how it rolled out of the junkyard—work has been done on it to give it that look.

The fourth method is the one I prefer: Don’t touch it. I’d no sooner change the worn look of any of my cars than get plastic surgery on my own scarred and craggy face.

Find an imperfect car and then resist the urge to “fix” it. You’ll smile like an idiot when you drive it on a Sunday instead of bemoaning the fact that you always wanted one but couldn’t afford it.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Can you live with patina? appeared first on Hagerty Media.

In the summer of 1984, my then-girlfriend Maire Anne and I left Austin, Texas, to return to Massachusetts. We were getting married, the wedding was in Boston (where both of our families lived), and we reasoned that if we returned to Austin, we’d likely do the things married couples do— meaning buy a house and have kids—and before we knew it, we’d be dug in there.

Thinking about how infrequently we’d seen our families since our move south, we decided that a pre-emptive return to Boston was in order. So we quit our jobs, rented a U-Haul truck, and headed north. I drove the truck while towing my recently-purchased, rust-free 1975 BMW 2002 named “Bertha,” and Maire Anne drove her ’69 Volkswagen camper. The only problem was that we had no jobs and nowhere to live.

Until my mother made us an offer we couldn’t refuse.

A year earlier, she bought a big, old 15-room three-story Victorian house in Brighton (Boston). It was built in 1900 by a Chicago plumbing magnate whose two sons were attending nearby Boston College. As originally built, the first floor was to receive guests, the bedrooms were on the second floor, and a back stairway ran from the kitchen to the servant’s quarters on the third floor. I’m sure that, back in the day, it was magnificent. However, a lot of history passed between 1900 and 1983, during which the house reportedly had stints as a boarding house, a “flop house,” a home for young women, and was rumored to have transitioned to being an, ahem, house of ill repute (the presence of a sink in every bedroom was a tip-off that the rumors were true).

When my mother bought it, the previous owner had subdivided the large downstairs rooms in order to rent to as many college students as possible. But she had a vision. She and my sister and her young family moved in, took down the rabbit-warren-like walls, and reconfigured the house as a quirky three-family where the first two floors were a mother-daughter home that shared an entrance and were open to each other, but the third floor was a separate rentable apartment.

When we arrived after the long, hot drive up from Texas, my mother said to Maire Anne and me that the third-floor tenant had just left (more likely was gently nudged out) so we could move into the third floor and stay until we figured out what we wanted to do. So I unloaded the BMW 2002, returned the U-Haul, and we began our stay in what I still refer to as “my mother’s house.” The figuring-out-what-to-do part didn’t come until eight years later when we finally moved out. Looking back, my sister and I joked that our mother bought the house and then shamelessly tricked her two adult children into living with her.

The house had a two-car garage, both bays of which I instantly commandeered for my wrenching passion. Why my mother and sister allowed me to get away with this (which meant that they were kicked out to find curbside parking) is a mystery to me to this day, but I chalk it up to being the youngest child who had a long history of getting away with murder.

My time with the garage actually did not begin well. A few weeks after we moved in, I was backing the 2002 out and accidentally left the driver’s door ajar and caught the edge of it on the garage door jamb, bending it. I ordered a replacement door, shot it in gray primer, and installed it “for now,” thinking that I’d certainly get the car painted soon. Now, 39 years later, I still own the car, and it’s still wearing the gray-primered door.

But that hiccup passed quickly. When it was clear that Maire Anne and I weren’t going anywhere anytime soon, I dug myself in. I vividly remember driving to Sears, buying the 2½-horsepower, 20-gallon compressor I still own, ordering the Central Pneumatic impact wrench and hose from a Harbor Freight and Salvage paper catalog, setting up the air tools in the garage, doing the first WHACKETA WHACKETA WHEEEEE, and thinking that I had arrived as a Hack Mechanic.

In the eight years we lived in my mother’s house, about 20 BMWs, six Vanagons, and an ’84 Alfa Spider cycled through those garages. I did an insane amount of work there. I installed engines. I lowered transmissions onto my chest. I even parted out a 2002 curbside and had the carcass hauled off as scrap, which I’m certain didn’t exactly endear me to my neighbors. The parts from it and other cars that were parted out off-property were stored under the front porch.

To be clear, the garage at my mother’s house wasn’t technically automotive ground zero for me. I began fixing cars when I bought the always-breaking Triumph GT6+ after I graduated high school. During the 2½ years I owned it, it spent nearly half that time on jackstands under the carport of my mother’s previous house in Amherst. And during Maire Anne’s and my stay in Austin, a dozen BMWs came and went from our little duplex on Speedway and West 35th Street. But the combination of the eight-year stint at my mother’s house and the two-car garage allowed me to stretch my automotive legs as never before.

Obviously, non-automotive things happened in the house as well. It takes the right dynamic to be able to move back in with your family. Moving in with your spouse’s family is another matter. But it was great. My family loved my wife, and she them. We had separate floors, so we weren’t always in each other’s business. Plus, Maire Anne and I had a band, and the house had a big basement we could rehearse in. When our first and second children were born, my mother was an always-ready babysitter. She had both of her kids and all of her grandchildren living in her house, so she was in heaven. It was wonderful.

When we were expecting our third child in 1992, Maire Anne and I needed more space and moved to the house we still live in in Newton. Garage-wise, the Newton house with its single corrugated metal garage was a huge downgrade from the one at my mother’s house, but I made due. It wasn’t until the new garage was built 15 years later and I sprung for the midrise lift that I felt like I’d outpaced what I had in Brighton.

The hoard of parts stayed under my mother’s front porch for decades. When, eight years ago, she politely asked me a fourth time to clear it out, I finally complied. I had a take-’em-away-for-free sidewalk sale of doors, transmissions, and subframes. A few items came back to Newton with me, most of which I later found homes for.

My mother passed in 2019, and my sister and I inherited the house. She and her husband continued to live in it, along with a commercial tenant on the first floor and my youngest son, who occupied our old third-floor apartment. But the house eventually became more than my sister wanted to deal with, and late last year we began the slow process of emptying it of people and stuff and readying it for sale.

As I wrote here, the numbers-matching engine to my BMW 3.0CSi was still sitting in my mother’s garage. In addition, I found three rear windshields tucked away in what was literally the old coal room in the basement. I’m still trying to re-home them.

My sister moved out of the house in June, the junkman and the cleaners did their thing, and the house went on the market soon after. With rising interest rates, it wasn’t easy finding a buyer for a charming but still oddly-configured large house, but it eventually sold. We closed on it in early September.

Although my wife and I lived in my mother’s house from 1984 to ’92, it was my family’s house for 40 years. Those memories will ring in my mind forever. The automotive aspect was narrow by comparison (it wasn’t as if I went back there and wrenched in the garage). But there’s no question that my life would’ve been very different had Maire Anne and I done what most folks would’ve had to do when we moved back from Texas—find a regular apartment with no garage.

I said above that it’s a mystery to me why I had free run of my mother’s garage, but that’s not true. I know why. My mother, who I routinely describe as the wisest person I’ve ever met, used to offer this parenting advice: “If your child shows interest in something, treat that like a flower. Because if you don’t, you’ll kill it with neglect, or worse.” It took me years to understand, but letting me monopolize the garage with a pampered classic and a series of highly questionable project cars while she and my sister parked on the street in the winter was one of a long list of times she “enabled the flower.”

Thanks, Ma.

Thanks, Brighton garage. The new owner isn’t a family, so it’s unlikely someone else will indulge their passions, buy something really stupid, work on it inside, skin their knuckles, and hone their Hack Mechanic skills. Here’s hoping my experience still resonates within.

At a minimum, you can probably still hear me swear from when I dented Bertha’s door 39 years ago.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post In praise of my mother’s garage appeared first on Hagerty Media.

There’s a lot of automotive information bombarding us from a car’s dashboard, and to some folks, it’s not clear which warnings require immediate attention. A rising temperature gauge should be treated very seriously, as driving “in the red” can easily result in a cracked head. The alternator warning light is a bit less pressing, as depending on the complexity of the car’s electrical system, you can get dozens or hundreds of miles down the road before the battery drains. Lower in priority are things like brake lining, ABS, and traction control warning lights—yes you should fix the underlying problems, but you don’t need to do so in the next five miles. At the bottom of the list are the “check engine light” issues which, on a post-1996 car, are usually caused by minor emission-control-related codes.

With all this information, it’s easy to miss the most important indicator of all—the oil pressure light. Ignore it, and it can very quickly lead to a very expensive BANG! And when, after the tow, you get an estimate for the cost of replacing the lunched engine, you’ll cry.

Because oil is the engine’s lifeblood, nearly every post-Model-A car has an oil pressure warning system of some sort. On a vintage car, it’s usually just a light that’s prominently displayed on the dashboard in or near the other instruments. Part of the ritual of driving an old car is to crack the key to ignition, be certain that the oil pressure light and the alternator light are both illuminated, then start the engine and verify that, in a few seconds, both lights go out. On newer cars, these lights may have receded into a distraction of other warnings, or—gak!—been subsumed into a diagnostic screen.

Note that the oil pressure warning light is not the same as an oil level warning light. Nearly all cars have the former. Some cars have the latter, which typically uses a gas-tank-style float and illuminates when you’re a quart or two low, which is the rough equivalent of the oil level being at the bottom of the dipstick. If your car has an oil level warning light, by all means pay attention to it, and if it comes on, check the oil level as soon as it’s safe to do so and top it up as necessary. But driving a few miles to the next exit when you’re a quart or two low is highly unlikely to kill the engine.

But your oil pressure light is different. It’s more important than any of these other indicators. If it comes on, and if the sensor is doing its job, it’s because oil is no longer flowing inside the engine, which is really, really bad. No oil flow means no lubrication, and metal parts which should be happily slip-sliding against each other will instead begin catastrophically scraping. If the oil pressure light comes on while you’re driving, stop. Now! Right freaking now. Don’t wait for the first exit. OK, yeah, find somewhere safe, but while you’re cherry-picking yourself a spot in the shade, imagine a $15,000 engine replacement bill. Rotate the key off the ignition setting but not so far back that the steering locks, and coast the car safely into the breakdown lane. Seriously. That’s how important it is.

Let’s visualize for a moment how oil flows through an engine so we can pick apart the various reasons the oil pressure light can come on. Every automotive engine has a reservoir of oil, and nearly every one built in the last 90 years has a pump that sucks the oil out and sends it coursing through the engine. That reservoir is usually the oil pan (the “wet sump”) at the bottom of the engine. Some high-performance cars instead have a “dry sump,” but let’s just deal with conventional wet-sump engines.

Oil pumps are usually driven mechanically off the crankshaft or camshaft, either via direct gear-to-gear engagement or a chain drive. (At some point in the 2000s, some manufacturers began using a “wet belt” or “Belt In Oil” / BOI system where a belt inside the oil pan spins the oil pump, but this is a family publication, so I won’t speak of those abominations.) A pick-up tube reaches from the pump to the bottom of the oil pan. As the engine turns, gears inside the pump create suction, drawing oil out of the pan and up into the pump. Oil is sent first to the oil filter. From there it flows under pressure via oil passageways in the block and head that then feed holes in the crank, cam, and connecting rods to lubricate the main bearings, rod bearings, cylinder walls, and valve train components.

The rule of thumb is that oil pumps deliver oil at a little more than 10 psi per thousand engine rpm, so at idle it should be about 10-20 psi, and at 4000 rpm about 40 to 50 psi. Note that oil pressure is affected by oil viscosity (thickness), which in turn is affected by engine temperature—as oil warms up, it thins, which results in lower oil pressure. In addition, on a car with a tired engine, badly-worn crankshaft and rod bearings can allow oil to escape around the bearings instead of just oozing the oil into place. Thus, just as a leak in a garden hose will reduce the pressure of the water flowing out the nozzle, worn bearings can reduce the oil pressure to the rest of the engine, including the pressure sensor. The combination of these two things can create a situation where, when the engine is cold, the oil warning light takes longer to go out, and when the engine reaches operating temperature, the light flickers on and off at idle, or worse, stays on. As long as the light goes out when you rev the engine, this isn’t an acute problem, but it is an indication that the lower-end bearings are badly worn and should be checked.

Then again, a flickering light at idle could simply be an incorrect oil filter. I once bought an inexpensive 1985 BMW 635CSi with 230K miles on it and a flickering oil pressure light at idle. I was resigned that it was engine wear until I changed the oil and found this clearly incompatible too-large filter that had been crushed-to-fit inside the housing. I replaced it with the correct filter, the problem went away, and I shuddered to imagine the mechanism by which the wrong filter had lowered the oil pressure.

If the oil warning light comes on while you’re driving, and you’ve stopped the car somewhere safe, here’s what you do. While full-on failure of the oil pump is pretty rare, it is possible that you really do have no oil pressure.

The light has come on for one of four reasons:

1. There’s no oil pressure because there’s NO OIL!
2. The light is grounding somewhere other than through the sensor.
3. The sensor is bad.
4. There really is a catastrophic loss of oil pressure.

Like everyone whose car died and who insisted it didn’t run out of gas only to find that, yeah, it ran out of gas, the engine being out or extremely low on oil can happen, so first, check the oil level on the dipstick. You’d have to have run the sump nearly dry in order for this to be the cause of the light coming on at even throttle on a level road, but stranger things have happened. I’ve engaged in enthusiastic cornering on exit ramps, had the light come on briefly, and found that I was negligently low on oil. It’s certainly possible that the oil drain plug loosened up and fell out, or you hit a rock and cracked your oil pan, or a return line for an oil cooler ruptured. If any of these is the cause of low oil pressure, I’d expect the dipstick to come up dry. Maybe you can fix the problem roadside, maybe it’s a tow, but at least you’ve found your problem.

If the pan is full of oil, then the light is coming on for one of the following three reasons. For #2 and #3, you get to plumb the design of the oil pressure warning system, so gloriously simple and effective that many cars still use it nearly a hundred years after it debuted. On a vintage car, one terminal of the warning light is fed 12 volts. The other terminal is connected to a terminal of an oil pressure sensor screwed into an oil channel in the engine. The sensor is just a make-or-break switch for the warning light’s ground path. When the engine isn’t spinning and oil isn’t pressing against the sensor, a pair of contacts inside the sensor—one connected to the terminal, the other to the body of the sensor—touch each other, completing the ground path and causing the light to illuminate. But when the engine is running and oil is pumping through the channels, the pressure of the oil forces the contacts apart, breaking the circuit and causing the light to go out. Simple. Functional. Perfect.

So go find your engine’s oil pressure sensor. It usually looks like a big nut with a domed plastic central housing and a single wire connected to it. It may be on the front or the back of the head, or screwed into the block. Inspect it. It’s common for the plastic housing to crack and leak oil, in which case the contacts inside may be compromised.

Now that you’ve found it and know how it works, you can probably figure out how to test it. Pull the wire off, and turn the key to ignition. The oil pressure light should have no path to ground, so the light should be off. If it’s on, then the light is grounding somewhere else—the insulation could’ve rubbed off the wire and it’s grounding against the body of the car.

If the light does go off, then do the other test—ground the wire to the engine or the chassis. The light should come on. If it doesn’t, either the bulb is burned out or there’s a wiring issue.

If the light goes on and off correctly, then you’re down to either #3 or #4—bad sensor or a real oil pressure problem. You have two choices—replace the sensor, or perform a direct measurement of oil pressure with a screw-in gauge. You don’t have a gauge? Don’t feel inadequate. It’s pretty rare that you actually need one. And oil pressure sensors have a variety of threads, so compatibility is an issue (though these days, a $30 kit on Amazon has 10 different adapters).

By all means, procure another sensor (they’re usually cheap) and try it, but if the oil pressure light still doesn’t go out, shut the engine off immediately.

If the oil pressure light comes on while you’re on the road and you have neither a gauge nor a spare sensor, there is a seat-of-the-pants test you can do, and I’ve done it more than once, but you perform it and judge the results at your peril, because if you’re wrong, you’ll blow up your engine.

It’s the “thar she blows” test. Clean around the base of the sensor, then take a big wrench (or, if absolutely necessary, pliers), and unscrew it. Then remove the fat wire from the center of the ignition coil so the engine won’t start. Have someone crank the engine while you hold a wad of paper towels on the hole where the sensor was. If the oil pump is doing its thing, a non-trivial amount of oil should hit the paper towels. If the sensor screws into the side of the head or block, you can catch the oil in a container instead, but if it screws into the top of a flat surface, the oil will shoot straight up, and it gets very messy very quickly if you don’t squelch it with a wad of paper towels.

If you still don’t see any oil coming out the hole, or have any doubt whether enough oil is being pumped, reconnect the coil plug wire and start the car and run it for just a few seconds. Given that the rule of thumb is about 10 psi of oil pressure for every thousand engine rpm, oil should absolutely gush out at idle. If it does, you probably just have a bad sensor (though my inner lawyer tells me to advise you not to drive the car anyway). However, if this engine was just running (that is, if it’s not a priming problem), the light came on, and now nothing comes out, you’re kidding yourself if you think you don’t have a major oil pressure issue.

So, if there’s really no oil pressure, what then?

Oil pumps themselves tend to be incredibly robust precisely because they have to be. When the DIY cost of engine rebuild parts plus the machine shop bill for one of my 50-year-old BMWs was $1500 and an oil pump cost $60, you’d throw in a new oil pump whether it needed it or not, but now, many of these parts are no longer available from the dealer, and there’s no aftermarket source. I’m not a professional mechanic, but on the vintage BMWs on which I work, I’ve never seen the gears inside an oil pump so worn that they won’t pump oil. There’s a spec for clearance between the gear faces and the cover, and the cover can be wet-sanded to meet it.

Folks I know who repair vintage cars professionally say that when they’ve seen oil pressure issues, it’s rarely the pump itself and has instead been due to:

• The pressure relief valve inside the pump being stuck open, so it returns most of the oil to the pan instead of circulating it through the engine.
• The screen at the bottom of the pickup tube being so clogged with 50 years of gunk that it barely sucks oil up into the pump.
• An engine being so worn that it leaves clouds of oil smoke at idle or has very noisy rod bearings.

So, if your oil pressure light comes on in an otherwise fine-running vintage car, yes the odds are that it’s just a bad sensor, but you can’t afford to be wrong about it. If you can, you have way more money than I do.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post What to do when your oil pressure light comes on appeared first on Hagerty Media.

My 29-year-old youngest son, Aaron, owns a silver 2007 Toyota Corolla LE. It’s the poster child for reliability and ease of operation—if ever there was a car whose design goal was to allow any grandmother to rent one and instantly be able to turn on the heat or A/C, it’s this one. It’s the poster child for, well, boredom. The reaction I have whenever I drive the car is that if I had to road-trip it even back and forth to New York, I’d feel like a like a coyote in a trap that would gnaw off its own foot to get free.

That having been said, I have a soft spot for the car, because speaking of grandmothers, that’s where Aaron got it—my mother gifted it to him before she passed in 2019. And, in fact, I was the one who procured the car for her. She had proudly been a “five-speed granny” until her arthritis caught up with her at age 84 and she asked me to find her an automatic. In one of those big circle of life things, Aaron had been living in our old apartment on the third floor of my mother’s house in Boston (where my wife and I lived from 1984–92 before we moved to our current house in Newton), and he would still be living there if my sister—who lived there with my mother for 40 years—hadn’t decided (and reasonably so) that it was time to sell the house and move into something that had fewer stairs and needed less upkeep. So, yeah, my sister and I evicted my son from my mother’s house. He moved back in with us to save money before striking back out on his own.

With all that context, you can probably appreciate that I’m not only happy to have Aaron living with us, but that the sight of the little silver Corolla in front of the house makes me smile. For a moment, I can pretend that my mother drove over here for a visit.

Because she used the car mainly for errands, and Aaron had a short commute to his job two towns over (now one), the car has only 88,000 miles on it. However, New England winters have begun to take their toll, and a large rust spot is forming on the left rear fender lip. At some point this will make the car un-inspectable. But we’re not there yet, and the Corolla soldiers on, receiving little attention and zero preventive maintenance, and it is taking the abuse remarkably well, as it was designed to do.

Aaron was planning to go camping in northern Maine with his two brothers. They had a staggered departure schedule—the other two left the day before in my wife’s Honda Fit, and Aaron was leaving in the Corolla the following morning. But when he got home from work at dusk that evening, he said that the right rear tire began rapidly losing air on his three-mile drive home from work. I looked at it and found what turned out to be a car key stuck in the inside edge of the tread. I could hear the air hissing past it.

This was a problem. The fact that the puncture impinged on the sidewall would almost certainly make any tire shop refuse to patch it. And the car didn’t have a full-sized spare, just a donut—definitely not something you want to put 600 highway miles on. And he had a boat to catch at 2 p.m., necessitating a 10 a.m. departure.

We stepped through the options. I jumped on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace trying to thread the needle looking for a good 195/65R15 tire on a compatible 5×100 45mm offset wheel with a 54.1mm center bore, and found none. (Actually, the Corolla has a set of execrable Pep Boys-type aftermarket alloys, the type with both a 5×100 and a 5×120 bolt circle. Where they came from, I have no idea, as they weren’t on it when I got the car for my mother. In addition, they host four mismatched tires. So I really hoped I could score a whole set of proper wheels and decent tires for Aaron, but sadly it was not to be.)

I called a friend who owns a mobile tire mounting and balancing business and asked if he could bail us out with one tire, but he said he didn’t have that size tire in stock and probably couldn’t get one and get over to the house until mid-morning. Aaron is the only one of my three kids who never learned how to drive a stick (he had a single lesson eight years ago in my Z3, where the combination of a parked car, an aggressive oncoming driver, and pedal confusion spooked him), so despite all the cars in the driveway, the only automatic vehicle I could offer him was the monstrously large Chevy 3500HD dually diesel with the utility body. This wasn’t out of the question, but the fuel cost was daunting.

We checked online and found that a nearby Sullivan Tire opened at 7:30 a.m. I advised that the best thing to do was pull the troublesome wheel and tire off the Corolla and mount the spare. This would let him run the loose wheel over to Sullivan, which might be faster than requiring a service bay to jack up the car. It all took longer than he’d hoped, but by about 10:30 that morning he was back home with a new tire on the wheel. I threw it on the car, and he was on his way. He was late for his boat, but managed to catch another one. It all worked out.

When Aaron got home five days later, I asked if there were any other mishaps with the car. He laughed.

“Well,” he said, “funny story …”

Having nothing to do with the flat tire, the car’s left front caliper was seizing. He knew that was the problem because the same thing had happened to the right front caliper last year. The car was pulling lightly to the side of the stuck caliper while driving, pulling more strongly to the other side while braking. Plus, the brake pad smelled, there was a bit of a chattering sound, and the wheel was hot to the touch. He said it started happening about 50 miles from home, and he thought about bagging it and called for a tow, but instead he stopped, let it cool down, then drove carefully in the right lane.

I don’t include seized brake calipers on my “Big Seven” list of things likely to strand a vintage car on a road trip because it’s not a terribly common occurrence in the vintage BMW world in which I live. I’ve only had it happen once, and oddly, enough, that was on what for me is a relatively new car—my 1999 M Coupe (“the clown shoe”). A seizing rear caliper doesn’t pull the car to one side the way it does when one of the fronts is seized; it’s the smell and the chattering that alerts you while you’re driving. The hot wheel is the confirming symptom. If this happens to you, be aware that the wheel can be so hot that you can easily burn your hand if you blithely press your palm or fingers on it. It’s better to let your palm hover half an inch away, or fold a paper towel over a few times and interpose it.

However, there’s something else that can cause these same symptoms—a clogged or swollen flexible brake line. The brakes on nearly every car use hard metal lines running from the master cylinder to the wheels, but because the wheels (and with them, the calipers, rotors, and pads) move up and down along with the suspension, a flexible section of brake line—usually a rubber hose—is employed to accommodate the motion. The flexible line may connect directly to the caliper, or may sit between two hard metal lines. In either case, if the flexible line is clogged, fluid can’t pass to or return from the caliper, and the symptom can be difficult to distinguish from that of the caliper being seized.

The definitive test is to pull the caliper off the strut and squeeze the piston(s) with a big pair of slip-joint pliers. If the pistons don’t move, then you’ve caught the seized caliper red-handed, but if they’re free, then the caliper isn’t the problem. A less-invasive way to triage whether the problem is due to the caliper or the flexible hose is to open up the bleed valve at the caliper. If fluid doesn’t flow out and the bleed valve itself isn’t plugged, either connect a pressure bleeder to the brake reservoir or have someone gently depress the brake pedal. If there’s still no fluid flow, then it’s likely that the flexible line is clogged or swollen shut. Of course, if the car is one that’s been sitting for decades, you’d automatically replace the flexible brake lines and probably the calipers as well during the rejuvenation process. On a not-as-ancient car, if the flexible lines are rock-hard and cracked, and you’re replacing the calipers anyway, it’s a good while-you’re-in-there task.

I’ve written for Hagerty and also in my first book about what I call “the rhythm of repair.” The issue is that if you bring a car into a dealership for a repair, they likely have every part it needs or can get them in short order, so they lay the car up in a service bay, take the problem area apart, assess the situation, make a list of parts, bring them to the car, then fix the problem. You are a DIY-er, however, not a dealership. So you make an educated guess.

In a perfect world, you know from the symptoms which parts you need to order. When they arrive, you jack up the car, pull the old parts out, install the new parts—boom, done. However, we don’t always live in that world. It’s common to start a repair and find out that you need more than just the parts you ordered. Maybe you have a used set of calipers around as well as a set of enough-meat-on-them-that-you-didn’t-throw-them-out brake pads, but the odds of you having every clip, spring, bolt, and backing plate a brake job might require are close to zero. If you need to order parts twice and wait for delivery, it virtually guarantees that the car will be laid up for a week.

Fortunately, a 2007 Corolla is a far cry from the 1970s BMWs and Lotus Europa that I usually work on. Automotive chains like Autozone are likely to carry many normal wear-and-tear parts. If they don’t, a trip to a dealership is likely to be productive, though more expensive.

I explained to Aaron about how brake work is usually done on both left and right sides, and thus, if this was my car, I’d probably replace both front calipers, and while I was in there would also do the pads and rotors and the flex lines if the rubber was hardened and cracked. I jumped on Rockauto.com and looked up brake parts for the car. The costs of rebuilt versus new Raybestos calipers were both about $60 per side. Two calipers, a set of rotors, and pads came to about $200 shipped. Flexible brake hoses were about an additional $18. However, Aaron said that in addition to the right front caliper having been recently replaced, he’d had the rotors and pads done not long before that. I shined a flashlight through the wheel and gave a cursory examination. The pads looked thick, and there was nothing cringeworthy about the rotors. I reached around the back of the wheel and grabbed the flexible brake line. It felt supple to me. He opted to take the inexpensive route—one caliper, shipped, for $68.44. I can’t say that I protested. My back is still giving me fits, and pulling one fewer wheel, one fewer caliper, and two fewer rotors was fine with me as long as it resulted in a safe car.

The next day, I moved the four cars that were in the way—the ’72 2002tii and the M Coupe that were in the garage, and the Z3 and my daily-driver 530i that were in the driveway—and cleared the most hallowed spot of all, the mid-rise lift, to receive the sh*tbox. As I drove the car into position, I could hear a bit of grinding from the left front. With the car on the lift, I put it in neutral and manually spun both front wheels. The right spun free, but the left was very difficult to turn. It sure felt like a stuck caliper.

I pulled the wheel off and had my first detailed look-see at what I was about to replace. The caliper was the kind of single-piston single-line unit that most modern cars use, with a slider bracket bolted to the MacPherson strut. A long rubber flexible line connected directly to the back of the caliper.

I thought about pulling the caliper off, but a) I really avoid disabling a car until I’m certain I have the correct replacement part in hand, and b) I noticed that the flex line was connected to the caliper with a banjo bolt. Unlike an old-school directly threaded-in brake line, there was no easy way to plug this, so if I disconnected it, it would drip brake fluid until it emptied the reservoir and the master cylinder. No, the thing to do was leave it connected until the new caliper was installed.

A few days later, the replacement caliper arrived, and I had at the repair. No, I didn’t rope Aaron into helping. This was a practical efficient utilitarian task, slotted in while he was at work. He’s a great kid who helps his mother and me in any number of ways. I didn’t need this to be one of them. I was perfectly happy to do it for him.

First, I visually examined the new caliper and verified that it appeared to be the same part currently on the car. I was pleased to find that it came with a new bracket, as some require you to reuse the original one currently on the car.

To minimize brake fluid loss, I left the old caliper connected to the brake line while I transferred the brake pads to the new caliper and installed it on the strut, then undid the banjo bolt and transferred the line over to the new caliper. I assumed I’d need to use my Motive pressure bleeder to get the air out of the caliper, but I realized that I didn’t have the adapter for a Japanese car. I was resigned that I’d need to wait until Aaron got home to press him and his right leg into pedal-pumping service, but then thought I’d try gravity-bleeding the caliper. I’ve rarely had success with this on vintage BMWs with four pistons, two brake lines, and three bleed valves on each caliper, but on this simple modern caliper, it worked perfectly.

A quick test drive revealed absolutely no problems—even braking, no soft pedal, no pull, no chatter.

So, for $68.44 and a few hours of my time, my mother’s car continues to serve my youngest son.

And yes, to avoid a repeat episode of being boxed in like this, Aaron has consented to let me try to again teach him to drive a stick.

Now if only I could do something about those wheels.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Replacing a seized caliper on my son’s crap-can Corolla appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Two few weeks ago I wrote a piece titled “You’re Slow, Old Man,” in which I poked fun at myself for not being quick or decisive enough to grab or even go see several interesting cars that came onto my radar, while also letting it slip that y’all should cut me some slack because this was against the backdrop of my wife having cardiac surgery. At the end of my column, I said that there was a car that I was actively pursuing, but I didn’t want to let the cat out of the bag lest anyone steal it out from under me. That episode has played out, so I can now make with the reveal.

It was a 1974 TVR 2500M. If you’ve never heard of TVR, they’re a British boutique car manufacturer best known for the three tiny similar-looking models built in the mid-1960s and ’70s—the Grantura, Vixen, and 2500M that share a design including a catfish-sucking-up-the-pavement nose and a big piece of wrap-around rear glass. If vintage Lotuses are too pedestrian for your Brit tastes, you can go TVR and feel at home, as both are lightweight cars built with fiberglass bodies on steel frames. And in the fine tradition of other classic Brits like the Sunbeam Tiger, the most valuable TVRs are the handful of Cobra-like models into which the factory stuffed a small-block Ford Windsor V-8 (the Griffin is a V-8-powered version of the Grantura; the Tuscan is built on the Vixen).

To be clear, the 2500M isn’t one of those. Built from 1972–77, the 2500M has more than just the usual Triumph parts bin brakes and steering components like my Lotus Europa—it has a TR6 engine, as that mill had already cleared U.S. emissions testing. It’s estimated that about 80 percent of the 947 2500Ms produced were sold in the United States. Europe also received both the slower 1600M with a Ford Kent 1.6-liter four-pot, and the quicker 3000M, Taimar hatchback, and 3000S roadster, all powered by the Ford Essex 3.0L V-6. Unlike the Grantura and the Vixen, the 2500M never had a factory Ford V-8 variant, but the North American TVR importer apparently developed a small number (less than 10) of 5.0-liter, V-8-powered cars and badged them as 5000Ms. Due to this history, some enthusiasts roll their own 302-powered 2500Ms.

While I can’t say that a 2500M causes me same knees-weakening-mumbling-in-adoration response that an early E-Type does, I’ve always thought that they’re very cool little two-seaters, scratching the same itch as the Triumph GT6 I owned 45 years ago and the BMW M Coupe (“clown shoe”) that I currently have.

So when I saw this ad on Facebook Marketplace one evening, it instantly had my complete attention:

“1974 TVR 2500M. Very nice, car starts on starting fluid and is a beautiful candidate for your dream restoration or could easily be roadworthy in a couple of weekends.  Only 947 of these produced worldwide 1972 to 1977, this one also has a complete set of 5 rare Wolfrace wheels that were an option from the factory. If you’re truly interested and understand how rare these are to find complete, then please reach out. $11,500.”

The ad had just four photos, all of the exterior. They showed a silver car with a black top, a black factory sliding fabric sunroof, and black trim. There was some patina to the paint, but the car certainly wasn’t a basket case.

I saw that the ad had just gone up 36 minutes earlier, so there was the chance that I could be the first one to respond. However, there were two non-trivial issues that stopped me.

The first was that the car was in central Long Island, New York. Having purchased a BMW 2002 in the Hamptons a few years back, I was intimately familiar with how long a schlep that is. I own a truck but not a trailer, and by the time you factor in picking up the rented U-Haul transporter, it’s difficult to squeeze the 500-mile round trip into a day, particularly if, like me, you’re only good for about an hour of driving after sundown.

The second issue was, of course, the far more important one—my still-recuperating wife. Although a week had passed since her surgery, it was still early enough that I didn’t feel right about vanishing for a full day (and likely overnight) for something as trivial as not just a car, but a British car (sorry). So I sighed, closed the lid on my laptop, and crawled into bed, knowing full well that the car would likely be marked “sold” in the morning.

But it wasn’t. The following evening, I sent the seller a friendly message explaining who I was (and that I’m a fellow Long Island boy—my parents are buried about 25 miles from his location), and what my circumstances were that would likely cause me to miss out on the car, but that he should hold onto my contact information because, well, you never know.

As things returned to normalcy in my house, the seller and I swapped messages, then a lengthy phone call. He said that the car had been previously owned by a fellow in New Jersey who’d had it since the 1980s. It had passed from daily driver to pleasure toy, then sat from about 2006 through ’17. The owner then revived it, thinking he’d undertake a restoration. That never happened, and the seller bought it late last year. He said he had visions of doing a Ford 302 engine swap, but the car was stored at his business, he was retiring and closing the building, and decided to sell it instead. As the ad said, the car reportedly fired up on starting fluid, but he hadn’t put the time into getting it running and driving. He said that he didn’t have a lift, but he’d jacked up the car and found only surface rust on the frame tubes, outriggers, braces, and suspension components. He sent me a bunch of still photos of the exterior and interior, and two videos of the undercarriage. He described some light damage to the fiberglass under one of the wheel wells, possibly due to a blowout, and the driver’s seat needing full reupholstery.

Maybe it was the Long Island secret handshake, but the seller struck me as a straight-up guy. It started the mental gears turning enough that I asked him about the title. He said that he’d never registered the car, but had an open title from the previous owner.

“Signed but undated?” I asked.

“No—signed and dated.”

This was a problem. While I have no moral qualms with an open title, in Massachusetts there’s a quirky issue where you can be assessed a penalty with interest if you buy a car and title isn’t transferred into your name within 10 days, so a title with an old signing date is potentially problematic. The odd thing is that the registry can’t tell you what the penalty is—they refer it to the Department of Revenue, which kills a goat, reads the entrails and comes up with a number. Seriously, I’ve never been able to find a printed reference for what the formula is. But I once saw a Boston television news segment where a guy who’d bought a TR6 decades ago and didn’t register it until a lengthy restoration was completed was assessed over $10,000 in penalties, so it’s something I’m wary of.

While I was thinking all this over, my wife caught me looking at the ad. I spooled out the whole story. “I’m fine,” she said. “If you want to go look at it, go!” (See why I love her?) But it’s a funny thing how, when learning that something you think you want to do is now possible, you examine whether or not you really want to do it.

I’ve certainly had my automotive passions carry me into questionable decisions, but I’m usually pretty rational and steely-eyed in these matters. I like to think it through to where there’s a trigger point that could go either way—e.g., “If I do A, then B will happen, but if I do X, then Y will happen”—and I’m satisfied with either outcome. While I’ve lost some cars I should’ve have, I’ve kept myself out of quite a bit of trouble too (says the guy with the brown Lotus Europa).

I wrote up a list of pros and cons. The pros were that I know what blows my skirt up. I wanted the car. And I joke that the “business model” of this phase of my life is buying needy cars that generate content for these articles, but it’s really not a joke, and the car would be perfect for that. The cons were price, distance, and the title issue.

The bottom line was that if the car was 2/3 the asking price and nearby, I’d have ignored the title issue and bought it already (more accurately, I’d have driven there, looked at the frame tubing carefully, and if it wasn’t rotted through anywhere, bought it on the spot). If I passed on it and found out later that someone else grabbed it for a great price, I’d be pissed at myself. But I now have over 20 grand in my ratty Lotus, it’s probably worth only $10K due to its survivor appearance (I love survivor cars with patina, but the market doesn’t), and I need to try to avoid having that happen again.

The distance was a funny thing. If the TVR was only a couple of hours away, I’d just jump in a car and drive there to make sure I wanted the car, close the deal, and then come back when it was convenient with the truck and trailer. But before I drove 500 miles down to Long Island and back, I wanted to be pretty sure that I was coming back with the car. There was an added complication about a non-running car being difficult to get up on a U-Haul auto transporter, but that was a detail. It was tempting to just zip there and back in my comfortable fast BMW for a look-see, but that seemed like admitting that I was less likely rather than more likely to buy the car.

Regarding the title issue, this risk may not seem like a big deal, but it did affect the value of the car to me. In the past I would’ve just run the car through the Vermont DMV, but with The Vermont Loophole closed, the options were to risk the penalty from the old date on the title, or try to get a clean duplicate title through the previous owner (I searched on Facebook and found his video of the car running in 2017).

Regarding price and value, I looked at 2500M values on Hagerty, at 2500M sales history on Bring a Trailer, and at project cars on GrassrootsMotorSports.com. Hagerty lists the value of a 1974 2500M in “fair condition” (described as “has visible flaws to the naked eye, runs fine but could use mechanical or cosmetic attention”) at $9800. As this one wasn’t a running, driving car, its condition was probably lower than “fair.” BaT sales prices of good and excellent cars seemed to correlate with Hagerty values pretty well, with the highest-priced cars being ones that had undergone a well-executed 302 V-8 conversion. The lowest-priced 2500M sold on BaT was $10K in 2021. It had been sitting for 34 years with a free-turning engine, but from the photos, that car appeared to be in substantially better condition than this one (e.g., shiny pretty paint, unripped seats). At the low end, on Grass Roots Motorsports, I saw stories of 2500M projects where people had picked up smashed glass, rodent-infested, basket-case cars for next to nothing. Clearly this car was in far better condition than those. So I couldn’t find data directly supporting value of a 2500M in the almost-running-but-not-driving survivor condition this one was in.

Then there was the issue of the money itself. Ten-ish grand is a lot of cash to be traveling with. I scoped out that there’s a branch of my bank in the town where the car was, open until 2 p.m. on Saturday. But boy, picking up a trailer on Saturday morning, getting down there, looking at the car, negotiating, and getting to the bank by 2 p.m. seemed like a thin needle to thread.

I decided to bounce it all off my good friend Tom. Tom and I have done each other multiple significant car guy favors. He has eclectic automotive tastes—BMWs, an E-Type, vintage Volvos, a hot rod—so I value his perspective. And he’s got a truck and a covered trailer with a winch, and has said he’s down for a road trip if there’s something I needed to bag and drag. I thought that if I went, I could use the company. We could share the driving. Hell, if I asked him to, I’m sure he’d go down to Long Island, negotiate on my behalf, and do it all.

Tom and I had a long talk. Though he’s an enabler (he literally asked “When do you want me to pick you up?”), he also gave me a dose of reason. He cycled through the Hagerty valuation and BaT sales just like I did, and said, “It looks like you can pick up pretty, shiny, running 2500Ms for $17K. You’re not going to pick this one up for 10 and turn it into one of those for another seven.”

He was right. Although I buy well-priced cars because I like their stories and want to be part of them, and I rarely think in terms like “upside” and “being underwater,” the episode with the Lotus has forced me to not do anything overly stupid.

The 2500M only made sense to me at significantly under the seller’s asking price. When I’m selling a car, I hate the sight-unseen buyer question “What’s the lowest you’ll take for it?” We all joke that the seller’s standard reply should be “What’s the most you’ll pay for it?” Negotiations are always best done with skin in the game—face to face with the seller, having driven there with a trailer and money. I really didn’t want to do to the seller what I hate having done to me. And if I did, it would be meaningless because I hadn’t yet seen the car.

So what was the play?

I sent the seller a lengthy detailed email saying most of what I said above (I’ve always found it helpful when both buyer and seller have the same information), and ended it with this: “If you said, ‘Well, I paid $X for it, I need to get rid of it, but I was hoping to get something out of owning it,’ and if $X was a good number, I’d be interested and would come down. But if you said ‘$11,500 is the firm price, I’ve gotten a hundred messages, someone will pay it, three guys are coming down this weekend,’ then I don’t think there would be a path to ownership for me, and that’s OK.”

The seller sent me an equally thoughtful response, the pivotal part of which was “There’s multiple offers on the car at this point, exceeding the [$10K] car on BaT … While I am motivated to sell, I’m by no means vulnerable or desperate, and will start working on it in September if it doesn’t sell.”

And with that, my patented “If he says yes, I’m good, and if he says no, I’m good” process played out. So, no. Done. Move along. Nothing here to see.

But the seller also offered me this poignant perspective: “Everyone, including myself, would love running survivor TVRs below $10K. Those days came and went years ago. Cars deteriorate more over time, so few survivors exist anymore, and it’s hard to find complete and restorable cars of any brand. They are few and far between. If anything, the buyer in our age group is the vulnerable party. Sometimes you just have to pull the trigger at any cost, as tomorrow isn’t guaranteed and we may not be above ground when the next car we dreamed of comes along.”

He was right. Except for the last part. Maybe I’ve simply gotten spoiled, as well as less hungry, if that dichotomy is possible. My 1970s BMWs and the ratty Lotus Europa certainly aren’t the seven-figure exotics that real collectors have, but I’m blessed to own them. As I said earlier, I’d love to have an E-Type in my garage, but if I really wanted one, I could sell a few cars and make it happen, and I don’t.

The truth is that owning and experiencing any particular car before I die isn’t even remotely on the list of things I want to do before I pass on. I’m simply not wired to “pull the trigger at any cost.” Honestly, I’d rather follow my own quirky automotive compass and hang out with my wife.

Long may you run, TVR 2500M. May we both enjoy our paths.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post The TVR that I let get away appeared first on Hagerty Media.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the closing of “The Vermont Loophole”—that too-good-to-be-true situation where you could legally register a 15-year-old car in Vermont without a title or prior registration and without living in Vermont, and do it all by mail. It gave me a flashback to an episode in those pre-Internet days 40 years ago before you could look this stuff up online and where I was over a barrel over a title and not sure what to do about it.

It happened during that short 2½-year window when my then-girlfriend (now-wife) and I were living in Austin, Texas. I bought my first BMW 2002 there in 1982. This triggered a virtual avalanche of 2002s that I fixed and sold, or traded up for a nicer one and sold the one I had. I took to driving around Austin and looking down people’s driveways to find dead cars.

It was then that I saw my first BMW E9 coupe (the 2800CS / 3.0CS / CSi). These two-door, six-cylinder coupes weren’t boxy like the little four-cylinder 2002 sedan; they were lithe and sexy. Unfortunately, they were expensive. You could find solid pretty running 2002s for two or three thousand bucks, but intact E9 coupes were 10 grand even back then.

But in 1983 I saw an ad for a car I didn’t know existed—a 2000CS. It’s the four-cylinder predecessor of the six-cylinder E9 coupe, built 1965–69 as an offshoot of the “Neue Klasse” four-door, four-cylinder sedans that preceded the 2002. The body of the 2000CS is identical to the E9 coupe from the firewall back, but the front is shorter, as it only needs to hold a four-cylinder engine. The slanted-back “shark nose” lacks the pair of horizontally-slatted grilles flanking the center double kidney that became BMW’s signature look. Instead, a pair of unusually narrow kidneys sit alone in the nose’s unbroken sheet metal, and vertical slats in the nose for air flow to the radiator are partially hidden behind the front bumper. The cars had dual headlamps behind glass covers, making them look a bit like a cross between a praying mantis and an electric razor. Like the Neue Klasse sedans, the 2000CS was never imported into the United States through a dealer network, and many examples that were brought in individually through the “gray market” had these replaced with standard round U.S.-spec headlights. There was also a 2000C variant which had a single downdraft Solex carburetor instead of the CS’ twin sidedrafts.

When the first E9 coupe—the six-cylinder 2800CS—was created in 1968, the front was lengthened enough to accommodate the straight-six engine, and the nose, grille, and headlights were restyled, giving the car the timeless look that now makes nice E9s worth six figures. In comparison, the 2000CS’ shorter hood, underdeveloped nose, and narrow wheel track make it look more dated than its elegant E9 big sister.

But in 1983, a 2000CS was the BMW coupe that I could afford. The one in the ad was a 1966 single-carb 2000C, and it was cheap—$2500 (that’s about $8000 today). Although it had a recently-swapped 2002 engine and a rebuilt transmission, the low price reflected three caveats.

The first was that the car turned over and started, but barely ran. This was fine with me. I’d already cut my teeth on half a dozen dead 2002s. The engine, ignition, and fuel delivery systems on the 2000C were the same. If it being dead held the price down, I was all for dead.

The second and more serious issue was that the car had suffered a right front wheel bearing failure catastrophic enough to ruin the front stub axle. Since the car, like all Neue Klasse BMWs, had McPherson struts, where the strut housing and the stub axle were part of the same integral unit, the entire strut housing needed to be replaced. I’d replaced strut cartridges before, so the strut removal and replacement wasn’t an issue. Obtaining a replacement strut housing for this never-commercially-imported car was, however.

The last issue was the one I should’ve been the most concerned about. The seller said that the car was his, but he had no paperwork for it. The story was that he’d taken it in trade for back rent owed by a tenant, was still on good terms with her, and if I bought the car, he’d ask her to get a duplicate title and then sign it over to me.

Bad idea.

You saw that one a mile away, didn’t you? Hey, I was 25 years old. I was smitten. There wasn’t another affordable 2000C/CS or E9 on the horizon. I gleefully paid him the money, had the car towed to my house, and could scarcely believe that I owned a BMW coupe, even if it wasn’t the coupe.

Ah, youth. I wasn’t the least bit concerned about the title. The seller seemed like a nice guy. It was an early example of my being too willing to believe people when they have a motive to lie. No, my worries were about the need for a front strut housing. Since this was a BMW that was never sold in the United States (more than just the model—the entire Neue Klasse platform predated a U.S. BMW dealer presence), the odds of finding the part in a junkyard were essentially zero.

When bought my first 2002 a year and a half earlier, I’d made friends with Terry Sayther who ran the independent BMW shop Phoenix Motor Works in Austin. I pulsed Terry on the problem. He had a parts source in Germany, but keep in mind that this predated the widespread use of email by about 15 years. I had to write the fellow a letter. He responded, quoting me a price. I put a check in the mail. We’re talking three trans-oceanic snail mails.

The car needed a lot of other sorting out, so it’s not like I had nothing to do. I put the nose up on jack stands in the carport of our little rented duplex at 101 West 35th Street, where car friends tell me you can still see the oil stains from my presence 40 years ago. I pulled out the mangled strut and disassembled it with spring compressor. I performed the requisite fluid changes and ignition component replacement and got the car running well.

During this period, I called the seller at regular intervals. He said his former tenant had moved, but he had her contact information and the issue of the title was in process.

Finally, nearly six months later, as the calendar rolled over to 1984, the replacement strut housing arrived. I transferred the strut cartridge, spring, and upper bushing onto it and installed it in the car, along with new wheel bearings on both sides and fresh rotors and pads. By the end of the weekend the car was moving under its own power. I was ecstatic.

Except that I couldn’t register it because I still didn’t have a title.

I called the seller again. I got strident. He got testy. I asked for his “tenant’s” contact information so I could pursue it myself. He hung up on me. I left messages for him at his work place. He blew me off. I began to realize that nothing was “in process.” All I had was a big problem.

As I was a relatively recent transplant to Texas, I didn’t know where to turn. I asked around and was told that the thing to do was request a hearing with the county tax assessor, as their office had the power to grant me clear title. I filled out the necessary forms and made the appointment. I waited nearly a month.

When the time came, I went into the county tax assessor’s office, armed with notes of my correspondence with the seller but hyper-aware that there was a danger that a nervous-talking New York-Massachusetts-Yankee-transplant might not necessarily mesh well with whoever was lord of this particular domain. I pled my case as best as I could. I’m just enough of a nerd that I may have even ended with “Help me, Travis County tax assessor. You’re my only hope.”

When I was done, he squared up my papers, furrowed his brow, and nodded slowly.

“You have this feller’s work phone number?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well,” he smiled, “Why don’t we just ring him up and hear his side of the story?”

I was mortified. I was certain that I was odd man out, that the assessor and the seller would do the secret Texas telephone handshake, and that Yankee BMW boy would be hung out to dry. But there was nothing I could do but bear mute witness to what was about to transpire.

With me sitting right there in the office, the tax assessor dialed the seller up at his job. The assessor summarized the facts as I’d presented them, and asked the seller to respond. The seller claimed that he was helping me, but I was impatient, and if I just trusted him, he’d do what he said he’d do and get the title from the previous owner. The assessor asked exactly what he was doing to contact the previous owner, and the seller said he was working on it. The assessor thanked him for his time, hung up, put his thumb and forefinger on his chin, and thought for a moment. Then he looked at me. My fate hung in the balance. It was probably three seconds, but it felt like an eternity.

“Well,” he said. “That feller’s clearly a lyin’ sack of s**t. By the power vested in me by Travis County, I hereby grant you clear title to your Bee Emm Dubya.” He stamped the paperwork.

Never have I been so happy with someone who had complete control over his little fiefdom. I thanked him profusely and drove directly to the registry and plated the car.

The funny thing was that, when I got home, the guy who rented the other half of the duplex came riding up on a motorcycle. He had a huge Cheshire Cat grin on his face. He said he just picked the bike up for a couple of hundred bucks from a guy who was moving out of town. The catch, he said, was that there was no title.

“You go through a lot of cars,” he asked. “Didn’t you just deal with this with that white car that was in the carport for months?”

I rolled my eyes and laid out the whole story. I told him about the tax assessor and advised that he make an appointment as soon as possible.

“Damn!” he said. “I was hoping to ride it down to Big Bend this weekend.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t think there’s any fast-track way to get it done.”

“I think I’ll go to the registry and try anyway. I’ll play dumb and see what happens.”

The following night, our motorcycle-owning neighbor knocked on my door. He was wearing Cheshire Cat grin #2 and holding a license plate. My jaw hung open. “How the hell did you manage that?” I asked.

“Just lucky I guess.”

The moral of the story is that you can’t always be lucky, but you can always be truthful, respectful, and polite. When someone holds your fate in their hands, you never know what they’re going to do with it. People who you imagine live to rubber-stamp things “DENIED” may surprise you.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post That time I had to have a title hearing appeared first on Hagerty Media.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about reading Dick O’Kane’s classic book How To Repair Your Foreign Car while I was sitting in a hospital waiting room. What I didn’t say was that I was there because my wife was having cardiac surgery. She’s now home and doing fine, but in both the lead up to the surgery as well as during her recovery, it’s no surprise that my priorities were, uh, re-prioritized. I did virtually zero work on cars, and obviously I didn’t run out the door on the usual oh-my-Lord-I-need-to-drop-everything-and-buy-this-car-RIGHT-NOW or it’s-probably-nothing-but-you-never-know-unless-you-look reconnaissance exercises on potential new additions to my not-quite-a-car-collection (or, as I call them, “content generators”).

However, that’s not to say that I didn’t continue to look. Old habits—like coming downstairs in the morning, pouring a cup of coffee, and searching, as well as giving it one last look at night in bed while my wife is asleep—are hard to break. Plus, in trying times like this, old habits function as absolutely essential stress-busting diversions and little slices of normality.

But I have to say that looking without the realistic possibility of being able to pull the trigger on anything became challenging when actual cars of interest came on the radar. (I’m far too risk-averse to click-and-buy something on Hagerty Marketplace or eBay or BaT; I almost always buy locally where I can see the car with my own eyes, meet the owner, size up the car and owner, and drag the car home.) I’ll walk through them below—in order of price, since, as you know, I’m an inveterate bottom feeder, and thus it’s the cheaper cars that I was most likely to have actually done something about.

(I doubt I need to say this, but just to be clear: I adore my wife more than anything in this world, and any jokes I make below about running out on her during recovery from cardiac surgery to look at a car are just that—jokes. I hung with her constantly during the week before the surgery, was there during all visiting hours the week she was in the hospital, and was her caregiver the first week of at-home recovery. The was zero chance of me running out on her to look at a car, or me even being preoccupied by something I saw online when she needed me. What I’m really talking about here are the periods before it all hit the fan and after she’d recovered enough that a semblance of normality returned to the house. Even if I hamstrung myself by saying I wasn’t going to click-and-buy and commit to any sight-unseen purchase, and even if I couldn’t go see a car in person at the time, in theory there were still options—such as a trying to negotiate a sight-unseen electronic deposit to hold a car for a week or two, or convincing someone that you’re serious enough that if they bring the car to you, you’ll likely buy it. So, when I joke in the headline “You’re slow, old man,” what I’m really saying is that the circumstances were still too extraordinary for me to feel right about acting on something, and the cars weren’t extraordinary enough for me to want to.)

#1: 2009 BMW 128i 6-Speed ($3300)

The lines of BMW’s E82 1 Series two-door coupe (the 128i and 135i) never did anything for me, but it is one of BMW’s last small rear-wheel drive platforms, and as someone who will go to his grave believing that front-wheel drive and all-wheel drive simply feel wrong, it did hold some academic interest to me. A few years ago, I helped a friend in Virginia buy a 128i that showed up on Facebook Marketplace (FBM) here in Boston, and I was surprised by how much I liked it, so occasionally I search for stick E82s. This one showed up on FBM with 113,000 miles and a price so attractive that I thought even-odds that it was a scam. It didn’t matter, because by the end of the day its status was changed to “sold.”

#2: 2006 BMW 3 Series 6-Speed Wagon ($3800)

I daily-drove BMW wagons for a decade. I get away with my current daily—a 2003 530i sedan—because it has fold-down rear seats that allow me enough of the utility of a wagon to fake it (e.g., it can fit a set of wheels and tires), but I search regularly for an E91 3 Series wagon. Most of the ones out there are automatics with all-wheel drive. Stick E91s are rare, rear-wheel-drive wagons are rarer, rear-wheel-drive stick wagons are unicorn-rare, and rear-wheel-drive stick sport-package wagons only exist if someone ordered them that way. So the ad titled “2006 BMW 3 Series 6-Speed Wagon” that appeared to show a sport package interior with beautiful dark-brown, deeply-bolstered seats certainly piqued my interest, even with the reported 180,000 miles.

I messaged the seller, asking if the car was rear-wheel or all-wheel drive, and I asked him to send me the VIN so I could run it through a decoder site and verify the option package. He responded, “This was all-wheel drive but now 2-wheel drive.” It’s not uncommon for owners to disable the front drive on AWD BMWs by unplugging an electrical connector when the plastic gear on the transfer case actuator fails, but his answer wasn’t the one I was hoping for. And he didn’t send the VIN. As much as I swooned over the dark brown interior and the sport seats, a closer look at the photos showed that that “M” on the steering wheel is way bigger than it should be, the wheel’s two-tone leather was someone’s personal installation and not a factory option, and there were a number of odd gauges stuck onto the dash, as well as boy-racer-style aluminum pedals and dead pedal. So, in order to know what it was, I’d need to go see it, and that wasn’t going to happen. It was gone the next day.

#3: 1962 Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk 4-Speed ($7500)

I’ll admit that this one’s a bit of a stretch, as it’s a car that I literally had on my FBM “saved” list for nearly a year. But still, I’m sure I’m not the only one who saves listings for things like this, and when they sell, thinks “Damn, I would’ve bought that!”

While the Studebaker-related ventricle in my heart really belongs to an Avanti, this ’62 Gran Turismo Hawk had serious mojo. From the four-on-the-floor stick to the slit-like tailpipes of the twin exhausts, to the factory Studebaker floor mats with the diamond motif that would’ve looked at home in the original Sands hotel and casino, I thought it just exuded cool. Unfortunately, it didn’t have factory air, so it didn’t exude cold. Still, even after saving the listing for a year without taking action, when you see that red “Pending” label show up, you know it’s game over, and that’s sad.

#4: 1968 Triumph GT6 Mk1 ($12,000)

As I wrote about here, the 1970 GT6+ I owned after I graduated high school was, by far, the worst car I’ve ever owned (it was the car that taught me that everything bad I’d ever heard about British cars was, in fact, true), but it was also quick and beautifully proportioned. The word got out years ago that these look a bit like a 3/4-sized E-Type Jaguar and cost a small fraction of the price, so the days of solid cheap ones are long gone. Having a solid largely-original first-generation GT6 show up just 40 miles from me made me start to think things that just weren’t right. Of course, I do have my limits. I would’ve loved to bring the car home to my driveway, but twelve grand wasn’t anywhere near cheap enough to make me run out on my recuperating wife while I yelled upstairs to my kids, “Watch your mother and make sure she doesn’t bleed out on the couch.”

#5: 1973 Corvette 4-Speed ($17,500)

During the pandemic, I wrote about being seduced by a C3 Corvette, a bronze ’73 that had brown stripes down the center and along the sugar-scoop rear window buttresses, a brown-painted tail, and curved brown accent stripes over its hips and shoulders that evoked images of an illicit romance with an overly-made-up woman from the wrong side of the tracks. It was a sea-change moment for me, as C3s never really blew my skirt up, but I suddenly developed an appreciation for that Coke-bottle-shaped body. Ever since, I’ve kept my eye open for another C3 that might light my fire in the same way. In my humble opinion, ’73 is the inflection point on the C3 cost/value curve. That is, the earlier C3s have the thin chrome bumpers on both the front and rear, but the ’73s tend to be less expensive because they still have the rear bumper but not the front (the bumper was made integral with the nose). This was a one-year configuration; in ’74, the chrome rear bumper was deleted and the cute upturned rear end was changed to a slant-back design with an integrated bumper.

This 65,000-mile car was just north of NYC. The combination of the blue paint, the double white stripe down the center, the black interior, and the four-speed made it the first C3 that came remotely close to triggering the pleasure centers that that bronze-and-brown-striped car did. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who was smitten, because after the seller dropped the price from $29,500 to $17,500, the car was gone in a week.

#6: Mystery Car

A few days ago, a car I’ve lusted after showed up on FBM for an attractive price. The ad had only been up for 34 minutes when I stumbled across it in my evening search, giving me that buyer’s adrenaline rush that I might actually be the first to respond. The seller isn’t in Boston, but he’s within a day’s drive there and back. I looked at the ad, thought about the situation, decided “Well, there’s no way I can actually act on this,” and went to bed, assuming that it would be gone in the morning. Surprisingly, the ad was still there. That day, I couldn’t put it out of my mind, so that evening I pulsed the seller, told him my situation, said “All’s fair in love and classic cars; I’m sure it’ll be gone by the time I can get serious, but let’s hold onto each other’s contact info.” I’ve since talked with the seller on the phone. As my wife’s recovery continues—and as two of our adult sons live with us—the possibility of my going to see it becomes less and less out of the question.

We shall soon see whether or not this old man really is too slow.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post You’re slow, old man: Missing out on cool cars and good deals appeared first on Hagerty Media.

In late spring of 2022, I received an interesting email:

“I am a writer/filmmaker looking for a 1974 (or so) BMW Bavaria to use in an upcoming short film. I saw The Hack Mechanic piece about yours and wonder if you still have it or know somebody who does and would be willing to loan or rent it? Any help or advice you may have would be hugely appreciated.  I look forward to hearing from you. Many thanks and my best.”

I googled the sender and found that she was for real—she is a New York Times–reviewed author of several novels, one of which was made into a film. I responded that, yes, I still have the Bavaria and we could probably work something out, but she should know that it’s a ’73, which is a small-bumpered car, whereas the ’74 she asked about is big-bumpered, so if the film was about Jackie Onassis, who famously owned a green ’74 Bavaria, mine looks a little different. She replied that, while there is a reference in the script about Jackie O. owning the same model, but the film isn’t about her, so the difference isn’t important.

We swapped a few more emails, then spoke at length on the phone. She told me the outline of script, which involves a young woman finding the car in the driveway of a house and feeling drawn to it, then learning that the car was owned by a man’s wife who passed away under mysterious circumstances. I said that my Bavaria may have been destined for this part—after I bought it from a guy who’d picked it up at an estate sale, I learned that the owner before him had apparently ended his life after his wife died under mysterious circumstances. 

By the time the call was over, we’d done the writer-to-writer secret handshake and I verbally agreed to rent her the car. She said that shooting was slated to happen in New York’s Hudson Valley the first week of June, she’d gladly pay for rental and shipping, and she’d hand me over to her producer to work out the specifics. 

Several emails and phone calls ensued with the producer. While I’d loaned out my BMW 2002s for weddings, this was different—this was a commercial venture for which I’d need to be certain about insurance. “We have prop insurance for the film,” he said. That didn’t sound adequate to me. “I think I’ll need to find out what’s involved with my own insurance company.”

So I called Hagerty. It was very straightforward. I was told I’d need to add a commercial rider to my policy. For the modest insured value of the Bavaria, the cost for a commercial rider was $50 for the year and covered up to four events, each up to three days long. All that I needed was the shoot dates and a scan of the driver’s license of anyone slated to drive the car.

Regarding transport, the car was currently in the warehouse in Monson, Massachusetts, making shipping non-trivial. That is, I couldn’t simply give that address to a shipper; I’d need to be there to bring the car out. I first thought the thing to do was to grab the Bavaria from the warehouse myself and bring it to my house in Newton so that a shipper could load it there. I got a one-way shipping quote of $450. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that commercial shipping probably wouldn’t work. If you’ve shipped cars, you know that it’s not like making a dentist appointment; you can’t realistically expect pick-up and drop-off to be on a specific day and time. It’s whenever they get there. I may not care if a car is delayed a day or two or seven, but a film crew sure as hell would.

Regarding a daily rental fee, I asked the producer to tell me what was reasonable and customary. I never heard back from him on this point, so I did some web-searching. I found posts on vintage car forums that ballparked it as $100–$200 if the car is basically an automotive extra parked on the street, but potentially thousands of dollars if the car is rare, valuable, and used more like a character in the film. I also read some alarming things about cars and movie shoots, warning that, regardless of what you write into a contract, there’s no way to guarantee that every person on the set has the same regard for your baby that you do, so if you’re not there every moment monitoring their actions, you’re taking on risk and may not like the result.

The filmmaker emailed me saying that the shoot date and location had been nailed down—early June at a large modernist house in upstate New York. When I Googled it, the first hit was Airbnb, which listed the nightly rental at nearly what I’ve paid for many of my cars.

I’ll freely admit that my reaction was “OK, these folks have a decent budget for this film. It’s appropriate to charge them market rates.” Cost to rent the Bavaria? From the filmmaker’s description, it sure sounded to me like it was going to be used as “a character in a film.” I set the rental fee at $500/day. Transportation costs? In order to assure the car was there at the appointed day and time, I saw no other option than for me to be the shipper—e.g., rent a U-Haul trailer Sunday night, pick up the car at the Monson warehouse as early as possible that Monday morning, drop it off at the film shoot, and reverse the process two days later. Since this was going to involve a lot of my time, I multiplied the $450 shipping estimate by four (I’d need to go back and forth four times) and quoted $1800—still cheaper than anyone else would charge for shipping and pickup with guaranteed arrival dates and times. I wrote up a simple Memorandum of Understanding (more than a phone call, less than a formal contract) listing those rates, as well as other caveats like no adhesives could be used to affix cameras, suction cups only on the glass, and that they’d have to pay for any additional expenses including damage below my deductible, and emailed it to the producer.

To my surprise, it went tilt. He called and said, “We just don’t have that in our budget.” I said that I saw the Airbnb rate for the location, so it was difficult to believe that they were doing this on a shoestring, and I reminded him that the filmmaker had contacted me and that the both of them had agreed to the rental and had offered to ship the car.

Then he said something surprising: “There’s a guy near here offering to rent us an old Mercedes for $500 for the day.” Wait, what? Before I became a full-time writer, I was an engineer for 35 years, so I’m used to thinking in terms of requirements. I replied, “Is a BMW Bavaria required for the shoot or not?” The producer said, “Well, she certainly wants it.” We went back and forth, with me saying that the logistics of my getting them the car on time for a three-day shoot would occupy much of two of those three days.

Finally, the producer said, “Is there any way you could just drive it here for a day for $750? We could go as high as a thousand. And we could put you up overnight if you’re here too late to drive back.” I thought about it, and said, “Yeah, if it’s really a one-day shoot, I can do that, but if it rolls into a second day we’d need to renegotiate. And I can’t go out there expecting one day and have it turn into three.”

But then there was an even bigger surprise. “We’re not sure if the actress can drive a stick,” I was told. “You don’t have one of these cars with an automatic, do you?” I don’t recall what I said, but I’m sure I stifled what I really wanted to say. 

We left it that the actress-maybe-not-driving-a-stick thing definitely needed to be resolved, but yeah, sure what the hell, $750 for one day, more if it rolled over into the next day, plus expenses, with some caveats. I rewrote the Memorandum of Understanding. The producer signed it. We were on. I called Hagerty and paid for the insurance rider, then texted the guy who owns the warehouse in Monson asking if he could meet me there at 6:30 a.m. on a Monday in early June so I could grab the Bavaria. He said he’d be unavailable but gave me the combination to the locks on the gate and the warehouse door.

Let me take a step back for a moment. There are many things in life that you can make as simple or as complicated as you want. This was one of them. Even the issue of the non-stick-driving actress notwithstanding, I really don’t know how you would do this in an iron-clad fashion without a lawyer. I was aware that I had absolutely no bona fides on what “studio” was making this film, or on this producer who’d signed my flimsy little Memorandum of Understanding. But to quote the great philosopher Peter Griffin, “Sometimes in life you gotta say, ‘What the hell,’ and just go for it.”

A few days later, the producer emailed me saying he confirmed that the actress was stick-capable. He also attached the required scan of her driver’s license, which I forwarded to Hagerty.

Anything can go wrong with a 50-year-old car, so I packed the trunk of my BMW E39 530i with spares for the Bavaria as well as jumper cables and starting fluid. I even packed a small floor jack in case I had to change a flat. I arrived at the warehouse around 6 a.m. on Monday, reconnected the Bavaria’s battery, and filled the dried-out float bowls of the twin Weber 32/36s with perhaps 20 seconds of on-off cranking. The car settled into a lumpy idle that smoothed out as it warmed up. I locked up the warehouse, texted the filmmaker that I was on the way, and hit the road.

As soon as I began driving, though, I caught an unmistakable whiff of the sweet smell of antifreeze. Damn. I stopped and checked, but I didn’t see any coolant dripping. The translucent overflow tank, though, was a bit low. I bought a gallon of pre-mixed antifreeze at the first open convenience store and topped it up. Over time, the smell lessened. I watched the temperature gauge like a hawk, but it stayed cool. I’m still not sure what caused the smell. I eventually relaxed and enjoyed driving the Bavaria out the Mass Pike through the Berkshires, then down New York’s lovely Taconic Parkway.

I arrived at the mailbox to the shoot location at 8:15 a.m. and drove slowly up the long winding gravel driveway that snaked up the hill to the house. The filmmaker came out and greeted me. She marveled at the car, particularly its intact original tobacco interior. 

Unfortunately, she then shared some less-than-thrilling news: The actress could barely drive a manual transmission. I thought about it carefully, and decided to see for myself. I met the young woman who was slated to drive the car.

“Tell me about your manual transmission experience,” I said.

“I have driven a stick before,” she said, “but I don’t do it often.”

“When was the last time you did it?” I asked.

“Yesterday.”

Out of decorum, I did not ask if “yesterday” was the only time she’d ever driven a stick.

“I won’t burn out your clutch,” she said.

I thought about it. “Good answer!” I replied.

There was a 20-minute window before filming was scheduled to start, so I took the actress out on the long gravel driveway for a short lesson. She did OK, not unlike my kids when they were learning. Her main problem was releasing the clutch too quickly, which is better than feeding way too much gas. And the gravel driveway was fairly forgiving, as when she let off the clutch too fast, the rear tires just kicked up stones. I showed her the trick of using the handbrake to get started on a hill, but that’s something that takes a lot of practice.

I was keenly aware that I was in an awkward position, as saying “no” would’ve ground things to a halt and cost the filmmaker thousands of dollars. At some point, you make a gut-level decision about these things. The Bavaria is not a high-dollar car. It’s not precious to me in the way my 3.0CSi is. The actresses’ clutch skills were passable. The car’s transmission and clutch are pretty stout. Nearly the entire shoot was going to be on the gravel driveway. It was less than ideal, but here we were. Onward.

By the time we finished the lesson, everyone was there. Between the actors and the crew, there were probably 15 people. The only thing similar I’d ever done was the video shoot with Magnus Walker. This was bigger—more people, video and film cameras, a drone, a script, and actors with lines. 

Nearly everyone on the crew loved the car and treated it very carefully, with one glaring exception—a young woman who put both her clipboard and clapperboard (the thing where you go “Scene 4, Take 2, action!” and slap it closed) on the trunk lid. The filmmaker immediately corrected her. The young woman distractedly nodded but didn’t remove the items. I approached her and gently said, “You can’t put hard objects on the paint of a car like this.” She removed them but made no apology. I let it go. The filmmaker witnessed this, walked back over, looked at the trunk lid, pointed to a long faint superficial scratch, and asked, “Was that already there?” I said, “I’m pretty sure, yes.” As I said, you can make things as simple or as complicated as you want.

Since the crew was planning on having the Bavaria for only one day, all filming centered on it. The first shot had the car sitting under a cover. The filmmaker had asked me to bring the thin cloth cover that I used in the warehouse. Although it was unrealistic for real outdoor storage, it draped nicely on the car. She was attracted to the idea of yanking the cover off like a magic trick or a tablecloth from under dishes and glasses. Unfortunately, there were too many snag points for that to happen. They then tried a single graceful sliding pull, more like a nightgown falling over shoulders, but the cover got hung up on the rear corners of the drip rails. I put electrical tape over the ends of the rails, making little ramps for the cover to slide over. This actually worked, but the cover then snagged alternately on the antenna, mirror, and wipers. After multiple takes threatened to blow the shooting schedule, the cover was removed by less sensual methods.

Next were the driving shots. The actress was still coming off the clutch too quickly, making little chirps in the gravel. I went into dad mode, encouraging her, complimenting her, and keeping my cringing to myself, but the film crew thought the little peel-outs looked cool. A video snippet of one of them can be seen below.

One of the driving shots was slated to use a “hostess tray”—a large apparatus that hung on the passenger door and held a film camera aimed at the driver. I inspected the hardware and noted that it used four round discs, each about two inches in diameter, to support the tray against the door skin. It looked like each needed a rubber pad much larger than the ones that were on them. The cameraman admitted that they’d normally use big thick rubber squares, but they didn’t have any. “We’ll mount the whole thing on a furniture blanket, then put towels under each of the discs,” he said. “I’ll need to judge it for myself,” I explained. I put the furniture blanket on the door sill, began to lift the hostess tray onto it, realized that it weighted at least 35 pounds, put it back down, and simply said “No.” They strapped the hostess tray onto a rental car instead and got the shot by driving alongside the Bavaria.

Filming ran all day. After the final shot was complete, the filmmaker reported that a piece of the inside rear door handle connecting the rear armrest/door pull to the door had broken. She was livid and apologetic, and immediately said she’d pay for it. I looked at it, thought, and shrugged. “It’s a 50-year-old piece of plastic,” I said. “We’ll work it out. It’s probably no longer available. I’ll probably just glue it, then never look at it again.” (It turns out it is available, but only in black. However, a little reinforcing bracket is available that’ll help keep it together after I glue it. I charged her for the bracket.)

With the car’s part of the shoot over, the filmmaker expressed deep gratitude. I ate dinner with her and the crew, then crashed for the night on a spare mattress in the big modernist house. I woke up early and drove the Bavaria, its clutch and transmission apparently no worse for the wear, back to the Monson warehouse, retrieved my E39 sedan, and headed home. A few days later, a check arrived for my agreed-on expenses.

So, was it worth it?

For me, yes, absolutely. I like to say “yes” to things as often as I can. And I took a lot of pride in enabling this fellow writer’s shoot by providing her with the car she wanted. Speaking with her directly on the phone first, then meeting her and liking her, then having her be so grateful were key. The fact that no one else would’ve done what I did—rented and delivered the car himself for such a modest sum, not bailed on the business of the barely-stick-driving actress—made me feel good. I can’t fix this broken world, but I could do this one kindness for this one writer/filmmaker. One cracked plastic armrest piece doesn’t change that one iota. 

I recently learned that the film was nominated for best mythical/spiritual short at the 2022 Cannes World Film Festival. However, as I haven’t yet heard directly from the filmmaker, it would be improper of me to release the film’s name or post a link.

If you’re reading this and screaming “Are you freaking nuts? I would never let someone do those things to my car,” that means that if someone is asking to rent your prize for a movie shoot, you should say “no.” And that’s OK.

But if you do choose to do this, know that there’s a very straightforward mechanism within your Hagerty policy to cover the car.

The main takeaway message is that, if it’s a car that you care deeply about, I would strongly recommend that you state in writing what is and what isn’t allowed, and then require that you be on the set at all times to enforce it, and, if necessary, veto what they’re about to do.

And yes, if there ever is a next time, I’ll make sure that the actor/actress really knows how to drive a stick.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post My Bavaria is a real character (in a movie) appeared first on Hagerty Media.

I recently had to spend a day in a hospital waiting room while a family member underwent a procedure (they’re fine). I took some unusual reading material with me—How To Repair Your Foreign Car: A guide for the beginner, your wife, and the mechanically inept by Dick O’Kane (Doubleday, 1968). A friend bought it for me five years ago, and I hadn’t gotten around to reading it. I thought something light would be a good counterpoint to the gravitas of the hospital.

Let me back up a bit. The three books that most influenced me as an automotive writer were Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A manual of step-by-step procedures for the compleat idiot by John Muir, and Shop Class as Soul Craft by Matthew Crawford. I read Zen when I was in college 45 years ago, and like many young men overly impressed with their own intelligence, loved its odd epistemological ramblings and its tenet that working on a motorcycle is a microcosm of rationality itself. I re-read it when I was writing my first book, Memoirs of a Hack Mechanic, and was surprised by how badly it (or I) had aged. What were mind-blowing Carlos Castaneda-like revelations when I was 18 on the metaphysics of quality now struck me as a self-indulgent series of digressions; the chapter on “stuckness” that I remembered so fondly was a joke; and there was but a single diagnostic example of the kind of Zen-based maintenance that forms the book’s title (the author realized that his bike was running rich at high altitudes and leans it out).

In contrast, the “Idiot Manual,” as John Muir’s Volkswagen book is usually called, really is the “philosophy lesson disguised as a repair manual” that Zen pretends to be. Muir really does dispense hippie-cowboy-Zen wisdom, sort of an automotive version of Sam Elliot’s character in The Big Lebowski. His book was a huge entry point for me into both wrenching and writing. It’s what got me working on my then-girlfriend’s (now wife’s) VW bus in the late ’70s. The idea that a real repair manual can be written in the first person and be entertaining enough to read cover to cover was the inspiration for my book Just Needs a Recharge: The Hack Mechanic Guide to Vintage Air Conditioning.

I thought that Matt Crawford’s Shop Class as Soul Craft bogged down after it came out of the gate, but the third chapter, “To be master of your own stuff,” hit the nail on the head in terms of why it feels so damned good to fix things yourself. I’ll freely admit that I thought, “Well, if he can write about this, so can I” when I was collecting similar themes I’d been writing about for decades for BMW CCA Roundel magazine, and I used them as the basis for Memoirs of a Hack Mechanic.

Then, when I began writing Memoirs, I discovered a fourth book—Old Tractors and the Men Who Love Them: How to keep your tractors happy and your family running, by humorist and CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Roger Welsch. As per the subtitle, this wonderful book delved into the relationship between hobbies/passions and human connection.

To be clear, How To Repair Your Foreign Car hasn’t worked its way in as a fifth face on this automotive literary Mount Rushmore. But it’s a charming little book that’s a decent primer on how to troubleshoot common problems on your vintage car, foreign or otherwise. And, in more than a few places, it’s laugh-out-loud funny.

The author, Dick O’Kane (1936–2019), was a print and television copy writer. How To Repair Your Foreign Car was the first of his eight automotive/mechanical books. Mr. O’Kane had such an endearing gift for flippant names and phrases that you’d assume he was British (he was from Arkansas and Rhode Island). For example, his term for a generic British car is “Trashwell-Snailby,” and when it breaks, you have to take it to “Filth & Greed Motor Imports Ltd.” The sound of a fan belt snapping is “THWOMPETYbangbangbang CLUNK!” Really, the tone of the entire book is contained in the chapter, “Why, When Britania Rules the Waves, Will Her Cars Not Go Through a Puddle?”

Mr. O’Kane’s book is an entertaining readable narrative in which he applies simple common-sense diagnosis and repair to the things that are most likely to be the causes of a car dying or not starting, and offers that if it’s not these things, it’s something more serious and you’ll need to pay for a tow and a repair. There is an appealing economy and clarity in that approach. The neat thing is that his list lays directly on top of the first six of what, for decades, I’ve written about as “The Big Seven” things likely to strand a vintage car (ignition, fuel delivery, charging, cooling, belts, clutch hydraulics, ball joints). The mind-blowing part is that it’s one thing for me to be applying this to the bulk of little “ferrin” cars from the European invasion of the late ’60s and early ’70s that are now 50 years old, and quite another to find the same set of common problems described in a book from 1968 when the cars were nearly new. Although most cars from this era are similar (that is, carbureted and free of emission controls), the “foreign” part of it is there because it was the author’s passion, and it provides a nifty foothold to describe what probably did happen a lot back in the day—if you took a Beetle or a Porsche into a corner service station where the mechanic was used to servicing Chevys and Fords, he’d be flummoxed not only by it not being ’Murican but by the engine being at the wrong end.

The book begins with a “What Makes it Go” chapter, which is quick primer on engines and the suck-squeeze-bang-blow four-stroke cycle, followed by “And All of a Sudden It Stops,” in which car-dies-while-running problems are, as you would imagine, triaged primary as fuel or ignition related (unless they’re accompanied by a large, expensive bang). O’Kane quickly has you examining battery terminals, looking for broken ignition wires, checking for spark, and verifying that the fuel pump is pushing fuel into the carburetor, giving just the right amount of detail for a first troubleshooting encounter if you’re not naturally a grease-under-the-nails person. Subsequent chapters drill down into ignition, fuel delivery, cooling system, charging system, the clutch, and the distinction between car-dies-while-running and car-won’t-start. It’s a good approach. He swims in the old-school waters that rough running is almost always an ignition-related problem, and that “carburetor” is a French word meaning “leave it alone.” Of course, when the book was written, it wasn’t yet old school.

O’Kane seems to get genuine enjoyment out of describing bashing things with a hammer—voltage regulators, SU electric fuel pumps, starter solenoids. This, of course, makes for great writing, and fits with the quintessential experience of driving your, ahem, Trashwell-Snailby in the rain when the car dies. The common thread with these devices is that they contain electromagnets with contact points, and if they’re stuck, a little mechanical persuasion sometimes helps them open or close. I wish that he’d drawn the common thread connecting them, but he is forgiven because his description of the three states of operation of the voltage regulator is perhaps the clearest I’ve seen anywhere.

Given that it’s a 55-year-old book, there are, of course, anachronisms. I laughed every time I read that working on the car yourself would save you from paying the $7-an-hour labor rate at the dealership, or that certain technical questions could be answered by your “dealer shop manager.” More serious is the fact that he says you can check for spark at a plug wire by simply holding it in your hand while someone cranks the engine. This is horrifying. Coil voltages have crept up significantly over the years, and any spark testing should be done by holding the plug connector ¼-inch from ground with insulated pliers.

Furthermore, if the car suddenly dies, O’Kane is correct in telling you to look for broken ignition wires at the ignition coil, but he omits the simple description that the wire to the coil’s “+” terminal should be carrying battery voltage, and the wire on the “-” terminal should connect to the condenser on the distributor. Then again, this is in keeping with the “ferrin car 101” nature of the book; there aren’t scary-looking wiring diagrams anywhere. And the instruction that, if a car is overheating, the stuck-closed thermostat should be removed, is a bit too 1968 to be useful. Yes, thermostats can stick closed, but not all of them can simply be removed. And the stuck-thermostat trope is usually false; hot-running on old cars is almost always due to insufficient heat transfer (clogged radiator) and insufficient air flow (fan and shroud).

But this is just quibbling around the edges. It’s astonishing to me that a concise little book written 55 years ago about troubleshooting and repair of lightly-used foreign cars could still be so close to the mark and be such a joy to read. Not every page contains humor, but when I read the single-sentence chapter on “Patching Your Own Flat Tires,” I laughed so hard that other people in the waiting room began looking at me. And the chapter on “Dignity: Routine Care and Maintenance,” which gives you creative ways to lie about the fact that your precious foreign car is actually dead by the side of the road, is a whole new comic vein that I intend to mine.

I deeply regret that Mr. O’Kane and I never crossed paths, shared libations, and swapped stories before his passing in 2019.

If you have a friend or loved one who is into simple old cars, be they foreign or domestic, and enjoys good writing, hunt down a copy of Dick O’Kane’s How To Repair Your Foreign Car (used copies are available through Amazon vendors). Then wait for the laughter. And for them to bash their voltage regulator with a hammer.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best of the Hack Mechanic: 35 years of Hacks, Kluges, and Assorted Automotive Mayhem, is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post A new review of an old book that you may want in your library appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The party’s over. The State of Vermont has closed the too-good-to-be-true loophole that allowed you to register a motor vehicle there without living in the state and without physically making an appearance at a Vermont registry, without proof of insurance, and, if the vehicle is 15 years or older, without a title or a previous registration.

My knee-jerk reaction was that it was partially my fault.

To appreciate the utility of “The Vermont Loophole,” you have to understand how much registration laws vary state to state. My home state of Massachusetts requires a title for all cars no matter how old, so if you stumble upon your dream Jaguar E-Type barn find with no paperwork and it’s sold to you on just a bill of sale, you can’t register it. The state does, however, realize that many states don’t issue titles for cars that are over 15 years old, so if you buy an old car from out of state, Massachusetts will register it if you present a previous registration and a bill of sale both in the name of the seller. But if an old registration can’t be produced, you’re out of luck.

Such was the case when I bought “Louie,” the 1972 BMW 2002tii that was the subject of my book Ran When Parked. In it, I describe the previous owner finding that the title and prior registration, which had both been stored in the glove compartment, had been eaten by mice. I took the risk and bought the car anyway. I looked into vehicle title service companies and learned that what most of them do is run the car through the DMV of a state with lax registration laws, and that’s something you can do yourself. At the time, I had a good friend living in Maine, a state where you can register a car with only a handwritten bill of sale (no title or former registration), and where, as an added bonus, there’s no automotive sales tax, so I sold it to him. He did need to insure the car and make a physical trip to the registry, but once he did, he had a paper registration in his name. I paid all his expenses, and he then sold me back the car, thereby providing the prior registration and bill of sale in the same seller’s name I needed in Massachusetts. I then registered the car here and paid the sales tax and all fees.

But as part of this process, I stumbled upon a post on a motorcycle website about registering old barn-find bikes. It was there that I learned that, like Maine, the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles will allow you to register a 15-year-old vehicle with only a bill of sale (no title or old registration required), but Vermont had an additional three-way twist that sounded too good to be true. First, you didn’t need to be a Vermont resident to register a car there. Second, you didn’t even need to show up at the DMV; the entire process could be handled by mail. Third, no proof of insurance was required. Since Vermont doesn’t issue titles for cars older than 15 years, the process didn’t result in a title, but it did give you that all-important registration in your name, which, in theory, allowed you to transfer the registration to your home state and title the vehicle there, as if you’d just moved there. Unlike Maine, Vermont assesses a 6 percent sales tax on the greater of the NADA low book value or the actual paid price, but what you were getting in return sounded very appealing. In 2019, I wrote about all this for Hagerty in “The Vermont Loophole.”

Not long after the piece was published, I had three reasons to try The Vermont Loophole myself. I owned a 1974 Lotus Europa Twin Cam Special that I’d spent six years resurrecting and had just gotten running. The first issue was that, although I had the title from the previous owner, there was a minor recording error. It probably could’ve been corrected via a notarized affidavit, but if it couldn’t, the consequence was unclear. The second issue was that the car had a cracked windshield that prevented it from passing Massachusetts state inspection, and at that time, no Europa windshields were available anywhere in the United States. The third was that my mother was dying, I wanted to be with her as much as possible, and spending an entire day at a Massachusetts registry wasn’t something I was willing to do.

So, since all I had to do was fill out a form, send a check, and wait for the time to pass, I tried using The Vermont Loophole as a temporary measure to register the car. Regarding the cracked windshield, Vermont (like Massachusetts) requires an annual inspection, so I’ll admit that my logic here was a bit suspect. I was banking on the idea that even though a Massachusetts State Police officer could pull me over and ticket me for driving a Vermont-plated car with no Vermont inspection sticker, he or she would be less likely to do so than if the car had Massachusetts plates.

To my surprise and delight, the whole thing worked. The by-mail Vermont registration process was a bit murky—it’s not as if the website had yellow-highlighted “THOSE TRYING TO REGISTER AN OUT-OF-STATE BARN-FIND CAR WITH NO DOCUMENTATION, CLICK HERE” banners on it. You needed to download Vermont VD-119 form, fill it out, print the NADA values for the car, circle the low value, calculate 6 percent of that and add it to the $76 registration fee, and send the form and a check for the total amount. Although I wasn’t certain whether or not it was required, the motorcycle-centric article I read talked about photographing the VIN plate, so I did that, printed it, and included it as well.

And then I waited. About three weeks later, my bank showed that the check had been cashed. About a week after that, an envelope arrived with a Vermont license plate and registration. Shortly after that, I received a sticker for the plate. I then wrote a second article detailing my specific experience using the loophole. Over the years, I fielded many emails helping people with the process, and I got to see the joy on their faces when they sent me selfies of them and their Vermont plate.

To be absolutely clear about this, it’s almost certainly against some rarely-enforced motor vehicle law to continue to drive a car that’s registered in “State A” when you legally reside in “State B”—you’d need to check with the laws of both states. Thus, people using The Vermont Loophole to deal with title-less barn-find cars were advised to get the Vermont registration and then immediately use it as proof of ownership to legally register the car in their home state. I never intended to continue driving on the Vermont plates, at least not for as long as I have, but the Lotus was in a perpetual state of being sorted out, it took me a few years to find a windshield to replace the Lotus’ cracked one, and when I did, it was via a group buy through a Europa enthusiast group. By the time all the orders were collected and the giant crate of windshields were delivered to Rhode Island, we were mired in the pandemic, during which my wife and I seriously considered moving to Vermont, so getting the Vermont tags off the Lotus dropped to the bottom of my priority list. I finally got the windshield installed this past spring, so now that the car is inspectable and my wife and I appear to be staying put, there’s nothing preventing me from transferring the registration to Massachusetts. I just haven’t gotten around to it. And, although I feel conspicuous as all get-out by driving this highly-visible little slot car around Massachusetts with no inspection sticker on it, I’ve never been stopped and ticketed for it.

Of course, I wasn’t the only one who had publicly used The Vermont Loophole. YouTuber Doug DeMuro telegraphed its existence in a video about buying and registering a tiny little European Mercedes A-class that’s proudly wearing Vermont plates. The writer, Mercedes Streeter, did a series of articles on Jalopnik about buying an International school bus and registering it in Vermont as an RV, as the state doesn’t have the RV requirements other states do. One of them was titled “My Bus Has Plates Because the Vermont DMV is Secretly America’s DMV.” And if you simply search YouTube for “The Vermont Loophole,” you’ll find dozens of videos, both from do-it-yourselfers and professional firms like Car Titles.

As usage of The Vermont Loophole became more widespread, certain states began to push back. Reportedly, Florida now refuses to transfer Vermont registrations to their states unless the Vermont registration address is actually in Vermont. People in Ohio also report problems transferring Vermont registrations there. But I didn’t expect a friend of mine to send me a link to this video, in which my Lotus had become the literal poster child for abuse of The Vermont Loophole. Specifically, the owner of Car Titles is taking me to task for continuing to drive the car on Vermont plates instead of using them as a stepping stone to register the car in my home state.

So, were automotive gadflies like me and Mercedes Streeter, writers who were quite public about using The Vermont Loophole, responsible for its closure?

I don’t think so.

It appears that the change may have had less to do with publicized individual car-nut cases like mine and more to do with for-profit businesses using the Vermont DMV as a turnstile to process large volumes of transactions. Streeter’s recent piece on The Autopian quotes a Vermont DMV official who said that the loophole was being abused by “runners” making in-person appearances at DMV locations several times a week to process multiple transactions. When there were hiccups with paperwork, “these runners became very hostile and belligerent to the staff,” requiring the DMV to “station sworn law enforcement officers at several branch offices.” The registry official also mentions multiple power-of-attorney forms bearing the same signature, stolen vehicles, salvage vehicles, and bogus ownership documents. In other words, they’re likely reacting to organized fraud, not to individuals registering a 50-year-old Lotus or a school bus camper conversion.

On June 26, 2023, the Vermont DMV issued a policy update that stated, “The Department will not process this/these transaction(s) unless or until the owner of the subject vehicle can establish a legitimate connection to the State of Vermont.”

The funny thing is that, just before this happened, I saw an ad for a pretty cool, unfinished Cobra replica project. It had a beat-up powder blue body, deep-dish rear wheels, side pipes, and an attractive asking price, and it spoke to me in that special way that gets your blood up. At the end of the description, it said, “This is a kit car and the buyer is required to do diligence with their local DMV, as the origin of the body is unknown.” My knee-jerk reaction was “No problem. I’ve got The Vermont Loophole in my back pocket.”

No more.

I’ve received my renewal for the Vermont registration for the Lotus, so it appears that existing registrations are not impacted. Nonetheless, I think that it’s best that I mark the end of the party by cleaning up my mess and taking the long-overdue step of registering the car in Massachusetts.

But I’m glad that I got the chance to have a beer at the Vermont Animal House Delta Tau Chi party before Dean Wormer shut it down.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best of the Hack Mechanic: 35 years of Hacks, Kluges, and Assorted Automotive Mayhem, is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post The end of “The Vermont Loophole” appeared first on Hagerty Media.

There’s a phrase I’ve heard women use: “Closet Shopping.” It describes rooting around in your closet to find clothing that you’ve forgotten about and reconnecting with it, maybe wearing it in some new way.

First, let me say that I don’t think I’m engaging in gender-stereotyping. I’ve simply never heard men use the phrase. I will, however, freely admit that I have two dozen sport coats in my closet from back in the days when I managed a team of engineers and wore a coat and tie to work. They’re mostly Italian labels that I found in thrift stores for the price of a DIY oil change. When my wife and I head out to a social obligation or a nice dinner, I will admit to trying a whole bunch of them on, sighing, wondering why I still own them, then not being able to part with any of them. But I doubt that there is any “new way” to wear a sport coat, at least not one that wouldn’t make me look like I’m off my meds.

I’ve written quite a bit about the 13 cars I own (the Lotus Europa Twin Cam Special, the three BMW 2002s, the 3.0CSi, the Bavaria, the 1979 Euro 635CSi, the M Coupe, the Z3, the 530i daily driver, my wife’s DD Honda Fit, the little Winnebago Rialta RV, and the Duramax Diesel truck), and how the 70-mile distance to the spaces I rent in a warehouse in the town of Monson on the Massachusetts/Connecticut border has made it so it can be months between visits to the five cars that are stored out there.

It made me wonder: Is the Monson warehouse my “closet?” If you own enough cars, is there such a thing as “Garage Shopping?” And, if so, can it actually stave off the desire to buy another car?

Maybe, maybe, and maybe.

To be clear, I’d have to own a lot more than 13 cars to simply forget about several of them and then rediscover them like an old sweater or last season’s Capri pants. I do, however, have recurring dreams about cars I once owned. They’re very specific. The 1970 Triumph GT6+, my wife’s ’69 VW Westfalia camper, a particularly spritely 1972 BMW 2002tii, and a 1983 BMW 533i daily driver (the exception in an otherwise passion-centric list) all make repeat somnambulic appearances where I dream I stashed them in a warehouse or garage and forgot that I still own them until I stumble upon them. But I digress.

But there is something to be said for the proposition that, when you don’t drive a car for a while, you get reintroduced to it when you finally do. And that reintroduction can go either way. It can be like running into an old college flame and thinking “What did I ever see in her?” Or you can react viscerally and walk away weak-knee’d and feeling, “Oh man, am I in trouble.”

A few months ago, I wrote about driving the five cars in Monson after not seeing them since Thanksgiving and not driving some of them farther than around the block for over a year. The experience was generally a positive one, with one glaring exception—when I drove the 1999 BMW M Coupe (the “Clown Shoe”) the 70 miles home, I was painfully reminded of the fact that, after 45 minutes, the seats cause me sharp lower-back discomfort.

Because of this, I began to seriously think about selling the car. I clocked through a few punch list items—I had the wheels refinished and one slightly bent one straightened, shelled out for new tires, repaired a cracked taillight, and investigated refinishing the front bumper cover.

As I wrote (here and here), it’s a lot of work to sell a car, particularly if you want to get market value for it and supply the information necessary to address the questions you’re certain to get peppered with. I had a few friends and online acquaintances who expressed interest in the car, so instead of shooting hundreds of still pics, I did a simple walk-around video of the car, and a second one with it up on the mid-rise lift in my garage.

But before even a quick walk-around video, the car needed a rudimentary cleaning. Really, what the car badly needs is to be detailed. There’s so much particulate matter embedded in the paint that once it gets a clay bar treatment, it’ll make the bar look like it’s been rolled in a granite quarry. And interior-wise, you can probably find a 10mm socket in the dirt in the seat crevices. But doing something is better than doing nothing, so I simply gave it a quick washing and interior vacuuming in my driveway. On the drive to the parking lot where I often photograph cars, the car was still dripping, so I took it up onto the highway for a few exits to blow the water off.

And that’s when I found it in my closet and remembered why I bought it in the first place.

When I bought the car in the winter of 2007, it had four bent wheels and all four shocks/struts were either seized or blown, but it didn’t matter, because when I got it on the entrance ramp to the highway and nailed it, it wound up so quickly that I hit 90 before I knew what happened. By modern standards, the car’s specs (240 horsepower from the S52 engine, 5.3 seconds 0-60) don’t cause hyperventilation, but it was quicker than and completely different from anything I’d ever owned, and between that and the car’s “planted” rear end, I was immediately hooked.

The funny thing is that, 16 years later, that’s still the case. And now that the car is sitting on completely round wheels with brand-spanking-new rubber, the quick drive on the highway was transformative. Mash the gas, and car rockets forward, glass-smooth on the asphalt. Throw it around an entrance ramp, and it feels glued down. Back pain after 45 minutes? Who cares when that’s still 35 minutes away? Since this is a family publication, I’m not sure I can print the meeting-the-hot-old-flame analogy, but you get the picture.

I’ve been strident about my view that, as a regular non-hedge-or-trust-fund Joe with finite resources, a car needs to be for something in order to stay around. The 3.0CSi is to look at and swoon over, and after 37 years, I still get to be its partner (sort of how I look at my wife). The other vintage BMWs are for long-distance driving to events. The ratty Z3 roadster is for top-down stress-busting, even on a trip to the hardware store. The Lotus Europa is for driving on twisty roads through leafy suburbs west of Boston at 4 mph over the speed limit and having so much fun that I feels like I should be arrested. The Rialta is for quick inexpensive beach getaways. The dailies and the truck are for the disposable stuff of life. By this analysis, the M Coupe hasn’t been for anything in many years, and thus has felt like the odd girl out.

But maybe, if money and space concerns don’t get too pressing, being the feels-like-nothing-else-I-own-and-I-go-ohgodohgodohgodohgodohgod-when-I-nail-it car is enough.

Regarding the overly-stiff seats, when I wrote the “maybe I’ll sell it” article, I received numerous comments that I could replace the seats with something more comfortable like the vintage Recaros in my old BMWs. It’s not that simple. Like most cars built since the 1990s, the M Coupe has seat belt tensioners—sensational devices that are triggered along with the airbag and other Supplemental Restraint System (SRS) components to pull the seat belts tight in the event of an impact. The belt tensioners are a part of the seats and thus are not easily or safely retrofit onto an old Recaro.

However, years back, some Clown Shoe folks alerted me that I wasn’t alone in finding the seats uncomfortable, and that some people found that simply tilting the normally-unadjustable seat base slightly back by adding spacers in the front makes a difference by providing more leg support. I tried throwing a few washers under the front seat bolts six years ago and didn’t find it to be a magic bullet. However, someone sent me a link to an inexpensive adjustable kit for the M Coupe. I have it on order.

Holy hell. I’ve not only found an old article in the closet, I’m about to wear it in a new way. I’d better check my meds.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best of the Hack Mechanic: 35 years of Hacks, Kluges, and Assorted Automotive Mayhem, is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Can you go “closet shopping” for cars? appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Last week, I talked about the pros and cons of doing a “prophylactic” replacement of the perfectly-functioning fuel pump in my 1996 Winnebago Rialta (a Volkswagen Eurovan with a Winnebago camper body). The argument for replacing it was that:

1. Fuel delivery problems are on my “Big Seven” list of things likely to strand a well-used car;
2. Other items on that list had already reared their ugly heads, failed, and nearly stranded me;
3. The receipts from the previous owner didn’t show fuel pump replacement; and …
4. I’d already bought a new fuel pump to have with me just in case, but because it lives inside the fuel tank, replacing it roadside isn’t trivial. That is, fuel pump replacement in a modern car is the antithesis of an old-school mechanical fuel pump that’s held to the head with a pair of nuts and two hose clamps and can be swapped almost as easily as a fuse.

The cons were a combination of the usual “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” argument coupled with the issue of the poor quality of new parts raising the real possibility that I might replace a high-quality working pump with something that could fail sooner. The thing that tipped me toward replacing it was when a friend of mine posted about having the fuel pump fail on his well-sorted car during a thousand-mile enthusiast tour.

So, a month before a scheduled trip to the Cape with my incredibly supportive wife, I dove in, but I had a special degree of curiosity as to whether I could have easily replaced it roadside had it failed. I did what was necessary to pull up the rug, expose the fuel pump, and remove it. This was more invasive than simply lifting up the back seat, as was required to do this repair in my 2003 BMW a few years back, but it wasn’t as bad as I expected. The surprise was that the plastic twist-lock fitting holding the fuel pump to the bracket on the bottom of the tank appeared to be stuck fast. While old plastic obviously doesn’t rust like steel or corrode like aluminum, with age it can certainly stick and bind. The time and effort it took simply to rotate it 30 degrees was enough that I was glad I was doing it in my driveway instead of on the side of Route 6 on the Cape.

The work that remained was simply transferring the rest of the components—the flexible corrugated plastic hoses connecting the pump to the flange, and the fuel level sensor—over from the old pump to the new. On paper, this is trivial, but the actual mechanics of it were surprisingly challenging.

I put the fuel pump assembly in a disposable aluminum roasting pan to catch the dripping fuel and carried it to a table in the garage where I could work on it in the shade.

Before I detail the swap-over of the components, I should note that whenever you have reason to open up a fuel tank, it’s an opportunity to look inside and check for contamination. I’ve removed fuel senders from metal tanks in running cars only to be greeted with what looked like a mixture of pot roast and chewing gum. While the plastic tanks in modern cars don’t rust like the old metal ones do, there can be a surprising amount of sediment at the bottom. If it looks like someone emptied a beach pail in there, everything stops while you drain the tank and clean it out. Fortunately, the Rialta’s tank showed only a tiny bit of sediment, small enough that I was confident the screen at the bottom of the pump and the upstream filter would keep it out of the injectors.

Back to the task at hand. The flexible plastic lines are attached to the fuel pump with single-use crimped “pinch clamps.” While I understand that they’re used on in-tank fuel pumps because they’re vibration-resistant, I really dislike dealing with them. I do have a set of “ear” clamp cutters that are supposed to bite through them, but I don’t have the upper body strength that I used to. If there’s no fuel present, I’ll sometimes cut them off with a cutting wheel on a Dremel tool, but the sparks raised makes its use out of the question if there’s fuel present.

I was able to carefully pry the barbed end of the band clamp off with a small screwdriver and unwind it off the hose. Prying it this way puts leverage on the plastic fitting that the hose is attached to and thus risks cracking it, but as I was replacing the pump anyway, I took the risk.

The next step was to pull the plastic hoses off the fittings. As you’ve probably experienced, even with rubber hoses, when the rubber has hardened with age, this can sometimes be surprisingly challenging, but as was the case with the plastic pump on the plastic bracket, these had a death grip.

I really didn’t want to damage the plastic hoses, as that would mean replacing them, which would necessitate removing them from the underside of the send/return flange, and if I broke either of the plastic fittings there, I would’ve been in a world of hurt. I used a number of prying tools to carefully work them off. When the gap between the end of the hose and the base of the fitting became wide enough, I was able to use a 7mm box-end wrench to contact the hose 3/4 of the way around and efficiently pry it off. For the last mile, where the gap was very wide, I used a pair of these wrenches.

Cutting off a couple of crimped-on clamps and pulling plastic hoses off fittings doesn’t sound like much, but the whole episode took several hours. Granted, that was a leisurely pace in my garage with hydration breaks, but the ability to do it while sitting on a chair at a work table rather than hunched over by the side of the road was key. It may seem trivial, but I was struck by the minor detail that I do not routinely travel with two 7mm wrenches in my road tool kit.

To connect the flexible plastic lines to the new pump, I simply needed to remove a little black cap over one of the fittings. However, regarding “simply,” as Inigo Montoya said in The Princess Bride, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” I assumed the cap was rubber and I could just flick it off with my thumb, but it turned out to be made of vinyl or plastic and had become rock-hard either while the pump was on the shelf in the warehouse or in the RV’s storage bin. It wouldn’t budge. I was being stopped by a little eraser-sized cap. It was like the fuel pump’s guard dog was jumping up and grabbing my ankle as I was climbing the fence to escape. I gently pried the cap forward using the same trick with the two 7-mm box-end wrenches. That is, until I heard a piece of plastic crack. My heart stopped. I thought it was the plastic fuel fitting itself, but it turned out to be a thin little support bracket the fitting was attached to. I stopped prying immediately and carefully cut slots in the cap with a single-edged razor blade instead.

That left transferring over the fuel pump sender. I had to compare the old and new pumps to see where the pump ended and the sender began. I found that the sender was held in place by two plastic tabs that clipped into slots. Anyone who’s dealt with unseating old plastic electrical connectors knows that these are the kind of things that snap if you even look at them. I carefully released them with a pair of screwdrivers and drew the sender upward, then transferred it over to the new pump.

And, with that, I could finally install the Rube Goldberg-like assembly in the fuel tank. I turned the key and cranked the starter, knowing that it might take the system longer to start than normal while the pump pressurized the system, but about five seconds later it fired up. I didn’t see any leaks, so I buttoned things up.

And, with that, the Fuel Pump Follies had finally ended.

So, could I have done this on the road if the fuel pump died? Now that I’ve been through it, yeah … I could have thrown a disposable roasting pan in the cabinet and those two magic 7mm box-end prying tools in the toolbox (and, make no mistake, I’ll stash those items, along with the original pump, in the RV) and bailed myself out of trouble if necessary, but the weight of data falls clearly on the side of prophylactic in-driveway replacement.

Unless the new one dies. In which case I’ll never utter the word “prophylactic” again.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best of the Hack Mechanic: 35 years of Hacks, Kluges, and Assorted Automotive Mayhem, is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post The Fuel Pump Follies (Part 2) appeared first on Hagerty Media.

One of my recurring sermons in the “Church of Hack” isn’t about the seven deadly sins—it’s the list of the “Big Seven” things that cause a car, particularly an older one, to be in the breakdown lane with the hood up. Once more for those in the cheap seats, that list includes issues with ignition, fuel delivery, cooling system, charging system, belts, clutch hydraulics on a manual transmission car, and ball joints. I preach over and over that addressing these things in a preventive fashion is an effective vaccine against the virus of roadside failure.

However, as I wrote a couple of years ago, the quality of replacement parts these days, even “genuine” Original Equipment (OE) dealer parts, is often poor, as the quality control applied to parts for our old cars (which exist in the thousands) simply isn’t the same as it is for new cars (which are pumped out in the hundreds of thousands). This has come to affect how I deal with “Big Seven” preventive maintenance. Prophylactically replacing an inexpensive normal-wear-and-tear item—like a set of points, or a larger item like a fuel pump, water pump, or an alternator—before a big trip used to be a slam-dunk for me if I didn’t know how old the part was. Not anymore. These days I generally need a reason to replace these items, since the part in the car may be of better quality than the one you’d be buying. Make no mistake—if something is exhibiting a problem, you shouldn’t ignore it. But I don’t spend the amount of time and money that I used to spend while replacing working parts. If this sounds like me discovering the well-known “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” paradigm, yeah, OK, there’s a hint of that in it. But I think of it more as somewhere between a Beatles-ish automotive “Let It Be” and a kind of informed laziness.

Last year, I highlighted this issue when I discussed performing another round of preventive maintenance on my little ’96 Winnebago Rialta (a Volkswagen Eurovan with a Winnebago camper body on it). Shortly before a summer jaunt to the Cape, the car died, fortunately in my driveway. The cause turned out to be a crack in the case of the ignition coil pack—as soon as it got wet, you could see it arcing to ground instead of to the distributor.

Even though I found the culprit, the search led me down the rabbit hole of reading about “sudden death syndrome” on the Rialta forums. Some posts laid the blame on the overload sensor on the in-tank fuel pump; others implicated the ignition pulse module that lives inside the distributor. My solution at the time was to spend $56 on a new OE coil pack, $167 on a new OEM fuel pump, and $65 on an aftermarket pulse module, but then install only the coil pack, as that was the component that was visibly failing and was trivial to replace. In contrast, there was no evidence that either the fuel pump or the pulse module was bad, and both are a pain to replace—the fuel pump is inside the gas tank, and replacing the pulse module requires yanking the distributor. Still, having those parts in one of the RV’s cabinets made me feel better, as a) if one of them failed while on a road trip, I thought that, if push came to shove, I could probably replace them roadside, and b) even if I couldn’t, having the parts might save two days if I had to have the car towed somewhere for repair.

As summer arrived and we began planning to use the little RV to drive to the Cape again, I was fine with those decisions. Let it be and all that.

And then, a surprising thing happened. My friend Keith Martin, publisher of Sports Car Marketplace (SCM) magazine, reported that on the “SCM 1000” enthusiast tour, his well-sorted ’72 Mercedes 250C died. The cause turned out to be a failed fuel pump. My knee-jerk reaction was, “Who doesn’t replace the fuel pump as part of sorting out a car prior to a thousand-mile trip?” But then I thought about both my revised way of looking at preventive maintenance and the Rialta with its fuel pump of unknown age sitting in the driveway, and I thought “Oh. Right. Me.”

And just like that, “If I had to, I could replace the Rialta’s fuel pump by the side of the road if it died” morphed into “And if you have to, you’re going to feel like an idiot that you didn’t just nut up and do it in your driveway instead.”

The Fuel Pump Follies had begun.

First, let me say that I dislike in-tank fuel pumps even though they make sense on paper, and I get why nearly all cars now have them. Putting the pump directly where the fuel is means it doesn’t have to suck fuel out of the tank; it can just push it forward. Plus, submerging the pump in fuel keeps it cool. And you don’t have the pump exposed underneath the car where a stone can get it.

But, as with many things, the apparent simplification of putting it out of sight makes the actual piece of equipment more complicated. On a vintage car, the fuel pump, the level sensor, and the pick-up tube (the thing that reaches down to the bottom of the tank and attaches to a fuel hose at the top) are three different things. On a modern in-tank pump, they’re all part of the same assembly. The fuel pump often twists or snaps into a holder on the bottom of the tank. The level sensor is usually a float on the end of a coat-hanger-like arm attached to the side of the pump. The bottom of the pick-up tube is actually the bottom of the pump itself, which is connected via in-tank hoses to the flange at the top of the tank to which the rubber fuel send and return lines attach. These three parts have to be withdrawn together. It’s like pulling a squid with rigor mortis out of an opening the size of a soup bowl.

I replaced the in-tank fuel pump on my 2003 BMW E39 530i last year, and it wasn’t too bad. The top of the fuel tank was easily accessible under the back seat. Removing the Byzantine pump-float-flange-hose assembly required watching a few videos. To save money, I purchased only the pump “insert” as opposed to the entire assembly, so I needed to cut off the crimped-on hose clamps (I hate those things), and disassemble the “cradle” that contained the pump. It was tedious but straightforward. It made me think that, if necessary, I could do the same repair roadside in the Rialta.

However, on the Rialta, accessing the top of the gas tank requires removing one or both front seats and pulling up the carpet, and doing that requires removing the bases of the gearshift lever and the handbrake. None of this is rocket science, but bear-hugging seats and yanking up rugs are exactly the sort of things that are likely to anger up my cranky back. I read on Eurovan forums that it’s possible to expose the access panel over the fuel pump by cutting the rug, but you need to be careful not to slice the wires running beneath it. I entertained that approach, but someone posted “Sheesh, you’d need to be a real hack to do that. I mean how hard is it to remove seats and a bit of shifter and e-brake trim?”

Point taken, perhaps more personally than most, uh, hacks.

So in I went, taking mental notes on whether I was indeed saving myself from a difficult or impossible roadside repair, or whether, like on a carbureted car with a mechanical fuel pump, it was more a matter of taking five minutes to loosen two nuts and two hose clamps.

The seat removal was surprisingly easy. My Rialta has captain’s chair-style seats that swivel on a six-inch-high pedestal, so there was easy access to the bolts holding the driver’s seat. And rather than having to bear-hug the far-from-featherweight seat out of the car, I was able to simply tip it backward into the coach section of the RV.

Removing the gearshift and handbrake bases was trivial. Lifting up the carpet had one hitch: The hole in it was clearly too small to lift over the big swiveling plate that the seat bolted to, and that plate was held to the pedestal with a very tight 24mm nut. I zipped it off with the impact wrench. Had I been roadside, I could’ve cut a clearance slot in the carpet instead. The carpet came up easily (I was concerned because one video showed a mechanic fighting against adhesive; mine had none). With a bit of finagling, it lifted over the seat pedestal, shifter, and handbrake. As I peeled the carpet back and flopped it over the passenger seat, I realized that the fact that I needed to remove only the driver’s seat and not both of them was probably due to the fact that mine were the pedestal-mounted style and thus had a much smaller footprint on the carpet than they would’ve had if they were floor-mounted. The handbrake lever was bolted to the floor with three stout nuts. They came off without a fight, giving full access to the fuel tank cover panel.

So far, the idea that I might have been able to do this as a roadside repair wasn’t at all far-fetched.

Then I unscrewed the access panel to the tank. The top of the flange where the hoses attach—the thing that you lift up to pull the pump out—was covered with leaves, acorns, seeds, and mouse detritus, stuff that you definitely don’t want falling into the tank. I grabbed the shop vac and sucked it all out, wiped anything loose off the plastic face, and vacuumed again. Yeah, I thought, this would’ve slowed me down roadside.

Next, I disconnected the three hoses (fuel send, fuel return, and the line to the gas generator) on the flange. The hoses were old and stiff, and getting them off required a fair amount of careful pushing, tugging, and twisting. I was keenly aware that I needed to re-use the flange, so if I broke the plastic nipples, I’d be in trouble. While it wasn’t strictly necessary to disconnect the cable from the handbrake lever, doing so got it out of my way. Working slowly and carefully, I got the hoses off.

I then undid the big plastic lock ring holding the flange to the top of the tank, allowing me to carefully draw it upward and look into the tank. I could see the plastic corrugated hoses connecting the underside of the flange to the fuel pump. To get a better understanding of the layout, I unboxed the new fuel pump I’d bought last summer. I could see the slots on the bottom where it locked into the flange on the bottom of the tank. I gleaned from their configuration that the pump must lock in by twisting it to the right, and unlock to the left. I watched a video to be certain.

Then I donned gas-resistant rubber gloves, reached in with my right hand, and tried to twist the pump free.

It wouldn’t budge.

I watched another video where a mechanic said that the thing to do was get both hands through the hole and on the pump. I scraped the back of one of my hands doing so, and still couldn’t get the pump loose.

I rooted around in the garage looking for an oil filter strap wrench to get some leverage on the pump, but all of mine were too small. I entertained using a large pair of slip-joint pliers, but there wasn’t an obvious way to get them in and orient them. Plus, I really didn’t want to damage the level sensor, which I could feel but couldn’t see.

I probably tried eight times to twist the damned pump free. Finally, keenly aware that I’d feel stupid as all get-out if I reinjured my back trying to remove a fuel pump that had absolutely no symptoms of being troublesome whatsoever, I went for it, grabbing the pump and twisting it to the left as hard as I could. Mercifully, it gave up before my back did, and I pulled it out.

Yeah, I would’ve totally hated trying to do this by the side of the road in the hot sun.

[Next week, I finish this it-wasn’t-broke-but-you-fixed-it-anyway repair and reveal whether the swap and the installation went easier than the removal.]

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best of the Hack Mechanic: 35 years of Hacks, Kluges, and Assorted Automotive Mayhem, is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post The Fuel Pump Follies (Part 1) appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Whenever anyone mentions having an electrical problem with a car, someone always gives the well-meaning advice to “check the ground.” My experience is that this isn’t the slam-dunk many think it is—I’ve found that most electrical issues are instead tied to bad components or the connections between them.

Of course, sometimes it is the ground. The most dramatic example is with a poor engine ground connection when trying to start the car.

Witness the situation that occurs in the vintage BMW world where I spend most of my time. Someone will pose a question to bmw2002faq.com—the hive mind of 2002 information—asking, “My 2002 wouldn’t start. I turned the key and it wouldn’t crank at all. Then I hit the accelerator pedal, tried again, and it started right up. But afterward, there was a bit of a burning smell from under the hood. What’s going on?” Those of us who have seen this before can answer the question immediately because the symptom is so specific.

On every car, the battery’s negative terminal is attached to two places. The first is the car’s metal body. This provides the common ground path for every single electrical device.

Well, except for one—the starter motor (and any other electrical devices that are integral with the engine). Because engines have rubber mounts to prevent their vibration from telegraphing through the body of the car, they are usually not grounded without a second ground connection from the negative battery terminal directly to the engine. Whether there’s a single Y-shaped ground cable connected to the negative battery terminal where one strap goes to the body and the other to the engine (as is the case on a BMW 2002), or a ground strap from the negative terminal to the body and then a separate one connecting the body to the engine, varies according to make and model.

Both of these ground connections must be present for the car to start and run properly. With age, it’s not uncommon for one or both of them to fail due to the braided strap corroding and breaking. If the engine strap is intact but the strap to the body has failed, the engine should still crank, but other electrical components may work intermittently, if at all. Conversely, if the chassis ground strap is fine but the strap to the engine has failed, the lights, fans, etc., should all work fine, but with no direct grounding of the engine, the starter probably won’t crank.

I use words like “may” and “probably” and phrases like “if at all” because if one of the ground straps fail, there can be “unintended ground paths” that may allow current to flow though the other one, at least until enough current flows through something that it’s not supposed to that something burns up.

And, with that background, I can explain the strange condition where a BMW 2002 won’t crank until you hit the accelerator pedal, then starts, followed by a burning smell afterward. As shown above, the negative battery cable on a 2002 is a braided Y, where one braid goes to the chassis, the other to the block. When the braid to the block corrodes all the way through, the engine has no direct ground path. After all, the engine is on rubber mounts, as is the transmission, the shift platform, and the exhaust.

But there is an “unintended ground path” and it’s quite a surprising one. It’s the accelerator linkage. The linkage is a series of metal ball-in-socket rods. There’s a lower rod that connects the accelerator pedal to the throttle linkage rod. One end of the throttle linkage rod is connected to the carburetor or injection pump (which, in turn, is connected to the block via the intake manifold and head). The other end goes into a plastic bushing in the firewall that supports it and aids in rotation.

Wait. Plastic doesn’t conduct electricity, right?

No, it doesn’t.

So how is this a ground path, and how does hitting the accelerator pedal make the starter crank?

This is the fun part.

There’s a throttle linkage return spring about the diameter of a fountain pen connecting the linkage to the firewall. Unlike the rotating end of the throttle linkage rod itself, the spring isn’t sitting in a bushing. The top is just hooked over the cowl and sits in a small hole in the metal. Similarly, the bottom spring hook is in a hole in the linkage. Over time, the paint in the upper hole wears away, allowing metal-to-metal contact. Poor metal-to-metal contact with an inner coating of rust, to be sure, but contact just the same.

So, hit the gas pedal, it stretches the spring, which pulls the hooked ends tighter against their metal holders, maybe jostles them around in the holes. Turn the key, and suddenly hundreds of amps of current find a ground path. They flow through this little piece of metal like an entire city’s water supply being shoved through a soda straw. With all that current, the spring can literally glow like the similarly-shaped elements in a toaster. So, yeah, there can be a smell.

Credit for discovering this rather remarkable failure mode and disseminating the knowledge goes to my BMW 2002 colleague Mike Self, but being an old guy who has seen it happen, I get to act like I’m a wizard when someone describes the symptom and I blithely nail the solution as if it’s the product of deductive reasoning instead of my friend Mike having told me.

I just encountered a pretty cool variant of this issue on a modern car. My friend and neighbor Dave has a 2014 MINI that wouldn’t crank. I walked two doors down to check it out. The battery read 12.6 volts, so it appeared to be fully charged. I connected my battery jump pack, and tried four times. On three of them, nothing happened, but on one, there was the CLICK of the starter solenoid. The rest of the car’s electronics seemed to work, just not the starter.

As I was musing whether the problem could be caused by the interlock that prevents the starter from engaging unless the clutch pedal is depressed, Dave said, “When the car was in for service last year, the mechanic said that the ground strap was corroded. Do you think that could have something to do with it?” He then showed me a video that the mechanic shot, clearly showing a ground strap green with corrosion, and a weak spot forming at the strap’s connection to the chassis.

It made perfect sense to me that this was the problem—the strap had corroded through, or nearly so, and the engine no longer had a valid ground connection.

To be clear, Dave wasn’t asking me to repair the car. He was just wondering what I thought was going on, and how serious the problem was. And besides, in order to replace the ground strap, I’d need to jack the car up, set it on stands, and pull off the engine’s under-cover—and his driveway, where it was parked, was too uneven and sloped to safely do any of that.

Dave isn’t a car guy, but he’s smart enough to have asked me the following very interesting question:

“Is there some way to ‘jump’ the ground path?”

A light bulb went off in my head.

“Do you have a set of jumper cables?”

“Sure.”

Like most cars these days, the MINI is a front wheel-drive car with a transverse-mounted engine, so instead of the engine mounts both being just above the oil pan like they are on an old-school rear wheel-drive car, one of them was up high, connecting to the right inner fender wall. I clamped one end of a jumper cable to the big aluminum bracket connecting the engine to the mount and the other end directly to the battery’s negative post.

I then had Dave start the car. It took a couple of tries with me reseating the jumper cable’s clamp and pulling the ends of the handles apart in order to get their teeth to bite more firmly into the bracket, but the MINI started. It certainly removed any question that the problem was due to the engine not being grounded. And from the video, the root cause of that was almost certainly the corroded ground strap.

Dave asked if I could drive the car to the repair shop. I carefully disconnected the jumper cable providing the ground path. The car continued to run, but we both heard a sharp click, likely an electrical relay—one that also relied on the electrical ground path through the engine—de-energizing. If this was an emergency, I could’ve gone to AutoZone, bought a beefy generic ground strap, and connected it semi-permanently from a good ground point on the chassis to a good ground point on the engine. But it wasn’t, plus Dave had AAA, so after a free tow and a small repair bill at a local shop, the original ground strap was correctly replaced.

This is a good thing to be aware of, and a good work-around to be able to put in both the mental and physical tool kits. Now, you can be the wizard who pulls this out of his bag of tricks at a car event and saves the day. Extra credit if you can point to a spring glowing red like a toaster.

Hey, everyone likes to feel well-grounded.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best of the Hack Mechanic: 35 years of Hacks, Kluges, and Assorted Automotive Mayhem, is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Insights on being well-grounded appeared first on Hagerty Media.

I’ve owned my 1999 BMW M Coupe (a.k.a. “the Clown Shoe”) since 2007. That’s a long time in Hack Mechanic years. I bought it when I was still firmly nestled in the income-generating bosom of my real-world engineering job. At the time, since I still owned my 1982 Porsche 911SC, buying the M Coupe seemed to be the height of frivolity, as on paper, the two cars seemed to be similar (e.g., tiny, fast, iconic, haunched, and craved by men from adolescence through dotage).

In reality, though, the two cars couldn’t be more different. If nothing else, generationally, they’re separated by decades, so much so that when I lost storage and thought I was going to lose my engineering job in 2011 and thus needed to lighten the automotive load, I kept the ’shoe and let go of the 911SC. My triple justification was that a) technology and vibe-wise, the Porsche really wasn’t that different from my 1970s-era BMWs, whereas I owned nothing else remotely like the M Coupe, b) SCs were common commodities, and I thought that if I wanted to buy another one when my financial situation stabilized, it would be easy, and c) the SC’s heads needed to come off to replace the leaky valve guides and seals, and I knew that if I touched the exhaust studs, they’d snap and I’d cry.

Of course, I completely blew it. Within four months of selling the SC, the value of every air-cooled Porsche went nuts. Even though I’ve bought other satisfying cool cars since, selling the 911SC, especially selling it when I did, remains by far my single biggest automotive regret. Even though, as the M Coupe’s stablemate, it’s been gone from the barn for 12 years, it still casts a big shadow, precisely because I’m terrified that if I sell the M Coupe, it’s going to “pull a 911” and soar upward faster than an AI company’s stock price.

A few years ago, I wrote in detail about the Clown Shoe. The 1999–2002 M Coupe (also called the Z3 M Coupe) looked like what it was, which was a skunk-worked design that grafted a shooting brake-style hatchback onto the back of the little Z3 roadster, and outfit it with the engine from the M3, a stiff suspension, fat rubber on staggered wheels, and a cool chrome-gauge-ringed interior. The design may be iconic now, but at the time, it was polarizing, with some reviewers saying that it looked like two different cars grafted together, and it didn’t sell well. Only 2858 M Coupes were built for the U.S. market. That divides into 2180 of the 1999–2000 cars with the 240-horsepower S52 engine from the E36-bodied M3, and just 678 cars with the more ferocious 315-hp S54 engine from the E46 M3. There’s also the non-M Z3 Coupe (2071 built for the U.S.)—a fine car, but lacking the M engine, the staggered alloys, the fat rubber, and the suspension tweaks.

But over time, opinion tilted largely in the Clown Shoe’s favor. Because it’s got that magic combination of a unique look, a great driving experience, a rabid enthusiast base, and low production numbers, the idea that it’s the next big thing seems grounded in reality. A succession of print and web articles have trumpeted the car’s coming appreciation, both aesthetic and monetary, of the car. My very M Coupe and I were even featured in “The BMW Clown Shoe Has No Equal” episode of the show The Next Big Thing with Magnus Walker. And, indeed, some M Coupes have reached truly spectacular values on Bring a Trailer.

However, a rising tide doesn’t really lift all boats, at least not equally. The stratospheric bid-and-buy prices on BaT apply mostly to low-mileage 2001–02 S54 cars with zingy exterior colors and seizure-inducing two-tone interiors. Mine is a driver-quality 105,000-mile S52 car in silver and solid black—the most common of all color combinations. Personally, I think that the silver tones down the car’s extreme lines, and that the solid black interior sets off those chrome trim rings, but the market doesn’t appear to value my aesthetic viewpoint.

The website mcoupebuyersguide.com does a pretty good job of tracking and displaying Clown Shoe sales, and the coattails of the six-figure 10,000-mile S54 BaT cars don’t seem to be dragging up cars like mine. So the car, while collectible, hasn’t reached the point where every example in driver condition is worth crazy money. Which is to say … it’s not a 911SC (mind you, the $20,000–$25,000 that my car is probably worth is nothing to sneeze at.)

Whether you sell a car or other possession or asset is always a judgement involving the gin rummy game of the left-brain issues of whether or not you need the money (and how badly), whether or not the car is appreciating, and the “opportunity cost” of the money, the space, and your time being tied up in it, and the right-brain issues of how much you like it versus how much you want to get into something else. In my case, I’m not hard-up for the money, and I do think that appreciation will carry my car’s value upward, but I could use a little simplification in my life. So, regarding sell-or-hold, it puts me on the fence.

But another issue is that—and I really hate to say this—I’m just not that crazy about driving it. And it has nothing to do with speed or handling. To be clear, the car is like dancing the tango with a supermodel on meth (or so I imagine). The problem is the seats. For some reason, the deeply-bolstered, overly-stiff seats have a long history of angering up my back. It’s weird. I can pound out 500 miles sitting in the vintage Recaros in my 1970s-era BMWs, but I drive the M Coupe for 45 minutes and find myself with low back pain. And the car is too small and the seats too narrow for the usual solution—a TempurPedic back cushion—to be practical or effective.

The seat discomfort issue was recently and viscerally on display. Last week, I wrote about my difficulty in keeping up with the 13 vehicles that I own. I cycled through the five cars I have in the warehouse on the Massachusetts/Connecticut border, and as part of that, drove home in the M Coupe. I stopped first to drop off some parts at a friend’s house in Worcester. Sure enough, the 45-minute drive was enough to make me feel like I’d been leaning against the pointy end of a brick. And this experience was duplicated on the remaining portion of the drive home.

When it’s difficult enough for me to find the time to road-trip the cars that are actual road-trip cars, finding the proper set of circumstances to enjoy a car that I can’t drive for more than 45 minutes at a time is difficult. So no road trips or weekends with my wife in the Clown Shoe. If the sole reasons to own it are to look at its fat, planted rear end and hope for further financial appreciation, are those good enough? Maybe not.

So maybe it’s time for it to go.

But that means preparation. As I wrote in my two-part series on how to sell a car, I typically begin by writing up a warts-and-all list of the car’s needs, then clocking through as much of it as I can on the assumption that it’s always better to fix something than to list it in an ad and apologize for it. On the M Coupe, the top three items on that punch list are ancient tires on curb-rashed and discolored wheels, a scuffed-up front air dam, and a cracked rear taillight. I’ve certainly had the experience of prepping a car to put it up for sale and filing off rough edges that I’ve lived with for years, only to have the exercise reignite my relationship with the car.

We’ll see what happens with the Clown Shoe.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best of the Hack Mechanic: 35 years of Hacks, Kluges, and Assorted Automotive Mayhem, is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Is it time to sell the Clown Shoe? appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Last year, I wrote about losing the storage spaces that I’d had for nearly a decade. These five small individual one-car bays, each with its own roll-up door, were located in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. I found them when I outgrew my three-car garage in Newton and needed more space, and I was put off by the $300-ish per month I’d need to pay in suburban Boston for restricted-access space. I found that the farther west of Boston I looked, the farther rent dropped off. Fitchburg is about 50 minutes from my house, but it’s a nice drive out Rt. 2, and for $50/month, the garage there was a great trade-off on the cost-distance-access curve. Initially only one bay in the five-car garage was available, but by the end of my tenancy, I was renting all five. The rent for each bay later went up to $75/month, but still, $375/month for five individual bays with 24-hour access was dirt cheap. “The Fitchburg Swap”—taking two hours to drive one cool old car out on a Sunday morning and grab a different one—became a cherished part of my weekend routine.

And then it ended. The house hosting the garages was sold, and it was only a matter of time before the new owners wanted the spaces for their tenants. I scrambled and found space in a cavernous warehouse in Monson, Massachusetts, on the Massachusetts-Connecticut border. On paper, it was—like the Fitchburg space—a slam-dunk; the cost was just $70 per car per month, the warehouse was 70 miles from my house in Newton, and most of that was a straight shot out the Mass Pike (I-90), so with zero traffic, Google Maps estimated the drive at only 15 minutes beyond the Fitchburg spaces. The downside was that it’s not only shared warehouse space but space that’s rented primarily to RVs, trailers, and boats, so when the cars are blocked in for the winter, you’d need a really good reason to have to get one of them out.

It’s been about 15 months, so I now have enough experience to offer up the following assessment.

Ready?

It’s like a marriage you stay in for the kids.

Don’t get me wrong. Cost-wise, at $350/month for five cars, I’ve yet to find anything that approaches it. It’s expandable—if I buy another car and need somewhere to stash it, I can pony up another $70/month: boom, problem solved. And the guy who owns the warehouse is great. The building does triple duty for his irrigation business, his own cars (he’s into oddball French stuff—that’s redundant, right?) and commercial storage, and he’s been very flexible when I’ve needed to get a car out at times other than normal business hours.

But the sum-total of the 15-month experience is that it’s decidedly less convenient for me than the old spaces in Fitchburg were. If I had a better option, I’d be practicing my “it’s not you, it’s me” lines. But I don’t. So I stay. For “the kids.” Romantic, huh?

The first issue is the distance. Google Maps may say that it’s only 1:05 from my house with no traffic, but I’ve yet to clock it at under 1:15, and with the usual non-rush-hour traffic, it’s more like an hour and a half. At rush hour, it can be over two hours. And on certain peak weekends, like when the kids are coming back to school at UMass Amherst or during prime leaf-peeping in the fall, it can make you cry. And even though I thought the straight shot out the Pike would offset the longer distance, in fact it’s been the opposite—the highway drive is boring. The narrower, curvier, more-punctuated drive out Rt. 2 was much more enjoyable.

The second and much larger issue is the restricted access. Again, I’m glad to have found anything, but it’s been tough to go from the don’t-need-to-call-show-up-anytime-you-want freedom of the old Fitchburg individual garage bay spaces to a locked warehouse that’s surrounded by a locked fence, and inside your car may be blocked in. The blockage may be my own cars, someone else’s, or multiple boats and trailers. I avoid the latter by not even attempting to pull cars out until the owner tells me that most of the big stuff has left. The blocking-in by other cars is usually handled fairly efficiently by the owner’s employees by either putting the offending car in neutral and rolling it, or putting it on GoJak wheel dollies. The whole process is less formal than scheduling an actual appointment to come to the warehouse and pull out a car—whenever I contact the owner and ask him, the answer is usually “sure, someone is almost always here during the week.” That’s usually true and it usually goes quickly enough, unless everyone is in some far-flung corner of the warehouse and difficult to find. And weekends can be tough.

I hate to keep playing the old-guy-with-bad-back card, but that’s the third issue. When I’ve had an urgent need for access on a weekend when no one’s around, the owner has been kind enough to tell me how to get into the building, but the gate is one of those 20-foot-long sliders, and it’s not motorized—you need to manually slide it on its less-than-perfect rollers. Between this, the non-motorized roll-up door, and rolling around my own cars so I don’t foul up the air inside, a swap leaves me with back pain longing for the old individual bay doors of Fitchburg. And, of course, if I go through all that to find that the car I want to drive is blocked in, I’m out of luck.

Now, I’ll freely admit that I look at the years the cars spent in Fitchburg through rose-colored glasses. Yes, the 24-hour access and individual bays with roll-up doors were great, but the low price reflected ceilings that leaked until the roof was fixed, and the garages were in a part of town that wasn’t great. (I joked with my wife about the lovely proposition I once received from a lovely redheaded young woman. I thought it was a lot funnier than she did). As much as I tried to do “The Fitchburg Swap” without attracting attention, there’s nothing subtle about vintage BMWs and a ’74 Lotus Europa Twin Cam Special, and when folks walking by ask you about the cars, you can either act like an aloof rich guy (I’m neither) or you can take the time to answer questions and make friends. It all worked out, and nothing ever happened to me or the cars, but I was keenly aware of the less-than-secure situation, and it had been years since I’d stored my BMW 3.0CSi out there.

Still, The Fitchburg Swap could be done in two hours. In contrast, The Monson Swap, best case, is more like four. Again, it doesn’t sound like much, but there’s a significant difference between something that can be knocked off between breakfast and lunch and something that takes half a day.

For all these reasons, I hadn’t been out to the Monson warehouse since Thanksgiving. That’s six months. My previous visit was in September, when I needed to grab my Bavaria and drive it out to upstate New York to be used in a movie. The three other cars in the warehouse—two 2002s and a 635CSi—hadn’t even been started and driven since I moved them there from Fitchburg a year ago.

I was beginning to feel like a negligent hoarder.

Even worse—I, the guy who owns 13 vehicles but keeps insisting he’s “not a collector,” felt like I was having what I could only describe as a crisis of automotive faith. I mean, if I wasn’t driving these cars, why do I even own them? Hell, forget driving—I wasn’t even visiting them.

So, last week, out I drove to Monson in “Hampton,” my 49,000-mile ’73 2002. The plan was to check on the cars, drive them, get any inspected that needed it, empty the water from the DampRid containers, and do a “Monson Swap,” driving a different car home. I brought my usual road tool box, a cigarette-lighter tire inflator, starting fluid, fresh DampRid, fresh Bounce dryer sheets to keep the rodents at bay, a portable battery jump pack, and jumper cables just in case the jump pack wasn’t enough. Note that there isn’t access to electricity in the warehouse to run trickle chargers, and my days of pulling batteries out and bringing them home are behind me, so I simply unhook the batteries and hope for the best. I’ve never had problems doing this for a four- or five-month winter sit; I reconnect the negative terminal and the cars usually crank over fine. A year, though, is pushing it, and some of the cars did need the help from the jump pack.

One of the owner’s employees directed me to my cars (they’d been moved within the warehouse to make room for some building repairs). Initially I waived him off, but the warehouse is huge and a bit warren-like, and it would’ve taken me a while to find them if I just wandered around. Plus, even my beloved boxy little BMW 2002s aren’t as recognizable under covers as one might think.

The first thing I did was lift the covers off all five cars and take inventory of the inspection stickers. I knew that those on the cars that had been sitting for over a year were expired. I didn’t expect the total to go four out of the five. My new status as negligent hoarder was now officially conferred.

Fortunately, there’s an inspection station less than a quarter mile from the warehouse. Car by car, I checked the fluids, verified that there weren’t mice nesting in the air cleaners, reattached the front license plates, woke the cars from their slumber, looked underneath for puddles, eased the cars out of the warehouse, stopped at the end of the street, checked for leaks and puddles again, then got the cars inspected. I did the Bavaria first, then “Bertha,” the patina-laden 2002.

Only “Louie,” the ’72 2002tii, did something surprising. As I was driving it out of the warehouse, I noticed that the brake warning light was on. This is usually due to the handbrake not being fully released. I stopped and jiggled the handbrake lever, even pulled up the rubber boot to manually pull the spring back on the switch, but couldn’t make the light go out. I opened up the hood, thinking that maybe the float in the brake reservoir was erroneously reporting a low fluid level. I was stunned to find that the fluid was not only low, it was below the level of the pipe to the clutch master cylinder.

I walked back and looked at the spot where the car had been parked, but I didn’t see any puddles. Was it possible that I’d driven the car there a year ago with it that low on brake fluid? Or had the fluid leaked out and I couldn’t tell because all my cars had been relocated within the warehouse so the puddles were now somewhere else? I didn’t know. I hadn’t brought any brake fluid, so I drove the car back into the warehouse, grabbed another car, drove to the nearest auto parts store, topped off Louie, tested the brakes and clutch, didn’t see anything obviously leaking, drove the quarter mile to the inspection station, and left the mystery for another day.

By the end of the day, I’d gotten three of the four cars inspected. I couldn’t do the ’79 Euro 635CSi because I’d left its renewed registration at home. I stashed Hampton in the warehouse and drove home in my ’99 BMW M Coupe (a.k.a. “the clown shoe”).

The next day, I did a second Monson Swap, this time driving out in the Lotus Europa with its newly-improved brakes, and bringing the up-to-date registration for the 635CSi. I got the 635 inspected, and drove it home for some R&R on its air-conditioning system (the last road trip I took it on in 2021, a fitting had loosened up on the compressor and it lost its refrigerant). If, on the drive out the Pike, the tiny feather-light Lotus felt like a 14-year-old girl lost in the big city, the 635CSi was in its Autobahn-inhaling element.

So, what began as my feeling like a negligent hoarder, and deepened into a crisis of automotive faith, suddenly was banished like a bad dream in the reassuring light of morning. I was on top of things again. All 13 cars were running and inspected, with eight of them at my house, and the other five just two or three or four episodes of Rick and Morty away. I thought, “Hey, maybe staying together for the kids isn’t so bad. Maybe we just need to spice things up a little bit.”

Maybe even add another kid?

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best of the Hack Mechanic: 35 years of Hacks, Kluges, and Assorted Automotive Mayhem, is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

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Ken Levin writes:

My 1960 Ford Country Sedan runs hot, particularly in traffic on warm days. The car is rebuilt to stock specs and equipped with the original radiator and four-blade fan. No air conditioner. What are my options to improve the cooling, and which do you recommend?

Hot running can be caused by many things (stuck thermostat, rusted water pump impeller, sediment in the water passages of the block), but overheating in warm weather usually means that the radiator’s cooling capacity is insufficient. Running additionally hot in traffic is a classic symptom of inadequate airflow.

Since your radiator is 62 years old, I’d recommend upgrading to something with a three- or four-row core. I’m not a big fan of re-coring radiators, but if you want to keep yours original, and if you know of a good, old-school radiator shop, you can certainly go that route. Replacing the radiator is a bit confusing, as the 1960 Country Sedan doesn’t appear to be as well-represented in databases as its Ford brothers. I believe the radiator is the same as that for a 1960–63 Galaxie. However, unless you’re certain that something is a correct replacement, I’d recommend calling Eckler’s Automotive (877-305-8966), as it should be able to confirm fitment, and it has both original-looking copper radiators as well as aluminum. Personally, I don’t care for the look of aluminum radiators in vintage cars, but they’re usually a less expensive option.

Regarding the airflow, a shroud around the mechanical fan should improve cooling in traffic, but I’m seeing conflicting information on whether your car had one. Some folks would advise an aluminum radiator with one or two electric fans directly attached to it, but I’m not a, er, fan of this approach. The electric fans that come on inexpensive radiator-fan packages are usually junk. They often move less air than advertised and don’t last. Also, I resist the deletion of a reliable belt-driven fan, unless there’s no alternative.

I’d update the radiator and see how much of the problem that solves. If it still runs hot in traffic, try changing to a five- or six-bladed fan inside a full shroud. If that doesn’t work, then try shrouded high-quality electric fans.

Randy Mertz writes:

I have a ’64 Chevy Impala with an original 140,000-mile 327 engine. It runs and drives after sitting 15 years in the barn, although the power brake booster is shot. I can get the car started, but after warmup, it smokes oil terribly and oil drips out the exhaust pipes. Mechanics have told me the rings are bad, but there’s no blowby coming out of the oil-fill tube, and the engine is pretty peppy when I step on the gas. Is it the valve guides and seals that are letting oil into cylinders?

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I have to agree with the mechanics.

Fog-like oil burning usually is caused by something in the cylinder-piston-ring interface, and if the car sat for 15 years, it could be that the rings are stuck. Sometimes they free up with use, sometimes they don’t. In contrast, worn valve guides and leaky valve seals usually result in oil burning at start-up and during deceleration.

I’d recommend performing a leak-down test to get as much information as possible. Since you note that the power brake booster is shot, you should check that what’s dripping out the exhaust is oil and not brake fluid. It’s possible for brake master cylinders to fail, leak brake fluid into the booster, and for the fluid to get sucked into the intake manifold. When burned, brake fluid smoke is white (oil smoke is bluer) and has an acrid, bitter smell.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best of the Hack Mechanic: 35 years of Hacks, Kluges, and Assorted Automotive Mayhem, is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Hot Under the Collar: Cooling-system cures and piston ring problems appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Last week, I admitted to you something that most folks would share only with their therapist—that seeing the adjective “straightforward” applied to retrofitting a Datsun F10 master cylinder into a Lotus Europa triggers me into a Three Stooges’ NIAGRA FALLS! (“Slowly I turned …”) level of rage.

But I got it done, only to find that the symptom that caused me to replace the master cylinder in the first place—a brake pedal that was soft and with travel that was obviously too long and that pumped up firm with a single pump but repeated the whole thing just 10 seconds later—was unchanged. In other words, I hadn’t fixed it. Grrrrrr.

So I’ll admit something else—I’m magnifying my level of annoyance because, well, because it’s funny. Really, the swap went about as expected. The issue of the troublesome unadaptable 7/16-20 fitting on one of the brake lines was just a detail, albeit a vexing one. In a perfect world, we’d all be alerted to these sorts of stumbling blocks up front. When I write my version of the swap in detail for one of the Lotus Europa forms, I’ll do exactly that; I’ll say, “Understand that you have no choice but to cut the flare off the line with the 7/16-20 fitting, substitute a more conventional fitting, and re-flare the line, because there is no commercially-available adapter.” The world doesn’t always spoon-feed us the information that we think is the crux of a project. We usually only know what that is when we’re done and it’s bitten us in the behind.

I did, though, still need to solve the problem of a brake pedal with too much travel that pumped itself up with a single stroke, only to repeat the symptom 10 seconds later. The fact that it did exactly the same thing with both the old master cylinder and the new pretty much took the master off the table as the cause of the problem.

To recap, the problem appeared last fall when I was driving the car on a leaf-peeping trip in western Massachusetts. I noticed the long pedal travel, then stopped and found that I’d been driving with the handbrake on for some unknown amount of time (more than five, less than a hundred). I assumed that I’d probably shaved a goodly amount of life off the rear brake shoes—on a car with rear drum brakes, badly-worn shoes will certainly cause unwanted brake pedal travel. However, when I pulled off the drums, the shoes had some visible wear, but weren’t the worn-down-to-metal nightmare I expected. Plus, my Europa is a Twin Cam Special, and this model has self-adjusting rear brakes, so I thought that I was doubly let off the hook as this being the source of the problem.

I did a manual adjustment of the supposedly self-adjusting brakes, then bled the system, but the problem remained. That was what sent me down the path of replacing the master cylinder, about which I was apparently wrong.

So, with an apparently unnecessary new master cylinder installed, I went back to basics. I did some reading on the Europa forums regarding the Special’s self-adjusting rear brakes, and learned that the general opinion is that they’re about as useless as you-know-whats on a bull—if the shoes are completely unadjusted, they may move them a bit closer to the drums, but they don’t get them close enough to take out all the pedal travel. Some Special owners drill a hole or cut a slot in the backing plate to allow a screwdriver to be used to manually turn the teeth on the adjuster with the drum on, as is the design on many cars. I didn’t really want to take the time to pull the shoes off, which appeared to me to be necessary to properly cut a hole or slot, as that meant having to deal with the pesky springs that all brake shoes have. Plus, it wasn’t clear to me how I’d be able to rotate the adjuster backward if I got the shoes to the point of rubbing, as the automatic adjuster would prevent that, and as removing the automatic adjuster completely looked like it would allow things to spontaneously loosen or tighten—that is, there would be no detent or other mechanism holding the adjuster wheel in position.

Instead, I carefully adjusted the shoes. If I did this last fall, I apparently did a terrible job of it. This time, I was methodical. For each rear wheel, I pulled off the drum, clicked the adjuster by one tooth at a time, put the drum back on even if I had to tap it on with a rubber mallet, pulled the handbrake, released it, and stomped the brake pedal to seat and center the shoes, then repeated this process until I found the point where the shoes were just beginning to drag on the drum. This lessened the brake pedal travel by about half, but the pedal still did the pump-up thing on the remaining travel.

A soft brake pedal that pumps itself up is usually symptomatic of air in the brake lines (air is compressible; fluid is not). Thinking back to last fall when I left on the handbrake and drove the car an unspecified distance before I noticed it, I had to admit that it was possible that the rear brakes got hot enough that the brake fluid boiled. This phase change from liquid to vapor can create bubbles, the very definition of air in the brake lines. As was the case with adjusting the brakes, I did bleed them last fall. Maybe I did a poor job with that as well.

As I mentioned last week, part of my master cylinder swap included installation of a remote ATE reservoir from a BMW 2002 I’d parted out decades ago. The goal of this was to be able to use the same Motive power brake bleeder that I use on the vintage BMWs.

Last fall, I installed a set off SpeedBleeders—bleed nipples that have a little check-valve in them that allows one-person bleeding; just open up the valve and push the pedal up and down.

Now that I had the Motive, however, I unfortunately found that the SpeedBleeders didn’t play nicely with it—the Motive didn’t build enough pressure to overcome the force of the spring in the check valve. So I pulled the SpeedBleeders out and reinstalled the old passive bleed nipples. I bled the system three times, but the brake pump-up issue remained.

I bounced the problem off some friends as well as posting it on one of the Europa forums. One senior Europa guru in England had a genius-level idea: Engage the handbrake, then try the brake pedal. If both the too-long pedal travel and the pump-up problem went away, then I’d know the issue was still being caused by the adjustment of the rear shoes. If not, the issue was likely air in the lines. I tried it, and it made no difference. Back down the bleeding hole I went.

I should add two things. The first is that I’ll admit that I didn’t “bench-bleed” the master cylinder (put it in a vise, feed it brake fluid, manually push the cylinder in and out until the bubbles stop, then plug up the ports) before installing it. The reason was that with all the twists and turns in the installation, I thought that the odds I’d get it installed without the fluid leaking out and air leaking in were small.

The second is that among the Europa’s many strange features is that Twin Cam cars like mine have dual power brake boosters. Because it’s a mid-engine car, the boosters aren’t mounted on the master cylinder like they are on nearly every other car but are in the back—in the engine compartment where they can be easily connected to the intake manifold. With 50 years of age, it’s very common for these boosters to die. Like the original Girling master cylinder, they’re long since out of production, so the only choice is to have them rebuilt, or to bypass them, which isn’t crazy since the earlier non-Twin-Cam Europas don’t have power brakes at all (hey, you can get away with a lot on a 1600-pound car). So, when I got the car running four years ago, I went the bypass route, buying a few short brake lines, bending them into “U” shapes to bypass the boosters, and splicing them in with unions. While this was successful, it does create a geometry that’s almost tailor-made for air bubbles to lurk in the high spots of the inverted “U”s and be difficult to push out.

At a friend’s suggestion, I tried something I never would’ve thought of: I re-installed the SpeedBleeders and used them and the Motive power bleeder and manually pumped the brake pedal. Normally, you use a power bleeder so you don’t have to pump the brake pedal yourself or rope a spouse or child or friend into doing it for you. The only reason I had the SpeedBleeders was because the original Girling master cylinder had threads on it that no cap—from Motive or homemade—would seal against. So using all three at once was sort of like using belts, suspenders, and a staplegun to hold up your pants. But my friend’s logic was that this was the best way to push fluid and air out while minimizing the chance that, when the pedal was lifted, fluid and air would backtrack.

He was apparently right, because finally, on the eighth bleeding, the pedal became firm.

So, my post-mortem is that the problem appeared to have indeed been caused by my leaving on the handbrake—specifically, the long pedal travel likely was due to the brake shoes losing some material, and the pedal being soft and pumping back up was likely due to the brakes having been overheated, likely boiling the fluid and creating air in the line.

Oddly enough, I’m not unhappy with the way this worked out. Even though I was less-than thrilled that going to all that work to replace the master cylinder didn’t solve the original problem, the end result—having a new brake master cylinder rather than the 50-year-old one (the only original bit of brake hydraulics left on the car)—was a huge plus for what was really a modest outlay of money, only a few more evenings than I’d anticipated, and a bit of cursing.

However, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that the textbook symptom of a bad brake master cylinder is the brake pedal slowly sinking to the floor when you stand on it. The car never did that. So while I’m glad that the Lotus now has a new master cylinder to go with the new calipers and rear wheel cylinders I installed four years ago, I also must admit that, had I been my usual unrelentingly cost-conscious self, it actually would’ve helped me come up with the correct diagnosis at the beginning rather than the end of the repair.

Live and learn.

The post The Great Lotus Europa / Datsun F10 Master Cylinder Swap (Part 3: The Bleeding From Hell) appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Last week, I discussed how a soft pedal in my ’74 Lotus Europa Twin Cam Special followed my having driven with the handbrake on. The fact that the softness didn’t respond to bleeding, and that the 50-year-old master cylinder (MC) was the only original brake hydraulic component left, led me to the decision to replace the MC. I would’ve replaced it four years ago when I sorted out the car, but the original Girling component is no longer available, and any replacement requires adaptation.

I decided to do the Datsun F10 master cylinder conversion, as that swap appeared to be well-reviewed on the Europa forums. The part has long been No Longer Available (NLA), but I found a New Old Stock (NOS) one on eBay for $110 and dove in.

Oh, my word. What a colossal pain in the patootie.

What I read in the forums was that you needed to slightly ovalize the mounting holes in the F10 MC to get them to slide over the car’s mounting studs, but that the rest was “straightforward” since the original pushrod assembly could be reused. There was the complication that the fittings on the original MC are English, whereas those on the F10 master are metric, but several articles breezily stated that this could be handled by a trip to the local auto parts store for fittings and adapters.

“Straightforward” my … well, you know. Routing out the mounting holes with a Dremel tool was “straightforward.” Nothing else was.

Although the pushrod itself was compatible, there was a non-trivial issue. The end of the pushrod is shaped like a rounded golf tee and is captured behind a washer that’s held in place with a retaining clip. So transferring the pushrod from the old MC to the new one should just involve undoing the clip, then clipping the pushrod and washer onto their new home.

Not so fast, Lotus breath.

It turns out that the ends of the two master cylinders—the portions that hold these washers and clips—are different diameters. The original one is a shade under an inch, the replacement MC about 0.83 inches (it’s Japanese, so it’s likely a metric 22mm), so the original pushrod washer is too big to fit. The new MC also came with a washer behind its clip, but its center diameter is too large to capture the pushrod. This would’ve created a situation where, if the brake pedal flopped forward, it would allow the pushrod to fall out.

Further, the original washer is “cupped” to accommodate the shape of the end of the pushrod, and even the venerable website McMaster-Carr, on which you can usually find any common industrial part, doesn’t sell cupped washers.

Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to shave the outer diameter of a washer. You put a snug-fitting bolt through the center, tighten it down with a nut, and stick it in the chuck of a drill to spin it around. Then, while it’s spinning, you grind it down by touching it against a file.

In about 10 minutes, I made the cupped washer the correct size. It was also too thick, but that was handled by shaving it on a belt sander. With that, the original pushrod was installed in the G10 master cylinder.

I mounted my newly-adapted prize in the car so I could begin adapting the brake lines. In the photo below, you can see the two lines hanging down next to the new MC. They’re poised to enter on the left side, but the new MC’s fittings are on the right.

I had to dig on the Europa forums to find the information, but the fittings on the original brake lines are 3/8-24 UNC bubble flares, whereas those on the new MC are metric 10mm x 1.0 SAE inverted flares. On paper, I’ll admit that the adaptation doesn’t sound like it’s that big of a deal. I mapped out two ways to approach it. If you want to risk cracking the original brake lines, you simply buy adapters that have a female 3/8-24 UNC input and a male 10mm x 1.0 SAE output, screw them into the new MC, bend the brake lines 180 degrees so they go into the right side of the MC, screw the fittings into the adapters, boom, done.

If you don’t want to bend 50-year-old British steel brake lines and risk breaking them, you fabricate a pair of short adapter lines instead. You use a pair of female-to-female 3/8-24 UNC unions and build two lines with a male 3/8-24 bubble flare at one end and a 10mm x 1.0 male SAE flare at the other. I vastly preferred this second option. I’ve fabricated brake lines before and have a length of easy-to-flare-and-bend Cunifer copper-nickel tubing and two flaring tools in the garage.

But there were several things that made this job confusing from the get-go. The first one is subtle. There are two primary kinds of flares used in automotive brake lines. For the most part, American and Asian cars use an SAE “double flare” that looks sort of like the horn of a tiny trumpet. It’s referred to as a “double flare” because the flaring tool that makes it folds the metal of the horn onto itself to double its thickness.

European cars use a DIN/ISO bubble flare that looks like the cap of a mushroom with a flat bottom. The Lotus, however, like other Brits, uses a British bubble flare. It’s similar to the DIN/ISO flare, but has an angled rather than a flat bottom, so in profile it looks more like a flying saucer from a 1950’s film than a mushroom cap.

From a practical standpoint, what this means is that if you’re building adapter lines, as I was about to, you need to be really certain about what you’re buying. I pored over the web and found Federal Hill Trading Company (“FedHill”) in central Massachusetts. Its website contains better information on these different kinds of flares and a larger variety of clearly identified fittings than any other site that I found. Right there on the home page is a menu option labeled “British-Girling Fuel / Hydraulic / Brake Line Tubing, Nuts, and Fittings.” I was in love.

I called FedHill, spoke with the owner, Tim Beachboard, and described my Lotus-F10 master cylinder swap. He pointed me at the parts I needed, including the unions that were not just F-to-F 3/16-24 unions, but F-to-F 3/16-24 British bubble flare unions. He also quizzed me on whether I had a flaring tool capable of making a British bubble flare (I did). I thanked him profusely for his time and expertise, and placed the order.

A day later, everything arrived. Like a kid on Christmas morning, I tore open the package and began test-fitting the pieces. I immediately realized that I had a problem.

It turns out that the original brake master on my car didn’t have two 3/16-24 fittings. It had a 3/16-24 fitting for the rear brake line, but the front brake line used a larger 7/16-20 fitting. When I searched on the Europa forums, I found a small handful of references (like two) to this. It appears to be unique to the tandem master cylinders in U.S.-spec twin-cam cars like mine.

OK, I thought, no big deal. I’ll go back on FedHill website and order the parts needed to build the front brake’s adapter line.

The problem was that I couldn’t find a 7/16-20 British bubble flare union.

I called Tim at FedHill and explained about the two different-sized brake line fittings. He listened carefully, then said not only didn’t he have a union that size, but I’d be unlikely to find one anywhere online. He advised that I’d probably need to cut the end off the front brake pipe, slide off the 7/16 fitting, slide on something more conventional, and re-flare it, but he cautioned that that might not work on 50-year-old steel pipe. He said that I should be prepared to have to replace the entire line, undoing it from whatever it connects to at the other end. Since this line runs inside the tunnel under the car, that definitely wasn’t something I relished.

To sum it up, he uttered the last words you want to hear from someone with that level of expertise—“Basically, you’re screwed.”

Recalling the famous “Trust, yet verify” quote of an American president in the 1980s, I then spent several hours online looking for a 7/16-20 bubble flare (British or otherwise) brake union. Tim was correct—no such thing is available. Further, while there are a whole variety of adapters to turn 3/16-24 male fittings into something else, there’s nothing remotely like that for a 7/16-20 bubble flare.

I did, however, see a 7/16-20 SAE female brake nut on the FedHill website, and wondered if I could make it work. I ordered it and a corresponding male fitting, and began making some test flares with my $42 flaring tool.

Since copper-nickel brake line is soft, I had a hard time imagining that I wouldn’t be able to build something that would seal. I needed to see a candidate connection with my own eyes. So I slid the 7/16-20 SAE brake nut on a piece of tubing, made an SAE flare, and prepared to tight it against the 7/16-20 fitting at the end of the brake line.

I didn’t need to snug anything down to see how ridiculous this was. It was like watching a pair of sixth graders kissing with their lips barely touching.

Just to help my understanding of things, I then made a single flare—the kind you’re told you should never ever use on brake lines because the metal is too thin—and screwed the two fittings together. In the photo below, you can see where the female fitting cut a ledge in the copper because neither the nut nor the flare were designed for this.

It took me several hours before I fully understood what the fundamental issue was. It’s this: You never have two flared pieces of tubing mating against each other. Ever. You have one flared piece mating against the inside of some solid fitting, whether it’s the master cylinder itself (as was the case here), or the crimped-on concave steel end of a rubber brake line, or a union. This female nut wasn’t something you use to seal two brake lines together.

Sometimes in a project—or in life—you’re faced with several different options to accomplish some task. You go down one path until you find something that’s a hard “no,” and that makes you choose the other path, even if it’s a rocky one. As much as I didn’t want to cut the flared end off a 50-year-old brake line, I had no choice.

So off it came. And that was challenging, as there was very little room to maneuver the tubing cutter.

I was now committed. And that was scary because there was an immediate problem. The flaring tool needs to grab a few inches of tubing, and there wasn’t a few inches of tubing before the 90-degree bend in the pipe.

So, with everything I’d gone through to avoid having to bend the old brake lines, I very carefully relaxed the 90-degree bend just enough to be able to slide the fitting back enough to clamp on the flaring tool. I found that the metric 10mm x 1.0 fittings were a looser fit on the tubing than the 3/16-24 ones, thus requiring less bending of the line. So, since it was up to me how I fabricated these adapters, I slid on a metric fitting and made an SAE flare.

With this hurdle finally cleared, the fabrication of the two adapter lines took maybe 15 minutes. Because the Lotus is extremely low, I didn’t want to run the adapter lines underneath the master cylinder lest some speed bump or misplaced rock rip them out, so I looped them up above it. However, when I went to tighten down the fittings, I found that there wasn’t sufficient clearance to get a wrench on one of the unions. I own a set of crow-foot wrenches (two actually—one English, one metric) because once a year, you run into something like this. Today was the day.

The only remaining task was installing the remote reservoir. As I mentioned last week, I have a Motive power bleeder that I’ve been unable to use on the Lotus because I could never find or fabricate an adapter to the original Girling reservoir that fit well enough that it didn’t spew brake fluid everywhere. I mounted a spare ATE reservoir from a long-ago-parted-out BMW 2002 and ran the hoses to the master.

With the surprisingly-troublesome Lotus Europa / Datsun F10 brake master cylinder swap finally complete, and my fantasies of ordering a hit on everyone who’d ever called this swap “straightforward” fading, I power-bled the brakes, folded myself into the little car, drove it down the block, and was stunned to find that the problem that made me go to this level of effort in the first place hadn’t changed a whit—the brake pedal still traveled noticeably further than it should, firmed up with a single pump, then repeated the process 10 seconds later.

Most days I love cars. This was not one of them.

[Next week: Find out if I fixed this or rolled the Lotus into a swamp.]

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best of the Hack Mechanic: 35 years of Hacks, Kluges, and Assorted Automotive Mayhem, is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post The Great Lotus Europa / Datsun F10 Master Cylinder Swap (Part 2) appeared first on Hagerty Media.

I’ve made a career (if you call this a career) out of writing about working on my cars and detailing the joy that comes from identifying a problem, crafting a solution, and putting it into practice, thereby completely solving the problem with your own brain and hands.

Of course, that has to be balanced against the times you simply want to light the goddamned thing on fire and walk away from the smoldering remains, turning around only to be certain that it really is on fire.

Such is sometimes the case with “Lolita,” my 1974 Lotus Europa Twin Cam Special.

To be clear, I love the car, and it’s actually been quite reliable since I resurrected it four years ago from its 35-year-long slumber. But due to its design as the first quasi-affordable mid-engine fiberglass-body-on-steel-backbone Le Mans-type street car, many repairs or modifications that would be trivial in a normal car send you down a rabbit hole of rage against the people who designed the thing. Lotus founder Colin Chapman is frequently quoted as saying “Simplify, then add lightness.” Work on one of these for a while and it seems like what was added wasn’t lightness but insanity with a not-so-healthy dose of sadism.

As I’ve written here many times (Google “Rob Siegel Hagerty Lotus”) and detailed in my book The Lotus Chronicles, in addition to the engine having seized from sitting, the car needed nearly every mechanical system refurbished. As part of getting it running and driving safely, I replaced the calipers and rotors, but the original Girling brake master cylinder (MC) appeared to be working, so I left it alone. Besides, I learned that the original MC had long ago become unavailable, so if and when it failed, I’d either need to send it out to someplace like White Post or Applewood for rebuilding, or go down the path of adapting a different master cylinder.

Regarding the latter, the requirements for swapping in a different MC are a bit more numerous and subtle than I first thought.

• The bore size must be the same as or close to that of the original master in order for the pedal effort to be similar.
• It must fit in the same physical space, which means that the holes for the mounting studs and the mounting flange circle have to be the same as the original, or nearly so.
• The brake lines need to be connected to it, so if the fittings on the new unit are different, adaptations need to be made. And if the ports aren’t on the same side, you need to either risk breakage by bending the lines around, or use unions and extension lines.
• The new MC must accept the original pushrod and related linkage that connects it to the brake pedal, or a new pushrod must be fashioned and integrated.
• You need to be able to connect a brake fluid reservoir, whether that’s directly on top of the master or remotely.

Complicating all this is the fact that my Europa is a U.S. Federal-spec car, and any car sold in the United States after 1968 had a tandem braking system with a master cylinder with separate connections for front and rear brakes. This is so, in theory, a car can’t lose all its braking if a brake line ruptures. (I say “in theory” because anyone who’s ever popped a brake line knows that, in practice, you don’t have half your braking; you have a fraction of that, and the heavier the car is, the smaller that fraction is.) So, unless I wanted to lose the tandem functionality, I needed a tandem MC.

The Europa forums have articles about adapting an MC from a Spitfire and a Festiva, and using a generic Tilton or Wildwood master, but for the Federal-spec cars with a tandem master cylinder, the preferred conversion involves using an MC from a 1970s Datsun F10. Unfortunately, like the original Girling cylinder, these are also no longer available (NLA).

You can see why, since Lolita’s master cylinder appeared to be soldering on, I had no desire to fix something that wasn’t broken.

Until last fall. I was driving home from a foliage-peeping trip in Amherst when my brakes began doing something very odd. The pedal would be soft, but when I hit it again, it would immediately be firm. However, if I depressed it even 10 seconds later, it would be soft again. I stopped and found that I had the handbrake on. I thought “D’oh! Well, that explains a lot; I probably shaved half the lining off the rear shoes, and that increased the pedal travel.” I disengaged the handbrake and drove the car home very carefully, pre-pumping the pedal when I needed to slow down.

With the car back in my garage, I checked the rear brakes’ adjustment (they’re supposed to be self-adjusting, but I checked anyway) and found nothing wrong. I bled the system (more on that in a moment), but could not make the soft-then-hard pedal problem go away. I concluded that it was time to begin looking at master cylinder replacement.

The Europa forums reported that the Datsun F10 master cylinder (part number 46010-M3802) swap was straightforward. The hole spacing is slightly larger than the studs on the Europa’s bulkhead, but a little routing with a Dremel tool was all that was reportedly necessary to fit it. And word was that it accepts the Europa’s pushrod assembly.

The forums did note that the original brake line fittings are 3/8-24 UNC whereas the F10 MC has 10mm x 1.0 threads, but I’ve made such adaptations before, either by purchasing adapters or building custom brake lines, so I wasn’t overly concerned.

Regarding the reservoir, a remote reservoir tank is likely necessary, as there probably isn’t enough clearance between it and the underside of the fiberglass “frunk” (front trunk; it’s a mid-engine car) for an integrated reservoir. That was fine with me, as one of the odd things about the original Girling master was that the thread specification appeared to have been designed in the Middle Ages, then lost to time. Plus, I have a Motive power brake bleeder that I use on my other cars to self-bleed brakes. You just pour brake fluid into it, screw the cap adapter onto your reservoir, pump it up, and open the bleed valves one wheel at a time. Having relied on the Motive for years, I wanted to use it on the Lotus, but multiple attempts to buy spare reservoir caps and put a pressure fitting in them all failed. None of them sealed correctly against the reservoir, resulting in a brake fluid tsunami in the frunk. I thought that if I was replacing the MC, I could simply mount an old ATE reservoir from a 1970s BMW and use the Motive and the same cap adapter I use on all the BMWs.

It was largely the lure of being able to power-bleed the system that I decided to look for a Datsun F10 master cylinder instead of send the original Girling unit off for rebuild, although having that as an option is always a good thing.

This past March, several NOS F10 master cylinders popped up on eBay, all sold by the same vendor as surplus merchandise from a closed warehouse. For $110, I clicked and bought. And so began The Great Europa F10 Master Cylinder Swap.

The first problem was in removing the original master. Withdrawing one cotter pin holding the pushrod to the brake pedal, undoing two brake fitting lines, spinning off two half-inch nuts holding it to the studs … I mean, how hard could it be?

Well, funny story.

The Europa is a tiny little mid-engine car with a fiberglass body dropped on a steel backbone. There are certain things that were clearly installed before the body was dropped on, and the master cylinder is one of them. As you can see from the photo below, access to the top bolt holding on the MC is blocked by the steering rack, the reservoir, and the body of the car itself.

I looked it up on the Europa forum, and found several posts with titles like “How do I get that %#&*! master cylinder top nut off?” After discussions of “Well, you can move the steering rack, but those bolts are probably frozen too,” one of the posts discussed the lubricating effects of curse words. This led to a spirited discussion of the general subject of swearing while working on British cars.

One fellow asked, “If it’s not too much trouble, please post a complete list of cuss words required for Europa maintenance and restoration.”

Another said, “You realize this job is not be undertaken within half a mile of any public schools, hospitals, or churches.”

The original poster replied, “The list of cuss words is very easy. I had them all from my XKE days. It seems any combination of words will work as long as M.F. is used also. But I am still up a m)^&$% f*(^&*% creek without a f&*^%&* paddle with this master cylinder.”

But my favorite was “My father told me a proper Englishman can curse for an hour and never repeat himself. I keep trying.”

I love it when you read a forum and find “your people.”

I thought I might need to strike the upper nut at a tangent with a chisel, but I got it off by rotating the reservoir out of the way, reaching the nut from the top through the reservoir fill hole in the frunk, finding the thinnest half-inch box-end wrench I had, cracking the nut, then using the open-end of the wrench to rotate it an eighth of a turn at a time.

With the MC removed, I took a detour I knew I should but kind of wished I hadn’t. I’d previously found a big mouse nest inside the front section of the Lotus’ frame, had removed what I could, and made a mental note that I could clean out more if the MC was removed. That time was now.

With the MC port on the left side of the frame now open, I reached in with a long set of tweezers and pulled out more nesting material.

I’m sure that this is just the tip of the, uh, mouseberg—I know that both the hollow frame section as well as the space between it and the fiberglass body have nesting material in them because I snaked a borescope in those areas and looked. If ever I pull the body off the car, I’ll do a proper cleaning, flushing, and disinfecting. For now, I just wanted to get what I could out of the front section.

So did two more things. First, I attached a one-inch hose—small enough to get into the frame’s MC openings—to my shop vac hose with packing tape, snaked it into the openings, and vacuumed out whatever I could reach. Next, I donned a Tyvec suit, a mask, and goggles, fired up the compressor, blew compressed air into one MC opening, and let it fly out the other. Then I switched sides. The resulting collection of mouse dung on the garage floor was truly impressive, and the hot shower I took afterwards was one of the most necessary in recent memory.

With the preliminaries out of the way, I commenced The Great Europa F10 Master Cylinder Swap itself. Obviously, neither the hard-to-reach upper nut nor the yet-another-mouse-nest-and-dung encounter were the fault of the F10 master cylinder. But I think that its very presence cursed the entire effort, and I’ll get to that next week. Spoiler alert: I wanted to go on the Europa forums and strangle anyone who referred to this as “straightforward.”

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best of the Hack Mechanic: 35 years of Hacks, Kluges, and Assorted Automotive Mayhem, is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post The Great Lotus Europa / Datsun F10 Master Cylinder Swap begins appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The real story starts about halfway through this piece. But if you’re a regular reader, you know that my stories are nothing without the proper context.

For a decade, I’ve written about “The Big Seven” things that are most likely to strand you on a road trip—fuel delivery issues, ignition issues, cooling system issues, charging system issues, belts, clutch hydraulics, and ball joints.

The first four items are fairly universal across makes and models, as well as on newer versus vintage cars. A dead fuel pump or alternator is about as likely to strand you on a 10-year-old car as on one built with Lyndon Johnson was in office. Ignition systems became enormously more reliable once points went away, but the crankshaft position sensors on which modern ignition systems rely on can fail. Cooling systems on newer cars are generally much better designed for real-world heat extremes than those on old cars, but modern plastic cooling system components have a far shorter lifetime than their old metal counterparts. Modern serpentine belts automatically stay tight, but when the belt tensioners fail, everything comes to a screeching smoking rubbery halt.

The last two items on my list—clutch hydraulics and ball joints—aren’t as universal. Clutch hydraulic failure is usually age-related, and thus you don’t see it often on modern cars. And I include ball joints on the list mostly because if they fail, you lose control of the car, and thus you can’t afford to be wrong about it. They’re actually remarkably stout items on my 1970s BMWs, but if you google “ball joint failure,” you see photos of a variety of relatively late-model vehicles with a front wheel rotated 90 degrees and jammed up under the wheel well.

And obviously, there are common failures that are specific to vehicle make and/or model. I don’t road trip my vintage BMWs without checking the giubo—the rubber flex disc between the transmission and driveshaft—as well as carry a spare, as with age, they eventually crack. You can drive quite a way as they thump and smack the inside of the transmission tunnel on acceleration, but if they fail completely, the loose bolts can tear into the cover of the back of the transmission or break the ears on the transmission or driveshaft flanges.

This gets into the issue of “hard” versus “soft” failures. In a piece a while back, I made the distinction between “hard failures”—things like fuel pumps that pretty much either work or they don’t and instantly drag the car to the breakdown lane when it’s the latter—and “soft failures”—things that give you a lot of warning before they disable the car. The “soft failure” example I gave was the charging system. If the alternator or regulator goes bad and triggers the battery light, you can get many miles down the road—certainly off the highway, maybe even to a repair shop—before there’s not enough juice to fire the spark plugs.

Another item that’s not on my “Big Seven” list is wheel bearings. They do eventually wear, and are certainly an item to replace when systematically sorting out a car that’s sat for decades, but their failure mode is so soft that it’s practically a pillow with a Cashmere cover. Wear is usually caused by a combination of high mileage and loss of lubrication. Play will eventually develop between the bearings and the race they run in. This will allow motion along the axis perpendicular to rotation, which in turn will increase the wear.

Fortunately, wheel bearing failure is almost always announced by a ballsy-sounding rumble that’s pretty hard to miss. If the bearing is bereft of lubrication, it may also squeak or squeal. The pitch and severity of the sound should vary directly with vehicle speed but not engine rpm. The sound may change when the brakes are applied.

It’s usually easy to confirm a bad wheel bearing. Jack up the wheel, support that corner of the car with a jackstand, and spin the wheel. If the wheel is not a drive wheel—that is, if it’s a rear-wheel drive car and you’re checking a front wheel, or vice versa—the wheel should be easy to spin, and a rumble, if it exists, should be plainly audible. If it’s a drive wheel, though, this is more difficult, as the CV joints and the differential or transaxle are also turning, which makes it harder to spin the wheel fast as well as creates other possible sources for the rumble.

The other thing to check for is bearing play. The time-honored method is to jack up the car, set it on stands, grab the wheel at 6 o’clock and 12 o’clock, and push-pull-rock it back and forth. If you grab it at 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock, play can be due to a loose wheel bearing, but on a front wheel, it can also be due to anything in the steering chain. Play at 6 and 12 can generally only come from a wheel bearing.

A few years back, I wrote a piece about front wheel bearing replacement on one of my 1970s BMWs. Like many other vintage cars, these have a hub with inner and outer bearings, both of which have races that are press-fit into the hub and bearing adjustment that’s achieved by tightening a castellated nut just the right amount, then putting a cotter pin through the castles and a hole in the end of the stub axle. Replacement of these bearings is messy, but at least it can be accomplished without any special bearing pullers, as the old race can be banged out with a hammer and a punch and the new one pushed in with a hammer and a right-sized socket. On these cars, the front discs are attached to the insides of the front hubs, so replacing the discs exposes the bearings. Thus, if the bearings’ ages are unknown or if they show any or make any noise, it’s prudent to replace them when changing discs. I’ve thus replaced dozens of them.

In contrast, rear wheel bearings in my vintage BMWs are so long-lived that, after owning upward of 70 cars, I’ve never replaced one. There’s a little journalistic sleight of hand in that statement, though. Thirty-five years ago, my wife and I were vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard in a high-mileage 1973 BMW Bavaria. We were coming home from dinner when a storm and tidal surge moved in, and while driving along the low, exposed road that runs along the barrier beach between Edgartown and Oak Bluffs on the eastern side of the island, crossed through a low-lying flooded section where seawater was unexpectedly deep. After that, the right rear wheel bearing began emitting an ever-increasing rumble. I limped the car home and looked at it, but didn’t own the bearing pullers I own now, and I paid a shop to replace it. So I didn’t replace it, but someone else did.

However, I recently replaced the rear wheel bearings (one was rumbling) in my Winnebago Rialta (a VW Eurovan with a Winnebago camper body on it). This is a fairly common configuration where a rear hub and stub axle are pressed into the center section of a bearing, which in turn is pressed into a fixed housing. Thus, in two separate steps, the hub has to be pulled from the bearing, then the bearing pulled from the housing. I felt like I’d paid my debt to The Automotive Powers That Be, incurred from when I passed on doing the rear bearing on the Bavaria all those years ago.

About 10 years ago, I replaced the front wheel bearings in a 1999 BMW E39 528i wagon I owned. They weren’t rumbling, but I was doing a front-end refresh including struts and control arms. I learned that the front wheel bearings on this car are a completely different design than on the older BMWs I’d had—they’re part of an assembly that bolts directly to the steering knuckle and has the hub directly integrated with it. That is, there’s no banging out or pressing in of bearings. The whole thing bolts on, and the wheel bolts directly to it. I also learned that access to the upper bolts is impinged on by the bottom of the strut assembly, so if you’re replacing the struts, it’s a good time to refresh the bearings. So I did.

When you replace these wheel bearing assemblies, you’re advised to also replace the bolts holding them in. The replacement bolts come pre-treated with a Loctite-like coating.

When I removed the E39 wagon’s old bearings, I was very surprised at the degree to which the Loctite on the old bolts sneered at my impact wrench and fought me every thread of the way. I needed to use a four-foot pipe on the end of a 3/4-inch breaker bar and grinch it off a sixth of a turn at a time, repeating this for each of the four bolts on both sides. I was exhausted by the time I was done. I made a mental note that this was a part I was unlikely to replace again if it wasn’t obviously bad.

And now, with that background, I can tell you about The Bad Wheel Bearing That Wasn’t.

I was driving my 2003 E39 530i—the car I routinely describe as the best daily-driver BMW I’ve ever owned—up to a recording session about 30 miles from my house when I began to hear and feel a bit of a rumble in the front of the car. It appeared to be coming from the left front wheel. I was surprised at how quickly the rumble came on, but it stabilized at a fairly low level. That is, the symptom wasn’t like loose lug nuts, which, as I described in this Hagerty piece about losing a wheel, can announce itself with a rumble that gets so loud and progresses so quickly that you have only five or 10 seconds before the wheel falls off. Even so, to be safe, I slowed down and pulled into the right lane and paid very close attention. The sound varied directly with speed and changed when I tapped the brakes, so even though the symptom wasn’t exactly that of a bad wheel bearing, it was close enough that I allowed those “soft failure” diagnostic neurons to fire and continued on to my recording studio appointment.

When I was done a few hours later, I wondered if I should play it safe and head to the nearest service station and ask them to throw the car up on the lift and check it out. The rumble, however, was still at a fairly low and constant level, so I continued onto the highway. I turned on my flashers, set my cruise control for 50 mph, and hugged the right lane. It got no worse on the drive home. I arrived at my house without incident, and pulled the nose of the car directly into the garage.

Since the problem was clearly a bad wheel bearing, I immediately went inside and jumped on my computer to get the part on order ASAP. I found that FCP Euro’s price on a front wheel bearing kit with a pair of German FAG bearing assemblies and the eight Loctite-coated bolts was over $300. Gulp! I began thinking about replacing only the bad bearing, and looking at prices and reviews of other less expensive aftermarket bearings, when I remembered the whole episode 10 years ago with replacing the wheel bearings in the wagon and how difficult those factory-Loctited bolts were to remove. A back injury I sustained last summer still has me hobbling around, and that kind of upper body twisting is a sure-fire recipe for relapse. Plus, there was the issue of the bottoms of the front struts being in the way of the bearing bolts. I realized that what I really needed to do was go out to the garage and verify beyond a shadow of a doubt that the bearing was actually the problem.

Believing the rumble was coming from the left front bearing, I intentionally began with the right one to get a baseline. I jacked up that corner, spun the wheel, verified that the bearing was quiet, grabbed it at 6 and 12, and verified that it was play-free.

I then moved to the suspected left front corner, jacked it up, and spun the wheel. It was noisy, though the noise was a little more clunky than rumbly. I grabbed the wheel at 6 and 12. Yup, play. Gotcha. Bad wheel bearing. I let the car down and began to walk back into the house to order the parts.

But then I had a thought—it was possible, though incredibly unlikely, that the problem could be loose lug nuts. After all, it was only a few weeks before that I’d swapped the car’s winter wheels for the summer ones. But, as I described in the wheel-fell-off article, for years I’ve been absolutely religious in my use of a torque wrench every single time a wheel is installed. I grabbed a half-inch ratchet handle and a 17mm socket and quickly checked the left front wheel’s lug nuts.

Four of the five of them were loose.

Holy crap.

I took the torque wrench and snugged down the nuts to the required 88 ft-lbs. Then, to quickly be certain this was the only problem, I jacked up the wheel again, spun it, and did the 6-and-12 push-pull. Noise and play gone.

Next, I checked the right front wheel. I was horrified to find that its lug nuts, while not loose, hadn’t been torqued down.

I checked the rears. Those were fine.

I have no idea how this happened. Due to the odd configuration of my garage, when I swap wheels, I’ll usually pull one end of the car in the garage at a time, jack it up, swap both wheels, let it down, torque down the nuts on both wheels and inflate both tires to the correct pressure, pull the car out, spin it around, and do the other end. I don’t know if, between doing the back and the front, I got interrupted by a phone call, or if this was some artifact of the fact that I make accommodations for working with a back injury in many ways, which may include stopping when I feel sore.

I’m convinced it was that one snug nut that saved me. Had that one loosened up, I would have had only a brief window before all hell broke loose like I’d experienced before.

My lug-nut vigilance has now officially increased to hyper-paranoid. I went out and double-checked the lug nuts on my wife’s car (they were fine).

So, yeah, the symptoms of a bad wheel bearing are still a rumble that varies with speed, and wheel bearing play is still discernible by doing the 6-and-12 push-pull-rock thing. But when a rumble first appears, stop and check your lug nuts. If you don’t, a wheel bearing’s “soft failure” can turn hard in the quickest and most dangerous way imaginable.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best of the Hack Mechanic: 35 years of Hacks, Kluges, and Assorted Automotive Mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post The bad wheel bearing that wasn’t appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Last month, I wrote about starting trouble with my 2008 Chevy Duramax Diesel, which appeared to be due to the fuel system losing its prime. While most diesel pickups have a “lift pump”—a fuel pump that sends diesel up to the fuel rail, where the diesel injection pump then ingests it, steps up the pressure, and sends it to the injectors—this generation of Duramax doesn’t, instead relying on the vacuum generated by the injection pump to suck the fuel out of the tank.

This works, as they say, until it doesn’t—until a hose clamp no longer seals a rubber fuel hose, or an o-ring in the priming head deteriorates, either of which can cause the injection pump to suck air instead of fuel. Obviously, if something is worn or broken it should be fixed anyway, but the consensus seems to be that the Duramax really should have a lift pump (later models eventually did), and so-equipping it should not only ease starting issues but also add longevity to the expensive injection pump and injectors.

However, the cost of doing so carries some pretty sharp sticker shock. As someone who’s installed an endless stream of electric fuel pumps in both carbureted and injected cars, my knee-jerk reaction was “$700?! For an aftermarket fuel pump?!” I couldn’t understand why these kits were so expensive. It’s not as if they’re supplying fuel at high pressure. It’s not as if, like the actual injection pump, they’re supplying fuel at thousands of psi. My understanding is that they run in the neighborhood of 10 psi. My brain went into cost-conscious Hack Mechanic mode and I thought, “Why can’t I just splice a reasonably-priced helper fuel pump in there?”

There are a few things that separate the expensive kits from the cheap stand-alone pumps. First is the pump itself. Since you’re installing something that wasn’t in the fuel line to begin with, you really don’t want it to die, as it will be a restriction that squashes the passive suction that originally allowed the engine to run without it. Most of the value-priced a la carte diesel pumps I saw on Amazon had a bump of one-star reviews of people complaining that it didn’t last long. As many diesel pickups are commercial vehicles, the last thing you want to do is fix a problem by installing something that will create further downtime. The second is that the kits are complete with all the mounting hardware, fuel lines, and quick-connect fittings needed for installation. The third is that the kits generally come with added fuel filtration in the form of a 2-micron diesel filter and a water separator that will save your expensive diesel hardware if you get a load of bad fuel.

It took me a while to feel confident enough to pony up the nearly $700, but I eventually pulled the trigger on an AirDog DF-165-4G lift pump kit. The “DF” stands for “demand flow”—returning unused fuel to the tank via a return line. The “165” is the number of gallons per minute pumped. This, along with the 165’s adjustable pressure regulator, are marketed to allow headroom for the diesel to be reprogrammed for, say, pulling big loads up long hills. There’s also a power-peak-pressure DF-100 with a fixed pressure regulator suitable for an unmodified truck like mine, but the difference in cost between the two was only about $15. Although I don’t need the modification capability, the next owner might find it a plus.

When the expensive heavy box arrived, I opened it up and had at it. Things appeared well-packed and complete.

The pump is part of an assembly that includes an aluminum slab, on the bottom of which are the spin-on fittings for the diesel filter and the water separator, and on the ends of which are threads into the quick-connect fuel inlet, outlet, and return fittings go. Installation of those took just seconds.

The next task was assembly of the part of the kit that holds the pump. There are a pair of ¼-inch steel brackets that sandwich the truck’s frame. A cradle attaches to the inner bracket and the pump/slab to the cradle. A series of holes are drilled in the inner bracket, allowing the pump to be placed as high as possible to maximize ground clearance. The instructions (and numerous videos, both from AirDog and do-it-yourselfers) showed benchtop assembly of the inner bracket, cradle, and pump, a quick test-fit against the frame rail, passing the two upper bolts and one lower one through to the outer bracket—boom, installed.

Except my installation didn’t go like that.

There were a few issues. Some had to do with the AirDog manual, which contained a lot of detail, but whose photos were too small to make out the details of the brackets. I initially had them upside down.

But what really bugged me was that the photos in the manual all showed the pump facing the wrong way on the bracket. I followed the directions and began to hang the pump from the frame rail before I noticed that the fuel inlet was facing the engine and the outlet was facing the fuel tank. The manual says that the kit is to be mounted on the driver’s side frame rail, and “The AirDog can be mounted on the inside or outside of the frame. Some bed and cab configurations may only allow system to mount on the outside of the frame.” However, every video I watched, including the excellent one from AirDog, showed the pump mounted on the inside of the frame rail. I get that the kit is meant for all Chevy Duramax Diesels from 2001 to 2010 and that there may be differences in installation between models, but when you’re spending $700, a simple statement in the manual saying “When assembling the pump cradle and bracket, be certain the fuel outlet is facing the engine” isn’t too much to ask. After this, I quit relying on the manual and instead switched my allegiance to the videos.

The next surprise was that, to mount the pump assembly, the inner bracket needed to be slid between the frame rail and a brake line, and both the two upper bracket bolts and the bracket itself contacted the line. From a liability standpoint, I’m really surprised that the manual didn’t mention that care must be taken not to have the installation rub or pinch the brake line. I solved it by extending one of the clips that positions the line, moving the line away from contact.

Next in the game of lift pump Whack-A-Mole was the issue of exactly where on the frame rail to mount the thing. It needed to be along a section where there isn’t anything bolted to the rail, and that turned out to be more restrictive than I would’ve thought, as when I mounted it where there was room, the required input line to the back of the fuel pump rubbed against other existing fuel lines. One video I watched referenced this rear-clearance issue and said to slide the assembly forward until it’s flush against the mount for the rear crossmember. Unclipping a wiring harness anchor bought me another inch, but I couldn’t slide it any further, as a guide for the parking brake cable was in the way. I removed the cable guide and tried to judge whether the resulting deflection had any real effect on the parking brake, but a nagging voice told me that this was a bad idea.

I let this marinate overnight in my mind, and in the morning realized that I could easily solve the problem by simply marking and drilling holes in the bracket that allowed the cable guide to use its original holes in the frame.

With the pump assembly mounted where it needed to be, the next task was the fuel line plumbing. In theory, this is easy. The pump is basically spliced between the fuel tank and the engine, with a return line added that dumps unused fuel in at the filler neck. Undo the quick-connect fitting at the top of the tank, run a new line from there to the input to the lift pump, connect the output of the pump to the quick-connect input to the fuel cooler, slice the filler neck hose to insert a tee, run the return line there, done.

Ah, if only it was that easy.

The manual said that a ½-inch fuel line disconnect tool (it looks like the bell of a tiny trumpet) would be needed to press in and release the recessed clip on the quick-connect lines. Of course, the manual also said that, to access the fitting at the top of the fuel tank, either the truck bed would need to be removed or the tank would need to be dropped. I watched several videos that assured me that this almost certainly wasn’t necessary—that via some blind groping, you could reach up above the tank, slide the tool over the line, push it in, release the clip, and get diesel fuel running into your armpit as god intended.

I tried this first on the more easily accessible end of the line on the fuel cooler.

It didn’t make sense. The disconnect tool was blocked by a squarish red disconnect fitting. There was no mention of it in the manual. Both it and the videos showed use of the bell-shaped disconnect tool.

I eventually found a video that showed a squarish red fitting like mine, and how you needed to squeeze the tabs on the back and then pull it forward. Unfortunately, the bottom of this clip wasn’t finger-accessible. By squeezing my head up next to the driveshaft, I was able to lay eyeballs on the bloody thing. I could reach one tab with a finger. For the other, I employed a right-angle pick. With some work and a few choice words, I got it disconnected.

Unfortunately, that was the easier-to-reach of the two red quick-connect fittings. I still had to deal with the one above the fuel tank, and that one I could only see by sliding my phone above it. I could lay a finger on the tab that was facing upward, but the other tab was on the underside of the clip, and attempts to reach and depress it with a right-angle pick or other tool proved fruitless. I struggled with it for hours.

I briefly entertained dropping the tank, but eventually I realized that if I could rotate the clip, I could position both tabs so I could squeeze them simultaneously. Unfortunately, in order to rotate the clip, I needed to rotate the fuel line to which it was integrated, and since it was a plastic line with fairly rigid angle-bends in it that passed through a tight body channel, it wasn’t free to rotate even though I’d disconnected the other end. Although I hated to do so, I cut the plastic line (I try not to cut off my means of retreat from a repair until it’s clear that it’s successful). Some amount of groaning, swearing, and scuffed fingers later, the little bugger finally came out.

After giving my right shoulder a day to recover, the rest of it was pretty straightforward. The barbed ends of the new quick-connect fuel line fittings were, as advertised, a snug fit into the fuel hose, and insertion required coating them with oil and pressing the hose onto them with one smooth motion. This was easy when I could lay the fitting on cardboard on the ground and put my weight onto the hose, and not so easy when the fuel line was trimmed to fit and dangling under the car.

When I went to install the fuel return line, there was one final surprise. I cut the hose on the fuel filler neck and spliced in the tee fitting, oiled up the barbed quick-connect fitting and pressed the fuel line over it, and slid it over the tee, but it wouldn’t lock in place. After multiple tries and about 10 seconds of cogitative dissonance, I looked at the brand-new fitting, and saw that it was missing the little plastic portion that snaps around the bulge in its male counterpart and holds the fitting in place. In the short term, I held it on with a hose clamp. When I came back inside, I contacted the vendor, which contacted AirDog, which sent me another fitting.

Electrical installation of the lift pump was very straightforward—a wiring harness with a relay and a fuse, ring terminals for battery positive and negative, and a piggy-back-style fuse holder that lets you tap into an existing blade-style fuse without having to either enter the fuse box from underneath or splice into an existing wire. When the key was cracked to ignition, I could hear the lift pump spin, hear it self-prime as it pushed the air out (as recommended, I left the new fuel filter loose with a pan under it until it spat), after which the big diesel fired up instantly.

Earlier, I talked about the lack of trust that occurs when a truck like this won’t start—that is, it’s one thing for a vintage car to die on a joy ride and quite another for a truck to die or not start when you’re miles from home towing a trailer. Obviously, no repair inoculates a vehicle against all maladies, but if this truck does have additional issues, I’m pretty sure they won’t be related to fuel priming.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best of the Hack Mechanic: 35 years of Hacks, Kluges, and Assorted Automotive Mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Installing a lift pump in a Duramax diesel appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Last week, I talked about how windshield replacement in a vintage car is usually a different beast than the one-call-shopping that’s available to get a big glass company to come to your driveway with a new windshield and be in and out in an hour. This is due to both the boutique availability of the glass itself and the fact that the job can easily mission-creep its way into paint and bodywork. I gave examples using two of my 1970s BMW 2002s, both of which had shrunken rock-hard windshield gaskets that had to be practically chiseled out and that, when removed, revealed rust on the A pillar that needed to be treated.

Today we’ll get even more obscure and talk about replacing the windshield in my 1974 Lotus Europa Twin Cam Special.

I bought the car knowing that it had been sitting for 35 years, had a seized engine, and needed everything, so the fact that it had a cracked windshield was little more than a footnote. I did some research and found that the windshield was available from Pilkington Glass as part of its “Classics” line for about $400. I could even pick it up in nearby Salem, Massachusetts. In my mind, I checked off the windshield as available, affordable, and not nearly as pressing as getting that Lotus-Ford Twin-Cam engine rebuilt.

That process took six years, as it was punctuated by job loss and career change. When, in the spring of 2019, the Europa rumbled out of the spot in my garage where it had been rolled in 2013, replacing the windshield suddenly took on urgency, as there was no way the car was going to ever pass a Massachusetts state inspection with that big crack right down the center. So I called Pilkington in Salem, recounted my conversation with them six years prior, and said that I’d very much like to pick up that $400 windshield as soon as possible. I was horrified when they told me that, due to low demand, the Europa windshield was one of those no longer available in the United States through the Pilkington Classics program. (Lesson learned—when you know you’ll eventually need something like this, and it’s available and reasonably priced, you buy it.)

I searched on the Europa forums and learned that I wasn’t the only one looking for a windshield—there appeared to be no new ones in the country, and folks were loath to let go of their used ones. Then, in a development representative of why these sort of enthusiast forums are wonderful things, a fellow down in Rhode Island took it upon himself to put together a group buy of windshields directly from Pilkington in England. If there were 10  people within a geographic region, they could have their own crated shipment, and fortunately, since he needed a windshield, one region was centered at his house, about an hour’s drive from me. It took over a year, and the price crept up to $800, but eventually I got the call that there was a giant crate with 10 windshields in it down in Providence, and one of them had my name on it. Last fall, I drove down in a car with a nice, big, soft pillow on the back seat, wrapped my hard-won windshield in a blanket, drove home very carefully, put my prize in a dead-end corner of my front porch, and cordoned it off with caution tape.

This past winter, I finally began the task of windshield replacement. The windshield in all S1 and some S2 Europas is affixed with a rubber gasket and a locking strip like the windshields on my vintage BMWs, but the windshield in all Twin Cam Europas is glued in, as it is in most modern cars. There’s decorative trim around the edge, held in by a ledge that sits under the glass and in the glue. Unfortunately, during the four years that I’d been driving the fragile little fiberglass-bodied car, a number of pieces of trim had flown off, and one of them was the windshield trim on the left A-pillar. The windshield trim is available but expensive, and you get into the slippery-slope issue of one new piece looking out of place against three old ones, or all of the new pieces looking out of place against the rest of the heavily patina’d car.

I did a lot of reading on Europa forums. I learned that the original adhesive is butyl rubber, but replacement should use the same urethane rubber that modern glued-in windshields use. I learned that the car’s fiberglass roof is so thin that the windshield frame sags, and that a 2×4 or other support should be cut to length and used to prop up the roof and frame while the glass is glued in. I learned that the trim is purely decorative, does nothing to actually hold in the glass, can be eliminated if desired, or can be replaced after the glass is installed with generic inch-thick trim that looks remarkably similar and glues to the outside of the glass. And I learned that while you can do the glue-in installation yourself, the urethane adhesive is incredibly messy, and if you screw up, you’ll regret it. I understood this, as I vividly recalled replacing the door seals in a BMW 2002, which uses a similar black adhesive. I didn’t like where one of the seals came to rest, thought I could reposition it, pulled the seal off, and the resulting black gooey web stretched everywhere, including onto one of the seats.

Well, OK then.

I set about getting the trim and glass out. This wasn’t nearly as bad as it was with the windshield gaskets in the BMWs—the nearly 50-year-old butyl rubber adhesive was still pliant. Still, it required a lot of time spent with a plastic scraper removing the bulk of the dirt and rubber, then a metal scraper to get down to the fiberglass, then paper towels and solvent to get the last of the goo out. Flick through the whole painstaking ordeal in the slideshow below:

Although fiberglass obviously doesn’t rust like steel does, there were some divots and indentations in the windshield frame. The upper left corner was the worst. I filled them with epoxy.

When spring came and I was girding my loins to install the precious new glass, a local friend posted on Facebook that he had a freelance glass pro come to his house and install the windshield in the BMW 2002 he’s restoring. I was surprised since, as I said a few weeks ago, a good friend who works at a local repair shop that specializes in classics said they now do their own glass work since they couldn’t find anyone who does it. This fellow said that he was very satisfied with both the work and the price. I called the glass guy, described the situation with the Europa, and asked if he had experience gluing windshields into fiberglass-bodied vehicles. He said that describes most RVs, so yeah. I told him that I do most things myself, and I had recently roped in two gasketed windshields (with help). However, the fact that you can’t gracefully back your way out of a urethane installation if something’s wrong gave me pause. He laughed and said, “Yeah, if you don’t know what you’re doing, the stuff gets everywhere and is very difficult to clean off.” He quoted me a price of $200. I jumped at it.

A week later, Joe Maki of “On the fly auto glass” showed up with his helper-son, a collapsible stand, a pair of suction cups, and the biggest glue gun in the world. He double-checked my work cleaning the windshield frame, then test fit the glass, determining how many shims were needed at the bottom to keep gravity from allowing it to drift down. Joe noted that either the car’s fiberglass body wasn’t quite true or the glass had a slight twist in it, as one of the upper corners was a bit higher than the other, but it wasn’t anything acute.

Then Joe scuffed up the fiberglass with a Scotch-Brite pad, laid a swath of adhesive primer on both the windshield frame and the glass, employed that giant electric glue gun to lay down a beautiful perfectly peaked pyramidal bead, plopped the glass down, seated it, and taped it at the top. Done.

Because no trim was installed, I thought that the lack of adhesive coming up to the edge of the upper corners looked a little funny, and asked joe to fill them in. This part wasn’t quite as clean-looking as the rest, but it was my request.

So it’s done. At some point I’ll deal with the question of the trim. The original trim is a bit chunky—it’s thicker than the trim around the windows—but it does brighten up the front of the car. Without it on, it looks like something’s missing.

Disposing of the old windshield was a surprise. In the past, a local auto glass place let me toss windshields in their dumpster, but this time I was denied. I read that laminated auto glass can be recycled, but neither the town recycling center nor two other glass shops I called take it. Someone at the town dump said that I should break it up and put it in the trash. I was surprised at that, but with the crack already right down the center, it gave it up with just a light foot squash.

The takeaway message in all of this is that if you’re looking to buy a vintage car that, among its other issues, has a cracked windshield, don’t trivialize it. The glass itself may be unavailable, other body and paint issues may rudely present themselves once the glass is out and the windshield frame is exposed, and installing replacement glass may be outside your backyard mechanic wheelhouse. Ten years ago when I bought the Lotus, I never would’ve expected that I’d spend a thousand bucks removing the old glass and cleaning the frame myself, sourcing a new windshield, having a very reasonably-priced glass pro come to my garage, and electing not to buy new expensive correct reproduction windshield trim.

Now that I finally have crack-free front glass, I guess I should get the thing inspected.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best of the Hack Mechanic: 35 years of Hacks, Kluges, and Assorted Automotive Mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Windshield replacement in a vintage car (Part 2) appeared first on Hagerty Media.

If you’re driving down the road in a late-model car, and the vehicle in front of you kicks up a rock that cracks your windshield, it’s not really a big deal. The combination of readily-available glass, the good condition of the rest of the car, the likelihood of insurance coverage, and the reasonable cost even if you have to pay for it out of pocket, makes the process relatively painless. These days you probably don’t even have to go anywhere, with many glass companies offering in-driveway windshield replacement.

However, it’s different you buy or own a vintage car with a cracked windshield. While a website like Safelite’s is great at being able to tell me that a windshield for my 2003 BMW 530i, with rain-sensing wipers, is $355 installed, these click-and-estimate tools don’t apply to most vintage cars.

Why not? Several reasons. First, the windshield itself—a high-volume glass company might not be able to procure a boutique product for your vintage ride. Second, the method of installation. Most modern windshields are flat, or nearly, and are held in with adhesive. In contrast, the glass on many pre-1970 cars had a lot more curvature and was typically held in with a rubber gasket, usually with a locking strip.

But the biggest reason that a commercial glass shop probably won’t be able to replace the windshield in your vintage ride is that if the glass hasn’t been replaced in 40 or 50 or 60 years, it probably isn’t coming out without a fight, and the area underneath it may need work that’s outside the wheelhouse of glass replacement.

I’ve been through this with two of my BMW 2002s. The first was “Louie,” the decade-dead 1972 2002tii I bought sight-unseen in Louisville in 2017 (you can read about it in my book Ran When Parked).

The windshield wasn’t cracked—in fact, it was in remarkably good, un-pitted condition—but the gasket was so shrunken and hardened that it was effectively porous, and when I hit rain on the drive home, enough water pooled on the floorboards to make a family of salamanders very happy.

The gasket proved to be as tough as alligator skin. After removing the plastic lock strip, I tried to cut the gasket out with a utility knife. It was the kind of half-inch-at-a-time work that, if the knife slipped, threatened to sever arteries and tendons. Initially I thought that I needed to cut both down into the gasket where the lock strip had been and then across, but eventually I found that I could simply cut across and lift the cut gasket out of the way. This sped things up quite a bit.

Once I’d cut through the gasket, I was able to press the windshield out from inside. However, the remaining hardened portion of the gasket was attached to the windshield frame. While there were some large chunks that pulled off, many small sections held on like barnacles. It was like removing old grout between tiles. I threw everything at the problem: fingernails, a plastic scraper, acetone, Scotch Brite pads, a Dremel tool, single-edged razor blades, and a metal scraper. Not surprisingly, the metal tools worked the fastest but had the most deleterious effect on the paint. Since Louie had a fair amount of patina on it—the previous owner had treated some rust blisters by sanding them and then spraying Hunter Green hardware store paint—I wasn’t as horrified by this as you might think.

Removing the windshield and gasket exposed two things. The first was an odd, toothed clip that ran around the inside of the windshield frame. This turned out to have been installed by the factory in all BMWs between certain dates as a response to Federal DOT-mandated requirements about keeping the windshield secure in the event of collision.

But the more troubling thing was the presence of rust on the driver’s-side A pillar.

I carefully ground the rust down and found pitting but no actual perforations, so I elected to treat it with Rust-Oleum Rust Reformer, one of several rust conversion / encapsulation products.

Not wanting a windshield gasket replacement to mission-creep into an outer body restoration, I simply primed this section and anything else I scratched or shipped and painted it with the same color Hunter Green paint that was previously used elsewhere on the car.

The windshield and new gasket were ready to go in. For this, I elicited the help of my friend Lindsey Browne, shop foreman at The Little Foreign Car Garage in Waltham, Massachusetts, and a fellow 2002 aficionado. Lindsey had previously explained to me that they used to use a glass guy who had a lot of experience with vintage cars, but he retired, so now they were doing most of their own glass installations.  I said something to him like, “So, you know how to do the rope trick to flip the lip of the gasket, right?” He said yes but cautioned me that this is sort of the “stick the landing” part of windshield replacement—the part that everyone knows to comment about but is usually a relatively small portion of the whole routine. “There’s also a lot of prying, shoving, slapping, and cursing involved,” he said.

What’s meant by doing “the rope trick” to “flip the lip”? Rubber windshield gaskets have an inner groove in which the glass sits, and an outer groove into which the windshield frame needs to seat. The problem is that, like installing a rubber grommet in a hole, the inside-facing lip is larger than the opening in the windshield frame, so to get the frame to seat in the gasket, the inside-facing lip has to be coerced to come inside an opening it’s too big for.

The time-honored method of doing this is to goop up the groove with something slippery but non-permanent like Gojo lanolin hand cleaner, take a length of thin rope, slide it into the groove all the way around the gasket, then begin inserting the windshield and gasket into the frame, and slowly and carefully pull the rope out from the inside so it pulls the inside-facing lip of the gasket over the inside edge of the windshield frame.

I’d watched a few videos of this, including one of a friend of mine demonstrating it at a vintage BMW event. Mine did not go nearly as easily. There were a few reasons why. One is that, if you look at the photo of the gasket (above), you see not just one groove and two lips, but several of each, so there are actually multiple lips that need to be flipped. Another was that, particularly at the bottom, the presence of the toothed clip exacerbated an almost impossibly narrow space for the thick rubber gasket to pass. A third was that once the gasket began to seat, the degree to which the glass could be slid side-to-side was almost nonexistent, so twice we needed to pull it out and start over.

But the main culprit was that pulling the rope and flipping the lip in no way guarantees that the windshield frame is actually seating in the central groove of the gasket. This issue was greatly exacerbated by the presence of the toothed clip, as it prevented the lip from easily flipping over and made it more difficult for the gasket to seat. In the narrow dashboard gap on the bottom and other areas, I had to manually intervene with a tool jury-rigged with a pair of Vise Grips and an Allen key employed to reach in and pull the inner lips out of the way.

Eventually we got it close except for the left side being high. This was dealt with by the kind of force that Lindsey warned me about.

After we were done, I read that there used to be an OEM gasket made specifically for cars that had the toothed clip, but the part number had been superseded by that of the clipless gasket, and what I should’ve done was drill out the rivets and remove the clip. D’oh!

I had the opportunity to do it all again when I bought back “Bertha,” the 1975 2002 my wife and I had driven from our wedding in 1984. It too had sat for decades, had rust blisters the size of dinner plates on the hood, a cracked windshield, and a rock-hard gasket that had to be cut out.

When I removed the windshield and gasket, I found that Bertha did not have the problematic toothed clip but had rust on one of the A-pillars that, when ground down, revealed two actual perforations.

Since Bertha is a car that wears patina with a capital P, I was even less concerned about a do-it-once-do-it-right approach than I had been with Louie. Launching into an A-pillar replacement would’ve been expensive, so I treated the area with naval jelly, painted it with rust reformer, patched the small perforations and filled the divots with POR-15 Patch and Seam Sealer, sanded that down, then primed and painted it.

I sourced an inexpensive, used windshield from someone local, and Lindsey again came over and helped me with the installation. Even without the dreaded clip, it was still a bear, requiring insertion of a hooked pry tool to pull the lip inside the windshield frame.

We reached the same point that we did with the windshield on Louie, where the section along the driver’s A pillar wasn’t quite seated. We did the same shoving and slapping as last time, but unfortunately, this time the windshield cracked.

This is part of the advantage of having a friend who is a pro and owns the same car. Lindsey said, “I’m pretty sure I have another windshield at the shop. I’ll be back in an hour.” Sure enough, an hour later, another used windshield rolled into my driveway. For whatever reason, this one went in a bit easier.

The takeaway from all this is several-fold. If you have a car with an old, hardened gasket, odds are the gasket is binding tightly to the windshield frame and the remnants will have to be chipped or scraped off. This alone is likely to rule out a Safelite-like service in favor of a classic car specialty repair shop. If the gasket removal damages the paint, and the car is pretty enough that that matters to you, you’re looking at taking it to a body shop for paint matching and touch up. If you find rust perforations on the windshield frame, it’s more in the purview of outer-body restoration.

For all these reasons, it’s unrealistic to think you can handle windshield or gasket replacement in a classic car in the same way as a late-model car, where it’s done in your driveway, or you drive in and out as if it’s an oil change.

However, I have a high tolerance for imperfection and am quite good at containing mission creep, so I did it myself, preventing a windshield and/or gasket replacement from slippery-sloping its way into what probably would’ve been several thousand dollars of sheet metal work and paint-matching. I was thrilled, with help from a friend, to get this done on two cars for just the cost of the materials.

I not only would do it again, I am doing it again. Next week, we’ll go through all this with my little fiberglass-bodied Lotus Europa, whose cracked windshield is held in not with a gasket, but with adhesive.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best of the Hack Mechanic: 35 years of Hacks, Kluges, and Assorted Automotive Mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally inscribed copies from Rob’s website, http://www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Windshield replacement in a vintage car (Part 1) appeared first on Hagerty Media.

As I wrote about last month, the original numbers-matching engine to my 1973 BMW 3.0CSi E9 coupe had been sitting in the corner of the garage at my mother’s house since I pulled it out and swapped it for a newer freshly-rebuilt engine in 1989. My sister and I inherited the property after my mother passed, and some cleanout of items like the engine was long overdue.

I wrote (in a lot of detail) why continuing to hold onto the engine made very little sense to me. My argument for dragging it straight to the recycle bin was that a) I am never going to rebuild and reinstall it, and b) after I die and my heirs advertise the car, if someone wants to own a fully-original numbers-matching E9 coupe, why on earth would they choose to buy this one that’s been not only color-changed but repainted in a non-factory color? These factors resulted in my somewhat passionate defense of why I think that not feeling responsible for the rest of my days for a hypothetical future of a 350-pound lump—simply because it has seven numbers stamped into it—doesn’t make me a bad person.

However, the steps required to remove the engine from the garage were the same whether I was going to tow it back to my house in Newton, Massachusetts, or to the recycle bin—it had to either be put in the back of the truck or dragged into a trailer.

In days past, when I’ve needed to move an engine, I’ve disassembled my engine hoist and loaded it into the back of the truck. Like most hoists, it has four main pieces—the base, the backbone, the arm, and the hydraulic cylinder. The backbone is held to the base with three bolts, and there’s a pivot bolt on the arm, another on the cylinder, and a few other small fasteners. Disassembling it, loading it, driving to the scene of some engine-related crime, reassembling it, using it, and disassembling it again to take it back home never used to be a big deal. But now that I’m closing in on the big six-five and have back issues, doing this alone is trolling for back pain. Yes, I can ask for help, but I prefer to use that free spin card only when it’s truly necessary.

So instead, I thought I could put the engine on a furniture dolly, then use my Warn PullzAll 120VAC electric winch to pull it up a ramp and into the back of the truck. What’s more, I had the bright idea that I could dry-run this on the other big part in the garage—the entire front subframe from another E9 coupe I’d parted out a few years before pulling the engine from mine. The subframe was standing upright in the back of the garage, resting on the engine. Sure enough, all by my lonesome, back-injured self, I was able to tip the subframe over onto the furniture dolly and winch it up a board I found in the house (it turned out to be the top piece of a discarded piano) and into the truck.

I then disassembled the subframe in place in the back of the truck, kept the steering components, and drove the bare subframe directly to the scrap metal bin (if there’s a part that lasts the lifetime of a BMW E9 coupe and thus there’s virtually zero demand for, it’s the front subframe). Gee, I thought—maybe this was more of a dry run for what to do with the engine than I’d planned.

Although this was successful, it made me realize that while tipping the 350-pound engine onto the furniture dolly to get it out into the street probably wasn’t unreasonable, winching it up a narrow wooden board acting as a ramp certainly was. I was going to need a little U-Haul trailer.

I broke the job into two steps. In the first, I went over to the house with the goal of getting the engine on the dolly. I was smart enough to know that it was doubtful I could do it alone, so I pressed my youngest son, who lives upstairs in the house, into service. It was pretty comical. Not surprisingly, the weight of the engine immediately caused the dolly to tip up. We wound up needing to brace the dolly against the wall and have him stand on one end as the engine tipped onto it. We then employed a 10-foot-long 2×4 to lever the engine so its center of gravity was about in the middle of the dolly. Finally I ratchet-strapped it in place. It looked like a very greasy Christmas goose.

About a week later, I rented a little U-Haul 4×8 cargo trailer. Having seen landscapers wheel all manner of lawn equipment out of and into similar small cargo trailers, I just assumed that the U-Haul ones had a smooth fold-down wooden rear ramp, and that this would be preferable to the open utility trailers where the ramp is a decidedly less-smooth metal grate or a corrugated piece of floor. It wasn’t until I rented the utility trailer and they had it all hooked up that I walked behind it and saw that the door opened to the side instead of folding down. My mistake—the side-opening door is clearly shown on the U-Haul website. I had them exchange it for a small utility trailer.

Rolling the engine into the street and positioning it at the bottom of the trailer’s short ramp was trivial—the furniture dolly did its job flawlessly. Winching it up the ramp, however, was not. Even with a small piece of plywood at the bottom as a little helper ramp, the little wheels on the furniture dolly didn’t like the metal grating on the ramp, and they bit into the gap between the ramp and the bed of the trailer. Fortunately, I’d brought a four-foot pipe with me, and judicious levering of the dolly coaxed the wheels into position. Once the engine and dolly were on the bed of the trailer, it still didn’t roll easily, as the corrugated floor tripped up the wheels. But I got it in and strapped down. If I had to do it over again, I’d bring two larger thin sheets of plywood to completely cover both the ramp and the bed.

As approached the turn-off to my street, I realized that all I had to do was continue straight for another half a mile and I’d be at the Newton recycling center, where I imagined simply unstrapping the engine, lowering the gate, hitting the accelerator pedal in the truck, and letting nature take its course.

But I’d already made the decision: The engine was coming home. And not because I suddenly imagined a scenario where it might be used. Or because, as I said at the end of the original piece, that the numbers-matching engine is like the character in The Sixth Sense who thinks he still has someone to help in this world (although if someone with a very original 3.0CSi coupe—which was a Euro-only model—contacted me saying that their engine just put a rod through the block and for originality’s sake they’re trying to find a block with a European VIN as close to theirs as possible, I’d be all ears).

No, the thing that tipped the scales was about as undramatic as they come. Many decisions I make are based on this simple bit of mental calculus: If it costs you nothing to leave an option open, why not do that? Ninety-five percent of the work had already been done. All I needed to do was clear a spot for it at the end of my driveway and throw a tarp over it.

Unloading the engine in the driveway was trivial, as gravity was on my side. I pulled the vehicles on the right side of the driveway (the Winnebago Rialta and the BMW Z3—the truck usually sits there as well) out into the street, and used the 4-foot pipe to lever the engine and dolly out. They made quite a racket going down the trailer’s gate, but once they were on the asphalt, they gracefully rolled down the driveway and smashed through the garage door.

Just kidding.

So yeah, I kind of kicked the can down the road. But that’s OK. Since the engine will now be sitting outside (tarped, but still outside), at some point soon I’ll source a valve cover and spend an hour with plastic wrap, rubber bands, and Gorilla tape sealing up the coolant inlets and the ports on the head.

Although the plans my wife and I were hatching during the pandemic to find a garage-centric property have stalled, I doubt the house in Newton will be my final abode. If I were to bet, I’d wager that within the next few years we go somewhere else, and I’ll need to move the engine again. Maybe it’s best that I think of it not as an albatross, but as a good luck charm.

Oh, my God. I figured it out. You know what the dead numbers-matching is? It’s the car’s Picture of Dorian Grey (the Oscar Wilde novel about the portrait in the attic that looks worse and worse while its real-life subject commits all manner of sins but never ages). This is perfect. By dumping the thing at the end of the driveway under a tarp, I’ve ensured that my precious E9 coupe will remain forever young. Maybe if I pull the tarp off the engine and let the rain get it, the little scrape on the car’s right rear wheel arch will self-heal.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

The post The end of the numbers-matching engine story (for now) appeared first on Hagerty Media.

After putting a lot of thought into dealing with the 34-year-dead, numbers-matching engine to my 1973 BMW 3.0CSi, I was prepared to go over to what used to be my mother’s house in Brighton and drag it back to my house in Newton. I’d already elicited my youngest son’s help to ratchet-strap the greasy lump onto a furniture dolly. The trussed-up, numbers-matching turkey just needed to be winched into the back of a rented U-Haul trailer. I loaded up some odds and ends into the only-slightly-mouse-infested truck (the 2008 Chevy 3500HD Duramax diesel), turned the key, and …

Oh, dear.

Last fall, I wrote about a frustrating crank-but-no-start problem that vexed the truck for nearly a week, then vanished without my really having identified the cause and fixed anything. I’d read about a problem that this generation of Duramax diesels have where any cracked fuel lines or worn o-rings can cause the fuel pump to suck air rather than fuel, but because the truck had thrown a P2510 code and this is also correlated with cranking but not starting, I went down that electrical rabbit hole, checking grounds and disassembling the fuse box looking for corrosion and not finding anything wrong.

At some point, I cycled the central locking (and with it, the alarm system), and the truck started as if nothing had happened. I chalked it up to the alarm and locking systems somehow having gotten out of sync. The problem never recurred.

Until yesterday.

Now, when someone says that their car or truck died and they have to sell it because they “no longer trust it,” I usually roll my eyes. Nearly all automotive problems can be solved. As I say over and over, the main things that cause cars to die are fuel delivery issues, ignition issues, cooling system issues, charging systems issues, and belts (and on vintage cars, add clutch hydraulics and ball joints). These are all solvable problems. People may say they’re selling a car because they no longer trust it, but odds are that the driving forces are really the superposition of age, mileage, repair bills, changing family needs, and the desire for something newer and nicer.

However, the truck is different. It’s a big dually diesel that the company I worked for purchased to tow a 32-foot trailer. I bought it from them for a song when they all but abandoned it in a parking lot and mice got into it. Because of the big utility body on the back, it’s often mistaken for a commercial vehicle (it was a commercial vehicle). Insuring, registering, and getting it inspected in the state of Massachusetts took a bit of doing, as I had to find people who understood that you can have a 10,000-lb GVWR truck registered that way. But the combination of the truck’s size and weight, and the fact that it’s a Duramax diesel, means that if it breaks down on the road it’s going to be more difficult to deal with than a passenger car, and any repairs are going to be expensive. And that’s even before considering the nightmare scenario of it dying while I’m towing something.

So my first reaction to the return of the mystery cranks-but-won’t-start problem was, in fact, the very one that I scoff at when I hear others speak it: “If I can’t trust the truck, I’m going to have to sell it.”

Fortunately, the no-start couldn’t have happened in a better place than my own driveway, and I had no hard timetable for using it to move my old numbers-matching engine or anything else, so I calmed down, rolled up my sleeves, and had at it. This time, because there were no DTC codes when I plugged in the $25 code reader (which I keep in the truck for exactly this reason), I focused on the fuel delivery system.

Diesel trucks like this are outside my mostly-small-European-car wheelhouse. I did some reading and learned that most diesel pickups have an engine-driven mechanical injection pump that generates the thousands of PSI needed by the injectors, as well as a secondary “lift pump” to get the fuel out of the tank and up to the engine. However, the GM Duramax diesels built between 2001 and 2016 weren’t equipped with a lift pump, the logic being that their Bosch CP3 and CP4 mechanical injection pumps were capable of generating enough suction that a lift pump wasn’t strictly necessary. This means that, in order to prime the fuel system (to get it full of fuel so it’s not sucking air), you have to rely on the big push-button that sits on top of the fuel filter head. You take a screwdriver and open up the bleed valve located on the top of the housing, pump the button until fuel without air bubbles comes out, close the valve, then continue to pump until the button feels hard.

This all works fine until it doesn’t. Aging fuel lines and rubber seals in the filter head can make it so the fuel system “loses its prime” and doesn’t regain it even with repeated pumping of the push button. It turns out this is a fairly common problem in Duramax diesels. However, when I began reading about installing a lift pump, the applications I saw had to do with increasing power for towing big loads on long hill climbs, something I’m unlikely to do. It took me a while to understand that the lift pump also solves the priming problem.

Initially, I was skeptical that the truck had a priming problem. It had only been sitting for a few days. I’d previously let it sit for weeks without having this happen. And I pumped and bled the fuel system twice, to no effect. But when I tried it the third time, after closing the bleed valve, I kept pushing the pump button until it was rock-hard and my thumb was sore, and the truck fired up. I had to admit that the diagnosis fit the symptoms pretty well.

I also watched several diagnostic videos where people trouble-shot crank-but-no-start problems on Duramax diesels by using a scan tool to look at fuel rail pressure (FRP). I thought, “OK, so I need to spend the money to buy a GM-specific scan tool—this $25 OBD-II code reader I keep in the truck isn’t going to do that.” But when I read further, I learned that fuel rail pressure should be part of the data stream supplied by the CAN OBD protocol, and that even an inexpensive code reader should display it. Sure enough, with the truck running, I could see fuel rail pressure of 42540 kilopascals—about 6200 PSI.

When I got the truck started, my initial reaction was to drive it directly to a nearby repair shop whose parking lot is routinely full of dually diesel landscaping vehicles, but now that I was armed with a) the knowledge that it was a priming problem, b) a data point that it started when I fully primed it, and c) the ability to confirm fuel rail pressure if the problem recurred, the my-truck-isn’t-reliable-what-am-I-going-to-do cloud dissipated, and I felt like I had some space to look at which solution to implement.

As with many problems, it depends how much you want to spend.

The least expensive approach would be to spend 10 bucks and buy a rebuild kit with the o-rings and seals for the pump filter head. If you’re going to go that route, the pump filter head has to be removed from the side of the block, so you might as well also spend the $120-ish bucks to replace the two rubber hoses plumbing the filter head. Of course, no-start problems can also be caused by collapsed fuel lines at the back of the truck. So down the rabbit hole you go.

The next improvement you can make is to spend about 100 bucks to purchase an adapter plate you can install on the underside of the filter head to allow use of a 2-micron Caterpillar 1R-0750 filter (the stock filter has a 10-micron mesh). Unfortunately, this does away with the stock water separator, so you either have to add it back in a different way or go for a lift pump where it’s integrated into the package (below).

While there is an available in-tank lift pump, most are external kits that combine a pump, a 2-micron filter, and a water separator. If, like me, you’re coming at this from the background of adding a $50 electric fuel pump to a vintage carbureted car to deal with priming empty float bowls after a winter-long sit, you’ll get sticker shock—the lift pump kits from AirDog and FASS seem to start at around $650 and require a some amount of fabrication to install in such a way that they’re not waiting for a stray rock on the highway to take them out.

So, I’ve got some decisions to make. If you’re like me, you don’t mind spending money on cars when it’s something that improves appearance or performance or comfort, but you bristle at paying for parts or repairs that merely return the vehicle to a baseline. After spending nearly $800 replacing the truck’s stolen catalytic converter, looking at spending nearly that on what’s essentially preventive maintenance isn’t a slam dunk. Still, as I often say, vehicles are not organic systems. They do not heal themselves. Problems don’t get better. They get worse. This truck has now exhibited this problem twice. I’d be an idiot not to deal with it, and I try to not be an idiot.

I’ll let you know what happens.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

The post Trouble with the truck. Again. appeared first on Hagerty Media.

In my first book, Memoirs of a Hack Mechanic, I wrote about the taxonomy of a hobby. That is, if you find some hobby where there’s a physical object, an activity, and a social component, and you’re attracted to all three, you wind up getting sucked in, and the hobby becomes a passion. This is obviously the case with me (and almost certainly you) with cars, but it holds for most hobbies.

For example, my wife is an avid quilter, and all the things I do with cars have their counterpart in the quilting world. One of the wonderful things that comes from being part of a community of people with a shared passion is the sense of human connection. We tend to inherently trust people who love the same things that we love. This often translates into a near-automatic sense of kindness and generosity. Obviously that can happen without the shared interest (and the world would be a far better place if that happened more often), but if you’re into vintage cars, and like working on them, and you see one broken down by the side of the road, of course you’re going to stop and help.

It’s a beautiful thing to be either the giver or the receiver of this kind of automotive grace. The fine tradition is to “pay it forward”—that is, if someone helps you and doesn’t charge you for it, you then help someone else. When this happens, no matter which end of it you’re on, you can almost feel yourself putting your oars into the spiritual water that keeps the world, or at least our little corner of it, going ‘round.

In 2019, I was at the BMW event “The Vintage” in Hot Springs, North Carolina, a tiny little town up in the mountains about 50 miles north of Asheville, when a man approached me. “Something went wrong with my car as I was heading down the last set of switchbacks,” he said. “I heard something go whump-whump-whump-whump-WHACK, then saw black pieces trailing away behind me in the rear-view mirror. I asked around, and people said that you and your friend Paul Wegweiser are apparently the people to ask about field fixes.” He apologetically said, “I found you first.”

What he was describing was the textbook symptom of the giubo (pronounced “GWEE-bo”) going bad. It’s the rubber donut connecting the transmission output flange to the driveshaft input flange, a common wear-and-tear part on vintage BMWs. I lay down next to his car on the grassy field where 600 vintage BMWs had assembled in Hot Springs, stretched my arm up as far as it would go, and laid my fingers on the giubo. Sure enough, I could feel that there was a piece missing.

I had a spare giubo with me, and told the gentleman that I’d replace his if he found a shady place with a cement floor—that is, for safety reasons, I wasn’t going to jack up the car and crawl under it on grass or dirt. Plus, it was beastly hot out, and a car can easily tip off jacks and stands if they sink into asphalt. At the end of the day, he circled back with me and said that he found a local Porsche guy who lived less than a mile away and said he had a small barn with a cement floor we could work in. So we babied his car over to the Porsche guy’s barn and I began to have at it.

Replacing a giubo isn’t terribly difficult, but the eight nuts holding the bolts to the two flanges are 17mm nylocs, so once they’re loosened, they don’t just spin off; you have to keep wrenching down the entire extent of the threads. That, combined with the need to raise the rear wheels to turn the giubo to access the bolts at the top, the need to rotate the nuts and bolts only on the metal flange and not against the rubber (which means using a wrench and not a ratchet), and the heat in the garage, made it slow going. From wheels-up to wheels-down and done, it was a couple of hot sweaty hours. But I got it done.

The owner was extremely grateful. He tried to pay both me and the guy whose barn we were in. But then the barn owner—a man of few words—said something to the guy. It was terse, direct, and beautiful:

“It’s called ‘pay it forward.’ This is how it’s done. Next time, you help somebody.”

The car owner nodded and put away his wallet. We all shook hands, knowing we’d left this world a slightly better place.

Of course, just because I fix cars doesn’t mean that I’m always on the giving end of “pay it forward.” While driving home with friends from The Vintage the previous year in my 1979 BMW 635CSi, I heard some alarming noise from under the hood, stopped, and found that the cooling fan had shed one of its blades.

I made some phone calls to try and find another fan. Unfortunately, although the car’s M30 inline six-cylinder engine was used in BMWs from 1968 through 1995, there were three different configurations of water pumps, fan clutches, pulleys, and fans, and only the most recent configuration is readily available. So, to fix mine in a timely fashion, I needed to replace not just the fan but everything it attached to. (It’s not as if I had those parts with me either.)

Fortunately, my friend Luther contacted me saying that he was about a hundred miles north of my current location and had all the parts needed for the conversion. With one of the fan blades missing, the fan felt badly unbalanced, and I worried that it could self-destruct and pierce the radiator, so I removed the fan entirely. As long as I was driving on the highway at speed, there would be plenty of airflow, but if I got caught in traffic, I risked overheating the engine and cracking the head. I did a quick hack with the electric condenser fan (the one in front of the radiator for the air conditioning) to allow me to run it without the A/C on to provide some additional air flow to the radiator, but when I tested it while parked, the temperature rose alarmingly. Still, I didn’t have much choice, so I went for it. Fortunately I hit almost no traffic.

When I arrived at Luther’s, he had all the parts laid out for me. More than that, he noticed something I’d missed—my coolant expansion tank was cracked. Amazingly, he had a spare one of those as well.

A few hours of work later, I was on my way with a rebuilt cooling system. I remind all my road trip companions of this whenever we travel—that I am as likely to be the beneficiary of pay-it-forward as the provider.

But really, those two pay-it-forward examples are just the pre-amble. Without them, you’d think I’m trying to write a column merely by printing someone else’s email (below). Here’s the real story …

In early March, I received the kind of email that makes you glad you’ve lived your life a certain way. It is reproduced verbatim below.

***

Hi, Rob. I don’t expect you to remember me, but you saved my butt on the side of the road near BC [Boston College] about 35 years ago.

I was driving my ’76 2002 outside of Cleveland Circle when the engine cut out. I pulled over, opened my hood and started trying to diagnose the issue. I realized fairly quickly that this was not likely to be a “side of the road” kind of repair, and I began to wonder what to do next. I was a broke college student before cell phone ubiquity, so simply calling AAA and waiting for a tow was not an option.

You pulled over a few minutes into my pondering. You got out of your Bavaria, approached me and asked what was going on. I described the symptoms and what I had tried so far. You took a look, had me crank the engine, and almost immediately said I needed a fuel pump. It was near dusk on a weekend, so finding a fuel pump for a ’76 2002 would be really challenging, aside from the fact that I was dead on the side of the road.

Amazingly, you said you actually had a spare fuel pump at your place and offered to swap that one in. You drove me to your home (I believe in Allston/Brighton), got the pump and some tools, and we drove back to my stranded car. You then helped me remove the faulty one and install the replacement. With a quick turn of the oblong key, my car came back to life.

I thanked you up and down and asked what I could do to repay you. You wrote your address on a piece of paper, and said if I could replace your spare fuel pump, we’d be square.

A few days later, I got a new fuel pump and planned to drop that off the following weekend. Then I couldn’t find the piece of paper with your address. I kept the fuel pump in my trunk, and whenever I was in the Allston/Brighton area I’d try to replay the drive to your house in my memory to try and find it. Never found it.

Fast forward all these years and I was looking for an independent BMW shop for repairs to my 2012 X3. Yes, I’ve been a BMW owner consistently since 1985. I went to the BMW CCA website—which I haven’t been to in years—hoping to find a recommendation. In my browsing, I found a post you wrote and immediately recognized your name and photo after all these years. A quick additional search brought me to your website.

So, first of all, thank you for your kindness to a stranded college kid a long time ago. There are many people I’ve helped on the side of the road in the years since, and your example factored into many of these interactions.

Regrettably, my ’76 2002 is long gone, along with the fuel pump still in the trunk. I’d be glad to send you another one if you still want, and most of all I wanted to again thank you for a random act of kindness many years ago. Your act may have had a small impact in the universe, but the ripples remain to this day.

All the best,

Dave Mahoney

No, I did not ask Mr. Mahoney to send me a fuel pump. I rather love the idea that the one that he bought to give to me, and put in the trunk of his now-departed 2002, is still running around in the world, waiting to help someone else.

Oars in the water. Pay it forward. Keep our corner of the world spinning.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

The post This is the best pay-it-forward story ever appeared first on Hagerty Media.

If you’re like me (and I think we’ve firmly established that you are), your house is full of an odd assortment of stuff. Some of it is precious. Some of it is junk. Most of it is somewhere in between. But much of it consists of objects that are touchstones, things imbued with stories and meaning. This is the story of a rather unlikely one.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about helping my 95-year-old neighbor Jeanette with the perpetually-draining battery in her 2014 Honda Accord. That’s actually the iceberg’s tip of a longer story. Or I should say, the story of an iceberg that thawed.

When my wife Maire Anne and I moved here to Newton 31 years ago, we were the first new blood in a neighborhood of people who had lived here their entire life. We bought our house from the son of its original owner. The house on our right had both the same floor plan and pattern of ownership—the elderly original owner still lived in the house with her daughter Jeanette and Jeanette’s husband, Hank.

Hank and Jeanette seemed to be a nice retired couple. So I was surprised when Hank jovially stated, “Some of the neighbors call me Hank the crank.”

It didn’t take long, though, before I found out why.

It’s hard to say exactly what set Hank off. It may have been that, shortly after moving in, I drove my lightly-used Vanagon Westfalia camper all the way down my driveway and into my backyard, as I had nowhere else to park it. It may have been that I transgressed an unwritten law about not parking in front of his house even for short periods; I soon learned that he had absolutely zero tolerance for leakage of fluids of any kind in what he considered his part of the street. Some of it may simply have been generational—me the 32-year-old software engineer with the flashy red BMW 1973 3.0CSi and him with land yacht of a 1992 Lincoln Town Car (hey, maybe he needed dibs on the space in front of his house to be able to turn that barge around). Or it may have been the sheer volume of cars that came and went. Or the fact that, since my single-car garage held the 3.0CSi, I was always wrenching in the driveway.

Whatever the reasons, things deteriorated, and quickly. He accused me of running an unlicensed repair shop and a used car dealership, neither of which was true. He took to watching my comings and goings, paying careful attention to the dates on my cars’ registration and inspection stickers and calling the police on me if I mistakenly drove a car with expired tags after a winter sit. He became aggressive and hostile, calling me “college boy” and swearing at me in front of my children.

The low point came in 2004 when I wanted to build a new garage. The original corrugated metal single-car structure was one foot from the property line, and the town’s zoning requirements required any new construction to have a four-foot setback. My little 6600-square-foot piece of suburban paradise didn’t have enough room, so I applied for a variance, not understanding that Hank knew people on the commission and had poisoned the atmosphere against me.

When the hearing was held, despite my having hired an architect to develop and present plans for a beautiful new stand-alone garage in harmony with the lines of the house, something that would’ve looked worlds better than the rusting, leaning, paint-flaking World War II-era excuse for a garage, the fix was already in, and I received a rubber-stamp denial. The head of the commission solemnly intoned, “No one needs a garage, and certainly no one needs a three-car garage.” Hank stood in the back of the room, arms folded, smiling. I was gut-punched. What could this guy who drove a Lincoln—the poster-child for floaty “same-day steering”—know of my passion for cars?

I regrouped with my close friend and contractor Alex. We managed to design a garage that, rather than being standalone, was attached to the back of the house, thereby avoiding the capricious variance-for-the-setback issue. As long as we were within the letter of the law, there was nothing Hank could do. But when Alex came by with a small backhoe to dig the foundation, he nicked a section of the fence that Hank had put up, knocking it over. Hank ran out of the house, red-faced and screaming. I thought he was going to have an aneurysm. Alex repaired the damage, but Hank was so furious at not being able to stop my garage construction that we didn’t swap a word with him or Jeanette for nearly 10 years.

But time softens most wounds. As Hank aged, things got harder for him. During the winter, I began to snowblow Hank and Jeanette’s sidewalk and driveway. The first time I did it, Hank opened the front door and yelled, “Robby!” I thought, what, he’s going to chew me out for this? But to my surprise, he thanked me profusely. I kept doing it, and the relationship thawed. That spring, when I took my first drive in my flashy red 3.0CSi, Hank, rather than scrutinizing the dates on the tags, commented on what a beautiful car it was.

When Hank and Jeanette bought their Accord in 2014 (the car whose battery I wrote about replacing), they showed it off to me, seeming to want my approval. I nodded and said, “Yup, Honda builds a great product. You can’t really go wrong with an Accord.”

Then I wondered, “Did you trade in the Lincoln?” I asked. “No,” Hank said, “it’s in the garage.” (Their house still has the corrugated metal structure similar to the one I had torn down).

Then Hank said something startling. “You know, we’ve been thinking … maybe it’s time we built a two-car garage. The guy who did yours seemed nice. What was his name? Alex?” I had to stifle laughter at the irony.

The following fall, I realized that I hadn’t seen Hank for a bit, and asked Jeanette what was up. “Oh, you didn’t know about the accident?” She said that Hank had become increasingly frail and had signs of the onset of Alzheimer’s. He wanted to take a Sunday drive in the Lincoln, but neither she nor her brother thought that was good idea. After a discussion, Hank agreed to let her brother drive. As they were pulling onto the highway, the Lincoln got sideswiped by a tractor-trailer, spun around, and was hit on the other side as well. All occupants were shaken but OK. But the Lincoln was totaled.

The heartbreaking part was that, as Hank’s dementia advanced and he went into memory care housing, he kept asking about the Lincoln, not accepting that it was gone, and wanting to see it and drive it again.

“Gosh, he loved that car,” Jeanette told me. “It only had 20,000 miles on it. People kept asking him if he’d sell it.”

Suddenly it all came into focus. Hank probably bought the car the year we moved into the house. It had vanity plates on it with his initials and birthdate. The guy that I was at war with for nearly 25 years was, in his own way, a car guy. How could I possibly have missed this?

I never saw Hank again—he passed in 2015—but I took solace in imagining that, somewhere along Alzheimer’s winding paths, he would reunite with his beloved Lincoln.

Jeanette and I have never spoken about my adversarial relationship with Hank. And why would we? It’s all water under the bridge and has no effect on whether or not I would help a 95-year-old neighbor. But I was surprised, and touched, when she knocked on my door, and I opened it to find her holding something.

“Robby,” she said, “I found this in the basement. It’s the cover to Hank’s Lincoln. Do you want it?”

Despite my not owning anything it would fit without leaving two feet of fabric fore and aft, I said, with the utmost sincerity, “It would be my honor.”

So there, on a shelf in my basement, it sits. The cover to Hank’s beloved Lincoln. As I’m now the age I was when I met “Hank the crank” and settling into the “get off my lawn” phase of my life, it’s a gentle reminder to be kind, even to people you don’t like. Even to people who weren’t kind to you for decades.

Plus, if I ever jump outside my 1970s BMW comfort zone and buy some 18-foot American luxo-barge, I’ve got it covered.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

The post The poignant tale of Hank’s Lincoln appeared first on Hagerty Media.

One of my basic automotive tenets is that none of my 13 vehicles ever gets everything it needs. Choices must be made. This manifests itself in many ways. My Winnebago Rialta, for example, is missing the spare tire hatch and the rear bumper corner pieces, as both are no longer made and thus are very expensive when they show up used on eBay. Since the entire vibe of my particular Rialta is a bit on the well-used side, these blemishes don’t really jump out.

My Boston Green 1999 BMW Z3 roadster is similar. When I bought it in 2013, it was pretty run down. The previous owner loved the car, but a divorce, a move, and other demands on her time had relegated it to sitting outside for almost a year. When I first saw the car, it presented itself with flat tires, a dead battery, and a substantial interior coating of mildew. I jump started it and filled the tires, but nearly every dashboard indicator light was on, and after a short drive, it died completely. This isn’t unusual. Alternators aren’t designed to recharge completely flatlined batteries, and modern control-module-laden cars often don’t respond well when you simply jump start a doornail-dead battery and drive, as the control modules don’t see the right voltage levels—you often need to remove the dead battery and replace it with one that’s fully charged.

But I took the chance and bought it. Subsequent searches on Craigslist, eBay, and copart.com confirmed the three grand I paid made it the least-expensive, running, non-salvage six-cylinder Z3 in the country at the time.

Massachusetts inspection law requires all of the emissions and safety-related dashboard lights to be extinguished, but it didn’t really take that much to revive the car and achieve inspectability. The Check Engine Light (CEL) was on due to a minor evaporative leak from a deteriorated vacuum hose. The lights for the ABS and traction control were lit due to cracked solder joints in the control module for the ABS pump. A Supplemental Restraint System (SRS) light was on due to a dirty connector on one of the seatbelt tensioners. And, of course, that fresh battery. I gave the car a good cleaning and began driving it.

I quickly developed a lot of affection for the little car. Convertibles of any stripe, and little snappy-handling roadsters in particular, are wonderful vehicles. Drop the top, and it’s the automotive equivalent of forest bathing. Although the Z3 wasn’t specifically designed and marketed as any kind of a women’s niche vehicle, there’s something about its shape that seems to trigger the “it’s so cute” response. My wife, my sister, and their friends all loved it. We took to calling it “Zelda, the therapy car.”

But you can’t hold onto everything forever. As the number of cars I owned climbed, I had nowhere to store Zelda, so in 2018, rather than leave it sitting outside over the winter, I sold it to my friend and neighbor Kim. Although I don’t work on cars for other people, I did work on Zelda, as it lived right around the corner, Kim is a dear friend, and that way I still got to drive it.

In the fall of 2020, Kim reported that Zelda’s clutch began making a lot of noise. I found that the noise was happening while the clutch was depressed, so it was obvious that the throwout bearing was going bad. It was certainly bound to get worse, but my advice was to maximize the top-down use of the car during the fall foliage months, and then we’d figure out what to do about it. However, I had little desire to do the work for her, as replacing the throwout bearing requires pulling the transmission. I’d done that job on my Z3 M Coupe (a.k.a. “the clownshoe”) years back, and the combination of a big engine and transmission in a tiny little car made for some very challenging bell housing bolt access.

The issue of the throwout bearing, however, got short-circuited, because one night while Kim’s son was using the car, in an inattentive moment likely fueled by youthful indiscretion, he ran Zelda into the curb surrounding a median strip. The impact pushed the front suspension back several inches, shattered the front bumper cover (what you’d normally call the front air dam; we’ll get to that below), the plastic inner fender liners and other low-hanging components like the A/C compressor bracket and idler pulley assembly, dented all four wheels, and blew the air bag.

Miraculously, though, the sheet metal was almost completely spared—the only metal damage was a small section of the rear corner of the right front fender being folded in by the pushed-back front wheel. But even still, the car would’ve certainly been totaled by the insurance company. That, combined with the need for a throwout bearing, drove its value through the floor. Kim and I talked, and came up with a number acceptable to the both of us for me to buy it back. The idea of both the car and “The Cult of Zelda” continuing to exist gave us both joy.

Over the winter of 2020–21, Zelda occupied the prime spot in my garage—the one on my mid-rise lift—as I replaced the bent lower control arms and other damaged steering and front suspension components as well as yanked the transmission to replace the bad throwout bearing (and other clutch components while I was in the neighborhood). By the spring of 2021, the car was back on its feet, continuing to provide the rolling Xanax experience in which a roadster excels.

There was still, however, the matter of the front bumper cover. And it looked like hell. In addition to being cracked in several places from the curb strike and held together via my application of Gorilla Glue and packing tape, it looked as if it had suffered prior damage, someone had patched it up with body filler and resprayed it, and the curb strike incident had caused much of that to flake off. Zelda is far from a mint car—she has scratches and a few little dents in the body panels—but unlike the missing corner pieces on my Rialta, Zelda’s beat-up front bumper cover was a wart that really stood out.

I should explain the “bumper cover” thing. When a front aerodynamic aid is a factory or aftermarket option that sits below the bumper, it’s called a spoiler or an air dam. However, when it’s an integral part of the nose of the car and sits in front of the actual metal bumper, it’s called a front bumper cover. Whether that makes it harder or easier to replace depends on the car. On a Z3, it’s actually pretty easy.

But that doesn’t mean it’s cheap. The dealer list price on a new OEM Z3 front bumper cover is $804, with discounted list about $675. Plus, since it wraps around the front of the car, it’s big, so unless you order it at a local dealer and pick it up, shipping can be a killer. In the photo below, you can see how the Z3’s front fender is a very small body panel, existing only behind the tire. The top line of the wheel arch is formed by the hood. The front section is actually the side of the plastic front bumper cover, dislodged here in this photo. This explains why, on such a little car, the bumper cover is so big.

Aftermarket front bumper covers on eBay and Amazon are much less expensive than OE, dipping down as low as about $275 shipped. Plus, of course, you need to paint the replacement cover to match your car. Aftermarket spray cans of BMW Boston Green metallic paint are as low as $35 online, but with two cans of primer and two cans of paint, it adds up. And shooting something like this myself isn’t really something I do. Good paint work requires preparation, and I neither have the space nor the patience. If you know someone with a body shop who can do you a solid, maybe you can get a bumper cover shot for a hundred bucks. Otherwise, it’s likely two or three times that, if you can even find a body shop that’ll shoot it (most will want to do the entire insurance-billed repair).

Oh, and I also needed the two inner fender liners. The dealer list on these is $267 per side, but they’re available in the aftermarket for as low as about $100 a pair.

So I hoped for the “in a perfect world you can thread the needle” solution—that is, I kept my eyes open for a used front bumper cover from a Boston Green Z3 that was close enough that I could spare the shipping and pick it up myself. After all, I threaded that needle two years back when I was fixing the mouse-infested truck, needed a headliner specific to the 2008 3500HD Silverado extended cab (no sunroof, no entertainment system, no rear climate control) and found the correct headliner—a prohibitively-expensive item to ship—just 70 miles away down in Rhode Island.

Unfortunately, although there are plenty of used OEM Z3 front bumper covers on eBay and car-part.com (their cost, shipped, seems to start at around $400 for something lightly scuffed), I never found a Boston Green one that was well-priced enough for me to buy it or close enough for me to pick up.

So in the spring of 2021, I did what I so often do—I opted for the cheapest possible solution. When I found a front bumper cover on Amazon on close-out for $180 shipped, I pulled the trigger, figuring I’d rattle-can it and call it done. While I wondered how the cost could be that low (when, on eBay and car-part, vendors wanted $200 just for the shipping), I chalked it up to the odd economics of Chinese-produced parts and Amazon vendors.

When the bumper cover arrived, I thought there must be some mistake, as it was in a box far too small to possibly contain it. When I opened the box, I was further mystified, as there was a bag inside with strapping material around it. I opened the bag to find an aftermarket bumper cover that was so flimsy, it was literally folded in thirds for shipping. I returned it.

My next attempt at cheaping out was when a friend of mine in Virginia offered me the front bumper cover from a purple Z3 he’d parted out. When I realized that I could pick it up on the way home from attending the event “The Vintage” in Asheville, North Carolina, it seemed the obvious solution. Unfortunately, when I got it home and looked at it closely, I realized that it was from a four-cylinder Z3 and thus had a smaller grille opening than mine. While it would fit, it was the wrong part for the car. Had it been Boston Green, I probably would’ve installed it anyway, but the idea of having to do work—or to pay someone to do work—to paint the wrong part stopped me.

And so Zelda continued to run around carrying the black eye from the curb strike incident.

Then, right before Christmas, I found the orange spectrum Recaro office chair down in southern Connecticut. To make the trip more worthwhile, I searched Facebook Marketplace for other things along the driving route that I might need, and to my delight I found a guy in Springfield, Massachusetts, parting out a Boston Green Z3. Unfortunately, the photo he sent me of the front bumper cover showed two splits on the lower section, but this was the only cover I’d found within easy driving distance. Plus, he also had the two fender liners, and was willing to take a hundred bucks for all of it. It was hard to see how I could go wrong. So I snagged it.

I planned to pull Zelda back in the garage and give her back the prime spot on the mid-rise lift, but for various reasons the cars in there needed to stay where they were. It had been a fairly mild winter here in Boston, so I wondered if I could attack the front bumper cover in the driveway. I carefully jacked up the car, put a pair of metal plates on the asphalt, jackstands on the plates, and Zelda on the stands.

It turns out that there are just two T50 Torx bolts holding the bumper and cover assembly to the body; any other small fasteners securing the corners of the bumper cover to the inner fender liners had been torn away by the curb strike. So when I undid the two Torx bolts and tugged on the bumper cover, it and the bumper came out so easily that I was lucky it didn’t rip the wires connecting the fog lights and the corner markers (I should’ve removed their connectors first).

With the bumper cover removed, you can see how the actual aluminum bumper is inside it, secured by 16 reusable plastic rivets. There’s also the front grille at the bottom, and the fog lights and corner marker lights. All these needed to be transferred over to the new cover.

The replacement fender liners needed to be installed as well. I normally have no qualms about not cleaning parts I’ll never see, but the liners were literally coated on both sides with road salt, so I gave them a cleaning before installing them.

Things ground to a halt when I went to transfer over the fog lights. They’re held in place by fasteners through holes in tabs. I’d forgotten that both of the tabs on the passenger-side light had broken in the impact (you can see it dangling in the photo near the beginning of this piece). One of the tabs on the left light was broken as well. I epoxied them back in place as best I could and installed them.

By this time, winter weather had moved back into Boston, and the car was under a cover under snow. I really didn’t want the bumper cover occupying prime real estate in the garage, so I peeled up the car’s cover just enough to expose the nose, and slid the bumper cover into place. I thought about skooching under the car and installing the Torx bolts holding the bumper to the body, but this way, when the weather warms back up, I can pull the cover back off (or at least out) so I can refinish the hazed plastic headlight covers without scratching the paint. Until it’s bolted in place, I’ll need to remember not to slam on the brakes.

You may shake your head that I intentionally went to the effort to procure and install another damaged front bumper cover. I look at it differently. The $100 that I paid bought not just the only Boston Green front bumper cover within driving distance, but also the two inner fender liners that I needed to buy anyway (and OEM ones at that), so the bumper cover itself was essentially free. I now know that replacing it is trivial. If I find an uncracked correctly-colored one nearby for a good price, I’ll buy it. In the meantime, I haven’t lost anything, and I’ve gained a front bumper cover that comes close to making the car look whole again for hundreds of dollars less than any other path.

And, come spring, Zelda can hold her head up and not look she’s hiding a black eye.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters. 

The post The Z3’s long-delayed bumper cover replacement appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Today we’re going to talk about the numbers-matching engine. No, not the one that’s already sitting in a valuable restored or survivor car. I’m talking about the one that was long-ago removed from the car and has been kicking around the property ever since like a houseguest who doesn’t know when to leave. Or like a ghost from The Sixth Sense—someone who doesn’t realize that he’s dead.

Back in the fall, I wrote about “the mitzvah 2002tii,” the 1972 BMW I helped a local woman sell on Bring a Trailer after her husband had passed. The car was very pretty and nearly rust-free but had a number of issues that prevented it from coming anywhere close to the six-figure sales prices that best-of-the-best tiis have attained on BaT. At the top of this list: an engine compartment that showed clear signs of metal rework and an undercarriage that, despite having no rust holes, very much wore the car’s 203,000 New England miles on its sleeve.

In addition to those things, the car’s engine had been replaced in 1985. The original (and seized) numbers-matching engine was sitting in the seller’s garage. In the BaT auction, I stated that the numbers-matching engine was included with the sale and that I could assist with the logistics of shipping it (e.g., procure a pallet and strap it to it), but the cost of shipping would need to be borne by the buyer.

During the auction, I was contacted by a local Porsche guy in Vermont. When he called, his very first question was about the original engine—whether I knew if it failed catastrophically or had seized from sitting and what my experience rebuilding seized BMW M10 engines was. I kind of bit his head off, launching into a somewhat strident lecture about how if that’s the first thing he’s asking about the car, he’s clearly the wrong buyer, and that there was little reason for us to waste each other’s time. To his credit, he then calmly lectured me about how, with an appreciating car like a 2002tii, what may not be important today will likely be important in the future. While I nodded at his perspective, I still felt that elevating the tii’s 38-year-sitting engine above the actually-running car was the seized tail wagging the very-much-still-alive dog.

When the car sold on BaT, the buyer was a fellow in Los Angeles who was not long on detailed communication. It took a couple of emails before I got what I considered a clear unequivocal statement that he did not want the original numbers-matching engine. A few friends of mine were horrified at this. One of them—a pro who wrenches at a shop in San Francisco—commented with a great deal of passion, “The era has passed where one can knowingly let a numbers-matching engine slip away. There are others that are going through hoops to reunite their tiis with their numbers-matching engines. One good friend just drove his halfway across the country to have its original engine reinstated and will happily drive it back in a couple of weeks. We who are true enthusiasts do not understand why a person of means would not at least obtain, for only the cost of shipping, this car’s original numbers-matching engine to keep with it and pass on to the next owner. A significant part of the value in this tii is the knowledge that the original engine is still with the car. Even if in need of rebuilding and not currently installed, there is value left on the table if you don’t do the reasonable thing and keep the engine with the car.”

Personally, I don’t regard this as a moral issue. I asked the buyer if he wanted the engine. He said no. All it meant to me was that I felt that, as my last act helping the seller, it was my responsibility to get the seized lump out of her garage. It was her husband’s car. He was gone. The car was gone. There was no reason for this rusty greasy ghost to continue haunting her garage, but it’s understandable why it was: Engines are heavy. It’s work to move them. I offered it for free on a Facebook page for 2002 owners in the Northeast. There were no takers.

But really, the reason that getting rid of her late husband’s late engine hasn’t risen to the top of my to-do list is that I have the same issue myself: The original engine to my 1973 BMW 3.0CSi has been sitting in the garage at what was my mother’s house in Brighton, Massachusetts, since 1989, and the time has come for me to deal with it.

As I wrote last week, I’ve owned my E9 3.0CSi coupe since 1986. When I bought the car, it had been cracked in the front and needed a nose and fenders and had dents in nearly every body panel, but it was inexpensive and remarkably rust-free. In addition, the fact that it was a CSi carried a certain cache. While the U.S. market received the carbureted 180-horsepower 3.0CS, in Europe you could buy the electronically-injected 3.0CSi which was rated for 200 hp. Some CSis reached our shores through what was then called the “grey market,” but for reasons unknown, mine had never been federalized—its speedometer is still calibrated in kilometers per hour, and thankfully it’s still missing the silly little corner marker lights that were slapped on Federal-spec 3.0CS coupes.

A previous owner had already replaced my car’s original Bosch D-Jetronic injection with a pair of Weber carbs. As it happened, this was the first of many departures from originality, a trend that only accelerated during my stewardship. As I detailed last week, when I had the outer body restoration done on the car in 1988, I not only color-changed it, I selected a color outside BMW’s color palette (Signal Red, used on a number of 1980s Mercedes models). Then I found another E9 that had a tan leather interior, re-dyed it a lighter shade of beige, and swapped interiors.

Then I happened into an engine from a 1984 533i. To be clear, this is merely a newer version of the same straight-six engine that was originally in the car (BMW used this M30 engine from 1968 through 1995), so it’s not like I was LS-swapping the car or anything. The original numbers-matching engine made the 40-foot trip from the side of the curb on the street in front of my mother’s house, where the swap was performed in back of my mother’s garage. Although my wife and I moved out of the house in 1992 and I cleaned most of my stash of parts out in 2016, the engine is still there. And like the mitzvah tii’s engine, why wouldn’t it be? These things don’t evaporate. And unlike body panels, they rust very very slowly.

These days, if a removed engine is valuable, either because the engine itself is rare or because its numbers-matching nature makes it so, people talk about “pickling” it. This means filling the cylinders with something like Marvel Mystery Oil, sealing up any port where dirt or humidity can get in, and, if possible, crating the thing, which not only protects it but also gives it the appropriate Raiders of the Lost Ark valuable artifact vibe. In addition, if you’re actively caring for the pickled engine, you rotate it regularly. Like a car undergoing a rotisserie restoration. Or compost.

I, of course, did no “pickling” or other vegetable-inspired preservation with the E9’s original engine. I treated it more like lutefisk. Worse, after shoving the thing into the back of the garage, I stole its valve cover—it turned out that I needed it to backdate something in the replacement engine. I would’ve sworn that I’d put the 533i engine’s valve cover on the original engine to keep the dirt out, but on recent examination, it wasn’t there. So in addition to sitting for 34 years “unpickled,” the valve train was yawning open to contamination. OK, so not lutefisk—more like roadkill.

Despite my neglect, the E9’s original engine survived to the present because it cost me zero in time, space, effort, and money to let it sit where it came to rest 34 years ago. But there’s a new variable at play. When my mother passed in 2019, my sister and I inherited the house. We are embarking on some long-needed improvements to the property, including dealing with the 40-year accumulation of stuff. This includes cleaning the two-car garage I wrenched in from 1984 through 1992, and with that comes confronting the fate of the engine. The M30 straight six probably weighs in at about 350 pounds, so it’s not something you deal with, to make the obvious pun, lightly—you decide where it goes, put it there, and don’t move it again.

But if you’re never going to move it again, aren’t you admitting that you’re never going to use it? And therein lies the rub.

For decades it seemed that the whole numbers-matching engine thing didn’t even apply to my vintage BMW world; it seemed to be a muscle-car-specific thing, crucial to allowing classics like ’63 split-window Corvettes attain their maximum value. In contrast, sales of BMW E9 coupes on Bring a Trailer show that their value doesn’t appear to be hurt by swapping in an entire drivetrain—Motronic-injected 208-hp M30 engine, ECU, wiring harness, sensors, and five-speed—from an early 1990s 535i sedan and getting the benefit of more power, better fuel economy, and improved drivability, provided that the swap is part of a well-executed whole. (I did the light version of that, installing L-Jetronic injection, which is less invasive.)

I often think about selling points like the numbers-matching engine from an “all things being equal” standpoint. That is, if you had two cars for sale, identical in every way except that one has the original numbers-matching engine and the other doesn’t, isn’t the former worth more than the latter? Sure, probably, but the point is that you almost never have that situation. Cars are more complicated than that, “worth” is what something sells for, and that can be a function of who’s bidding that particular day. All this crowing about numbers-matching engines strikes me like people who watch gymnastics and shriek from their armchair that, after the gymnast has flown through the air and done impossible twists and turns, they didn’t “stick the landing.” That is, yes, it may lower the score, but the performance may still have been remarkable, and if it’s the only thing someone points out, the criticism may be more a reflection on them than on the performance.

But the Porsche guy in Vermont had a point: With increasing values come new parameters. I may not regard the original numbers-matching engine with any sense of awe, wonder, and reverence, but someone else up the road might.

And yet, when my car has already been color-changed inside and out, when the details would be nitpicked to death because I’m the one who did the work, and I’m, well, The Hack Mechanic and not The Anal-Retentive Mechanic—and, more to the point, when I adore the car and plan to keep it until I die anyway—is there really a universe in which the original numbers-matching engine stands a realistic chance of being reinstalled?

Even looking beyond what happens when I shuffle off my mortal ignition coil, is any potential owner who wants a bone-stock E9 coupe likely to buy this car and set about returning it to originality? Seriously, is someone really going to sand off the gorgeous Signal Red paint and respray the car in the original Polaris (silver), pull the beige leather interior out and hunt down one in the original Navy velour, remove the retrofitted air conditioning, backdate the desirable five-speed gearbox with an original four-speed, yank the updated M30 engine and L-Jetronic injection and replace it with the numbers-matching engine fed by an obsolete and finicky D-Jetronic injection system whose main claim to fame was that it was shielded so badly that it was known to malfunction when nearby truckers with high-wattage CBs did the “breaker breaker” thing?

I don’t think so.

So, shouldn’t I just get rid of the tired, old, numbers-matching mill? Say a prayer for it, thank it for its service, and drop it off at the scrap metal dealer?

Yes.

And yet … would you?

The mechanics of moving the engine aren’t that bad. At first I thought I’d need to disassemble my engine hoist, load it in the truck, and bring it back to the scene of the crime (it’s actually the same hoist I used to pull the engine in 1989), but I can rent a U-Haul trailer and drag the engine onto it with my Warn PullzAll (120V portable electric winch). The bigger problem is that I really have no room for it here at the house in Newton. My garage here is full to bursting. Even the junk area under my back porch is packed with the engine hoist, transmission jack, half a dozen transmissions, the lawnmower, snowblower, power washer, and generator, and a spare engine for a 2002tii (long story). If the engine came here, it would have to sit outside at the end of the driveway, past the off-the-road-for-the-winter Winnebago Rialta, which is where parts go to die. Why do that? Why not just cut the cord now?

I did a thought experiment regarding dismantling it, but engines are like miniature parts cars—take them apart and their volume explodes. Plus, the irony is that, from a utility standpoint, the part that’s the most useful is the head (M30 engines can easily crack their long straight aluminum head if they’re overheated, and I own two other M30-powered cars). Of course, the part I could care less about—the block—is the thing that’s actually stamped with the VIN-matching number. So, what, I should take it apart and save everything except the block? That doesn’t make any sense either.

Then two things occurred to me. First, I don’t in fact know that it’s the original numbers-matching engine. It makes sense that it is, but I don’t think I ever checked. Second, it’s probably seized from its 34-year-long sit. I realized that if it fails either of those tests, I’d have zero qualms about dragging its long-dormant butt directly to the Newton recycling depot.

So, armed with a roll of paper towels, a can of brake cleaner, a 36mm socket, and a breaker bar, I drove over to the garage in Brighton to examine the engine. I wasn’t surprised when it passed the numbers-matching test—it bore the same 2264290 VIN as the car.

But with the engine sitting for decades unpickled, unsealed, no oil in the cylinders, no annual rotations, and with the valve train uncovered, surely the engine must be seized, right? To my stunned surprise, when I put the socket on the crankshaft nut and leaned on the breaker bar, the engine said, “No, I’m not seized,” then did its best Leslie Neilson impression and said, “And don’t call me Shirley.”

My reaction was sharp: “Damn it!” I said out loud to no one but myself.

So, now I feel honor-bound to keep the damned thing.

Sigh.

What to do with this numbers-matching albatross all comes down to answering this question: To what extent should I feel beholden to a hypothetical decision a hypothetical future owner of the car may want to have the option of making (if you’re counting, that’s four conditionals), when that makes me responsible for keeping a 350-pound block of metal around (and not just “around”—sheltered) until I die?

Maybe a removed numbers-matching engine is a ghost, and not just one that thinks it’s still alive, but one that thinks it has a shot, even a narrow one, at re-inhabiting its original body. But maybe it’s more than that. Maybe, like Bruce Willis’ character in The Sixth Sense, it thinks there’s something it still needs to do in this world. Who am I to tell it otherwise?

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post The Ghost in the Garage: The dead numbers-matching engine appeared first on Hagerty Media.

If my Hack Mechanic worldview is about anything, it’s about trying to thread the needle between not craving what you can never have while also being the person with the Cheshire-cat smile while driving the less-than-perfect car you could actually afford. My 37-year-long ownership of my 1973 BMW 3.0CSi is the physical manifestation of all this. Recently, some long-lost photographs of the car came to light that show how, through creativity and dumb luck, I pulled off what on paper is barely possible.

The story begins when my not-yet-wife Maire Anne and I were living in Austin, Texas, in the early 1980s. I’d already gone through half a dozen BMW 2002s, which I was very good at finding by driving around and simply looking down people’s driveways. While doing this, I spied the butt of a car I didn’t know existed—the E9 coupe (the BMW 2800CS/3.0CS/CSi sold from 1968–74). I was transfixed. “Screw 2002s,” my internal car muse said. “I want me one of these.” Unfortunately, due to their classic-even-when-new lines, E9s never really depreciated like 2002s; pretty shiny examples cost 10 grand even 40 years ago.

When we returned to Boston in 1984, I kept looking for an E9 I could afford. Of course, the northern winters made this even harder, as even back then, E9 coupes were legendary rust buckets. The E9’s Karmann-built body seemed to have been pre-rusted at the factory (if you learn only one automotive joke, it should be “Karmann invented rust, then licensed the process to the Italians”), and its construction included a trap under the front fenders where dirt would accumulate, stay wet, and rot out the shock towers, fenders, and firewall from the inside, so by the time you saw the perforations at the bottoms of the fenders, you were faced with nosebleed-level bodywork.

But in the summer of ’86, I read a newspaper ad (remember those?) that said: “1973 BMW 3.0CSi hit front partially repaired no rust many new parts $5200.” In those ancient single-landline-phone days, I wound up talking with the owner’s mother. She said the car hadn’t run in over a year, was under a tarp in her driveway, and was a piece of junk she couldn’t imagine anyone would want. I, of course, was excited beyond words.

When I arrived, I slid off the tarp and found, as Mom had promised, one seriously ugly E9 coupe. Unfortunately, no photos exist of the car in its driveway-find state, but an accident had bashed the nose, creased the fenders and bowed the hood, and a previous owner had applied a balm of aluminum, pop rivets, and bondo. The right fender was particularly cringeworthy, as the crease had been jig-sawed, overlapped, riveted, and filled. In addition, the front windshield was smashed, the rear windshield was missing, the bumpers and trim were off, and the interior was out of the car. Oh, and it was dead. “How much does my son want for this thing?” she asked. She nearly choked when I told her. “If it was up to me,” she said, “you could haul it off for 50 bucks.” This was promising.

The seller, it turned out, worked at a BMW dealership, had been accumulating parts to fix the car, then lost interest. Mom opened the garage and showed me a giant box holding a new rear windshield. There were other boxes with interior parts and much of the trim.

I opened the car’s hood and found that the original Bosch D-Jetronic injection had been removed, but in its place was a set of brand-new Weber 32/36s. Unfortunately, a compression test revealed 80 psi in five cylinders and zero in the sixth. I coaxed it out of its year-long slumber and started it, and it ran just long enough to scatter a family of mice living under the hood while fogging the driveway with a James Bond-level of oil smoke.

So, yeah, the car was a basket case. However, it did appear to be an incredibly solid basket case. I didn’t know then what I know now about how E9 coupes hide their rust, but I couldn’t find a rust hole anywhere on it.

The seller and I were both about to go on vacations. In those hazy pre-Internet days when there weren’t 10,000 eyeballs on a car, you could do that without someone swooping in and stealing your prize. It took about a month for us to get back and the negotiation to play out, but in September 1986, I bought the basket-case Polaris (silver) 3.0CSi with the Navy velour interior for $1700. I had it towed to my mother’s house in Brighton, Massachusetts, where Maire Anne and I were living in the third-floor apartment. When the flatbed disgorged it in front of the garage, even my relentlessly-supportive wife and mother both thought I’d inhaled too much brake cleaner. A guy who lived across the street and was watching laughed and asked rhetorically, “Is that supposed to be worth something?”

I installed the glass and interior and began mechanically sorting out the car. I lucked out on the engine—the lack of compression in one cylinder was due to a valve so badly adjusted that it was remaining open. With use, the stuck rings freed up and the fog-like oil burning ceased. Owning a rust-free E9 for $1700 sounded like I was living the dream, but this particular car was anything but the lust-worthy one I first saw in Austin. Still, I was a man with a vision.

Restoration—whatever the hell that means—is hellishly expensive these days, but it was never cheap. The moment you take a step up from a bottom-dollar Maaco spray job, costs skyrocket. My E9 may have been essentially rust-free, but it still needed a nose and fenders, and it had dents in every body panel. Complicating things was the fact that on nearly every other car, the fenders simply bolt on, but on an E9, they’re lap-seamed at the corners of the front windshield, so the windshield has to come out to replace them, then they have to be carefully cut off.

I decided to break the project into two steps. I bought a new nose and fenders ($1400), then paid a shop to cut the old ones off and weld the new ones on ($2300, which included a new OEM windshield to replace the one that cracked during installation). While the fenders were off, the shop repaired a single quarter-sized rust hole underneath. I then drove the car that way for a year while I saved money to get it painted.

However, as the clock ticked toward 1988 and Maire Anne was pregnant with our first child, the idea of dropping thousands of dollars to get an enthusiast car painted was insane. I marvel that I did it anyway. I found a shop that was active in the local BMW community and whose owner, coincidentally, was redoing an E9. He quoted me $4000 to pull the glass, take the body down to metal, level the panels, and shoot it with seven coats of color and seven coats of clear, all wet-sanded. You can look at the photos below and recoil at the use of body filler, the amount of overspray, and the fact that the engine wasn’t removed when the engine compartment was painted, but please spare me the “do it once, do it right” lecture. Those three things made it affordable—a $4000 paint job and not a $15,000 paint job. Plus, I still didn’t have all the money needed for the paint job, so I took out an unsecured bank loan for $4000. The method to this additional layer of madness was that I expected that Maire Anne and I would be looking for a house in the next few years, and this would help me to build credit.

I was never really bowled over by the car’s Polaris paint, and with the body stripped, I had the opportunity to change it. I saw a new Signal Red Mercedes 560SL and absolutely loved the color, which is a bit richer and deeper than Verona (BMW’s red in the early 1970s). Remember—these cars weren’t worth the six figures they potentially are these days, and people didn’t bat an eyelash about color-changing them with colors outside the manufacturer’s palette. So Signal Red it was.

As the shop began reassembling the car, it was quickly obvious that any old trim was going to stick out like a sore thumb against the new paint, so I ponied up for any chrome and rubber that wasn’t part of the original haul from the previous owner’s garage.

The just-painted car was absolutely stunning. The story I often tell is that, shortly after getting the car back, I was at a stop light in Boston when a guy in a new Porsche Carrera pulled up next to me.

“Gorgeous car!” he said.

“Thanks,” I replied with a smile.

Then the other shoe dropped. Remember that I was 29 years old and looked like a young skinny Jerry Garcia. “How does a guy like you afford a car like that?”

“Drugs,” I said, and drove off.

This was the summer of 1988. New baby and a freshly-painted E9 coupe … I really was living the dream. In terms of the car’s outer-body restoration, that was pretty much it; no other paint or bodywork has been performed since on the car. The total sunk cost at the time came to about $13,700. I rationalized that, since it was about the value of the car, I did pretty well, but against the backdrop of a young family, it was bordering on reckless financial endangerment. In hindsight, it’s astonishing that I pulled it off. In terms of the bulk of spending, that was pretty much it. But in terms of the “rolling restoration,” it was just the beginning. Fortunately, the rest of the work I could do myself.

A few months after the car was painted, I (incredibly) stumbled into another rust-free E9 coupe—a white car with a tan leather interior and working air conditioning. It was so well-priced that I couldn’t not buy it. Due to the working A/C, I thought about keeping it and selling the red one, but instead I swapped interiors and sold the white car for a good profit, so I actually made money on the interior swap. The beige leather against the new red paint made me swoon. I completed the interior with a new rug.

My red/beige E9 was now stunning, but the drivetrain felt tired, and the car was a bit of a rattle bucket. It turned out that the guy who painted it was very talented with a spray gun, but did a poor job reassembling the car. I spent decades tracking down rattles, many of which were due to improperly-attached trim, as well as under-hood and interior components.

In late 1988, I happened into a low-mileage engine from a 1984 BMW 533i for a song, as well as a five-speed gearbox. So I dropped in the replacement drivetrain, laughing at the irony that now I was pulling the engine instead of doing it before the engine compartment was painted.

The decades that followed brought installation of air conditioning, an L-Jetronic fuel injection retrofit, suspension upgrades, and a set of Alpina 16-inch open-lug wheels, but the car didn’t really see much road time. All that changed dramatically in 2010 when I began road-tripping the car to what was then called “Vintage at the Vineyard” in Winston-Salem, later changed to “The Vintage” in Asheville, North Carolina.

But in 2014, during the drive down to The Vintage, I hit 500 miles of drenching unrelenting rain, exposing the car to more moisture than it should receive in an entire lifetime. During the bumper-to-bumper rainy traffic on that same trip, a clevis pin and chain flew off the back of a semi and embedded itself in the E9’s front grille. The combination of these things made me shy about road trips unless I could see a clear end-to-end forecast, which of course you can’t if the trip is more than a few hundred miles. The car saw little road time for the next six years. I eventually relaxed, and last year drove the car back to The Vintage.

There are many angles from which one can analyze my 37-year-ownership experience of the E9. Jay Leno has famously said that he likes to take cars in rough shape and restore them to 100-point cars, then drive them back down to five-point cars before restoring them again. If I had Jay’s money, maybe I’d do that, but especially with today’s restoration costs, that will never be a play I can make. So I’m careful with the car.

The whole originality-and-correctness thing is its own topic. Judging by Hagerty values and the sales on Bring a Trailer, a photo of this car would sway you into thinking it’s a $100,000–$140,000 E9. But if I ever sold it, purists would rip it apart for the color change, the selection of a non-BMW color, the non-numbers-matching engine, and the swapped interior (the seat and door card pleating changed in 1974, so technically it’s wrong for a ’73). I did the engine, fuel injection, and A/C retrofits myself, and while they look OK to me, it’s telling that, 35 years ago, my column was named “The Hack Mechanic” and not “The Anal-Retentive Correct At Any Cost Mechanic,” so there are nits to be picked there.

One could, if one really wanted to, even argue about the use of base-coat/clear-coat paint. There’s an argument that the shine of base coat/clear coat is just a parlor trick, that classic cars that were original shot with single-stage paint should be repainted that way, and that wet-sandedsingle-stage paint produces a depth of finish that base coat/clear coat can’t match.

What I will say is that, when I bring the car to events ranging from informal cars and coffees to BMW gatherings, when the car is in direct sunlight, and the base-coat/clear-coat finish lights up as if it’s illuminated from underneath, no one has ever said, “Gee, it’s really a shame that you changed the color and butchered the car” or “a straight color would be prettier.” Instead, the response is simply “wow.”

Over the years, I’ve become an avid promoter of living with patina as a much easier (and waaaay less expensive) way to go through automotive life. And I’ve become critical of restoration, saying that the term encompasses such a broad range of actions that it’s become almost meaningless. Most people who say, “I’m restoring such and such” either don’t have a clue of how expensive it’s going to be or have way more money than I do (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Restoration is a fool’s game, and that if you want a pretty shiny car you should buy a pretty shiny car instead of trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. The E9 is the only car on which I’ve ever had anything remotely akin to an outer-body restoration done, and it’s difficult for me to imagine ever embarking on another one, as the numbers don’t even come close to adding up.

Having said that, it was possibly the best $13,700 I’ve ever spent. I would never have the life-long relationship I have with the car had I left it Polaris/Navy. I wouldn’t love it the way I do. It would’ve vanished long ago in the tidal churn of cars coming and going. Anyone who says, “Gee, it’s a shame you didn’t do it right” or draws conclusion that “The increased value of the car now would completely outpace what it would’ve cost you in 1988 to do it right then” completely misses the point: That never would have happened. It’s really an automotive miracle that the needle got threaded and I’ve had this gorgeous thing to enjoy for the last 35 years.

I hope you love a car as much as I love this one.

“Is that supposed to be worth something?” More than you can possibly imagine.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post The 37-year-long rolling resto of my BMW 3.0CSi appeared first on Hagerty Media.

My next-door neighbor Jeanette is a 95-year-old woman. She’s healthy, independent, and pretty spry for her age. And she still drives—she uses her 21,000-mile 2012 Honda Accord to go to the grocery store, the hairdresser, and to the nursing home to visit her 102-year-old brother. Unfortunately, this past fall, the car began having a problem where, after not being driven for a few days, she’d come out to drive it and find that the battery was dead.

So-called “parasitic drains”—things that run the battery down while the car is sitting—can be a problem in any car, but they’re typically worse in newer cars. The electrical systems in cars without computers and onboard diagnostics are usually very simple, so unless there’s something like an aftermarket power antenna that’s perpetually trying to go up or down, there’s very little that remains on when the key is out of the ignition. If there is a problem, the time-honored method of dealing with it is to put a multimeter set to measure amperage between the negative battery cable and the negative terminal on the battery, measure the drain, then pull fuses out until it goes away and see what devices are on that fuse. If the devices listed in the owner’s manual for the fuse all appear to be behaving, you may need to unscrew the fuse box and examine the wires being powered by the mystery fuse, as sometimes someone has wired things, shall we say, creatively. But even still, the simplicity inherent in the car’s age makes it a very tractable problem.

However, as cars crossed into the 1990s, parasitic drains became much more difficult to diagnose. They can come from many different things: heated door locks, stuck central locking actuators, alarm systems, control modules that don’t go to sleep because the microswitches on the hood, and doors don’t think they’re closed … on and on.

And finding the cause is far more difficult than on an old car. While a vintage car might have only six or 12 fuses, a modern car typically has dozens, and systems may use more than one fuse. And because you need to get the control modules to go to sleep for the current levels to drop, you have to close the doors, hood, and trunk, or at least simulate their closure by either disconnecting the switches or rolling the latches closed. Then, instead of pulling fuses, you leave them installed and check the voltage drop across the back of each fuse to infer the current passing through it. Then you need to see what systems are on that fuse, but due to the complexity of those systems, you may need to consult a wiring diagram, which on modern cars is far more complicated than the old two-page foldout and instead often takes the form of a current track diagram. Like I said, a pain.

One of the best end-to-end videos I’ve seen of a professional mechanic doing this, where he methodically diagnoses the cause of a drain on a ninth-gen Civic to be a bad door lock actuator, can be seen here:

Watching it is instructive because it shows that, if the cause isn’t something simple like a dome or map light being left on (or the visor light not shutting off when its cover is flipped closed), or something laughable like an aftermarket seat heater being wired in, a comprehensive diagnosis is a beastly amount of work.

For this reason, if the drain is minor (e.g., if it drains the battery in days, not hours), many people simply live with it by either installing a battery cut-off switch or using a battery tender, maintainer, or trickle charger. As for me, I have too many cars to make trickle chargers practical (and besides, five of the cars are stored in a warehouse where there’s not easy access to electricity), so when I have cars sitting in storage for the winter, I simply disconnect the batteries. For cars that are in my driveway and driven only occasionally, I use battery cut-off switches.

Back to Jeanette’s battery-draining problem. It appeared to be getting worse; the car wouldn’t start after it had been sitting for about five days. She’d have AAA jump it. Eventually she took it to the Honda dealer. They tested the car’s two-year-old Honda-branded battery, said there was nothing wrong with it, and told her that she needs to drive the car more frequently and take it for longer drives on the highway. While there’s some truth to that, a) this is a problem that the car didn’t always have, and b) telling a 95-year-old woman who doesn’t drive on the highway that she needs to drive the car on the highway was neither terribly sensitive nor constructive. So, the battery kept running down, and she kept calling AAA. Eventually the problem happened enough that she used up her AAA benefit.

One morning she called me saying she had a hairdresser appointment in 30 minutes and the battery was dead. I checked it and found that it was down to 11.5 volts. I put it on charge and told her that, if necessary, I’d jump the car, but 30 minutes later it started. She asked, “What about if it dies when I want to drive home?” I said, “The hairdresser is two miles away. If that happens, call me and I’ll come and jump it.” (It was fine). I thought about saying, “I’ll just drive you to the hairdresser,” but you don’t mess with someone’s independence.

But the next week, she called me one morning in tears, saying that her brother had fallen in the nursing home, she needed to go see him, the car wouldn’t start, and she didn’t know what to do.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece about why working on other people’s cars is often a bad idea, but if I can’t help my 95-year-old neighbor out with a dead battery, I’m not, well, me. So, into the valley of the parasitic drain rode the man with the white hat.

The approach I use for this is four-fold. First, is there an obvious smoking gun? Second, is the alternator charging the battery? Third, is the battery obviously bad? Fourth, is there a measurable drain that’s above an acceptable limit?

I put a jump-pack on the battery and examined the car. I found no parking or interior lights on, and there was nothing plugged into the cigarette lighter socket (they’re not on without the key turned anyway; more on that in a moment). OK, so no smoking gun.

I jump-started the car and tested the voltage at the battery with a multimeter set to measure voltage. It read 14.3 volts, indicating that the alternator and its internal regulator were correctly charging the battery. This verified that whatever was going on wasn’t due to the alternator not charging the battery, as was the case recently with both my 2003 BMW 530i and my 1996 Winnebago Rialta.

Next, I tested the battery. I have a nifty little Cen-Tech digital battery analyzer I bought from Harbor Freight about eight years ago. There are now many similar products available on Amazon for as low as $30. These are referred to as “battery testers” or “load-testers,” but they don’t actually put a big load on the battery like an old-school carbon pile tester. Instead, they infer battery condition by conducting what’s essentially a resistance measurement across the terminals. On the Cen-Tech, if the reading is less than 5 milliohms, the battery is in very good condition. If it’s over 10, it’s toast. If it’s in the middle, it’s a gray area. I’ve found that this reading correlates well with the battery’s behavior—that is, batteries that don’t hold a charge have high resistance readings and vice versa.

I fully charged the Accord’s two-year-old Honda battery, tested it with the Cen-Tech, and found the reading to be about 6.5 milliohms—slightly higher than a new battery, but not awful. The analyzer also showed the battery to be at nearly 90 percent of its original 490 CCA capacity. So, at worst the battery was slightly weak, but there was nothing glaringly wrong with it.

With the alternator working fine and the battery not obviously bad, I took a direct current drain measurement. While you can just set a multimeter to measure amperage and put it between the negative battery post and its cable, it’s best if you do this with a $10 battery disconnect switch, as this method eliminates the big amperage surges that can come with directly connecting a multimeter and having all the current of the car’s electrical system suddenly flow through it. To do this, you:

• Install the disconnect switch on the negative side of the battery.
• Make sure the switch is engaged (is on). This forces any startup current to flow through the switch and not through the meter.
• Set the multimeter to measure DC current and connect it across the switch as shown in the photo below.
• Flip the switch to disengage it (to shut it off). This forces all current to flow through the meter, generating a reading. Remember that, in this configuration, you want to measure ONLY parasitic drain. You do NOT want to see what the drain is with lots of devices turned on, as that can easily exceed the limit of the multimeter. If the meter has a fuse, that can blow it. If it doesn’t, it can blow up the meter. WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T TRY TO START THE CAR!
• Lock the car, as this is usually necessary to get the control modules to go to sleep.
• Watch the meter. You’ll probably see a current surge of single numbers of amps as the central locking actuates, then see it drop into the hundreds of milliamps as the interior lights wait to go out. Some amount of time later, the readings should drop into the tens of milliamps as the control modules go to sleep. This may take a few minutes or may be as long as 40 minutes. It varies by make and model. To find out what it is for your car, you may need to do some reading in a user’s forum.

In my case, within a very short amount of time after locking Jeanette’s car, the reading stabilized at a little under 50 milliamps.

If you don’t have a feel for amperage, you can convert it to the more familiar unit of watts with watts = amps x volts. The car has a 12-volt electrical system, so something drawing five amps is consuming 60 watts of power. You know what a 60-watt bulb is. Now you know that it would draw 5 amps. That’s a lot of current. In the world of parasitic drains, a drain of several amps is really big, and likely caused by something that’s actually generating heat, like an actual heater, a bright light bulb, or an electric motor. A drain of hundreds of milliamps could be something like a small bulb (a little 5-watt bulb would draw about .42 amps, or 420 milliamps), or a stuck actuator.

Now, the oft-quoted industry standard for an “acceptable” parasitic drain is 50 milliamps. So … was anything actually wrong with Jeanette’s car? It was difficult to say. It would’ve almost been preferable had I seen a much bigger drain that clearly indicated a problem.

I really wasn’t sure how to deal with it. This wasn’t my car. I didn’t have the room in my garage to do the hours of work required to try to diagnose it further, and I wasn’t certain that the thing to do was have Jeanette spend hundreds of dollars having a qualified shop chase a drain that might not be of much consequence, even if a problem existed. Yet the battery was draining sufficiently after four or five days that it caused the car not to start.

So, what followed was an odd sequence of bumping my head into the wall of why the normal workarounds appear to be to be unworkable.

I’d already installed a battery disconnect switch to enable me to properly do the drain measurement. If this were my car, that would’ve already solved the problem—I’d simply open the hood and flip the switch when I park the car in the driveway, then repeat the process when I need to drive it. But it’s simply not reasonable to expect a 95-year-old non-car-nut owner to do that.

The next obvious idea was to set her up with some sort of a battery tender or maintainer. On paper, this sounds like a slam-dunk. Unfortunately, she doesn’t park the car in her garage in the winter, as her driveway slopes slightly downhill and she doesn’t want the danger of slipping during that walk. There is an electrical outlet on the lamp post at the top of the driveway. This was what I used to charge the battery. I thought that if I set up a trickle charger there and could plug it into the Accord’s cigarette lighter socket, she’d be all set; all she’d need to do was disconnect the trickle charger from the extension cord to the lamp post.

But there was a two-fold issue with that. First, the cigarette lighter socket in the Accord isn’t active unless the key is turned to the accessories setting, so it would need to be connected to the battery instead. Like with the battery disconnect switch, I’m not going to ask her to open and close the hood whenever she needs to drive. Yes, I could permanently wire a little pigtail to the battery and have it protrude through the front grille (and I may do that, as I did with the disconnect switch, simply to make things easier on me when I help her out), but that brings us to the second problem, which is that one of the times I had the charger briefly hooked up, I watched her nearly trip over the cables. So even if she can plug and unplug a connector whenever she uses and parks the car, I’m very leery of anything that puts wires in her driveway.

Bottom line: I am not going to do anything that even slightly increases the possibility of a 95-year-old woman hurting herself. As health care professionals say, “First, do no harm.”

So, even though the battery wasn’t obviously bad, I replaced it—I got her a high-quality Interstate MTX-24F absorbed glass mat (AGM) battery with a 710 CCM rating. I’m hoping that the combination of the battery’s newness, 45 percent more capacity (at least in terms of cold cranking amps), and its AGM construction will buy the ability for to it sit for longer and behave better. At $229.95 ($242 with tax) directly from Interstate, it’s the most I’ve ever paid for a battery. (To be clear, she reimbursed me.)

[Quick digression: Costco has slightly discounted prices on Interstate batteries, and I got excited when I saw online that they offered the Costco version of this battery for $180, but on calling my local store, I learned that for some reason, Costco no longer carries Interstate AGM batteries. A web search unearthed a number of posts from folks who’ve had this same disappointment.]

A friend of mine had the interesting idea of installing a battery-charging solar panel and leaving it on the back deck under the rear windshield. The idea is that this would eliminate any driveway wires to trip over or connectors to unplug. It wouldn’t be as reliable as a trickle charger or battery tender, but any battery charging it would supply would be better than nothing. If the cigarette lighter socket was active without the key, this would be a great solution. Without that, I’d need to wire it in place, preferably directly to the battery, and I’m a bit hesitant to do that in a car that isn’t mine. But I’m thinking about it.

In the meantime, I’ll check the battery voltage weekly and see how much it’s dropping. And I’ll make some calls to find a local garage who knows how to perform proper parasitic drain diagnostics. Just in case.

Sometimes we simply wind up being responsible for certain things. Helping my 95-year-old neighbor remain independent by making sure the battery in her car stays charged isn’t a big deal to me. But as my mother used to say, what isn’t a big deal to you might be a big deal to someone else.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post How to drain a car battery, starring my 95-year-old neighbor’s daily driver appeared first on Hagerty Media.

I spend far less time on Bring a Trailer than perhaps you’d think. There are reasons for this. The primary one is that one of Rob Siegel’s Tips For Sane Living is “don’t crave things you can never have.”

So the carnival of vintage Ferraris, insanely-low-mileage Porsches, and oh-my-god-I-thought-this-car-was-an-urban-myth vehicles rarely make me lift my head out of whatever well-worn road-trip veteran I happen to be wrenching on, or whatever affordable needy classic I happen to be chasing.

The secondary reason is that nearly all of my meager income comes from automotive writing. While I marvel at the success of BaT’s business model that crowdsources free expertise under the guise of social media, I feel very little desire to contribute. It’s like bar and restaurant owners expecting musicians to play for exposure instead of money. If I want to bathe myself in social media, I can do it on Facebook and serve my own agenda, not BaT’s.

However, if someone sends me a link to an auction that they want my opinion on, or one that includes my “thehackmechanic” BaT handle in a comment that automatically generates an email, I’ll have a peek. For the most part, if the link is some best-of-the-best car that causes a hedge-fund manager and a real estate agent in Beverly Hills to bid against one another, I move on because I really don’t care.

But in late January, three people invoked my name in comments on an interesting basket case 1969 BMW 2002 on BaT. So, like Beetlejuice, I was summoned.

The auction was titled “No Reserve: One-Owner 1969 BMW 2002 Project.” The photos showed a long-neglected, heavily patina-laden Chamonix (white) 2002 that was wearing the mummy-like dust of lengthy storage but was sitting on wheel dollies in a well-lit warehouse surrounded by other nice-looking classics. It was sort of an odd juxtaposition.

The fact that this car was on Bring a Trailer at all drew quite a number of positive “BaT getting back to its roots” comments, and I suppose that there’s something to be said for that. After all, the majority of cars up on BaT are buffed and polished eye-candy—cars where the buyer brings a trailer to keep the dirt off his or her new purchase, not because the car is a long-dead project.

At first glance, the body of the 2002 appeared shabby but solid, meaning that there weren’t plainly visible, fist-sized holes in the corners of the front fenders as is often the case on abandoned-in-place 2002s. However, as you clicked through the photos, you came to ones that showed the hood and trunk lid both so badly rusted that the BMW emblem was literally falling off. The description said the car was being sold on behalf of its original owner, a gentleman who had parked the car in his garage in 1979 due to a bad clutch slave cylinder. At some point, the garage’s roof reportedly began leaking, which is what reportedly caused the car’s odd top-down rust. Very sad, especially considering how easy it is to replace a slave cylinder.

The seller used the term “barn find.” In my opinion, the whole “barn find” thing is largely a load of BS. I understand that the mystique is that it connotes that the car is a fully original time capsule, but there’s nothing about dust, mold, mildew, spider webs, and rodent droppings that make a car pure and unmolested. Roll the car out of the barn, begin itemizing its issues, and the aura of originality usually gets blown away by the stiff wind of real-world needs with real-world costs. From a purely practical standpoint, a recently running car with perhaps a few ill-chosen modifications will be much easier to revive than something that’s been sitting since the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and when people thought John Travolta was a great dancer.

Further, this was not a completely intact car. The radiator and other parts were sitting in the trunk. The passenger seat and rear seat had been removed, though they were included. The console was missing.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a two-part series on how to sell a car (part 1 and part 2). While not everyone has to do exactly what I do, it’s generally to the seller’s benefit to provide a thorough description of a car and give it some appropriate level of preparation. I joked that the latter doesn’t need to be much more than running it through a car wash and throwing out the Dunkin’ Donuts cups, but it’s true. It seemed odd to me that someone would go to the effort to drag a car like this out of the garage where it had been sitting for 44 years (and from the presence of the wheel dollies, “drag” must’ve been the operative verb), transport it to what the seller referred to as “our private auto museum,” and photograph it without bothering to clean the dust and grime off the windows, vacuum up the schmutz under the hood, and remove a Styrofoam coffee cup and an umbrella from the back floor.

Further, as the photos show, there was a good deal of stuff in the car and trunk. The car would’ve been better represented had the seller taken it all out for the photos. Then the rugs could’ve either been peeled back to show the condition of the floors, or the seats could’ve been put in, giving the car the image of being intact and complete. To do neither under the auspices of it being a “barn find” seemed a cop-out. The seller seemed to regard this as a point of pride, as he wrote, “I made sure not to disrupt the car from the way it was when we pulled it out of that garage.” I’m sorry—it’s not a crime scene or Native American burial site. I could relate to one commenter, who took the seller to task: “Don’t they have Windex in Virginia? Or shop vacs? It seems by not lifting much of a finger you’re kinda maybe giving the auction a little bit of a different kind of a finger.”

One of the things I say over and over about selling vintage cars is that by meticulously documenting a car’s condition, you remove questions about what the car might be and instead reveal what it actually is. This removes risk to the buyer, and therefore likely increases the number of bids. While there were 211 photographs, many were redundant shots of the outside of the car. Photos of the shock towers were provided, and there were a few shots of the rocker panels, but the only undercarriage pics were what could be photographed from floor level. While it’s non-trivial getting detailed undercarriage photos of a dead car, if you have a “private museum,” don’t you also have a lift? Or at least a floor jack?

In addition to inadequate undercarriage photographs, the seller stated, “I have not tried to turn the engine over by hand.” Several commenters asked for a definitive answer regarding whether the engine was seized, and the seller simply repeated his stance. This mystifies me. Especially with the radiator out of the car, it’s 10 seconds worth of work to put a 30mm socket on the crankshaft nut and try to turn the engine. If the seller didn’t have one, he could’ve tried to rotate it by grabbing the fan. If that didn’t work, he could’ve simply said so.

Now, I’ve been tough on the seller here. Let me back off. As I said in my piece, it’s a lot of work selling a car, and this one wasn’t even his. In fairness, there’s zero question that the seller did the owner a huge favor by getting the car out of what was presumably a cramped, decrepit garage and putting it in a well-lit space where it could be walked around and photographed. Considering that the car needed to be on wheel dollies, this alone was likely a substantial task. You may remember that I recently represented a 2002tii for a woman whose husband-owner had passed away. Bringing that car up to the condition where it was the best version of itself, describing and photographing it, and managing the sale was months of work. So, I totally get why the seller might have drawn the line where he did. But an hour or two more work may have made a non-trivial difference in the car’s sale price.

I’m very careful commenting on BaT auctions, as I once had a guy literally chew me out in public because he said I affected the value of his auction by commenting that the orange aftermarket color scheme of his interior wasn’t my personal taste (for the record, I only made the comment after the auction had closed, and it was hideous), but because three people had asked for my input on the basket-case 2002, I felt like I needed to comment. Other folks who know more than I do about the differences between early model year 2002s had already weighed in on the fact that the car was a largely original “first-series ’69” that carried with it some seldom-seen braking system components. To me, that was less of an issue than the car’s condition. I chose my words carefully:

“I’m pretty reticent about injecting my opinion here on BaT, as I have my own view of things, and they usually don’t involve spending a lot of money to turn X into Y. I wouldn’t touch any car without either crawling under it and examining the undercarriage myself or seeing a complete set of photos, especially one like this that already shows rust-through on the normally solid surfaces of the hood and the trunk lid, but I’m not going to be “that person” on BaT who asks for more photos but has no intention of bidding. I guess all I’ll add is that, even if it’s just revived and not restored, a car like this is going to need everything. If the undercarriage is in fact solid, and you want a ratty runner, and you can do all the mechanical work yourself, it could be a fun project. If, on the other hand, you want something where the end product is pretty and shiny … well, you can fill in the end of that sentence yourself.”

Actually, I have to admit that I was considering bidding on the car myself. After all, it did look pretty solid, bids were low even at the end, and it was close enough (it was in Virginia) for me to drag it home. But without further disclosure on the areas that I mentioned above, there was more risk in it than I was willing to take. Zero regrets.

It’s funny how small things can sway a decision. The rear half-shafts on most 2002 have CV joints at both ends. As long as the boots don’t tear, they’re incredibly long-lived. However, the photos for this car showed that this had one CV joint and one universal, and the CV boot had dissolved. While it’s not a big deal to swap half-axles, my knee-jerk reaction was, “To make the car drivable, I’d have to deal with this, too?” Moreover, it would be one of many decisions on originality—whether to just throw a used set of dual-CV half-axles in or pay to have these rebuilt. To me, it was the visible tip of the iceberg on the car needing everything.

But over and above the specifics of the BaT auction, I wanted to knock something around with respect to the value of a car like this, and what its future might be.

BMW 2002s are a huge part of my life. I’ve owned 40 of them. I currently own three. I know them well. Their value, particularly the 1968–73 round taillight cars in excellent condition, is quite strong. The Hagerty Valuation Tool lists values for a roundie 2002 as ranging from about $17K in fair condition to about $90K in concours condition. That sounds a bit high, but it’s more or less in line with the snapshot of as-sold values on BaT. The fuel-injected 2002tii is worth even more, and the rare Turbo more still. Hagerty doesn’t list values for cars in rough condition, and not many of them make it to BaT, so it’s more difficult to get a reliable metric on a car like this.

But, not to make too fine a point of it, a ’69 BMW 2002 is not a ’69 Porsche 911. A small-bumpered long-hood 911 in similar condition would probably be worth eight to ten times the $3800 that this car sold for. Folks would likely be falling over each other to laud the car’s originality, crow about what an easy restoration it would be, and bid on it. And the hypothetical 911 that pops out at the end, whether it’s a resurrected ratty runner, or a rolling repaint, or a full-blown restoration, would obviously be worth way more. This 2002 simply doesn’t have that kind of upside. Even considering that the worst rust on it is on the two easiest-to-replace body panels (the hood and the trunk lid), the car’s poor condition looks like it extends to just about everything. I’m a big believer in, as I said above about the widow’s 2002tii I helped sell, making a car the best version of what it already is. Taking a sow’s ear and trying to turn it into a silk purse becomes incredibly expensive. Unless you restore cars for a living, you’re generally better off buying a different car rather than trying to do so.

Further, despite the comments from 2002 purists on there being only a small number of first-series ’69s left and how cool it would be if this one was kept original and brought back to its former glory, my feeling is that the market doesn’t yet fully value such fine details on these cars. It certainly values a round taillight 2002, particularly a 2002tii, not being a complete Frankencar and having the right seats, dashboard, and instrument cluster as opposed to ones that time-traveled in from the later big-bumpered square taillight cars. But things like braking system details, I don’t know. Forcing all those details to be correct, as opposed to using more readily available parts from later 2002s, is likely to be an expensive layer on top of what would already be an expensive revival. If the car’s new owner wants to “correctly” “restore” it (I put both words in quotes because I hate both of them), that’s his call.

But if the buyer isn’t looking for perfection, if he does much of the work himself, if the frame rails and floors are free of rust-through, if the engine turns and is revivable with a fresh head gasket and a valve job, if the interior isn’t a gag-worthy water-damaged mouse-infested hazmat zone, and if he doesn’t get wrapped around the axle (or, in this case, the half-axle) of correctness, I think he’ll do handsprings over what he picked up. If I see the car in May at The Vintage (the annual low-stress BMW event in Asheville, North Carolina), hastily patched up and running, and making it there by the skin of its teeth, I’ll buy the new owner an evening’s worth of beers. If he just threw in a set of later half-axles, I’ll make that two evening’s worth of beers.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

The post The basket case BMW 2002 on BaT appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Terry Krausz writes: I have a 1969 Plymouth Satellite protected by Hagerty. During restoration, a new gas tank, sending unit, and fuel line were installed. When the tank was filled, the in-dash gauge showed a little over half full, with a slow response time when the ignition was on. Thinking the sender was faulty, I bought a new one. The new sender was connected through the car’s original wiring but not installed in the tank. When tested, the in-dash gauge responded quickly, showing half, three-quarters, and full. I reinstalled the new sending unit and filled the tank again, but I still had the same slow response, with the gauge showing a little over half. Grounding seems good. How do I correct this issue?

Terry, I’m slightly puzzled over the slow response time, but regarding the fill level, if it reads correctly when you manually put it through its paces outside the tank, the sender, gauge, and wiring are fine. I think it’s likely you need to bend the float arm of the sensor down to get it to read full. I’d also recommend checking that the float isn’t filling up with gas, as that will certainly affect the level.

Tim Doyle writes: I own a 1973 BMW Bavaria and have an issue with my gauge cluster: I cannot unplug the round harness connectors from the back of the cluster. They are stuck, and I am afraid of breaking them if I force them too hard. I tried to carefully pry them off with a small screwdriver, but they wouldn’t budge. Any thoughts?

Tim, the round connectors should simply slide off the pins on the back of the cluster. Corrosion may be holding them in place. Try delivering some penetrating oil via a spray straw, then gently pry.

Franklin Henley writes: I recently added a Chevrolet performance serpentine kit to the engine in my ’67 Camaro 327. The kit is for use with reverse-rotation water pumps. As I understand it, the water flow is still the same, just the rotation is different. I also installed a reverse-rotation fan and a Holley Sniper EFI. When I started the car, I noticed that the engine got extremely hot within a matter of minutes—so hot you couldn’t touch the valve covers or any other part. The new radiator was also too hot to touch. I did not replace the 160-degree thermostat, but I did test it, and it was working properly. Any thoughts on what to look for on the overheating issue? I was trying to set the timing when I noticed the heat, so I shut the engine off. I’m not sure what the distributor was set at, and it had not been moved during the installation.

Franklin, I suppose it’s possible that the ignition timing is way too retarded (try setting it to 12–14 degrees of initial advance), but it sounds to me as if the coolant isn’t moving. The question is whether it’s not moving at all or just not flowing through the radiator. If you’re certain that the thermostat is good and the system doesn’t have an air pocket in it, you may need to pull off the water pump and verify that the reverse-rotation impeller on the back spins with the pulley.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

The post A Potpourri of Problems: Faulty floats, grumpy gauges, and cooling conundrums appeared first on Hagerty Media.

If you’re like me—and let’s hope that you aren’t, but let’s admit that you probably are—few things feel as sweet as the kind of well-scored Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace deal that only you could find, bag, and fully appreciate.

If you’ll forgive me an opening digression, my wife tells me that I have this really annoying tendency to buy myself presents right around Christmas. She’ll say, “You should’ve left me a hint! I would’ve bought that for you!” So I tried that tack for two years. I literally left browser windows open on her computer for a Harmony programmable remote and a Warn PullzAll 120VAC winch. Then, when these items weren’t wrapped as presents on Christmas morning, her response for the winch was that she’d missed the clue, and for the remote was “I’m not going to buy you that!”

So that’s part of backdrop against which I tell you how delighted I was to score a Recaro rolling office chair right before Christmas—my present to myself in which I delighted at the search, the find, and eventually the physical acquisition.

And, of course, there’s a story in all of it.

I have to admit that I have something of a Recaro seat fetish. I’m not talking about the new Recaro racing buckets—I’m talking about the vintage Recaro LS, LE, SE, and LX models from the 1970s and ’80s. Back in the day, these were the shiznit. Bolstered and very supportive, these seats performed the miracle of both holding your butt in place while also being incredibly comfortable for long drives. If you track-drove your car and had the cash, you’d buy one Recaro to install as a driver’s seat. You only bought two if you had enough income to regard the form of the matching set over the function of you being the only one in the car the vast majority of the time. I still smile when I see old barn-find or ran-when-parked cars with one Recaro in them. You know, 1980s driver’s school car. Bam. I’ve got you nutshelled.

If you don’t know, Recaros—as well as their sport seat kissing cousins Konig and FloFit—have a standard 16-inch side-to-side bolt pattern for the rail spacing on the bottom. Recaros were factory standard or optional seats in a variety of cars, from a host of Volkswagens to Fox Body Mustangs. Any set I’ve ever bought, if you remove the model-specific seat rails—and this includes the big heavy electric seat bases on quasi-modern Volkswagens—what’s underneath is the same standard 16-inch rail spacing.

To mount Recaros in your car, you need to adapt that 16-inch rail spacing to whatever the side-to-side bolt pattern is for the rail spacing for your seat sliders. There are two different ways to do it. If Recaros were available as a factory option for your car—as was the case with the 1977–82 BMW 320i—then there was a set of factory adapters that bolted to the bottom of the seats. So, for a car like a BMW 2002, whose seats were the same size as those in a 320i, you order or scrounge or fabricate a set of these adapters, bolt them to the 16-inch rails on the bottoms of the Recaros, bolt the original seat sliders to the adapters, then bolt the sliders to the floor of the car where they always went. The other way to do it is that Recaro, or the aftermarket vendor selling the seats, typically offered mounting hardware that featured a standard set of very heavy-duty sliders that bolted directly to the bottoms of the seats. Then you needed to procure a car-specific adapter base plate that sat between the sliders and the floor.

While I absolutely love the look and feel of period-correct interiors in 1970s German cars, the big wide horsehair-stuffed seats are miserably uncomfortable for long drives, so I have Recaros (or Konigs or FloFits) in most of the vintage BMWs that I distance-drive. In my prized 3.0CSi, I have a set of beige cloth Recaro SE seats that I picked up 13 years ago on Craigslist whose color, by chance, is close enough to the beige leather rear seats and the vinyl door panels that the eye isn’t drawn to the difference.

In two of my 2002s, I’m currently splitting a set of Konig seats, allowing me to get the benefit of a firm supportive seat in each car. Although there’s no confusing either of these with a track-day car, the 40-year-old context of a lone Recaro-style seat makes me smile. I drive these cars, my back needs the support of the sport seat, I had a pair of Konigs sitting in the basement, and one went into each car. Boom, done. Cost: zero.

The point of all this is that what makes all this Recaro seat installation work is a uniform rail spacing on all Recaros (and Konigs and FloFits), and adapters that are specific to the make and model of your car.

With that, let me wind the tape back 40 years for a moment.

When Maire Anne and I returned to Boston in 1984 after our 2½-year stint in Austin, we brought with us a rust-free 1975 BMW 2002 (“Bertha”) that I’d bought that spring. I actually wanted a big-bumpered 2002 to withstand the demolition derby that is Boston parking and commuting. Over the next four years, I transformed the car into a cross between a daily driver and a weekend track rat, throwing in a goosed-up engine with a hot cam and dual Webers, a full Koni track suspension, and many other mods.

I was always buying, repairing, and selling whatever 2002s I could get my hands on, so when I found a 2002tii that had a full Recaro interior with the very zingy “orange spectrum” fabric—the car had two Recaro front seats and their adapters as well as a back seat reupholstered in the orange spectrum fabric—I bought the tii, swapped interiors with Bertha, and sold the tii.

In 1988, my close friend and fellow 2002 guy Alex got married. He and his wife were planning on taking his car on a big western road trip to do “the grand circle” of national parks. He couldn’t get the car ready in time, so as a wedding present, I loaned them Bertha (which, in addition to the comfortable Recaros, had working air conditioning). They loved the car, and when they returned, agreed to buy it.

That was, unfortunately, the beginning of a long and sad period for Bertha. Like me, they lived in Boston, and the car was often parked on the street. In 1990, Bertha was stolen and recovered. When it was stolen and recovered a second time, the recovered car was damaged—it ran horribly from what appeared to be a bent valve, and one of the windows had been smashed. Alex rolled it into a neighbor’s garage. He never expected it to sit there for nearly 30 years. I’d routinely ask him about Bertha, with my nods and winks about buying it back turning into outright pleading as the years went by.

Finally, in 2018, Alex relented and sold me the car back. The problem was, like an idiot, I hadn’t actually looked at it, and when I rolled open the door to the garage where the car had been sitting since 1990, my heart sank. The garage backed into a pond, and the humidity, combined with insulation batting that had been stored on the hood of the car, had nearly destroyed the once-proud car.

The interior was an absolute disaster as well. Prior to the thefts, Alex had already worn the fabric on the bottom cushion of the driver’s seat, and swapped it with the passenger seat. This was now augmented with the shattered glass from the theft, spider webs, mildew, and rodent damage. The orange spectrum Recaros were now a sad worn memory of their former eye-popping glory. To see them in shambles was heartbreaking.

But if you’ve already decided to jump in, it really doesn’t matter how disgusting the water is. And jump in I did. Due to the pricey real estate and the nice lawn on his neighbor’s pond-facing garage where the car had been stored, there was no easy way to get a ramp truck down there, so I spent a week in the garage reviving Bertha enough to drive the car out under its own power, the video of which can be seen here. I then worked on the car over the next year, eventually driving it to The Vintage in Asheville in 2019. The entire story is chronicled in my book Resurrecting Bertha.

But there was something about the exposure the seats had gotten to the humidity from the pond that gave the orange spectrum fabric all the strength of a used Kleenex, and by the time I got back from my 2,000-mile round trip to Asheville, the base of the driver’s seat was a shredded mess.

Now, with everything I’ve said above, it’s clear that I keep my eyes open for vintage Recaro / Konig / FloFit seats, and when I find a well-priced set, I snag them, even if I don’t have something to install them into at the moment.

So imagine my delight when, on December 23^rd—two days before Christmas—I saw an ad for this rolling office chair on Facebook Marketplace (FBM), clearly showing a Recaro seat in the same orange spectrum fabric as Bertha. The asking price: $250.

Recaro rolling office chairs were—and still are—sold directly by Recaro. They featured a standard commercially-available rolling swivel base, bolted to the bottom of the chair via (you guessed it) an adapter plate that mates to the seat’s standard 16-inch rail spacing. From everything I’ve written above, you now understand that, to put this in a car, all you need to do is unbolt the swivel base from the adapter plate, unbolt the adapter plate from the rails, bolt on the adapters and sliders for your car, and it’s in like Flynn. These Recaro office chairs do show up regularly on CL and FBM, although one in orange spectrum fabric is, as they say, hen’s-teeth rare. As a buyer, a big advantage is that the people who have them as office chairs usually don’t know that the seat is worth more as a car seat than as an office chair. Of course, it would be worth way more if it was part of a matched set, so it cuts both ways.

Still, I totally, immediately, and unambiguously wanted this one. The problem was that the seat was in southern Connecticut, not far from New Haven, plus it was the day before Christmas Eve, my wife had the flu, and there was no way I was going to drop everything and get down there that evening, or anytime in the next few days, for that matter.

I messaged the seller, explained all this, and said that I’d gladly meet his asking price and would Paypal him half the money immediately, but that I probably wouldn’t be able to get down there until after New Years Day. To his immense credit, he agreed.

You do know what I did next, right? (You probably do, since we’ve established that you are like me.) To make the road trip more worthwhile, I spent hours trying to find cars to look at and other things to buy between Boston and southern Connecticut.

About a week after New Years, I lined it all up. I have a 1999 BMW Z3 (“Zelda”) that I sold to a neighbor, then bought back a few years ago after her son drove it onto a median strip, damaging its front end enough that the car surely would’ve been totaled and parted out if I hadn’t. I repaired it (bent lower control arms and wheels and blown air bag) and have been driving it around since spring 2021, but its front bumper cover (what most folks would call the air dam) was shattered in the impact. I’ve kept it held together with packing tape and Gorilla Glue, but have always had an eye out for one that’s the same Boston Green color as Zelda so as to save me the cost and effort of painting it. There are plenty of used Z3 front bumper covers around, but not many in Boston Green. Plus, bumper covers are BIG, and thus expensive to ship.

So when I found a guy in Springfield, Massachusetts—not directly on the way to southern Connecticut, but squaring off a rounded corner was close enough to make it work—who was parting out a couple of BMW Z3s, and one of them was Boston Green, I was almost giddy. Unfortunately, when he sent me the photos, his bumper cover had some separations in the bottom portion. Still, it wasn’t cracked all the way through, it was much better than the one on Zelda, and Zelda is far from a perfect car, so I told him that I’d be in his area the coming Saturday and proposed giving him a hundred bucks for the bumper cover and both of the inner fender liners, which I also needed. To my delight, he agreed.

The morning that I left, I saw a well-priced 1987 BMW E30 325is on FBM only about eight miles west of the guy with the bumper cover. Odds were that it was going to be rusty, but hey, you never know unless you look, right?

Game day came, and I needed only to choose a car. My resurrected truck—the 2008 Chevy 3500HD Duramax dually, the one that had its catalytic converter was stolen—was the logical choice to swallow these large items, but the fuel cost for the 300-ish mile drive wouldn’t be trivial. So I took my 2003 BMW E39 530i stick sport instead, as its fold-down rear seats give it near-wagon-like flexibility. Things were a little tight, but it was well worth being able to cruise at traffic speed in a car I actually enjoyed driving, plus it would burn only about $50 in fuel instead of more than twice that in the truck.

First stop was the bumper cover and the fender liners. The nice young Russian man was great, even handing me a baggie of fasteners that held everything in place. The parts, though, occupied more space than I expected, especially considering how little the Z3 is.

Next was a quick jaunt to see the BMW 325is. As expected, it was rustier than I wanted to take on, but seeing it enabled me to stop thinking about it.

That left the leg down toward New Haven for the Recaro office chair. I gave the seller the remainder of the $250, we unbolted the rolling base, and I stuck the Recaro seat on top of the passenger seat of my E39.

When I got home, I realized that I had no space in the garage for the chair, and the cats would tear it up if I put it in the basement, so I brought the two sections of the chair into the living room, where there’s light and floor space, and a door to keep the cats out. (Yes, I have a saint-like wife.) I cleaned it up and photographed the adapter that held on the office chair base before I removed it.

And then, to my surprise, I stopped. Instead, I reinstalled the rolling base, and rolled the chair into the dining room, which doubles as an office. As soon as it was in there, juxtaposed against the room’s Mediterranean orange walls and the orange tablecloth left over from Thanksgiving, I realized it was far more likely that the chair’s fate would continue to be an office chair and not a replacement for Bertha’s driver’s seat, as I had envisioned. And I’m cool with that. I mean, Bertha is a car with the patina knob turned up pretty high. Having a cherry set of vintage Recaros in it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Of course, the joke is that while a single Recaro seat, particularly an orange gradient one in excellent condition, is a freaking steal for $250, I’d never pay $250 for an office chair.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it.

The post This Orange Spectrum Recaro seat is the only office chair I’d buy for $250 appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Last week, I began writing about how to sell a car that falls outside the Kelly Blue Book or JD Power (formerly NADA) Guide values because it’s either vintage, needy, high mileage, or all three. I talked about the need for preparation and description, and the choice of a selling platform: fixed-price like Facebook Marketplace (FBM) or Craigslist; and auctions like eBay or Bring a Trailer. (Hagerty Marketplace, you should be aware, offers both Classifieds and Auctions.) Today we’ll talk about photos and videos, price, the difference between an offer and a commitment, and the passing of papers.

The Photos

On the one hand, the needed quantity and quality of photos depends heavily on how the car is being sold. If it’s going on a fixed-price local platform like Facebook Marketplace (maximum of 12 photos) or Craigslist (24 photos), you’d think that the pics just need to be good enough for people to decide whether or not to come see the car in person. On the other hand, the increasing national use of FBM and CL for sight-unseen purchases means that you need to be prepared to send anyone who expresses interest a full detailed set of pics via something like a link to Google Photos.

If the car is worth a lot of money and you’re putting it on Bring a Trailer or other auction site, professional photos that use a narrow depth of field on the details (e.g., a perfect taillight in focus and the rest of the background blurred) are worth every penny, but these days, any DSLR in auto mode or any modern cell phone with multiple cameras will do a presentable job provided you follow a few simple rules.

For the exterior, shoot the car on a sunny day in an uncluttered environment like an empty parking lot. A scenic backdrop is better, but most of us don’t live in Sedona. If the car is a bright color, the degree to which sun makes the paint pop can dramatically help the presentation of the car. All photos should be in landscape mode, not portrait mode (hold the phone horizontal, not vertical), and the car should fill most of the frame of the photo. At an absolute bare minimum, shoot it from eight angles—front, back, left and right sides, and the oblique views. Twice that many is better. Don’t block out the license plates with your thumb. It just looks stupid. Either leave the plates visible, take them off, or blur them with Photoshop. Another pet peeve of mine is photos with the shadow of the photographer lurking like Bigfoot. Just take the 30 seconds required to re-orient the car and re-take the photo.

The exterior whole-car pics are just the beginning. Take detailed photos of bumpers, grilles, lights, trim, and wheels. Photograph any dents and non-trivial scratches. Shoot several pics of the engine compartment, and the trunk showing the rear shock towers and the spare tire well.

For the interior, unless you know exactly what you’re doing with a flash, bright sun isn’t a good idea, as you never get the whole interior either fully in or out of shadow. It’s better to shoot it in the shade.

Remember that for a vintage car you need to prove its condition. You don’t say “rust-free”—you prove it with pics. Unless you have a lift, it’s difficult to photograph the undercarriage. Even if you jack the car up and put the cell phone flat on the driveway, the photos often show things too close and out of context. If the car runs, it’s well worth driving it to any repair shop and handing over the necessary number of $20 bills for them to put the car up on their lift while you snap away for five minutes.

Lastly, if the car not only doesn’t run but is marooned in a garage or barn with boxes on top of it, it’s best to do some upfront work to try to get it out where it can be walked around and photographed. While some cars are so iconic and valuable that, even in barn-find condition, your inbox will explode with interest, most cars will benefit from potential buyers being able to see the condition the car is actually in.

The Videos

Videos aren’t required to sell a car, but they’re strongly advised on BaT; they provide dramatically more information than still photographs and go a long way toward showing prospective buyers what the car actually is. I shoot a full walk-around video showing both the exterior and interior, a cold-start video, a driving video that includes around town as well as nailing and wailing on the highway, and a full undercarriage examination. One of my walk-around videos can be seen here.

Price

On auction sites, the price is set by the high bid, but on fixed-price sites like FBM, you need to list a price. On a modern car that’s more of a daily-driver commodity, you can look up the book value and price your car accordingly, but for a classic car, you need to triangulate off the Hagerty values, recent sales on BaT, and completed listings on eBay to see what cars in comparable condition have actually sold for. Because I have such an active Facebook presence, I’ve done pretty well by describing and photographing my cars in crushing detail, pricing them realistically, and putting them on my FB page, as well as other marque and model-specific pages (e.g., the “BMW 2002” page and the page for “The Vintage,” an annual event I attend in Asheville). I’m then usually contacted by someone who I’ve either met or who knows folks I know, trust is established, and we work it out.

If the car isn’t a classic, I list it on FBM, hold my nose, and deal with the garbage messages like everyone else. It’s rarely productive to combine poor condition and high price and be one of those “I know what I have” people, but I’ll sometimes price a car aggressively, say in the ad “Price is absolutely dead nuts firm,” and mean it.

Generally, though, you need to show some price flexibility as a seller. A potential buyer may say “I’ll come there prepared to do the deal with a truck, a trailer, and cash, but I want some sense of how firm the price is before I allocate the whole day to it,” and that’s understandable. It’s part of the larger context of seller and buyer feeling each other out. I may respond, “There’s some flexibility for the right buyer once he or she is standing in the driveway.”

Last week I talked about the increasing frequency of ads that say “don’t ask me a million questions,” which drives me crazy because of the implication that the seller’s time is more valuable than yours. Something else I’ve been seeing more often is the “soft auction,” where a car is posted with a price so low that it’s guaranteed to generate many responses, but the seller has no intention of selling it at that price. Typically the ad is then edited and the price is either raised dramatically or the seller says, “Message me your best offer.” If you really want to do something like this, I suppose you could advertise, “I’m showing the car Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Come see it, give me your best offer, I’ll select the highest one on Sunday at 10 p.m.,” but I maintain that if you’re going to auction off a car, it’s really far better for both buyer and seller to put it on a real auction site with the structure of a starting price, a possible reserve price, and bids that are publicly visible as they come in, as there’s nothing in a “soft auction” to prevent the seller from pulling the car or the high bidder from not following through.

The Difference Between an Offer and a Commitment

If the very first contact from a potential buyer is a message that says, “Would you take $X?,” it’s difficult for me to take that seriously. What, no questions about the car? No requests for more photos of the floor pans? You don’t want to talk to me on the phone? I sure would if I was the buyer.

A distinction needs to be drawn between “I’ve read your description, I want the car, and I’ll offer you $X, and wire you the money right now” and “I’ll buy it for $X and will pay for it when I pick it up.” The first is a commitment. The second sounds like a commitment, but it’s really an implied sight-unseen offer. Be wary of it. History has taught me that sight-unseen offers like this, if they’re absent a wire transfer or the binding commitment of the “Make Offer” button on eBay, are usually worthless, as the lowered price simply becomes the starting point for a new negotiation. What often happens is that once the seller sees and drives the car, they often say, “Oh, I didn’t know about X, Y, and Z” and try to get you to take less so you don’t lose the sale. I’m sorry, but the buyer can’t have it both ways—they can’t have the sale locked up with an accepted offer and you therefore considering the car as sold so you’re not showing it to anyone else, and also be able to lower the price further when they see the car. When a buyer makes an offer and a seller accepts it, in my opinion the buyer loses the right to renegotiate the offer. One big advantage of an auction is that it largely removes this possibility. (I say “largely” because I’ve had one or two eBay buyers try it. I sent them packing empty-handed.) This is another area where as complete a description as possible is to the seller’s benefit—there are fewer things the buyer can claim he or she didn’t know about. Obviously, if a car is grossly misrepresented by a seller, that’s an exception.

The Deposit

I hate deposits and try to avoid them. It gets dicey when you accept a deposit and the buyer changes their mind and wants it back. If someone comes and looks at my car, wants to buy it, and we shake on a price, they can come back tomorrow with the cash or talk with their bank about a wire transfer. I’m an old-school word-is-my-bond guy and won’t sell it out from under them. If they change their mind or vanish, so be it. The exception is that if someone sees the car advertised, contacts me with extreme interest, and asks me if I can hold the car for a day or two until they come and see it, I’ll sometimes take a small ($100) non-refundable deposit. In this instance, it’s clear that the deposit is really just buying their place at the head of the line.

Payment and Papers

If you’re selling a car in person, you sign over the title to the buyer (here in Massachusetts, every registered car, no matter how old, has a title), and they give you the money. In states where titles aren’t required for a car over 15 years old, a previous registration and a bill of sale in the same name usually take the place of a title. But the point is that, for an in-person sale, the money and the paper transfer occur at the same time. The buyer then owns the car, and how they get it home—drive it legally, drive it illegally, or tow it—is up to them. I’ve had buyers ask me if they can drive the car home on my plates and insurance. I’ve done it for friends, but in general it’s a poor idea, as you really don’t want to experience the nightmare scenario of someone getting into an accident in a car that’s in ownership limbo (e.g., the title has been signed over to them but it’s still on your insurance).

In-person payment can be cash (which carries with it magical negotiating powers), wire transfer (sort of), or check, if you the seller are comfortable with it. Bank transfer apps like Zelle are great, but they have a low limit—typically around $4000, though it varies bank to bank—that essentially limits them to inexpensive cars. It’s sometimes enough, though, that when combined with a trip to a nearby ATM for cash, a buyer can pay you on the spot. Otherwise the buyer needs to initiate an actual bank-to-bank wire transfer to the seller, which usually requires a physical visit to the bank and is usually not instantaneous. Bank checks or money orders can be used, but as a seller, you need to be clear that you’ll wait for them to post to your account before you’ll release the car. The exception is if the check is drawn on a bank where there’s a branch nearby and you and the buyer can actually go there and have them verify the check or even cash it.

I know that I’m writing this from the seller’s standpoint, but I’d add that, as a buyer, looking at a car during bank business hours and scoping out in advance where the nearest branch of your bank is can eliminate the need for showing up with an uncomfortably large amount of cash for a car you’re not even certain you want. This is why I maintain my account at an evil-empire-style big bank—they’re likely to have a branch office within a 30-minute drive of any car I look at in New England.

If the car is a remote sale either via auction or online purchase, money and papers have to be passed somehow. For high-dollar cars, there are escrow services that do this, but I usually just do the human-to-human thing and have a phone call with the buyer. We talk, establish trust, then agree to simultaneous exchange. They begin the process of wiring the money or sending a bank check, and I sign and date the title and put it in a USPS or Fedex envelope with a tracking number and send the buyer a photograph of me doing so. I’ve never had a problem doing it this way.

Once payment and papers are exchanged, the buyer is the owner, and you as the seller need to be extremely careful with the car. In one of the BaT sales I brokered, the shipper refused to drive into my neighborhood, insisting the streets were too narrow and the power lines were too low for his two-level tandem transport (and he was probably right). He asked me to meet him at a service area on I-95. I was happy to do so, except that with the sale of the car consummated, the owner (actual seller) had cancelled his registration and insurance. I contacted the buyer and explained this, and it turned out he hadn’t insured the car yet (this was his first remote purchase). A few frantic phone calls later and the car was insured. I drove it the five miles with a set of my old plates on it, as I was willing to risk getting stopped for driving an unregistered car but not for an accident in an uninsured car. The first is a potential ticket. The second is potentially losing my house.

As we wrote in Part 1 of this story, although it’s still young, Hagerty Marketplace offers the added reassurance of holding purchase payments in escrow until the sale is complete, and the $99 seller’s fee is currently being waived.

That’s most of it. Classic cars usually find a good buyer—often someone not unlike yourself—but garden-variety needy high-mileage daily drivers are tougher to sell. It often seems that the more you lower the price, the more of a zoo the whole thing becomes, and when you find someone who communicates in complete sentences, does what he or she says they’ll do, shows up when he or she says they will, and offers you something in the same planetary orbit as your asking price, you’re glad to take their money and end the whole episode.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it.

The post Professor Siegel’s Guide to Selling a Car (Part 2) appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The past few weeks, I’ve written about looking at cars with the hope of picking up a winter project. Not surprisingly, this showcased several of the things that drive me crazy about car ads, and about the process of buying and selling. While it’s all still fresh and irritating, I thought I’d share some of my pointers on how to sell a car.

Let me first say that I’m talking here mainly about vintage cars—but also needy cars, high-mileage cars, or cars that are all three of those things at once. If, instead, the car you want to sell is only a few years old and in excellent condition, with normal mileage, its value is generally a fixed quantity that can be looked up on Kelly Blue Book (KBB) or the NADA Guide (now called the JD Power Guide).

That known value brings make-it-easy-though-not-top-dollar options such as dealer trade-in and services like Carvana, Vroom, CarGurus, CarMax, etc. But if you have an old or needy car, make no mistake: Selling it yourself is a giant pain in the patootie.

“It’s Supposed to Be Work!”

One thing I noticed in my recent searches was a significant number of ads where the description said, “Don’t ask me a lot of questions, just come and see it,” or “I’m not going to answer a million questions or take a million photos.” The vehicle was usually some ran-when-parked-long-ago car, or well-priced because it needed work.

I really don’t understand why people think this a productive way to sell a car. To me, it screams that going to see the car will be a waste of time, as I’m likely to find things that, if they were simply disclosed, would’ve saved both me and the seller the effort. The funny thing is, when people do this, they’re likely to get a hundred messages, half of which are worthless—time-wasting, insultingly low, sight-unseen offers—with the other half being people asking those unwanted questions anyway.

It’s really as simple as this: Selling a car is supposed to be work. If you’re not willing to do the work, just donate the car to charity, or drive it down to the local used-car lot and see what they’ll offer, or ask your mechanic what they’ll give you for it.

Seriously: You can’t have it both ways. If you want to maximize your sale price, you need to put up-front work into the sale. The good news is that, by writing up a thorough, honest description and providing a good set of photographs, you provide information up front. Which reduces the number of questions from potential buyers.

Which Selling Platform?

There are two basic ways to sell a car—auction it, or sell it at a fixed price. Don’t confuse them. No one wants to see your no-price “testing the waters” ad. Either do your homework on your car’s value and state your price, or create an auction listing and let people bid.

Sales are also broken into two groups: local versus remote. In the grainy, sepia-toned past, selling a car meant putting a fixed-price ad in the local newspaper. That got supplanted by car-specific local weekly publications (here in New England, we had The Want Advertiser). Those weeklies, in turn, eventually had their lunches eaten by Craigslist.

These days, much of the action is on Facebook Marketplace (“FBM,” for short). Even a few years ago, an FBM or Craigslist sale was inherently local—that is, you’d post your car on those platforms, and the people who would respond were either in your city or within a small radius of your zip code. The result was often in an in-person visit and direct sale. (This was stark contrast to an eBay or Bring a Trailer (BaT) auction sale, transactions almost always sight-unseen.) Over time, that changed—a FBM or Craigslist response can now come from anywhere in the country. This makes a thorough description and significant photo documentation even more important.

Finally, there are marque-specific publications and websites. I’m most familiar with the classifieds in the BMW Car Club of America’s Roundel magazine, and on its website, bmwcca.org. With marque-specific websites, the tradeoff is specific interest versus quantity of eyeballs. You may have a model only appreciated by other marque aficionados, but these days, it’s often smarter to aim for the sheer volume of eyeballs on Bring a Trailer.

The Old Standby: Fixed-Price Sales

I’ll talk mostly here about Facebook Marketplace, as the volume of cars listed on Craigslist has dropped substantially since FBM’s launch.

From a buyer standpoint, Marketplace is laughably bad. Much of that badness can be traced to an architecture that appears to prioritize algorithm over search engine. Search for “1972 BMW 2002” and you may or may not be shown any 1972 BMW 2002s. Repeat that search a few times, the site will learn that you’re interested in 1970s European cars, and it will show you those whenever you jump on.

Cars will also mysteriously appear and vanish depending on whether you sort your search by price or by year, and cars within your search radius may be mysteriously excluded. It’s maddening.

From a seller’s standpoint, though, FBM has positives. The service offers free listings—Craigslist charges a fee—and uploading photos and a description is easy enough. You’re allowed a max of 12 photos, four more than with Craigslist. Other advantages: Communication with the seller happens through Facebook Messenger, and the site will provide a satisfaction score for that person’s previous Marketplace transactions. Finally, the buyer and seller can see each other’s Facebook profile, so you can get some sense of who the other party actually is.

Still, there are several downsides. FBM forces you to choose make and model from a laughably incomplete picklist. (The site, for example, doesn’t even know what a BMW 2002 is.) If a car isn’t on that list, sellers will often intentionally list it as the wrong model (“Yeah, I know it’s not a 1973 BMW M3, but that’s the closest thing I could select.”) Or they’ll advertise it as an “Item for Sale” instead of a “Vehicle for Sale,” in which case the car won’t show up in a vehicles-for-sale search.

The main downside of selling on FBM, though, is the app’s social-media-connected nature. Something about Facebook seems to bring out the worst in people. Any listing is virtually guaranteed to receive many insultingly low, sight-unseen offers. Sometimes those offers are full sentences. (“I’ll show up today with $500 and tow it away.”) Sometimes they’re text-speak. (“Wld U tk $500 4 it?”). Sometimes they’re nothing more than a number. (“$500.”) Also, Facebook’s auto-filled buyer message to a seller is, “Hi, is this still available?” so you’ll receive many of those, no further explanation or comment.

I’ve tried writing descriptions that begin with, “Any lowball offers and Is it available? messages will be ignored.” It makes no difference. You simply have to read every ad response you get and respond to the intelligent ones.

Another option (though I haven’t used it yet) is Hagerty Classifieds. Listing is free for Hagerty Drivers Club members, and there are no fees for either sellers or buyers. The submission process is template-based, somewhere between the completely open format of eBay and the highly-regimented submission steps of BaT. And the resulting description is your own, not the strange word salad that pops out at the end of the BaT process.

Buyers contact sellers through Hagerty’s website, which adds a measure of protection. Other advantages include access to Hagerty’s Valuation Tools and a 10-percent discount on shipping via Reliable Carriers.

The Wild West: Online Auctions

Any auction site offers five substantial benefits.

The first: Auction sites provide the structure for a starting price and, if you want, a reserve price. Bids are publicly visible as they come in.

Second: The auction process almost always produces a buyer. If you can’t sell a car by auction, it’s either because you set a reserve that wasn’t met, or because your winning bidder and every other bidder after that flaked and disappeared. (Rare, but it happens.) If you want to get the car out of your driveway and money into your bank account, that virtually guaranteed sale is a huge advantage.

Third: There is usually some sort of protection service in place—to assure the seller that the buyer will pay, and that the car will be as represented. This can be anything from structured insurance or assurance services, offered by the auction house, to your ability to leave feedback ratings after a transaction.

Fourth: You don’t need to deal with the torrent of insulting, sight-unseen offers that accompany selling a car yourself.

Lastly, online auctions are an inherently remote process. Yes, anyone who happens to be local can still contact you and ask to inspect the car. But those folks are usually a tiny trickle compared to the potential throngs beating down your door if you only advertise locally.

The downsides are simple: Auction houses have fees for listing and selling. Auctions can take a while to play out. As with any remote sale, you need to be prepared to assist the buyer with shipping—at a bare minimum, you have to be available to meet the truck, sometimes on short notice.

If you have a highly desirable car and can stomach the lead time and the description process, Bring a Trailer can certainly produce very high sale prices. As I’ve written, however, the BaT process is lengthy, from auditioning to get your car on the site to the actual listing, and the description process is frustrating.

eBay has the advantage here, in that it leaves you in control of the description process. Your listing can go up instantly, as soon as you’re done building it. These days, many cars on eBay are from dealers using fixed-price ads with high asking prices, not actual auctions. But that only makes a real auction—where an actual bargain might be found—stand out all the more.

You also might want to consider Hagerty Auctions. Although still young, the service offers many of the features of the company’s classifieds, plus a high degree of curation from Hagerty. For added reassurance, Hagerty holds purchase payments in escrow until the sale is complete, and the $99 seller’s fee is currently being waived.

I don’t have direct experience with the other auction platforms.

Selling: Car Prep

For the love of everything good in this automotive hobby of ours, wash and vacuum the car. It takes half an hour.

Okay, if you need to hand-wash it, it’s more like an hour. But you’re not prepping for a concours. Just throw out the Dunkin’ Donuts cups on the floor, vacuum the rugs and seats, pull the suction-cup phone mount off the windshield, and stow any cables. Is that too much to ask?

I also strongly recommend that you take ten minutes to open up the hood and remove any leaves, acorns, and pine needles that have found their way in. That one change goes a long way toward making an engine not appear neglected.

A tougher question: Should you have any repairs done? If the car only needs a battery, then absolutely, spend the $150. A car that starts and runs is worth more than one that doesn’t. From there, though, the cost-return relationship grows dicey. As a DIY mechanic, I make a punch list for any car I’m selling and clock through as much of that list as I can. I figure that it’s better to not have to state and apologize for a needed repair, but then, I don’t pay for my labor.

A car’s value is impacted by two sets of variables. The first is year, make, model, and mileage. The second is overall condition—the shape of the paint, body, interior, and mechanicals. For all intents and purposes, you can’t change anything in the first group. You can easily change three of the four items in the second group, however. Isolated small mechanical issues—a lit ABS warning light, for example—typically affect an older, high-mileage car’s sale value less than you’d think.

Selling: Writing the Description

The single biggest thing you can do to help sell a car is provide an accurate description.

The blurring of the difference between local and remote sales only makes that description more important. Unlike late-model cars, which rarely deviate far from as-new condition, vintage cars can be in any condition. From rust-free to solid to good bones to basket-case.

By fully and accurately describing a car’s condition, you reduce the risk for a buyer—you are eliminating much of what the car might be and replacing it with knowledge of what the car actually is. (Or at least, what you say it is, and what you know to be true, assuming you’re honest, which you should be.)

Not to toot my own horn, but some readers have referred to my ads as a gold standard for car descriptions. I write ads this way because, when I look at a car, I can tell if I’m interested or wasting time in the first 30 seconds. It is possible to write a for-sale description that conveys the same level of detail most people would see in person. (Note: With a BaT auction, you can’t write the main description, but you can post your description in a comment; see my link above.)

When I see an ad for a car I’m intimately familiar with, and the ad says, “rust on frame rails, rear shock towers, and floors,” that’s great. I don’t do bodywork, so I know that my interest in the car ends there. But if the ad doesn’t describe the condition of the car’s body, and no photographs of those areas are shown, every single other person interested in the car who knows anything about the model will ask the seller about those areas. To think you can avoid that conversation by using the idiotic “Don’t ask a million questions” line is . . . well, idiotic.

When writing a description for a vintage car, start with visible bodywork. Describe it at the walk-around level. Is the paint pretty or shiny? Is there peeling clearcoat? Are rust holes visible? If so, where, and how extensively? (In the corners of the doors or fenders, small bubbles forming at the corners of the doors, you get the idea.)

People are going to see these things anyway, when they come to look at the car. Just use the ad to tell them about all of it. It’s not hard to do.

Next, describe the condition of hidden areas of the body—the undercarriage, engine compartment, and trunk. Again, be truthful. “Some surface oxidation but no visible rust-through” is a very good description, if it’s accurate. Do not say “rust-free undercarriage” unless you are certain that that is the case. If the car has been sitting in a barn with a dirt floor for 30 years, you can say, “Standing at the side of the car, I don’t see any rust on the floor, but I haven’t crawled under it because I can’t safely jack it up.” That’s just being honest.

Look at it this way: If you write an ad that says, “Paint on hood and roof is cracked, one rust hole in left rocker, small bubbles at bottoms of doors, rust-through in spare tire well, no rust on shock towers, floors, and frame rails,” you’ve nut-shelled the body condition. The folks who want a perfect car won’t waste your time (and you won’t waste theirs), and the ones who want an affordable driver now know your car is right up their alley. A butt for every seat, and all that.

Next week, we’ll talk about photos and videos, price, the difference between an offer and a commitment, and the passing of papers.

***

Rob Siegel’s latest book, The Best of the Hack Mechanic^TM: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem, is available on Amazon. His other seven books are available here, or you can order personally inscribed copies through his website, www.robsiegel.com.

The post Professor Siegel’s Guide to Selling a Car appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Last week, I described seeing a 2005 BMW X3 six-speed manual with 170,000 miles advertised for $1000 on Facebook Marketplace. The ad said the low price was due to a possible issue in the transfer case or differential.

A few days before Christmas, I drove the hour and a half down to New Bedford, Massachusetts, to look at it. The front body panels were mismatched from a low-cost, do-it-yourself accident repair. Further, the car was incredibly difficult to start, the exhaust was disconnected, most of the dashboard warning lights were on, there was water on the front passenger floor, and the handbrake lever was missing.

The car was unregistered, so I only drove it 200 feet. Whatever issue caused the seller to suspect and highlight the potential transfer-case issue didn’t raise its head in that short trip. There were, however, so many other problems that the transfer case faded into the background like the MacGuffin at the end of a Hitchcock film. Even if I wanted the car—and I wasn’t sure I did—I hadn’t brought a trailer with me, so there was little reason to commit.

So I thought about it.

Whenever I look at a car and am not immediately hit with a slam-dunk “run away” or a “shut up and take my money,” I’ll come home, sit at the laptop, and list the pros and cons. The main positives? The X3 was cheap, it was available, it ran and drove, it could be trailered home for maybe a hundred bucks in U-Haul fees and diesel fuel, and it could sit in my driveway instead of occupying precious garage space. Finally—and this was the biggie—could generate a winter’s worth of Hack Mechanic columns.

The cons, once enumerated, clearly outweighed the pros. The big one was how the mismatched body panels put a hard cap on resale value—an important consideration given how I have zero lust for an X3, rare manual transmission notwithstanding. I saw the car only as something to keep my hands busy, to use as a winter beater, and to maybe make a little money on at the end of winter. The hard starting was also a concern. A dead vehicle in my driveway, one not easily moved into the garage for work, was wholly unappealing. Even the fact that several of the tires were low from sitting buttressed the feeling—along with registration, taxes, insurance, inspection, and the bare minimum of needed repairs, my thousand-dollar purchase would likely double in cost before I could begin to use it as daily transportation.

Plus, as I looked further on Facebook Marketplace, I began to see more X3s and X5s between $1000 and $2500. While some were even less appealing (e.g., “needs engine”), other ads reported only dashboard warning-light issues. The fact that the car in New Bedford was a rare manual example wasn’t enough to trump both its other needs and the numerous other available choices.

Eventually, I began to look at the New Bedford car from a more subtle, yet realistic, angle. As I’ve written, I’ve never owned a new car. Instead, I have for decades daily-driven well-used BMWs that are near the bottom of their depreciation curve. I do this because I like the cars and want the blend of performance, handling, and comfort they offer, but I don’t want the financial load of either an outright purchase or a monthly car payment. Two things have made this possible—I can fix cars myself, and for 35 years, I had a very short commute. (Okay, three things—the third being an incredibly understanding wife). These days, I work from home, and since my wife’s car is a Honda Fit with only 60,000 miles on the clock, we do own something reliable. So it’s easy to continue my old habits.

In general, fully depreciated, high-mileage BMWs advertised for astonishingly low prices usually have a combination of issues. Even if the body is great and the interior presents well, the Check Engine Light (CEL), ABS, and traction control lights are often on. CEL issues on a car that generally runs well can be as trivial as an occasional misfire from a single cylinder (usually due to a bad stick coil) or a dead oxygen sensor. They can also be something like a dirty catalytic converter, or an evaporative system leak that’s difficult to find. Other common maintenance issues are oil leaks, power steering leaks, and worn front-end bushings.

Individually, none of those are a big deal. They’re typically well within the skills of a backyard mechanic, but they can easily result in a repair quote for thousands of dollars. At that point, “estimate shock” often causes the owner to bail out of the car.

From a reliability standpoint, I’ve written multiple articles about “The Big Seven,” the problems most likely to strand a car. Years back, when I first came up with that list, it was mainly targeted at the stuff that would likely make a vintage car die on a road trip. These days, it applies pretty well to modern daily drivers—just remove “clutch hydraulics” and substitute “crankshaft position sensor” for “ignition issues.”

It’s been nearly six years since I bought my high-mileage 2003 530i on a blustery, 10-degree Presidents Day weekend when I had little to do but pound on Craigslist for bargains. The car was literally embedded in a snowbank in the seller’s driveway. He insisted that it had “an electrical problem,” because when he tried to jump-start the dead battery, it made “that clicking sound.” I showed up with a fully-charged battery, dropped it in, turned the key, and the car fired up instantly. When we shoveled it out of the snowbank, a test drive revealed only flat-spotted tires and a check engine light, later traced to a simple rotted vacuum line.

I’ve been daily-driving the car ever since, and true to “The Big Seven,” the only strand-me issues have been a weak fuel pump and a bad voltage regulator. Although the car hadn’t had any cooling system issues, BMWs built in the last 30-ish years are notorious for the use of plastic in the cooling system (the radiator tanks, expansion tank, thermostat housing, hose ends, and water pump impeller are all plastic). If any of these components crack, they can cause catastrophic coolant loss, and unless you stop the car immediately, the engine will quickly overheat and crack its cylinder head(s).

When I found that several cooling system components on the 530i still wore their original 2003 manufacturer’s date stamp, it was clear that I was tempting fate. So two summers ago, I bit the bullet and dropped around $500 for new OEM cooling system components. While no one can make any guarantees about the reliability of any 200,000-mile car, I feel pretty confident jumping in the 530i to do things like, well, drive 90 minutes in winter to look at a thousand-dollar X3.

And that gets to the heart of the matter. Even if I dragged that New Bedford X3 home and addressed its problems, would I really then de-insure a reliable and reasonably well-sorted 530i and slap its plates on a highly suspect X3 for the winter simply because the SUV has all-wheel drive and the 530i doesn’t?

No. I would not.

Don’t you love it when you think things through until it’s clear you’ve made a rational decision?

Even so, are who we are. My answer at that point wasn’t, “I wouldn’t touch this needy pig with a ten-foot torque wrench.” It was, “Okay, so maybe not $1000. Wonder what he’d take for it?”

I sent the seller a couple of texts—one before Christmas, one a few days after—using language like “What’s your availability for me to come down there with a trailer and see if we can make something happen?” I got no response to either.

That’s fine. These things have a way of working out. One door closes, another one opens. You never know what the Automotive Powers That Be might dangle in front of you next.

Of course, it could go the other way. TAPTB might say, “We were going to dangle the rust-free, running E-Type for $5000, but he passed on the X3, so screw him.”

Somehow, though, I suspect those guys are a fair bunch. Not unduly sadistic. They might note that I’ve kept folks entertained for decades, writing for outlets like this one. At which point the response would probably be something like, “We were going to dangle the rust-free, running Opel GT for $4000, but he passed on the X3, so screw him.”

I can live with that.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

The post Is it too late to buy myself another car for Christmas? (Part II) appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Now that my 2008 Chevy 3500HD Duramax is mobile again after the catalytic converter episode from hell, I’m left wondering if there’s time left for me to use the resurrected truck as intended. Maybe I should tow home some cheap, highly-questionable, dead, or needy car?

A search like this quickly separates into two main categories: vintage cars and daily drivers. The big dividing line, at least in my world, is that of physical space.

My vintage cars are kept out of the weather, either in my garage or my rented off-site storage. And as I’ve described previously, the garage at my house is a 17 x 31-foot shoebox attached to the rear corner of the house. All access is through a single-width roll-up door. While it’s possible to fit four cars if you put one on wheel dollies and slide it sideways, that packs them in like sardines, making it impossible to move either of the two cars on the left without reversing the roller-dolly stunt. (Plus, the open floor space that would hold the fourth car naturally gets filled up with tools, parts, and junk.) For these reasons, the garage usually houses three cars. Unless, of course, I find something I can’t live without.

So, what can’t I live without? First, recall that I’m an inveterate bargain hunter, so I’m looking for cars that are, ahem, affordable. I have a never-ending attraction to needy BMW 2002s, but with appreciating values, they’ve become considerably more difficult to find in said condition where the “need” isn’t bodywork on an utterly rotted basket case. I’d love another vintage Lotus, or even a more conventional Brit like a GT6 or a TR6. These, of course, are even more legendary rust buckets than my beloved 2002s, so anything solid is typically pricey. I’ve had a craving the past couple of years for a 1970s type BC Fiat 124 Sport Coupe, but I blew my one chance at buying the only affordable one in this part of the country last winter.

Since I often still search for Fiats, a solid-looking and well-priced 1987 X1/9 showed up on my Facebook Marketplace feed. I spoke with the seller, who’s a guy like me except his poison is ’60s-era muscle cars. He wound up with the Fiat for a song after seeing it at a local swap meet. He got it running, but it’s really not his jam.

The car looks decent for the $3200 asking price, and the idea of having two little mid-engine 1970s cars in the garage (the X1/9 and the Lotus Europa) is appealing, but ultimately it just doesn’t fully heat my car-passion furnace.

A few years back, I had a serious jonesing for a BMW 850i—the 12-cylinder-powered successor to the 635CSi two-door coupe. When they were new, they developed a reputation as boulevard cruisers, not sport coupes, and their value went into free fall. For a while, there seemed to be no bottom to their depreciation curve, and Craigslist was full of $3000 neglected money pits. Over time, though, the market began to appreciate them, and values rebounded. A decent-looking 840i (the eight-cylinder version) appeared on my Facebook Marketplace in Patchogue Long Island in sitting-for-two-years ran-when-parked no-I-won’t-start-it-you-take-the-risk condition and a five0-grand asking price.

It was gone in 12 hours. Damn, I’m getting slow in my dotage.

For the aforementioned garage space reason, as winter approaches, newly-purchased non-Hagerty-insured daily driver cars are a bit easier to contemplate. They can sit outside without me feeling like it’s an act of violence. Of course, nearly any cheap car I buy is cheap because it needs work, and unless it’s a very simple very quick repair I’m willing to do in outside in the cold driveway, that means pulling a car out of the garage and temporarily letting the new patient reside inside. Even still, all that beats sourcing an over-wintering indoor space.

What would be a good candidate cheap daily driver winter project? Well, I’ve been driving my E39-generation 2003 530i five-speed Sport package sedan for nearly six years. I’ve written about how it’s been the best daily-driver BMW I’ve ever owned. It’s not, however, a stellar winter car. It’s adequate—it performs well enough in the snow as long as I’ve got deep-tread snow tires on it—but it certainly isn’t in the same league as something with four-wheel or all-wheel drive. Of course, the Chevy 3500HD has four-wheel drive, but its sheer size makes it a poor choice if I just need to run to Trader Joe’s for eggs and milk. With the fat utility body on the back, it barely fits in the parking spots.

Before I had the 530i sedan, I had two BMW wagons. The first was a 1999 528iT. Despite it being an E39 5-series car like my wonderful 530i, it was the worst daily driver I ever had. It drove great and had oodles of room, but for some reason it was one of those repair-of-the-week cars. I sold it and got an E46-generation 325XiT wagon. Reliability-wise it was better than the 528iT, and the all-wheel drive made it great in snow, but I never really liked the way the AWD made the steering feel. And when the front CV joints started clicking, and replacing them meant having to pop the front axles out, the job was so onerous that I decided I never wanted another AWD BMW again. The winter performance simply wasn’t worth the maintenance on the parts driving the front wheels.

All-wheel drive is funny. I live in suburban Boston (Newton), which means my house is not on a hundred acres off some windy dirt road through the mountains. Really, I just need to be able to back out of my own short driveway, which is occasionally troublesome as it slopes down toward the garage.

Nonetheless, a few years back I bought a 2005 BMW X5 with the unicorn-rare combination of six-speed manual transmission, Sport package, and factory tow package, figuring that it would be like the Swiss Army knife of vehicles. I could daily drive it and use it to tow. Unfortunately, I never really warmed to the car. It was simply too big and bulky for what I wanted as a daily driver, and I was relieved when I sold it the following spring and went back to driving the 530i.

But I’ve kept my eyes open for another BMW wagon. The successor to the E46 wagon is the E91-generation wagon, based on the 2006–2011 E90 3 Series platform. Like the E46, the E91 was available in both rear-wheel drive and all-wheel drive configurations, but here in New England, nearly all these wagons on BMW dealer lots were AWD, and most were automatics. RWD six-speed manual transmission wagons exist, but they needed to be special-ordered that way, making them exceedingly rare.

As E91 wagons are moving along their depreciation curve, high-mileage needy examples have dropped substantially in value. If I take the unicorn-rare 6MT RWD wagon off the table, I see numerous AWD-automatic examples for under $4000. I could drive the truck up to Burlington, Vermont and tow this one (below) home for $1500. Of course, it’s got 225,000 miles and is throwing Bank 1 (cylinders 1 through 3) codes. And with the cost of diesel for the truck, the round trip from Boston to Burlington is nearly $300 in fuel. But it would be a nice winter beater (or, as we say in Boston, a wintah beatah).

For a $3500 asking price, this E91 wagon (below) two hours north of me in New Hampshire even has the six-speed manual and the Sport package, but the “runs but needs work, good parts car” description is always a bit ominous. I messaged the seller asking what its exact needs were. He listed an oil leak from the valve cover onto the exhaust manifold (common on these N52 engines), the ABS warning light being on, the need for front struts and a front wheel bearing, and a few electrical issues. Doesn’t sound too bad. If it was closer, I’d look at it.

With both needy cars being two hours and four hours north of me, respectively, we get into the issue of the logistics of showing up with a truck and trailer. On the one hand, nothing says “I’m here to play” like showing up with cash, a truck, and a trailer, fully prepared to cut the deal and drag your prize home. I own a truck, but unfortunately I do not own a trailer. I’ve been back and forth over this for years. Although renting a U-Haul auto transporter is cheap—only $65 a day with insurance and taxes—whenever I need to do it, I’m reminded what a pain in the butt it is. In the first place, even though there are U-Haul dealers just 5 miles to the east and west of me, it’s astonishing how much time it adds onto the day to have to drive there, wait in line, pick up my reserved trailer, and drop it off at the end of the day. It easily adds two hours onto whatever drive I’m making. Second, it seems that whenever I need to rent an auto transporter on short notice, these two dealers are usually out of them and I instead need to go to one farther away, adding even more time on both ends.

Now, finally, I can tell you about the thousand-dollar 2005 BMW X3 six-speed.

I wasn’t really looking at X3s. I didn’t really like the X5 that I had, and I’d much rather get a wagon. But as part of a search for a well-priced standard-transmission BMW wagon, I happened into this ad for a 2005 X3 with 170,000 miles for $1000 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, on Facebook Marketplace:

“I’m selling this suv/truck for parts clean title it has differential or transfer case problem but the engine is good lots of new parts and it runs. It’s a mechanic’s special please do not ask too many questions. The price is firm. As is.”

Transfer case problems on these vehicles are usually due to a failed plastic gear on the transfer case actuator—a relatively easy and inexpensive repair. The three small photos appeared to show an intact vehicle. And it was a six-speed, which is rare. (Like the wagons, most of these cars were automatics.) The seller was difficult to get hold of, but he eventually responded. I could come down anytime, I said. He replied that he was available between 4 and 6 pm on weekdays. That’s not a great time to be driving the hour and a half south from Boston to New Bedford, but I committed.

And that raises the age-old question of car hunting: Do you just jump in the daily driver and shoot down to have a look, knowing that if you want to buy the car you’ll need to make the drive again with the truck and trailer, or do you try to do it all in one trip— go through the effort to rent the U-Haul auto transporter and tow it down with the truck? I’ve always felt that if it’s a one-hour drive, you just have a look, and if it’s a three-hour drive, you err on the side of the truck and trailer. If it’s in-between, call it a gray zone.

I let the availability of the auto transporter dictate the answer. None of the nearby U-Haul dealerships had one, so I took $1000 in cash and drove my 530i down to New Bedford.

The sun was setting by the time I got there. When I saw the X3 parked on a side street, my heart sank. The nose, hood, and front fenders were a different color than the rest of the car, so clearly it had been hit and home-repaired. And three of the tires were low to the point of being nearly flat.

The seller showed up. He explained that he lived in Brockton (about an hour north), he had since bought a pickup, and his brother was letting him park the now-unregistered X3 in front of his repair garage here in New Bedford, where it had been sitting for three months. He rooted around in a nearby junkpile, found a piece of a 2×4, and used it to brace one of the wheels, explaining that the car’s handbrake lever was missing. We tried to start the car and found that the battery was dead. I’d brought my battery pack and hooked it up. The engine cranked, but the car wouldn’t start. “Sometimes it’s just hard to start,” the seller said, and positioned his pickup to jump it. He cranked and cranked and only got a burble out of it. This had the hallmark of a complete waste of time, but to my surprise, the X3 eventually started, accompanied by a very loud exhaust. After the incident with my truck, my first thought was that the catalytic converters had been cut, but when I crawled under it, I found that they were intact, and the noise was coming from a missing clamp connecting them to the head pipes.

Because of the potential issue of the transfer case, I’d brought my Foxwell NT510 BMW scan tool with me to see if the car had thrown a transfer case-related code. There was one (minor, an out-of-range resistance value, not a failure), but of more concern were the hail of codes related to oxygen sensors (likely related to the disconnected exhaust), misfires, operating temperature, and the cam position sensor. Even with all that, the car seemed to idle okay. However, when I sat in it, I noted that most of the dashboard warning lights were on, and cringed when I saw that the passenger-side footwell had an inch of water in it, so it was leaking from somewhere.

The seller went into his brother’s shop, came out with a portable air compressor, and inflated the tires. He explained that the car wasn’t registered, but that I could drive it up and down the side street. I did, and it drove surprisingly well, at least as well as one can ascertain in 100 feet at 20 mph. Whatever he interpreted as being a transfer case issue wasn’t preventing the car from being driven.

Tough call. Even with the mismatched color of the body panels, the disconnected exhaust, the pile of codes, the specter of a potential transfer case problem, the water on the floor, and the odd missing handbrake lever, a thousand bucks is a very good price for a running X3 six-speed. The car seemed like it fit the bill for the sort of pull-it-into-the-garage-a-few-hours-at-a-time project that might work well for me over the weekend. (Hey, these columns don’t write themselves without a continuous stream of stupid decisions on my part!)

Still, it was too much risk. I would’ve jumped at it if there were one fewer demerit, but the totality of issues made me err on the side of “no, at least not now.” Plus, even if I wanted it, there was no reason for me to commit and hand over the cash, as I’d need to come back anyway with a truck and trailer.

When I got home, I ran a CarFax on the VIN. It showed only a minor accident last March—I assume the one that required the replacement of the front body panels—with the note “airbags not deployed.”

As I write this, it’s four days before Christmas. Heavy rain is forecast for December 23, followed by freezing temperatures. Even if a trailer is available nearby on Saturday December 24, I don’t want to spend it ice skating on frozen roads towing a highly-questionable car that I’d largely be buying so I can have the bragging rights of having gotten an X3 six-speed for a thousand bucks. I’m sure the seller has more important things to do the day before Christmas as well. We’ll see what happens.

So, no car for Christmas for this guy.

Wait a minute. I have all this wrong. What I should be doing is contacting people who have had their catalytic converter stolen and seeing if they want to sell their car cheaply. You know, I hear that replacing them is a real pain in the butt …