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Photo of my new car.

Oops, I read that wrong I thought it was the taillight. For the backup lens, you could use car-part.com to buy a used one. I don't know the part number, usually stuff like that is bought by description on Ebay or elsewhere. You could also post on the Wanted section here, I'm sure there are a couple guys that have extras

Pretty sure there is a return spring up high under the dash, most likely what you heard snap Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk

Damn! That sucks! For that amount, you could have bought another car. Hope you get some of that back.

They're either incompetent, overcharging you, or some combination of both. No way it takes 40hrs to do anything you've mentioned. Any shop with competent techs can work on your car despite the fact that it's "old." If they literally can't, they're probably not a shop you want to deal with in the first place. I suggest finding an independent repair facility in the area that does general repair instead of going back to that classic car place. Talk to friends, family, neighbors, and look on facebook or other social media in your area to see who people use and if they're satisfied with them. I don't really have a preference when it comes to old or new. Sometimes the new stuff is very convenient to diagnose because everything communicates.

GTP wheels weren't 7.5". All 5 spoke Grand Prix wheels were 7" whether they were on a GTP or an SE, and GTP's with crosslaces are 8" So all first gen 16" wheels are 6.5", except Grand Prix 5 spokes were 7", and Grand Prix crosslaces were 8".

I will agree that there are a great deal of incredibly lazy shops out there, and in my experience, dealerships are absolutely some of the worst. Which car were you told they had to mess with the suspension to remove the gas tank? There is no W-body where touching the rear suspension is required for tank removal. As for your Achieva, I can't speak for NH's smog laws, but there is nothing complex or unusual about the exhaust on a N-body, Quad 4 or not. My point was really that you can't get any more dead-nuts simple than a 2.8/3.1 1G W Car, and I would take a shop telling me "yeah, it's too old and we're too inept to open up AllData, so we're just going to tell you to get lost" as a dodging a bullet. I'm sure those same shops would be more than willing to diagnose issues on a 2003 Grand Prix SE, which is virtually the same car with nearly the same powertrain. If a shop can't properly work on a pushrod 1G W car, they shouldn't be working on anything.

There is absolutely zero reason to take any of these cars to a classic car restoration place for mechanical work. There is nothing special about them to justify it. An 89 Regal has far more in common with a 2009 GM than a 1969 GM. It's your money, so spend it how you want, but know that you're getting fleeced by this shop.

X-laces are 16x8.

A wise man once said "If you ain't fucking something up you ain't getting nothing done" It's a double negative but I don't think he intended the reverse word play. Anyway, when we make the decision to maintain /repair /modify our own cars there's always things that go wrong. We learn from those mistakes and it's how we become competent. Everyone here has had things go wrong and made things worse with a novice repair several times over in the beginning. If you keep trying then things get easier, and yes that shop sounds much too costly.

That's two relays and two big fuses, hell yes there's power. I can get you prints Friday night if you want. My laptop is at work.

You'd have to rip the whole harness apart and remove everything from that PMIII relay center. there are other important wires in there so you cant just cut it up wholesale. When I did it on August's car I just cut the harness back to a point and put shrink wrap over the constant hots that were left

The special tool you would need is # 7 and what looks like the extension for it #5. Would be nice if your autozone place had these as it is a fine thread and 35 years of road grime have probably corroded the threads up. It was a tough turn to get mine off and the spring was removed and strut assembly off the vehicle. You could use the spring compressor in reverse to widen the spring to get a pipe wrench in there better as the others have suggested. This will take you about 5-6 beers to complete.

Pm GOT2BGM