I usually consider myself to be pretty good at buying $500 cars. Now to tell ya all about my 88xr7.
I figured ive about seen it all and can fix most anything on these things. For the first time, I feel like maybe I should have walked away from this one.
The gas tank was held up with some wires. I figured no big deal, hit the junk yard get some straps and call it a day. When I cut the 60' or so of wire off and dropped the tank, the fuel pump wasnt in the tank. It was hanging by a wire. The last guy drilled through the floor of the trunk and attached it to the trunk lid latch. The connector. I cut the wire, pull down the fuel pump which is "spliced" using scotch tape, duct tape and glue, also with a tiny green wire duct taped under the car to a switch wired right to the battery. No fuel pump retention ring, and the gas tank is full of dirt. Luckily it was completely empty, I ran it out of gas since the gas light was on when I got it home.
Get "new" straps, retention ring and wiring from a junkyard car, hose out the gas tank with brake clean and about 12 rolls of paper towels, reinstall the fuel pump and splice in the wiring, car starts right up, I think all is good. About two weeks later the car develops and intermittent fuel pump problem. Let it sit for 20 minutes, it fires back up. When I get it home, the wires all ohm out and cant find anything wrong.
One day the car dies at work and wont start up, so I drop the tank and cant find anything wrong, the connector has voltage but the fuel pump won't turn on. So I drop the tank on my 86 and rob the fuel pump and swap it in the tank. Bench test fuel pump fires up, in the tank nothing. Eventually I find that 6" pasr where I spliced in the "new" connector and wire, there are about 10 splices, this time just electrical tape and twisted together in about a foot of cable. Finally I found the cause of my intermittent no start.
Buy two new tires, a windsheild and throw two new shocks in the rear, plus the cat back off my 86 and I pass safety. Now it's time to swap out the new radiator with the hole some poked in it when they installed it. Luckily I had an extra in storage.
I bought a pressure tester open box on sale at harbor freight and hooked it up. Instead of leaking at the radiator, it leaks out of the also new looking water pump. Seems like a gasket so I buy a new gasket and tear it all apart. Once I get the water pump off, I find its full of rusted water, is hard to spin and the gasket leak was actually the weep hole someone had filled up with silicone.
Now for a new water pump. While in at it, why not do a thermostat and a quick tune up to get rid of the rough running idle and bad stumble. Get all that done, rotate all the spark plug wires over two posts and the car seems to idle much better but still stumbles. Oh well, drive it for a few days with no obvious water leaks.
Deciding ive about got everything major fixed and that it feels pretty solid, I drive 50 miles to pick up my kids from school. On the way back it starts overheating.
I let the car cool down and check the water level, seems a little low, but took less then a gallon. So I figured I just didnt have all the air bled out yet. Today, I drive the car to work and I keep getting weird spikes where it says its overheating on the guage, but cools right back down and the heater never quite so I know it's not out of water. So after it cools down after work, I pour some more water in it, irritated I cant find a leak and surprised at how much water it took, so I let it warm up good and hot on a quick drive. No weird temp spikes, no puddle when I park it. Let it cool down again, and after 12 miles of driving, it ate a gallon of water. My buddy stopped by, so I had him rev the engine while I was laying under it, and I see water dripping off the under side of the exhaust manifold.
Upon closer inspection, leaking between the #2 and 3 cylinders where the head meets the block.
Out of probably 10 302 cars, this is the first head gasket leak ive ever seen. My $500 car has turned into well over $1000 now, and now im looking up gasket kits and pricing stuff out. I just don't get why people.cant be honest when you buy a py $500 car. My favorite part, the guy tells me he drives it on a 500 mile trip 2 or 3 times a month and that it would pass safety with just a windsheild. I knew that was bs, since it had a cherry bomb welded straight to the cat and no tail pipe.
Just venting. Wish I hadnt disabled my 86 by borrowing parts to get this car through safety. Now I gotta do a head gasket, hopefully the head and block are fine when I get it all apart, or illd be robbing parts off this car to drive my 86 temporarily until I can get everything fixed. Funny how much cheaper and more reliable my 340k mile car is then the "clean one owner" with only 180k.
Slap a known good motor in it and forget about fixing someone else's bullshiznit hack job. Then again, I've had a few 400-500 dollar cars and I quickly figured out that I get what I pay for, and sometimes a shiznit-ton more.
Paid 3 grand for my mountaineer over 4 years ago, still runs, though it's falling apart around me. I wanna drive it till it drops dead, but. Thing has close to 350,000 on it, original engine and trans. Definitely feel remorse when I euthanize it, for sure.
I don't have the skill to buy a $500 car!
What an ass though. It's a $500 car, at least give the next owner a heads up on what's up
Ill have it fixed. I have e7's on my motor on the stand if a head is bad ill just swap them in, then ill pick up the gt40p's ive been eyeballing for sale locally.
$100 or so in gaskets and ill have it running good again. Just with I knew what I was getting into instead of disabling my other car to get this one on the road.
Timing just couldnt be worse. I doubt were more then a few days away from freezing every night here. I imagine a head gasket would also be a lot better to do without being cold as well.
Overall, I figure ill get it done in 3-4 hoursor so, being pretty conservative.
I've had a few 500 dollar cars.
I lost the ambition to wrench on a car to get to work. So I bought a 19K dollar car.
Buy a car that's over 1000.... Has never once broken on the way to work. No, that has let hoses go twice AND a coolant fitting on the intake, but always on the way home and close enough to where it'll get home so I can fix it. :p
Mine was over a thousand, about 19 times over!
That bad boy better NEVER break then! :p
To be fair, ive had about 11 $500 86-88 cougarbirds now, and most of them would go for over $1k anywhere else :p
When I was 16 and knew nothing about cars, I would buy a car for $500, try to fix it, make it worse till I couldnt figure it out, junk it for $400 then buy another one and do it all over again.
Now I consider myself to be at least average, ive swapped transmissions, engines, rebuilt and replaced a ton of stuff, and I am started to get halfway decent at troubleshooting junk.
A car is only worth what you get out of it. Ive had cars that lasted me years that I figured I would brake even if they only made it a block..even with my xr7 blowing coolant and overheating in less then 15 miles, it's still a fun car to drive. Something about it being a $500 car both makes the minor issues more liveable, and the better attributes even better.
Now I just gotta talk myself out of the gt40 heads for $100 for an a complete h.o. Swap at the same time.
im still way back on the fuel tank story, tells me there might be a ton of other surprises waiting for you down the road
my favorite part here is " im getting pretty good at troubleshooting junk " ,, thats classic!
If you can troubleshoot a cobbled together pile, you can troubleshoot anything.
Or throw parts at the pile of shiznit until everytime you pull up to oreilly's they roll out the red carpet and escort you to the VIP lounge...
Cars arent worth what you get out of them....unless you have an unmolested collectible classic, you're going to lose money everytime. Especially with an '80s domestic.
Every new car you will lose way more money.
Insurance is $40 a month and no car payment.
A $15k car or so with a 5 or 6 year loan would be about $300 a month and the insurance would be more then double, $120 a month or more. So there is $420 a month on a car you don't own. Being as ive got about $1k into this car, or roughly 2 months on a new car, id say that im still saving money.
Now let's say the car runs pretty good after and I dont need to throw a ton of money into it for a few months. Im not gonna be throwing a new waterpump at it every few months, and waste all $12. Same as the $200 windsheild or $160 on tires. Most of the money ive actually spent on this car is general wear and tear stuff to get through safety.
It's not conveiant when the far does break, but I'd rather it was a $500 car. I can fix most anything on itfor dirt cheap. Id rather drive crossed country in one of these cars sight unseen then any other car.
I've told the tank-wire-fuel-pump-open-hole-wire-support story to a few people and the reactions are priceless.
That's a good one. I mean league of it's own.
I'll continue to make old stuff work, PITA as it is. My criteria for a vehicle is too specific, I'm too cheap, don't feel like making payments/owing people money. Finally, government regulation on new goods isn't likely to ever regress any time soon...the requirements only seem to stiffen more and more. It's freedom baby, yeeeeeahh!!!!
If it wasn't for having owned a few 500 dollar cars, I probably wouldn't be half of the mechanic I am today. The most money I paid for a car, other than my FRS was 1700 dollars, and that was for a Mustang. Almost every car had some cobbled together that I had to rip out, and then figure out why the previous owner cobbled the together. I haven't owned a Ford in probably 8 years, but I still remember a lot of the DTC's, wire colors, sensor voltages and tons of other .
While for years, I was all about the "screw car payments, I spend less in parts a month", I finally appreciate owning a newish car. It's a blessing to get up, go outside, start it, and drive anywhere. If I took any of my older cars more than an hour away, I had to do a pretrip on them, and hawk eye my gauges. The only gauge I need to pay attention to is my fuel gauge.
I've gotten a little bit older (31 isn't that old, but I've been on the old forum since I was 15), and being a mechanic for a living, makes me really appreciate my down time and appreciate not being required to fix my car every weekend.
There's always two sides to the coin. I'm not as young and ambitious, so I'll take the car payment.
Just to FYI, my Scion was 19K out the door. 7.9% APR due to my mediocre credit, and my payment is 396 a month. Full coverage insurance on the Scion and comprehensive on the Trans Am are roughly 110 a month.
A little off topic, but in addition to the reliability there's also the safety factor. A drunk driver plowed into me a year ago and my head would have gone through the window if it hadn't been for the side-curtain airbags. Never even saw it coming and definitely wouldn't have walked away if I was driving the Cougar at the time. With all the texting / drunk idiots on the roads these days, a car payment is worth it in my opinion.
So I followed every part of your rant except for, "moving the spark plug wires 2 posts over". What does that do? And sorry about your $500 car, Ive got stuff that I cant get rid of, but I do try to honest with people to know what theyre looking at.
The dist cap.had the firing order written in permanent marker improperly. Either the dist was.dropped in wrong or they just labeler the spark plug wires wrong. I simply moved them back, didnt verify timing yet, but it felt much better and drove better. I planned on doing the timing afterwards, I did the tune up on my day off and ran out of time.
I am actually quite enjoying this thread, havent seen shawn or zonda around in forever.
Im no spring chicken either, I turn 30 this spring and joined the forum when I was 16.
Right now I do have a back up car to drive, my dads 2011 fiesta. Been staying with my dad since my divorce in 2013. Although the fiesta is nice, I am 6'5. I fit, but it is not comfortable. I now live about 45 miles from the city where my kids are. I sometimes make that 45 mile drive 2 or 3 times a week. In the fiesta my butt falls asleep and I gotta get out and stretch. When I drive either of my cougars, I take the long way home and try to find places to drive past in between. Plus at the 80mph speed limit, the fiesta gets about 34mpg while my 86 got about 26mpg. With 160k less miles im hoping to get this 88 up to about 28mpg at 80mph. The $1 or so extra I spend in gas each way is definately worth it since my kids fit behind the driver's seat better and it's much easier to get them in and out of.
I would like a new car, I really would. With how much driving I do though, I hit as much as 4k miles in a konth, averaging 2k. Just not worth the payment, the car will be worn out before it's paid off. Right now I am trying to catch up on child support and pay off all my bills. Starting a new job in a week or two that should make everything way better.
My commute used to be 40 miles each way for work. I know the feeling of racking up the miles faster than you can pay it off. I ran out of my warranty quick. I've since bought a house, and now the commute is 30 miles each way.
When I had my 86 GT convertible, I took it out to CatJam. It was a 7 hour ride, and on the way back, I locked in cruise control at 65mph. I averaged 29mpg. I was pretty happy with that. My Trans Am would average 21mpg, but them my Shelby Chargers would average 30mpg. The FRS is getting me around 32mpg. It seems petty to really care much about fuel mileage until you have to drive 30+ miles twice a day.
I understand not getting into a new car under the cirspoogestances you're under. For me, buying my car gave me an added financial burden, but it really did help me in the long run. Because of my car loan, and being diligent on my payments, it made it insanely easy for me to get a home loan. The credit boost was worth it in itself.
I am trying to hang around here a bit more. I have a lot of other stuff going on, but I do want to get back into another bird. Unfortunately, it will be a few years out. One reason is...well...my car payment. ;)
That's my close high school friend, and people forget that all he does all week is turn wrenches and fight with rusty POS parts on big trucks. Now...he's got a '90 Vette with a TPI 383 stroker that's getting a hairdryer this winter, and he's doing everything himself...but I know well that sometimes he'd rather do literally anything else on the weekend besides fix THINGS.
Buying a new car makes sense, in a couple of cirspoogestances. If you can afford a new car it's a good option for a couple of reasons:
For the first 5 or so years if anything breaks it's fixed for free!
The car starts every time without issue.
It's much safer (better structure, airbags) than even a 10 year old car.
There is a catch though (besides the upfront cost): you can't trade it in either before you pay it off or even right after you do. Trading in a car at 50K miles is silly. You can easily get 150K out of most cars sold now with minimal issue. Trading it in at 5 years old is a bad idea and wastes quite a bit of money/useful life of the car. If you keep a $20K car for 10 years it's almost like buying a $2K car every year for 10 years (well if you get really low financing ;) )
But to each is own. I prefer my daily driver to be something I bought new and know the maintenance history of. But I'm in a position to have that option. What is right and works for one person may not for another.
You can trade your car in any time you would like. The issue then becomes the value of the car versus the loan. If your car value and loan value are equal, you basically just start over with a new car. If you owe more on the car than it's worth, you will tack that additional amount onto the loan of your new car.
Some people are into trading a car in every few years, or leasing a car. If you're used to a certain payment, and are comfortable with it, you might as well enjoy the option of swapping cars and seeing what you like. It's not an option that I will partake in.
Monetarily, buying a new car generally never makes sense. My last two cars were 2-3 years old. Gets a lot of the initial depreciation over with while still being new enough to enjoy the tech goodies and safety improvements. However, you could buy a 4-5 year old car and save even more. While you're at it, you could get a 6-7 year old car....and so on. :D
Adaptive cruise control and LED headlights? Sign me right up!
The real shame is that your first year or so of your car payments almost all go towards interest. So even without depreciation, you didn't pay dick towards to prinl and end up behind if you wanted to trade in.
I will say, although I have a bare bones daily driver, it has seen been an awesome experience.
Yeah, gap insurance isn't a bad idea for new cars.
I've got a 3% rate on my car. Will end up paying 7% of the car's initial value in interest if I don't pay it off sooner. Not too bad.
My house mortgage is a lot worse. 3.5% rate will have me paying 62% of the house value over 30 years. At least the house value doesn't depreciate to nothing!
/thead 'jacked!
Spent about three hours working on the car. All the exhaust manifold bolts are out except two to hold it in place. All front dress and upper and lower intake are also off. Pretty much just need to unbolt the y-pipe then I can pull valve covers and get at all the head bolts. So far I am really surpised how clean everything is and how well it's coming apart. Well, except I broke the dipstick tube mount. It was rusted through and broke right off.
Not sure I'll get it done tomorrow, gonna take the intake to the car wash, its filthy under the upper, covered with sandy like grease. Gonna make tdc on the ballencer first thing then pull exhaust and then heads and go to town. Id like to have it all done wednesday. Cant imagine too many more 65°f days are left in November. Usually have snow by now.
I buy a brand new car, pay it off, and keep it until it dies. I get my money's worth out of it and all I end up paying for after the first 4-5 years is gas and insurance. That works for me but for others maybe not so much. If you trade a car in you have to be above water on it to do so. In my case I never worry about that as I'll just be paying it completely off and keeping the car indefinitely any way.
I'm not really worried about interest payments. I'm in a position where I really haven't paid any interest on any new car I've purchased. Both my wife and I bought out 2011 Focus and 2012 Mustang brand new with $0 down and 0% for 60 months. After the first couple of payments the car was always worth more than we owed on it. The 2017 Accord we just bought has the highest interest we've paid on a car, 0.9%. I've yet to make a payment on the car and it's still worth almost exactly what we owe on it.
haystack,
let me know if you need a part or two .. i owe you one anyway!
jcassity@frontier.com or call
You know, that majority of 5.0's I took apart had that same sand/grease. It almost feels like a sound deadener or something like that.
So I got the head off. There was so much grease I couldnt see the head bolts. Unbolted the exhaust manifold and valve cover. Got the head off, and there is nothing wrong with the head gasket.
Most of the bottom head bolts were finger loose and slightly stripped. One bolt head is broken off. Im guessing they tried to tighten it instead of loosen it when they loosened the other bolts for no reason.The head bolts under the valve cover were all tight. Pretty sure it's the oem head gasket, it says ford on part of it.
Gonna try to get a pipe wrench and see if I can spin the head bolt out.
Pipe wrench worked. Cleaned up gasket surfaces and pulled a head bolt out of my other motor. Head seemed to be flat. Decided I am going to leave the passenger head on and just do the drivers.
My harbor freight torque wrench didnt work brand new out of the box. Set it to 50lbs just to get everything snug then set a final torque and it didnt click. Backed it down to 20lbs and it didnt click either. Set it down and while it was sitting there it clicked all by itself.
Gonna run to autozone and try to borrow one quickly before I run out of day light.
Head gaskets done, well sorta.
Timing is a bit off still and I didnt even bother checking plug wires when I through it all together. Runs fine, more power thrb before, but not quite where it should be. Just gotta mess with the timing.
I also deleted the smog pump, need to cap off vacuum lines still so its ideling.a bit high, but all things considered, I am shocked it fired right up and I have no real problems and its driving okay. Need to get some antifreeze in it, supposed to snow tonight. I also left off the smog port thingy on the back of the heads. I could only find one bolt so I just continued on and forgot all about it till I fired it up. When it stops raining/snowing ill get the little stuff all buttoned up and be done with it.
:rollin:
sounds like the way stuff happens around there!
well that kinda sux ass berries! thats gonna be kinda hard to fugger with now that its all buttoned up.
Well the pipe was broken before the check valve anyways, so im not much worse off. Just got done with a quick 30 mile shakedown drive, just in time for the snow to hit. Glad I got done what I did. About 3" on the grass, hasnt stuck to the roads yet, but I got it done just in time.
Just gotta mess with timing and that smog port thingy, and ill be pretty happy. Dumped half a gallon of 50/50 mix in it, its only supposed to get down to 32, but we are 4700' above sea level. Im happy for now.
Been doing pizza delivery for the last two days. No coolant leak so far.
When I get a day off, possibly wednesday or turkey day, I will buy the bolts to plug up the smog ports and the injection port on the stock exhaust and play with the timing, get that set right. Its pretty close, but it's still running a bit rough.
Other then that, car starts every time, not leaking coolant and will actually bark the tires from a stop, so it is much better then it was.
Pretty soon ill start messing with the little things, like the tach and speedo that comes and goes. Everything else seems to work.