rich_e777 Posted May 21, 2019 Report Share Posted May 21, 2019 It never hurts to have someone look at it, especially if they see you actually care enough about the car to try and figure it out. Call first and talk with them a little to see if they`re cool about just looking at it without the attitude. A few things to look at would be the subframe mounts, Ive got the two in the back I need to replace and since a remanned R&P isnt unreasonable I`m going to replace that too. IIRC the R&P has a rubber mount of bushing that might could fail causing steering issues. Not positive on what a bad inner tie rod feels like but I was told they need to be replaced like the outer ends do just not as frequently. I also had one of the plastic pins holding the wheel well cowling in place and it would rub up against the tire on occasions that caused an array of whirring noises. Sounded very similar to a bad wheel hub I replaced on the Vert but on my 94 coupe. oldmangrimes 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldmangrimes Posted May 21, 2019 Author Report Share Posted May 21, 2019 I replaced my drivers side hub last weekend, it seemed to help quite a bit for the noise. The previous hub last less than 20k miles, it was a Timken, I used a Moog this time, but I think that maybe driving for a little while with bad alignment after my repairs killed the bearings. This hub replacement is at least the 6th wheel bearing I've replaced on this car, but from what I've read that isn't very unusual for a high-mileage first-gen. (A few years ago I used one of my old hubs to make a swivel seat on my children's backyard play structure. I've saved a few of the other bad hubs, I have crazy dreams of using them for barstool swivels or for a super-strong Lazy Susan kitchen cabinet, etc.) Next step is to get the tie-rods adjusted to perfectly center the steering wheel. And run a couple tanks of gas through it to check the mpg. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldmangrimes Posted October 14, 2019 Author Report Share Posted October 14, 2019 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. . . rich_e777 and cheatah faheatah 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rich_e777 Posted October 16, 2019 Report Share Posted October 16, 2019 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? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldmangrimes Posted October 17, 2019 Author Report Share Posted October 17, 2019 On 10/16/2019 at 12:35 PM, rich_e777 said: So that top nut and square plate was just spinning en capsuled in there? Yes, there's a thin metal "cage" around the nut/plate combo to keep it from spinning, but the welds on that cage had broken off so my nut/plate was just spinning. My guess is that the nut is not just simply welded to the floorboard because the cage design allows the nut to move around slightly before tightening, allowing subframe alignment. I did not align my subframe, I just compensated with tie-rod adjustment afterwards. I bent what was left of the cage up out of the way (you can see the rusted remains to the left of the nut) before the pic was taken, so I could get a wrench on the nut to hold it in place. I'm sure there was a much more elegant way to do this. I could have cut a much smaller hole in the floorboard but I didn't really know what I was getting into and couldn't find other pictures. Hopefully your welds hold while you break loose the old bolts. There's another small hole in the bottom of the hidden cavity (maybe for subframe alignment?) that is open to the elements under the car (you can see the edge of it in the shadow to the right of the nut), thus the cavity could fill with moisture and rust as you can see. I tried squirting WD-40 inside that hole when I first started the project, to loosen up the nut but it wasn't enough. Another issue I ran into was how to compress the two halves of the new subframe mounts together. I tried using a jack to compress them together but couldn't, although hopefully that method works for you. The stock bolt was just barely too short to reach the nut until the new mount is compressed. Since I had access inside the hidden cavity, I used a longer bolt and a different nut (because the threads didn't match) and was able to draw up and compress the new rubber mounts that way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pitzel Posted October 18, 2019 Report Share Posted October 18, 2019 On 10/14/2019 at 1:56 PM, oldmangrimes said: But I had to use a breaker bar to break loose the rear two mounts Did you try an impact gun before using the breaker bar? I'm kind of thinking that using a big-a** breaker bar might've been a mistake (retrospectively). Although your rust situation probably is a lot worse than mine was when I had mine out a few years back to do the oil pan. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldmangrimes Posted October 19, 2019 Author Report Share Posted October 19, 2019 4 hours ago, pitzel said: Did you try an impact gun before using the breaker bar? I'm kind of thinking that using a big-a** breaker bar might've been a mistake (retrospectively). Although your rust situation probably is a lot worse than mine was when I had mine out a few years back to do the oil pan. No I didn't try my impact first, it might have helped loosen the rust. But I couldn't get to the nut to soak it in penetrating oil, so I think I still might have broken the rusty nut cage. Oh well, I hope nobody else ends up having to deal with the problems I did in the way I did. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rich_e777 Posted October 21, 2019 Report Share Posted October 21, 2019 My rear mounts have been oil soaked from small seeps over their long life and rust is nearly non existent down there. Im tempted to get into it today but I don't have parts just yet. I might try to have some longer bolts made to see if that helps getting the mounts compressed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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