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- Today
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Thanks for the info. I realize most people are these days, yet I have no facebook account.
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So I spent a little time out in the garage tonight. I pulled the old crusty battery that has sat in the car all these years and replaced it with a new one ( which was also used to power the winch we pulled it onto the trailer with. This let me test some electrical components. All 4 window motors are working. The motor for the top works, though it is a bit sluggish ( i’m Sure it doesn’t help that there is extra weight in the roof framework, in the form of old mud dauber nests.) I was able to get the top all the way down, though the motor struggles to go back up ( this could be as a result of a partially drained battery. My old charger bit the dust, so I will need to get another one. Of course, having the top down has some advantages. It is much easier to see the mess that is the interior. I started the process of vacuuming out debris, tomorrow I should have some upholstery cleaner to work on the seats. I also took a few more photos to document what I am working with.
- Yesterday
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Sounds like you're gonna have to pull the pastic molding off the door and take a look. It's the only way. So, get your screw driver out, and get to it.
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Over the past few months, I've noticed my rear window is hanging a little low on the passenger side and when I examined it more closely yesterday, I found that it is actually pulling loose to the point that I can slip my hand around the window and into the car. Nothing feels torn, so I think something has just slipped out of its channel maybe, but I know nothing about convertible tops. Any ideas on how to fix this? I'm really not ready to go down the duct tape trail yet.
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I`ve got mine in the works to do the subframe mounts as well but I dont have the parts yet. So that top nut and square plate was just spinning en capsuled in there?
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And in case you are wondering, here is the thread where I discussed the issues the car had before it was partly disassembled: Now the motor has been siding with both the cam carriers and the intake manifold off of it since 2005 ( there is another thread here: ) At this point, I am not inclined to put the motor back together without rebuilding it. I think that is the right thing to do for the old girl. I did get the trunk cleared out tonight, and the hood open. All the parts I removed from the motor were tucked inside the trunk.
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Thanks. This was actually my daily driver from 1998-2002. I then supplemented her with another car and she did not see much winter road driving. She developed a ticking sound which I didn’t really have time to fix. Long ago I posted an audio file here of the noise she made. The license plates on her expired in 2004. She ended up in the lumber yard because I moved to Louisiana for 7.5 years. At least in the 11 years she was there, she was mostly under roof. ( you can actually see the line in the dirt on the hood where rain dripped off the roof edge ). The door glass is the least of my worries right now. Once I get her cleaned up, I may drop the top and leave it down most of the time, so I don’t really need the windows much ( not saying I won’t fix it, but there are bigger fish to fry... )
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So excited to see another one getting saved! I just love the red color and like Manic said, looks really solid. Congrats and I think it's so cool bringing back W-Bodies from the dead. I saved two W's from definitely getting scrapped and I found them in the same situation as you. My 91 International sat in the original owner's back yard since 09. I saved it in Dec of 2015. I bought my 93 STE last year from the original owner's son. It's been sitting in his front yard in the CA desert since 2010. I saved it this past June. Nothing beats seeing W's on Uhaul trailers, LOL! I'm using way too many exclamation points but so excited to see another CS!
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Nice save, looks pretty solid for an Ohio car. Fortunately, the door glass is the same as a 1988-94 coupe
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negativeMatt changed their profile photo
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Robert is easier to reach on facebook these days...just FYI Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
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I had last driven the car Sunday a week ago, so the map light had been on for a little over a week. I have no idea how old the battery is but it's safe to assume it's at least two to three years old. It was in the car when I got it a little more than a year ago. The previous owner had not driven the car in about a year when I bought it but he had kept the battery on a trickle charger during that time. It's a good quality Interstate battery and it has never failed to start the car—until yesterday. The turn signals have always blinked slowly (a little more than a second for a complete blink cycle) as long as I've had the car. The hazard flashers blink at about twice that rate.
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So it has been a long time since I posted here.... and Shawn ( @GnatGoSplat) probably thinks I’m crazy for starting this project, but... Yesterday I rescued my 1993 Cutlass Supreme Convertible from what used to be a lumber yard in Byhalia,OH where it had sat for almost exactly 11 years ( it was parked there in October, 2008 ). I am in a bit of damage/deterioration determination mode at the moment. When she was parked, the motor was partially disassembled, so obviously there is some work to be done under the hood. The drivers side window was broken at some point, so that will need to be replaced, and at this point I don’t know if any of the interior parts have damage that needs to be repaired or replaced due to the layer of dirt and dust and other debris I still need to clean out of the car. Getting her up on the trailer ( and back down again ) was fun... the passenger side rear wheel isn’t spinning. Surprisingly, all 4 tires took air, though the drivers side front would only hold it about an hour. Passenger side front was better. It took 12 hours before it went flat.... Next task is to look through the pile of parts ( and repair manuals ) I put in the trunk all those years ago... I need it clear so I can see if the top still works....
- Last week
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'95 CS Convertible hazard lights flash only in the rear
oldmangrimes replied to Human's topic in General
I would double-check your battery. How old is it? A map light should take a very long time to kill a healthy battery to the point that you couldn't quickly start it with the charger plugged in. I know from experience that a low battery voltage can make many car electrical systems behave strangely. Removing the battery is a bit of a hassle, but I think it would be worth it to have it tested. Or if it's more than 3 years old and questionable I would just replace it. How do the hazards behave with the charger plugged in? Or with the engine running? Any faster? A low battery voltage (from a bad battery, bad alternator, or voltage regulator, etc) can affect the flasher speed I think. -
Thanks for that information. I ordered a new flasher module from RockAuto because it was cheap and we'll see if that helps. But today I kept messing with it and eventually got it to work At first, it was still doing the rear only thing, but eventually it started working with only the left panel indicator blinking. Walking around the car showed all the flashers working, except for the right front. When I tried the right turn signal, everything on that side worked fine and then the flashers worked fine. Weird. But through all that, a new problem has arisen in that it the flasher button on the steering column won't stay pushed down. I have to hold it down and wiggle it around to get it to stay, then it takes a little more pushing and wiggling to get it to release. The button eventually came out in my hand and one corner is broken off at the bottom, where it attaches inside the steering column. If it's not one thing, it's another.
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Turn signals are slow but ALL THE LIGHTS WORK? Possibly the wrong flasher. Standard-duty flashers are rated by the number of bulbs they activate. You may have a flasher that's intended to drive more turn signal bulbs than the car has, Hazzard lights don't work in front, and don't light up the dash indicators? Need a wiring diagram to track that down.
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So I had the convertible out this evening and for whatever reason started to get slightly irritated by how slowly the turn signals were blinking (they've been very slow for as long as I've owned the car). By the time I got home, I had become curious as to whether the hazard blinkers were that slow also, so once in the driveway, I turned them on and from the driver's seat, it looked like they weren't working at all. But when I got out of the car, the taillights were blinking (at a more normal interval than the turn signals) but the front lights weren't and neither were the panel indicators. These lights work just fine when either turn signal is flashing. The car passed a sate safety inspection last August so the flashers must have been working then. I did have a dead battery this afternoon (I had left a map light switched on) and the car, of course, wouldn't start. I put the charger on it in the 60A "Start" mode but It still didn't start so I shifted it to the 10A charging mode and let it sit for two hours, after which it still wouldn't quite start on its own. When I turned the charger back to "Start" mode, it cranked right up. The only odd thing was the parking brake light on the instrument panel was on, even though the brake was most definitely off. I set and released the brake a couple of times but it stayed on, so I decided to go out for a drive to further charge the battery. After about 40 minutes, I parked the car, then went out about an hour later and it cranked up just fine and the parking brake light was off, as it should be. I'm not sure what's going on, whether I fried something with the battery charger or the inspection station just missed that the hazards weren't fully working or perhaps verified them from the rear. Any suggestions of what I should check?
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My fav year for the coupes are 91-93, of course the GTP's! Since I've been to CA now and realize it's not a big deal to travel, I REALLY WISH I had saved a 91 GTP that was for sale on CL out there. It was a factory CD car with the LQ1/5 speed combo. White with grey cloth quad bucket seats. No rust and all complete. It got down to $900 bucks, didn't sell and then they owner scrapped it. It showed up on Row52.com or a similar place like that. So sad, and it's haunting me now. Remember that one Jay?
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I've always preferred the '94-96 coupes myself
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But...got to admit, this is still my favorite GP front end of all time!
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Not trying to put this car down AT ALL but I just think the inner fogs on these cars look SO MUCH BETTER than without. Still an pretty incredible little coupe!
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Amen brother! That is going to be a blast to drive when you get her done!
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Its pretty ragged, but the 5 speed will go great in my black 90 TGP! Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
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@jiggity76 showed me this one. Pretty rare car.
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Update on the car: After driving it a month or two, it developed a unsafe "shimmy" or weird steering shift in the steering when making a hard left at speed. I did some online research and identified a few possible causes. Like usual, I didn't take it to a professional and tried to fix it myself. I thought it was probably related to something I'd replaced over the winter. Did I mention I've not a very good mechanic? But I am persistent. Anyway . . . So, I guessed it was the subframe mounts, as the car had 240k miles and the visible sides of the mounts looked bad. When the car was up on jackstands nothing felt loose, but of course I couldn't recreate the side-loads experienced on 45-mph sweepers. So I ordered a set of four subframe mounts, watched a couple youtube videos (there aren't many for this repair on first gen w-bodys) and got to work. First, I supported the engine with a jack and a block of wood and cracked loose the four mounting bolts for the subframe mounts. But I had to use a breaker bar to break loose the rear two mounts, and in doing so I broke the weld on the cage holding the hidden nut that is trapped inside two layers of the unibody by the drivers footwell. I did NOT realize this at the time. I spent a few hours removing the rusted, disintegrated remains of the original mounts. Initially I just used a hammer and chisel to remove most of the metal and rubber. But the metal parts of the mounts were wedged into the subframe and I couldn't pry them out. After awkwardly fighting it for hours, laying on my back with limited clearance, I ended up using my angle grinder and cutting at the stuck metal pieces. Finally I got it all removed, put the new pieces in place and tried to reassemble them. I couldn't get the parts to compress together, I fought it a while before realizing I hadn't removed all of the metal from the old mount, I thought it was metal from the subframe (I'm an idiot). I tried again to compress the mounts in place but I realized that the nut was spinning and I couldn't get to it to hold it in place! I was many many hours into the project at this point, spread out over weeks of time (vacations and other projects like my 1991 speedboat kept interrupting ) so I dejectedly gave up for a few weeks and left the car in the garage. Eventually I found a thread somewhere here describing how a guy had to cut through the floor to get to the nut. So, without knowing really what I was doing I cut through the carpet and insulation, cut and pried back a few-inch-square piece of floorboard (wow it was thin metal! I've never cut a floorboard before, I just assumed it would be thicker metal), and saw the busted cage around the nut. (see pic of floorboard hole, with broken nut cage removed) Even though the passenger side cage hadn't broken, I still cut through the floor on that side just to see for myself, I figured what the heck I'm already a bajillion hours into this project. It gets worse. (Did I mention I can make an easy project into a nightmare?). Since I still couldn't get the two subframe mount halves to compress together, I found out from a Youtube video that I needed a longer bolt. But the longer bolts I bought weren't threaded all the way like the bolts that came with the mounts, and when I finally got everything back together (yay?) I didn't realize that I had just tightened the nut down to the end of the threads and it wasn't compressing the rubber mount fully. So I drove it for a few days, but the steering was even worse because the whole subframe was shifting around. I didn't realize why and thought that I'd screwed up the steering rack when I lowered the subframe. Back in the garage it went. Also I didn't realize that when you replace subframe mounts then the alignment gets screwed up so my steering was off center even worse. And with the variable assist steering on my Oldsmobile it feels weird driving with the wheel a few degrees off because the progressive assist doesn't match the on-center steering. Anyway . . . I eventually realized that maybe I should check if the subframe was tightened properly. When I checked, I could tell the bolts didn't feel tight (because the rubber had compressed more) so I tried to tighten them, couldn't (because the nut was at the end of the threads), and then FINALLY realized what was up, added more washers to allow the bolt to draw up the subframe mounts properly, adjusted my tie-rods again to center the steering wheel, and now four months later it's fixed! I've driven for a couple hundred miles and it's driving better than it has in years. I need to patch up the holes in the floorboards, currently I just bent the metal flaps I cut back into place and loosely covered with the carpet and insulation I cut out. It's all hidden under my floormats for now, but I need to spray primer on the cut metal to slow the rusting and seal it up better for water and fire protection. Looking back on the project, I can see many places where I wasted time with the wrong tools, misdiagnosed issues, stupid decisions, and other things I didn't put into this already too-long post. I spent 50+ hours of my life, lost a summer of top-down cruising, and saved . . .a few hundred dollars of mechanic charges maybe? A smart mechanic could have done the whole project much more simply, in a couple hours on a lift with the right tools and expertise. I know that doesn't seem like it's worth it, but it's the principal of fixing it all myself and keeping the car forever. Anyway, that's my story of the summer of 2019 with my vert, on my back in the garage instead of out in the sunshine. Oh well, she's back on daily driver duty, just in time for the fall rainy season. I wonder what will break next. . .
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Picked up a 90 5 Speed donor car today! One more part for my black 90 TGP! Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
