Got a lot done this weekend, interesting find....

[RareGMFan]

Mmmkay, so I've been away from the boards for a while. There's been a lot going on in my life away from the car scene that I've been dealing with/thinking about, but I was rudely awakened and forced to re-enter the realm of automotive mayhem recently, so here's an update...

The TGP, my only semi-functioning car at the moment, has been limping me to and from work the last few months. Well....a couple weeks ago, the radiator went on it. I could still drive it, but the constant filling of coolant was getting on my nerves. So, 2 weekends ago, I decided to dig up the radiator (from the TGP I parted out a few years back) out of my Public Storage space. I just HAD to have it in the furthest corner possible, buried by interior pieces. So anyway, I get it, and go to my friend's driveway to work on the swap (I live in an apt complex where working on cars isn't tolerated). Well....all was going smoothly till the dreaded tranny cooler lines. Some of you may have seen my post in the TGP section about these not cooperating. I had to cut through the top one, and the bottom fitting rounded out trying to get it off. So I had to wait till the following weekend to find a solution. Against the advice of 2 parts store employees (due to the "damn near impossible angles in the bends"), I decided to try custom bending the lines myself. To my surprise (and theirs), they actually came out pretty damn close.

I had also decided during the week that, since the radiator was out of the way, to tackle a few other things I've been meaning to get to......for the past year. Saturday, I replaced the plugs (NGK Iridiums), wires (Taylor 8mm red), coils (Delco), ICM (Delco), oil return line (bought off TGPilot), and cleaned off the negative ground for the batter cable. Sunday, I put the radiator in with the new lines, new lower heater hose, new thermostat, and new battery post bolts.

End result?

......MUCH better running/accelerating motor. It still has some issues to resolve, but the horrible vibrating + lack of acceleration I'd get when I pressed the pedal more than 1/4 of the way down is completely gone! Oh.....this may have had something to do with that....


OLD COILS!!






Brian G discovered the splitting on the middle coil at our last w-body meet. I've been wanting to change them bad ever since, and removing the radiator, plus having a driveway for a weekend was just the excuse I needed to get my ass in gear and get it done! I'm so glad I finally did. I only wish I had done it sooner. The car still has a lot it needs, but I'm actually kind of excited about getting it done, now.

You now have all been briefed, and may resume your regularly scheduled activities.

[Euro]

sweet man! im glad you got all that stuff done and the car's running hella better now!

oh and btw...is it for sale?

[89GP_SE]

Glad to hear that your back into your car, cause I know how you feel. I have also done that (lost intrest in them) but then something like what happened to you always brings me back in, or I end up helping a friend cause they dont know jack LOL

[5speedz34]

How hard was the radiator to do? I might be doing one on a 94 3.4.

I've always thought they where pretty easy to do, but if there are tranny cooler lines to deal with...

[DOHCRagtopguy]

When my old lady had her 93 Euro 3.4 I did the radiator. It was very easy, just use a line wrench on those auto tranny lines and you should have no problem. Never try and take them off with a simple open end wrench or you're asking for problems.

[Crazy K]

oh my god those coils are hilareous!

the tgp radiator is on the tgp only it is like 1/2 the width of a normal radiator and twice as thick.

the regular radiators are very easy to change. when I cant get then lines off with a normal wrench... I break them loose with vice grips, and then wrench em out. I like to coat the threads with a dab of grease upoin reassembly, enough to preven them from ceazing.

[RareGMFan]

Matt - lol, I don't know yet. I don't want to get ahead of myself, but right now, I'm leaning towards not selling it. We'll see after I get rid of the other 3 cars.

Well the fitting on the top line broke free just fine. Problem is, it was twisting the line with it. I WD-40ed it 4 times, hit it with a blow tourch 3 times, and tried tapping between the line and fitting. It just wouldn't let go. So I finally gave up and cut the line right at the fitting, then unscrewed the fitting once the radiator was out of the car. This is the first time I've had a line be this stubborn. Both the 6000s' lines broke free of the fittings with little effort.

Oh, and besides some of the pain in the ass of getting a few of the things done, there was only one sour note during the process of these repairs. It came after I got everything back together late Sunday night. I took it for a drive to see if everything was operating ok. Went to a gas station, filled her up, inflated the tires, and took it for a cruise. Even on the way up to the gas station, I could feel the acceleration was 10 times better. But when I pulled out of there, and got on the gas, the passenger side wheel was spinning out hard. I'm thinking great, now what? I turned into a side street to head back to my buddy's house. As I hit the main street again, it was pulling to the right pretty hard. I'm like WTF, this isn't good. I pulled into the Bueno Beef parking lot, and popped the hood. I went over to the passenger side, and nearly slipped and fell on something. Before even looking down, I was thinking "uh oh". There was a pool of tranny fluid under the car!! Now my mind is racing, trying to figure out what happened. First thing I thought is the new tranny cooler lines didn't hold up for some reason. I looked at the external trans cooler, and luckily, saw that one of the hoses (that I wasn't working on) had popped off. I'm like ok, no big deal. I tried gently limping it home. When I got to the first stoplight, it was red. When it turned green, the car wouldn't go anywhere. It slipped a bit, then creped forward, so I pulled into a Bob Evans parking lot, and called my buddy. He was at work, so his mom actually came and picked me up, took me back to the driveway so I could grab one of the new spare clamps, drove me to a K-Mart so I could get tranny fluid, and then back to my car. I reattached the hose on the spot, filled her up, and.....all was good after that. No more leaks, and luckily, no slipping (from the new fluid) yet. So I also inadvertantly did a tranny fluid change. I hope the tranny holds up to it.

[99RegalGS]

Glad to hear you got it fixed.

Dikran, by any chance do you have off of work next friday? (the 23rd). I'll be in the area and I'll have some time to kill from ~8:30am-11:30am.

[SigEpCutlass]

Wow D. Glad it's working better for you than the last time I saw it. I have a similar setup with NGK Iridiums, but with blue Taylor Spiro Pro wires.

EDIT: Wow that coil looks worse there than I remember it being. I'm sure that could have been most of the acceleration loss right there.

[Euro]

i was just kidding about if you're selling it or not....tried to mock that bicycle cop that came up to us


and you got a pm

[slick]

Too late now, but another idea of getting it off would have been to torch it for a minute, and then take a can of computer cleaner(you know, compressed air in a can), turn it upside down, and spray it at the joint. Might have worked, might not of.

[BrianG]

Thanks for the credit on the find! I'm just glad I could help and shes running better now. Those cracks were nasty man. I gotta take pics of my coil that I had do the same thing.

[SigEpCutlass]

Did you fix your timing chain yet Brian?

[Euro]

haha nope not yet....


and yeah, the TGP really screams now....good lord :shock:

[RareGMFan]

Matt - Oh, I get it (on the selling the car joke). Sorry. I'm slow like that.

Sean - You should stop by my workplace!

Brian - No prob. I'm glad you spotted that! I planned on doing all this stuff eventually anyways (those parts had been sitting here, waiting forever), but spotting that put an urgency on it.

Yeah, she runs pretty good now when the SES light isn't on. I'm sure that's just a minor issue to work out, too. I did, however, find out my primary fan stopped working on the long, hot, extremely heavy traffic ride home today. This must have JUST happened, because after I put everything back together a couple weeks ago, I saw the fan run a few times. It never got past 240° today, but I found out first hand just how inefficient the secondary fan is at cooling off the motor. Best it could do is severely slow down the rate that the temp was rising. It was enough to keep it from overheating, though.

When I got home, I plugged in the "key" for the engine codes in the ALDL connector, and the secondary fan kicked on instead of the primary. For the hell of it, I swapped the primary and secondary fan relays, and sure enough, that was the problem. The primary one looks like some of the plastic melted on to the connector, keeping it from getting a connection. I cleaned it off, tried it again, and it worked. But I'm leaving the primary and secondary relays swapped just in case, till I grab a replacement for it.

So granted it ran hotter than I'd like to see, this was a good test on how the lines and radiator are holding up, which it actually passed pretty well, considering the circumstances.