Road Trip: Vinyl Fever

My first official act of 2018: made a store run with a vinyl tablecloth frozen to the roof of my car.

I'm betting none of you can say that.

Why? The car's sunroof leaks. I've been using a canvas tarp to cover it when it rains...BUT...if it rains hard or long enough, the canvas gets saturated with water and basically lets it through--and the sunroof leaks anyway.

So I got the vinyl to lay under the tarp. It's got a fleece lining so the vinyl doesn't slip. When I covered the car yesterday, it had already been drizzling. Wet roof, now close to freezing, and now there's a plastic tablecloth frozen to the car.

Stupid thing stayed there all the way to the store and back. I had to pry it loose from the windshield and fold that one little section back, but other than having it flapping like an idiot flag all the way there and back, the tablecloth didn't budge. No way I'm going to try peeling it off. With my luck, it'd take the paint with it.

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Addendum:
Looks like the thing's staying frozen until at least tomorrow. It barely broke 33, is already 32 again just at dusk.

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Jan. 2: Still there. At least now it's 41F. But at least my interior stayed dry.

Even More X-11 Progress!

This is getting to be a habit. It's been about 8 weeks since the last update, 12 weeks since I dropped a different distributor in.

The difference has been amazing. For much of the last two months, I've been making adjustments to the ignition timing and carb settings. Since I'm running the car with a non-computer-controlled carb and distributor, I don't have a manual or sticker for where the base timing should be set. I went with 10 degrees BTDC, plugged the vacuum advance in, then set the carb mixture and idle speed.

Much better. I've had none of the hard-start issues that plagued the car over the last couple of summers. I did have a bad afternoon the day I drove across town to get the X's tag renewed, though. I didn't have any tools. The car stalled as soon as the front tires touched the tag office parking lot and several more times on the way home. I never figured it out, other than the car was running hot. After it cooled down for a few hours, it started right up with no trouble. I got out the timing light a few days later and put things like they should have been weeks before. Fixed.

The next Friday, I went back to the tag office to get the Tracker's renewal. No troubles, no overheating. While I was sitting in line, I thought about the tachometer I'd repaired several months before. It was in a box behind my seat. The dash was only partly put back together from last year's electrical project; all I needed to do to be done was...hook up the stupid tachometer, adjust it, and install it properly.

I'll do a writeup on the tach separately; there's a common problem with GM tachs from the '70s through the '90s where a resistor goes bad and makes the thing read too high, too low, or not at all. I found a website with some decent step-by-step directions. The repair is dead simple if you're even okay with a soldering iron.

The tach worked, needing only some adjustment to read correctly. Once I got that done, I kept going, putting the instrument panel back together (so now I have fully-functional gauges AND dash lights), putting the heater/air conditioner controls back in (so now I have a working heater and defroster for the first time in 18 months), reinstalling and wiring the front stereo speakers, and bolting the steering column into place for the last time.

There's still the glove box to reinstall, but man, does the dash look good. The engine's running better than ever before...though there's still the small matter of getting that freaking dead muffler from last year swapped out.


On an X-11 related note, I recently found a program that let me grab almost all of the Chevy Citations Forever Yahoo Group, which I've been trying to archive for at least 6 years. It's called PG Offline and should work for most Yahoo Groups, as long as you're subscribed. I nabbed everything back to March of 2002. Everything for the 3-4 years prior to that is corrupted and useless. THANKS, Yahoo. Still, the yield was more than 31,000 posts spanning 12 years. That's not bad.

PGO is primarily an offline reader; you can grab a range of posts or the entire archive and look them over without needing to be inline. It also lets you export an archive to an SQLite database for further hacking. I found an SQLite browser which further let me save the post archive as a Comma-Separated Values file.

From here, I'm going to write a little Python code to go through the CSV and save all the posts as conversation threads to make stuff easier to find. There's a ton of technical stuff formerly locked up on Yahoo's servers that I can set free and make available to group members--engine swaps, parts sources and numbers, and like that. We're always getting new members who can't find info about parts.

Next grabbing project will be the group's photo archive. muahahahaha!

X-11 Progress!

It's been about 4 weeks since I dropped a different distributor into the X.

Holy crap, what an improvement.

It could just be a matter of ignition timing. I was never able to turn the other distributor far enough either way to get better timing. It turns out there was a metal vacuum line in the way in one direction, but I couldn't find an obstruction that would keep it from turning the other way.

Could have just pulled that distributor out, turned the case 60 degrees, adjusted the rotor back the other way--all to make what was the #6 spark tower #1. Just swap the plug wires accordingly.

But then, I wouldn't have been able to use this other one I had, would I? =)

The replacement item came with a box of goodies shipped from a guy down near Orlando, Florida. He had a little Holley 4160 4-barrel carb, an Edelbrock intake manifold to fit the X-11's 2.8L V-6, and some miscellaneous bits to make it almost a drop-in weekend project. I paid him $300 and waited. He had the parts in his barn and needed some time to get them together, box them up, etc.

I didn't sweat it. But it did take nearly 2 years.

I could have gassed up the Tracker and taken another road trip...

Nah. No way. According to the Google, the drive down and back would have been even longer than 10 hours there/ten hours back.

No. Way. I don't think the Tracker could make the run, with its engine so close to overhaul time. The little guy deserves a rest.

Fed-Ex did the work instead. The carb turned out to be from a 1972 or so Ford 302 marine engine. It's a little larger than I'd like; the 2.8L V-6 calls for about 350 cfm of air flow. The smallest Holley 4-barrel flows 390 cfm, which is fine. My Holley pulls 450 cfm. That shouldn't be an issue, really.

The intake is Edelbrock's aluminum 2-piece--the manifold itself plus an adapter casting to match a 4-barrel carb. There's also a 2-barrel adapter which would let me either go back to the existing Rochester 2SE carb I'm running or to a Holley alternative. For that matter, with the 4-barrel adapter in place, I could even install one of the all-in-one fuel injection systems from Holley or elsewhere. All it takes is a thousand bucks or so. (heh)

Both the carb and the intake are just going to stay in the box for the time being. To swap it all in will take some planning and some parts I don't have yet. Because the intake was intended for rear-wheel-drive vehicles like the Camaro and S-10/Blazer, the coolant outlet will end up on the passenger-side end of my front-wheel-drive car, so I'll have to work up a long, long, long top radiator hose. I'll also have to design a different air intake. The Holley is huge compared to the little Rochester 2-barrel. There's not a lot of room between the top of the engine and the underside of the hood, so the existing air cleaner would have to go.

The distributor is a mechanical and vacuum advance version of the 2.8's all-electronic item. The car's existing power and tach connectors plug right in, so I went from this:

...with the coil mounted on an ugly homemade bracket and the wiring spliced to plug into the X-11's factory wiring...to this:

...a factory installation that looks like what the car came with. Except for the computer-controlled stuff.

The past 4 weeks have been amazing. I've gone from a struggling starter to an enthusiastic one for the first time since I got the car in 2009. I'm still getting a little hard-starting trouble when the engine's hot, but I haven't been stranded so far.

Next project is to dial it all in: get the timing set, get the carb adjusted, and hopefully get a little more power out of the thing.

X-11: Progress?

Tentatively optimistic in the wake of Tuesday's distributor swap. I've made one adjustment so far, turning the distributor a bit clockwise after the starter struggled to spin the engine over.

This has been a consistent issue for most of the last five years and I'd always it was a starter issue. Especially when the engine was warmed up, the starter was working as hard as it could. I'm not a great mechanic, and I never thought that maybe the distributor was a bit too advanced or retarded, perhaps causing a buildup of cylinder pressure keeping the engine from spinning easily. Certainly sounded like it, especially Wednesday morning when I tried to fire it up. This time, the starter was dragged to a standstill, pushing hard against the crank--even worse than ever before.

After that little adjustment, though, the engine spins over at least twice as fast as before--strongly, no hesitations. Unheard-of in 5 years of tinkering!

This is all the same issue I've been trying to work out for a while, especially after getting stranded a few times in the last year. It seemed for a month or so that I made things better with the exhaust work I did in November, but that's also when the weather started getting cold.

As soon as things warmed up again, the drivability troubles started again--starter having trouble turning the engine, getting worse as the engine warmed up, dragging the battery charge down (and looking for all the world like a bad starter). Once the engine started (IF it started), it ran fine. Idle was a little ragged. Hard to judge gas mileage, since I hardly go anywhere lately. Haven't been to Fort Pickens since my back-to-back day trips in February of 2011 (here and here). Haven't been back to Fort Pike since my time and gas-wasting road trip out there in 2011. Power? Hard to tell there, yet, but if the starting issue is solved now, I'm up for a Pickens trip.

X-11: Smoke Test!

Dropping the replacement distributor into the car took less time than finding the cap and rotor I needed from storage.

It only took a few bumps of the case counterclockwise and clockwise to get the engine started, then a smaller bit of turning it to find the sweet spot--well, the temporary sweet spot. As soon as I got the thing locked down for a test drive, it started raining. Drove it anyway. Seems smoother, can't smell it dumping raw fuel into the exhaust.

Next up is another round of tuning and tweaking that should take care of all the drivability issues I've been having for a few years--hard starting when it's hot, which gets me stranded and makes a-holes unhappy; rough idle, dumping fuel, impressive clouds of gray smoke that fumigate the area if I coast in third at highway speeds...poor car.

Assuming that's taken care of, all that's left is the leaking sunroof, rusted-out rear hatch, clutch, power steering, rear tires...radiator...air conditioning...stereo (still uninstalled more than a year later)...getting the dash back together...bodywork...muffler...

X-11: Spark Test

The X-11's been running poorly lately, especially since the beginning of summer. I'm currently running a distributor and coil from an '85 S-10 Blazer. It works well enough, making a really nice, fat white spark, but I've never been happy with the installation. I had to make a bracket to mount the coil and wire up connectors for power and tachometer feed. None of it looks good. It seems to have a block of some sort on the casting restricting how far it can be turned (probably for emissions purposes), but all I'd need to do is loosen the hold-down, pull the distributor, turn the shaft just a little, and put it back. It's been a guessing game trying to get the engine timing dialed in ever since I put this distributor into it. It's really happy in winter, but I start having drivability issues once the weather warms up.

The distributor I'm testing in this video is identical to the X-11's original item, aside from being non-computer controlled. It's an all-in-one style with the coil built into the cap. Very clean installation, no external coil and wire, and the car's original wiring just plugs right in. There's nothing to keep it from being turned for more advance, either, so maybe the engine will have better hot-weather manners.

My test rig was powered by an old PC supply. I originally intended to run jumper wires to each of the distributor cap "towers" (where the plug wires connect) and even started making up some jumpers for the second half of the video, but at this point I was satisfied that it'll work, since I could hear a "chirp" from internal sparking where there wasn't a jumper and could see a good spark in the tester for those that were jumped.

I could have used a lab assistant, though, to see just how good that spark was. The last time I rigged up a test like this was for the distributor that I'm about to swap out of the car. My lab rat then was a co-worker who just couldn't resist the urge to touch the pretty white fire--and BAP!!. He jumped a couple of feet in the air. He didn't think the thing was going to work. Heheheh.

I still need to check out the vacuum advance and replace the cap and rotor, but now it's ready to drop in.

X-11--Five Years!

I still haven't done any of the body work, but every day the car's running is a damn sight better than sitting unused in someone else's driveway.

Hard to believe it's been five years since the X-11 was delivered.

I'd post a picture, but Blogger won't let me for whatever stupid reason.

Screw them, Here's Rush playing "Red Barchetta" in 2008:



Awwwwww, yeah.

X-11: Only Took Five Years...

When I first got the X-11 in January of 2009, both front brake rotors looked like this.

I completely re-did the rear brakes (new drums, new shoes, everything else cleaned up and lubed). About all I did up front was to drop new brake pads in and clean some of the rust off the calipers. I needed the car moving and new rotors could wait a little longer.

The replacement pads did a good job of scraping the rust off, but the rotors themselves were under spec and had grooves like little metal records. A good panic stop was very entertaining! I'd push on the brake pedal, then a little harder, then harder, watching that other guy's rear bumper getting closer. The X-11's nose would dive, but she'd stop with plenty of room between her nose and the other car's tail. Maybe she was testing my blood pressure for me.

More recently, though, I was hearing some occasional loud, low grinding noises like I was dragging granite blocks across cement.

For the record, no X-11 shipped with granite blocks.

Sounded really bad, and always after some moderate to severe braking. I started imagining the rotors getting worn down until they looked like these:

Yikes.

That is what happens when you don't get your brakes worked on like you're  supposed to. Those shiny "fingers" are the insides of the rotor--and the outer half of it is missing, ground down by metal-on-metal contact with a worn-out brake pad. Inevitably, the joker driving a truck like this will tell you, "It just started making noise this morning." Heh.

I saw one back in my Pep Boys days (1996-98) where the entire rotor had been worn down to the point where it fell off the hub. On both front wheels. "It only started making noise this morning," the woman said. "The brakes were acting funny, so I drove it here."

Then she wanted us to put the tires back on and let her drive it home because she couldn't afford new rotors and pads just then. We offered to call a tow truck, because that was the only way the thing was leaving. All it'd take was her hitting a bus full of kids and nuns and Pep Boys would be signing ownership over to someone new.

She left the truck and got the work done a few days later. This was a big full-size Ford pickup. Plenty of liability damage, there.

I had those images in mind when I ordered new pads and rotors back in August. Took me another 4 months to get myself together health-wise. All the usual stuff: one knee or the other, one foot or the other, or my right elbow would seem to flare up just as I was thinking it'd be a good day to work on the car. Add the trouble I have getting up and down and almost-constant tiredness and it seems to take a confluence of cosmic powers to get my ass out there.

I've still got things that need reinstalling after all the electrical troubleshooting back in May; a dead, rusty muffler to replace; a blower motor with a bad wire; an oil change 10 months late; and a lot of other stuff. Got the parts, but they won't install themselves.

I can tick the brakes off that list. Only took me two days, this time, to get them done. I have to relearn the brake pedal, but it feels amazing. Stops like a cat.

The rotors didn't look too bad. Both of them were the original 32-year old pieces the car shipped with. Both were close to 3/16" thinner than their replacements (and very likely under the "REPLACE THOSE SUCKERS NOW!!" spec). That grinding I'd heard was probably from the pads I threw on in 2009, which now have grooves ground into them from the wear on the rotors.

Then (because I was feeling productive for the first time in months) I re-fixed the horn. That's two things off the list. Only 2-1/2 pages to go.

X-11: In Which I Accidentally Make Things Better...

It's been a few months since I inconvenienced an a-hole by being unable to start my car.

I still haven't figured out what caused the problem. Haven't been able to reproduce the problem since then. In the last month, as a matter of fact, it seems like I fixed the supposed engine/battery/starter problem by replacing an exhaust hanger.

It'd be pretty damn cool if that's what happened.

About 6 weeks ago the car's rearmost exhaust hanger failed. I was in traffic, heard a CLUNK and clanging, heard the catalytic converter grinding as I pulled into the driveway. When I looked under, the converter and the outlet pipe leading to the muffler were a few inches off the ground. The muffler itself was dangling at a 45 degree angle, the exhaust tip nearly touching dirt.

I dug through my camera box. That's not as random as it might sound.

Back in 2008, I bought a few sets of exhaust hanger straps, U-bolts, and a mess of 1/4"-20 screws for making lightweight camera rigs. One of the hangers and U-bolts made a good clamping mount for a bicycle handlebar. I'd been planning to use that on one of the "hike & bike" rides out to Fort Pickens.

All the hangers and parts were in a bag. Once I sorted through it all, I had three complete hangers ready to go. Free is better than shopping for all new stuff.

It took a few more days to get my legs convinced to let me go out (all the going up and down stairs in the cellar the day I picked the spare X-11 engine off the back of the Tracker messed up my left knee). Took half an hour to get one of the hangers modified to fit the car's factory hanger bracket.

Man, the muffler is a mess. When I first got the car nearly 5 years ago, the thing seemed solid. Some burn-throughs in places, probably from too-rich, too-hot exhaust. One scary detail: the right rear bumper guard, a piece of hard black rubber, is partly melted. It sits several inches above the exhaust tip. Looks like there was a hell of a flaming exhaust problem at one point. Yikes.

Anyway, the muffler's belly is torn open and it's spilling rusty muffler guts everywhere. Got a replacement on the way, nice and shiny and keeping its guts inside.

Back to that hanger. Some previous owner had rigged up a hose clamp to replace the rusted/broken original strap. The hose clamp finally gave up, snapped, and dropped another project in my lap. A freaking hose clamp.

Took another couple of days, but I went back out to replace the other two hangers, certain that they were all snapped, given how low the exhaust was hanging. Hell, I've been needing to replace them since I got the car. Knew it, kept putting it off. Even knew about that stupid hose clamp. Hitting a speed bump or something at the wrong angle would get me a loud, embarrassing grinding racket or even a momentarily much louder exhaust as the spring joint at the front end was pulled open. Fun, fun, fun!

Didn't have to worry. Middle hanger was fine, next one needed to be adjusted. And that brings us to the accidental making things better. For the past year or so, I've had some random problems with a crappy idle after driving long enough to get the car warmed up, going into a store, and trying to drive it after letting it sit hot for a few minutes. More recently, it was the starting issue, where the hot engine seemed to get harder to turn over (or the engine heat was overloading the starter).

Ever since I tightened up the exhaust, though, no trouble. Engine cranks and starts more easily cold or hot. No trouble restarting even after a long drive. The only thing that makes sense is that the drooping exhaust was causing a restriction that kept the engine from breathing properly.

Saved myself the cost and effort of replacing the starter, and the disappointment of realizing that the starter wasn't the problem. What the hell, an accidental fix still counts.

Road Trip: "If You Want It Done Right Tour" ends...

...and it only took me 6-1/2 months.

Ever since I took to the highways of Florida, Alabama, and Georgia to get my own damn engine thanks to a less-than-helpful...acquaintance, I've had that engine tied down in the back of the Tracker.

It's been entertaining. The tail-dragging Tracker was skittish and threatened to bottom out on every bump.

The original plan was to get the engine out the morning after I got back from Atlanta. Medical stuff and too-cold March weather became medical stuff and too-wet April weather, then I went to San Francisco for a week. All the airport walking kicked my ass...and then it was too hot outside.

It was too hot outside yesterday morning, too, when I finally had enough and dragged myself out to finish the job.

The most difficult part: my new, unused engine hoist was still in pieces, still boxed up, and still in the cellar from the morning I bought it in mid-2011. No way I was going to be able to haul the thing myself, but I'm a pretty smart guy--and modest. Used the Tracker and a tow strap to pull it up.

It might have taken a half-hour without all the medical stuff. Took 2 hours to get this far, with frequent rest breaks. As soon as it was on the ground, I quit and sat in front of a fan for a few hours.

It only took 30 minutes to put the crane together and just a few to spot the Tracker into position.

Picked it up and drove the Tracker out from under it. Finally!

I'll need to get that blue beast on a stand and safe from the weather in the next day or so. From there I'll be able to start figuring out just what engine I've got.

I'm just glad that road trip's over.

In Which I Inconvenience an A-hole...

I was on the end of some medical errands (doctor visit, taking care of some billing issues) this afternoon. Stopped in at a store for lunch. When I came back out to the car...it wouldn't start.

This is the second time in two weeks that I've taken the X-11 out for more than a short run, only to be unable to start it. Fortunately, the first time was at the same auto parts joint where I bought the (still-new) battery. The guy there popped it out, charged and tested it, and after almost an hour I was back on the road.

This time...convenience store. All my tools are in the Tracker, 4 miles away. I let the battery "rest" between tries, turned everything off, waited a few minutes, tried again. No good. Then I tried letting it roll back on the sloped parking lot and popping the clutch. No good--and now I was stuck in the middle of the lot. No way I was going to try pushing back uphill, so I cut the wheel hard-left and started huffing and puffing, pushing the car toward the side lot.

I was obviously having trouble; one nice guy walked helpfully past me, hopped into his Mustang, and considerately moved it out of the way, then out into traffic.

Then there was Mr. Asshole, who had pulled in next to me before I tried popping the clutch. Mr. Asshole came out of the store as I wrestled the steering wheel. He got in his truck and started yelling at me for being in his way (I didn't see or hear it--I was too busy--but one of my helpers told me about his tantrum).

If I hadn't been busy being the only horse moving the wagon, I'd have gotten my camera out to take pictures of his truck to share with the Internet, since the Internet likes assholes. Just ask George Tierny of Greenville, SC. But I was busy.

A nice lady came running over and helped me push, then a guy who wasn't Mr. Asshole joined us. Mr. Asshole kept ranting manfully in his truck, safe from physical effort, and as soon as we inconsiderate car-pushers were clear he backed out and drove away. I was still too busy to whip out a camera, but I'm pretty sure he's a Republican. Fits the profile, these days.

We got the car around to the side of the building and I thanked my helpers and sat there for a few minutes. After maybe half an hour of sitting, I got the engine running. Ran like crap, rough and sluggish, and didn't get much better the entire way home. Hope I didn't inconvenience Mr. Asshole in some way, having once already ruined his day.

"Scumbags" tag's for him--and Johnny Cash has a message, too (I think he's saying, "Thanks for your help."):

Pic of the Day: Another Satisfied Customer!

I just got an email from a second member of the Citation X-11 Yahoo! Group thanking me for the decals I drew up in CAD.

The first guy did his in grays (it looks like he kept it close to the original colors); this second guy did his in orange and red:

He hasn't put the decals on yet. I love the car's new color!

Road Trip: The Little Citation That Could

Tallahassee damn near dried out in 1998. We had several months without significant rain; most of the spring and early summer went by without relief.

Tallahassee's surrounded by woodlands. Lots of kindling in the undergrowth. There were quite a few controlled burns, places where you'd be driving along and start smelling smoke, come around a curve and find a patch of ground the size of a house still smoldering.

There was at least one uncontrolled burn, a big forest fire between Tallahassee and Crawfordville. I could smell that one from my apartment 11 miles to the north.

We needed relief pretty badly and when the rains came they made up for lost time with a vengeance. We were getting some light sprinkles around mid-morning. I covered the Citation with a tarp: the area around the top of the windshield was pretty badly rusted out. If it rained hard enough I'd be driving home with a soaked seat and pools in the footwells.

Light sprinkles turned to heavy rains like gray curtains. Not bucket-loads, but tanker loads. Windshield wipers struggled in vain, giving only inches' more visibility. Falling water smote car roofs like a thousand Neil Peart drum solos.

The great thing about the delivery driver job I had at the time was that on a typical run you could be gone for an hour or more, depending on whether certain shops had ordered something. Our customers were scattered widely around town and in Quincy, Crawfordville, and Monticello, which are 15 to 25 miles out. Plenty of time between shops for thinking and recording writing ideas on a little tape recorder.

Not so great if you're struggling to see past the nose of your car, hoping the guy in front of you can see the guy in front of him (a common hope in rainless Tallahassee, a forlorn one in any other weather). Within hours people's yards on the southeast side of town were lakes, flooded from front door to pavement by insufficient drainage and massive runoff from Doak Campbell Stadium's lovely parking lot a few blocks north. There was an insane amount of water running in the shallow ditches and not much place for it to go. Most of my shortcuts were under water by noon. Lake Bradford Road had a lake where it went under a railroad bridge.

It rained all day, hard. We stayed busy. And wet. By quitting time it was back to sprinkling.

The Citation had stayed reasonably snug and dry, but the real test still lay ahead. Just about every road I could take had a problem; Lake Bradford was flooded, Orange Avenue westbound wasn't much better off, and eastbound would lead me to Monroe Street, which would be clogged with cars and construction instead of water.

I took Lake Bradford. That lake under the railroad bridge hadn't subsided much, but where it had been too deep for my delivery car (a Geo Metro), the Citation nosed through without any fuss. I passed a few abandoned cars on the higher ground just past the bridge. I knew not to try taking my usual shortcut that would get me to Ocala (Pepper, Lipona, and Belleview to Ocala, for the locals), so I went around the stadium's east side (Varsity to Pensacola). Varsity was flooded, too. Damn stadium. More abandoned cars on the roadside, some of them with their rear ends floating in nearly 3 feet of water.

The Citation rolled on, kicking up an impressive bow wave even at low speed. I took it slow. Pensacola Street took me past the north side of the stadium. At least now I was out of the worst of the flooding, but now I joined the lines of cars seeking higher ground and passage out of town. I don't know why I didn't just hit Ocala and head north like I normally would. Probably the traffic was too heavy that way. Can't remember. For whatever reason, I ended up on Mission, I think. All I remember about this bit is that I was cruising north on whatever road, came over the top of a hill, and had to panic stop so hard that all four wheels locked up. A line of cars stretched more than a mile to where this road--I'm pretty sure it's Mission; it's the only one that makes sense--dead-ended into Fred George Road. Stop sign. Very long wait.

From the shop to my apartment took at least an hour, probably 90 minutes, instead of fifteen. The Citation never sprang a leak, even when the water was halfway up the doors--though the next morning I discovered that my door and one taillight had become water tanks. Plenty of other people weren't as lucky. The Tallahassee Democrat ran a photo of one FSU parking area that was under six feet of water. A few inches of roof was all that showed of some guy's vintage '50s Chevy pickup. Some antennas poked up in other areas. Shortly after the July 13th Rain from Hell, Tallahassee or the County or someone decided that the southeast side's drainage problem should be addressed. Now there's a big drainage pond or two. I haven't seen the neighborhood since I moved to Pensacola in 1999, but it's got to be better for them these days.

When Troubleshooting Just Causes Trouble

Just to show how good I am at overthinking car troubles (and why I'd probably starve if I had to work as a mechanic)...

I was cruising along in my '83 Citation (the '81 X-11's "little sister") maybe 10 years ago, headed north along Scenic Highway. As I passed a last line of houses and started seeing undeveloped woodlands, I heard a loud BANG, like a gunshot.

Didn't stop to check for bullet holes. I just hit the gas and looked in my mirrors. Didn't see anything. Once I got home, I didn't find any damage. The event was shrugged off and forgotten.

The Citation's engine developed a rough idle, slightly worse gas mileage. I looked over everything, checking carb settings, ignition timing, engine vacuum. Didn't make sense. The carb settings were fine, timing was a little off but not causing trouble. Engine was breathing fine, maybe a little low.

But the idle stayed rough.

I went through the shop manual's troubleshooting guide--carb's okay, timing's good, vacuum's good...all the easy stuff got checked off the list. The manual suggested that the timing chain might have jumped a sprocket, and all the symptoms seemed to agree. I hated to think this might be the problem, since it was more work than I wanted to do.

Drove around like that for several months, occasionally trying those simpler checks--carb, timing, vacuum--in the hope that I'd missed something simple. Finally stopped putting it off, parked the car, and got to work.

Busted out the jack stands, got her nose in the air...loosen the belts, lose the water pump, timing cover...huh.

Timing chain looks fine. Rolled the engine a little to line up the crank and cam timing marks.

They're fine.

Shit.

Oh, well, probably the original chain, and as long as I'm already here...put in the new one, double-check timing marks...new seal on timing cover, new gasket...water pump, pulley, belts.

As long as I'm here, though...let's do the valve cover gaskets, get rid of that little oil leak.

Kind of a pain in the ass. Some stuff in the way--SNAP!

Shit!

There's a little trident-shaped set of pipes that are part of the emissions controls. The engine computer blows fresh air into the exhaust system through these to burn unburned or partly-burned fuel.

I'd just snapped one of the pipes. They tend to rust pretty quickly as it is, but on a 20-year old car they're brittle. Turning the nut holding the pipe in place just folded the pipe.

Wrecked all three getting the thing off of there. At first, I tried fabricating one from brake line (which is all the pipes were, basically) but couldn't bend the stuff with my limited tools. I put that project on the back burner, plugged the exhaust manifold with pipe plugs, fixed the valve cover gaskets, and buttoned everything up, pissed that I'd wasted a weekend on a not-bad timing chain.

Car started up as always, ran just fine, but that idle just wouldn't stabilize. Bugged the hell out of me. And again I tried all the simpler stuff yet again--carb settings, ignition timing, vacuum check. No leaks, no computer trouble codes, and still no idea what was causing the roughness.

A year went by. I still occasionally tried to ferret the problem. No magical new information in the troubleshooting guides. I wondered whether the engine computer might be acting up; it controls spark timing, fuel delivery, and all that. I thing I pulled it out and looked it over, decided I wasn't going to screw with it, and bolted it back in. No easy way of poking around on a plastic-sealed circuit board. Nothing looked burned or damaged.

I don't know what I was doing, the day the problem was solved. Maybe just checking the spark plugs, something I hadn't done in all the troubleshooting. I know I'd never looked at the things because...

...you car guys will love this. Really.

Put your drink down.

As I was feeling along the back side of the engine, I found the #3 spark plug hanging by its wire.

Remember that "gunshot" I thought I'd heard? I remembered it, then.

I'm guessing that I didn't tighten #3 down properly sometime before the "gunshot." Every time the plug lit off the air and fuel in the #3 cylinder, the concussion worked the plug out a little. That BANG was the final air-fuel charge blowing the loose plug out. From then on, my V6 was a V5.

Threaded the little shit back in...tightened it properly (this time). Engine ran perfectly.

The X-11 is just the latest in a line of cars with laughing rights on me.

Grounded, Pt. 3: Embarassingly Simple!

This is one of those times I'm glad my car can't talk, let alone laugh when a big, complicated problem boils down to something stupidly simple.

The X-11 has earned some laughing rights. Maybe she's just being nice to me because I'm kinda slow, like the time I ran out of gas just a few yards past a gas station...and coasted the damn car a quarter-mile downhill trying to get it started.

Ha, ha.

Or how about the time I tried to start her up, got nowhere, did some testing and decided that the fuel pump was bad. When I tried to replace the pump, I ended up breaking several bolts in the exhaust system, which is inconveniently in the way of the pump. Ended up having to replace every bolt in the engine end of the exhaust. Got the new pump in, got the exhaust system bolted in...and still had the same problem.

Turns out it was a couple of bad fuel hoses. A couple of bucks' worth, compared to 6 weeks' work and too much money.

Hah. Hah. Hah. Goddammit.

Now, I'm slowly putting things back together after trying to find an electrical fault. For all the circuits under the dash, there's a single common ground, a black wire with a ring terminal that's bolted to body metal (One Ring Terminal to Rule Them All!). I've got the dash in the back of the car, car guts all over the floorboards and back seat, I've gone over every wire and connector, pored over wiring diagrams, sat in the driver's seat and stared at the mess I've made, looking for that damn ground, and all this time it's been right there, dangling from the wiring harness.

Some previous owner screwed around under the dash and ended up bolting the ground terminal in the wrong place: a metal bracket that doesn't touch any other metal in the car. Might as well have left the battery disconnected.

All this time, the only ground for everything under the dash has been a skinny wire and crappy terminal from an aftermarket power radio antenna kit. When I pulled the old radio to try running wire to a newer one, the tenuous connection was broken--and everything either stopped working or freaked out. The air conditioning fuse self-destructed (must have been an impressive burnout).

All this because one wire got put in the wrong place years before I even had the car.

Hee, hee, hee, hee. I'm dyin' over here.

Grounded, Pt. 2

I wish I could say I've been busting my tail the last few weeks tracking down the electrical trouble in the X-11.

Hasn't worked out like that. Ever since I got out of the hospital in December it seems like I can't do anything but sleep. Before, I didn't get more than 3-4 hours at a stretch, then I'd be awake for 6-8 or more.

Finally got out to the car Monday afternoon and did a quick ohmmeter check showed something like 150 ohms' resistance between all the ground wires on the driver's side end of the harness and a good metal ground. I grabbed a jumper wire and ran a direct ground to one of the connectors. There were some strong sparks and the wipers swept across the windshield for the first time in 5 weeks. My dash lights lit up.

Turns out everything was grounding through a skinny black wire running from an aftermarket power radio antenna to a bolt on the gas pedal mount. I haven't found where it's all supposed to ground, yet. Hope it's easy to find, and easy to get to and fix; I'm pretty sure it's corrosion--either on the ground terminal itself or on the car's body. There's too much of both in too many places.

This afternoon, I ran some heavier wire to a good ground, ran the other end to one of the dodgy "ground" wires, and everything's working like it should.

Now all that's left is to fix a few other small things under the dash, put it all back together, and get my little racer back on the road.

Road Trip: The "If You Want It Done Right..." Tour

Back in November, I got a line on an X-11 engine just northeast of Atlanta. The guy only wanted $200. I thought about it for a few days, trying to figure out how to get it to Pensacola.

I could take a bus up, rent a U-Haul or something, and drive back.

I could risk driving the X-11, but with the clutch making scary noises on the last road trip, I didn't see that happening.

I could try making the run in the Tracker, which has been sitting more than driving in the last few years. I've been running around in it the last month while I try to find an electrical problem in the X. I couldn't see the little critter making it close to 800 miles, even after it's been from New Orleans to Jacksonville over several runs. The engine needs a complete rebuild and some machine work, the brakes have been locking up (note to self: don't drive in salt water anymore), and it needed tires.

I finally bought the engine in late January and emailed a sort-of acquaintance to see if he'd be willing to make the 180-mile round trip from his place and hold the thing for me. I emphasized that it needed to be picked up "yesterday," time was a factor, gotta be done soon. I'd pay for his gas and time. He agreed, saying he'd try the "beginning of next month."

The beginning of February came and went, with no word from him. Once the middle arrived, he wrote saying he'd be headed up "beginning of next week." This was three weeks ago. There's been another "beginning."

The guy I bought the engine from wrote me March 4, wondering when the pickup was going to happen. Neither of us had heard from Mr. Pickup. I decided that I was going to have to do it myself--the seller needed the engine out of the way and had it hanging on a borrowed chain hoist.

Dammit. "If you want it done right, you gotta do it yourself."

The X-11 is still offline; I haven't found the electrical problem, the clutch is dodgy, and she needs a couple of tires out back. Fast and fun, but that clutch could strand me and I can't walk to Atlanta.

That left the Tracker. The engine's more dodgy than the X-11's clutch. I did a partial rebuild in 2007, but the thing needs a new crankshaft, main bearings, con rod bearings, maybe an oil pump, water pump...the cylinders are only a few thousandths of an inch from needing to be bored out--and then it'll need new pistons and rings. The only thing that doesn't really need work is the head, which I rebuilt in '07. There must have been a pound of carbon crusted on the pistons and valves.

Still, he pulls strong, doesn't burn much oil, and gets 35 mph on the highway when he's in a good mood. Starts right up on its 6-1/2 year old battery even after sitting (ignored by an X-11 driving bastard) for months.

Two used tires...top up coolant, add Stop Leak...load up...wire up a cheap stereo...head out at 10 am. I screamed along with Chris Cornell in Audioslave and Soundgarden...top up coolant...took 4 hours to get to Montgomery (no need to rush)...top up coolant...another 90 minutes and I'm in Georgia...top up coolant...do I smell Republicans, or is that just cow pastures?...several pauses along the way, buy more coolant, top up, look for leak and hope I can outrun it...finally hit Atlanta sometime after dark...spend half an hour with several hundred other cars using I-85 as a parking lot...wonder about coolant level...it's around 8 pm by the time I get to Roswell and the Atlanta Hotel. Ten freaking hours.

Compared to the Ashtray Hilton, this place was palatial! A small fridge and microwave, a stove and sink. King-sized bed. Clean, and not even a whiff of ashtray. I only saw one roach the entire night.

Of course it was on the third floor, but there was an elevator, so my messed-up legs and back were saved a lot of walking. I grabbed a luggage cart and emptied the Tracker of anything of value, anything that could be stolen, right down to the jack handle. Took the coil wire so it couldn't be started. Left it unlocked and the rear window unzipped.

Plopped into the most comfortable chair, watched "House" reruns, and crawled into bed by midnight, but my farking cellphone woke me up at 2:30 to let me know it was now 3:30 (Daylight Savings)--and tired as I was I couldn't get back to sleep until 7. I wanted to be up at 8. Watched the last hour of "The Invasion" (Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig) and an old "Law & Order," read a car magazine, and failed at sleep.

Dammit, again. Up at 8 (man, did my legs ache), go looking for the luggage cart (almost right where I'd left it a few hours before)...load the Tracker...top up coolant...let's get this over with! Find the seller's house, load the engine, hang out with they guy and his father...don't wanna drive. I stall. Finally left at noon, their time.

The way it's squatting makes me look fatter.

Holy crap, was the Tracker skittish with 400 pounds of iron engine out back. I could feel the back end waddling every time I made a turn or hit a bump. I-285 South was a minefield of potholes and sunken pavement that had me imagining the Tracker's back end bottoming out, breaking a spring, and flipping that engine over the back seat and into my lap. The random 24 mph gusts coming from the south didn't help. All the way to Montgomery, those gusts whacked the Tracker's nose and nudged it toward the emergency lane. Once I got past Montgomery, I was headed more southward, so the gusts were hitting from the right and pushing me toward passing semis. I stopped every few hours, topped up the coolant, dumped the rest of the Stop Leak into the radiator, and kept hoping I could outrun the leak. I didn't bother with the radio the entire way back South.

If the coolant problem was the drama on the way to Atlanta (every road trip needs drama, whether it's an ashtray-scented motel or a kid's plastic playhouse that self-destructs right in front of you at 65 mph), my idiot body's refusal to go back to sleep was the drama for the ride south. I was running on maybe 3 hours' sleep by mid-afternoon, and of course I couldn't sleep anytime I hit a rest area or parking lot, just while I was roaring along at 65 mph, holding onto the wheel with both hands to keep the damn Tracker from whipping sideways, and just blinking only to find the Tracker headed for the emergency lane. It only got worse once I hit Highway 29 South, the final leg of the trip, the last 40 miles, all in the dark. It was 9ish when I finally peeled myself out of the Tracker for the last time. Man, did my legs ache.

Ten hours up, ten back, little sleep, $90 or so in gas, $32 for the hotel, $24 for the two gallons of coolant, $100 for the tires, a quart and a half of oil, cramped hands from gripping the steering wheel...if the engine had been a plain-Jane "X" engine instead of a high-output "Z" I'd never have bought it, let alone made a run to get it. The only difference is a somewhat hotter cam, domed pistons, and bigger valves. It's only good for 20 horsepower over the stock 115, and I've already got one in the X-11, but I can freshen the "new" one up and have it ready to drop in when the "old" one is ready for a rest. Or I could drop it into the Tracker (the front end, this time) to almost double its horsepower and halve its gas mileage!

I've also got a 4-barrel carb and matching intake for it. All I have to do is make an 822 mile round trip to Inverness, FL, and back....

No. Effing. Way.

Pic of the Day: Grounded.

It's been an aggravating few weeks. What should have been a simple radio swap has become a big troubleshooting project.

I'd been putting off putting in a new radio/MP3 player for nearly two years because of all the medical stuff and fatigue (which is part of the medical stuff, I guess). Four weeks ago, I got to it. It only took ten minutes to get the factory radio out of the dash. It's pretty hefty and has an impressive bunch of wires coming out of it. I traced everything out so I could hook it all up to the new player.

Then my instrument panel lights and windshield wipers died, the turn signal and high beam indicators wouldn't shut off, and the gauges all went crazy. After a week and change tracing the wiring in place, I realized I'd have to pull the dash: I couldn't get to the fuse block. It's half-buried under the passenger side of the dash and I couldn't get to all of it, just the lower couple of rows.

Time for some forensic wrench-turning. I pulled the entire dash and everything in it. No, the GM engineers didn't make it easy. They couldn't. It would violate their decades-old "let's screw with anyone who wants to fix their own damn car!" rule. These are the guys who put the oil filter up on the engine's back side in a late-'90s Cavalier, or bury a Chrysler Sebring's battery in the wheel well. The engineers probably added hidden cameras to all the cars just so they could watch and laugh: "Hey, guys! Forget the dope working on that Citation, we got another Sebring guy looking under the hood for his battery! Someone make popcorn! I'll put it on the big screen!"

In my case, they bolted the wiring harness to the backside of the dash panel to protect it from me. I won, without damaging the car:

This was this past Saturday. My poor car.

Fortunately, I know what everything is and how to put it all back. Theoretically, it's still drivable.  I could even hang the instrument panel somewhere and hook it up so I'd have gauges...and I'm already in X-11 withdrawal after almost two weeks of driving my Tracker instead.

At least this way I can sit in one spot and reach both ends of a wire run and the fuse box. This is the easy part. Putting it all back together might be interesting.

Pics of the Day: El Mexicano X-11

Back in September of 2012, an Citation Group member wrote a post asking where to find replacement or reproduction decals for his '85 X-11. It occurred to me that any sign shop with a vinyl printer should be able to run off a set. All they'd need is good photos of the originals.

It also occurred to me that I was bored and wanted a CAD drawing project, and that a sign shop could just use the files and save some time and money. I got with the guy and had him send whatever photos he'd taken of his original decals. His shots were just what I needed--big enough to zoom in on the decals and framed with graph paper:

I fired up QCAD, grabbed my dividers, ruler and reading glasses (someone shrunk the markings on that ruler), and got to work. Each of the decals took about an hour, maybe 90 minutes, from roughing-in to scaling up. For the door and spoiler "X-11" emblems, I drew each of the three shades of gray as separate layers and filled them with RGB matches of the colors:

I sent the guy copies of each as CAD DXF and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) files and also made copies available to the Citation group...and moved on to other things.

Last week, he sent me pics of his completed car:

Awesome.

CAD Projects: X-11 Decals

In a fit of boredom, I decided to work up a set of decals for a guy in the X-11 Group. Didn't take very long before I'd reproduced the door and spoiler "X-11" and hood "Alta Potencia V6" emblems for his '85 X-11 project:

I'd never seen the Spanish version of the X-11 "High Output V6" emblem before.

It took about an hour to hash out the basics, but I had to go back a few times to fix some things and get the solid color fill worked out in QCAD. I was originally going to export the drawings as Scalable Vector Graphics (.SVG) files and color them in a freebie vector illustration program called InkScape, but I didn't like the results. Did the coloring in QCAD instead.

I was still bored, so I drew up the "X-11" door and spoiler logos for '81-84 models:

Not bad for a weeks' worth of work. I still need to do the English "High Output" drawing and a "Chevrolet" to round out the '85 decal set. Anyone who's subscribed to the X-11 Group can find copies of the drawings there (under Files in the Members Only section). At this point, the sets are in CAD .DXF and .SVG formats; no idea what formats an actual print shop would want, but they should be able to work with what's there.