Well a long weekend, no rain (finally) a perfect time to totally go over the Mustang, it's been a bad week for her. I started the week finding out the convertible top has a leaking seal... motor still tries but there's no fluid left in there. Apparently this is probably the ram seal gone bad... I don't know if I want to tear my interior out myself to get at it.
Then the dump truck incident which cracked my glass and put a big chip on the hood... now I know why people buy Bra's. My insurance is on that problem.
At the start of the weekend I came out to go hit Autozone for some Macguires stage 3 wax, and some Mothers "back to Black". Intent on going at the paint with a full wash -> cleaner wax -> polish -> Carnuba. Saving the clay bar for AFTER some paint repairs. The Cat which I can not manage to keep off this car, had jumped up on it and lost traction, dug in to avoid slipping and put a nice set of claw marks down the nose. If I wasn't thinking about shooting that cat before (for sleeping on the convertible top), I was definitely entertaining the thought that morning. Instead I bought a car cover. As the gf would probably be suspicious if the cat disappeared right after I was bitching about the scratches. I came home with all sorts of stuff I hadn't intended to buy . BTW unless you like Cherry air freshener smell, DON"T GET Macguires leather conditioner wipes... I've been using BlueMax conditioner and it has a nuetral smell that actually makes the car smell NEW (that awsome cool leather smell) this stuff made my car smell like a
91 Honda accourd.. Or at least what I imagine one would smell like, with a handfull of air fresheners hanging from the rear view. Going back to the blueMax... It's a joy to have an 7-8 year old car that still smells like a new one.I'm one of the people who has had the 94-95 5.0 pinging problem, so I cleaned the MAF, and of course put in a new paper filter (No K&N here as I'm more interested in longevity than a the extra horses). The MAF looked fine, hit it with CRC anyway... The Filter on the other hand was INSANELY CLOGGED! How I let it slip that long is beyond me but the Pinging is gone, in it's place is a SWEET surge all the way through 3000 RPM's and beyond, and way better responsiveness. Punching it in 4th at
55-60 results in more pull away power than I ever thought this car had. Judging from the look of the teenager in the civic beside H^H^H^H er behind me neither did he.Then I went to Jiffy lube ONLY because I found out they had a Bilstien machine, my Cars been on Dino juice until now, but I want to go to Mobil
1, so being conservative I wanted to flush the oil passages and clean off the seals etc. Then put in a "high mileage" oil to condition the freshly cleaned seals etc. Next change I'll put in Mobile 1. The guys at JL are very enthusiastic about the Bilstien, they even showed me the Dip stick after they put the high mileage oil in "see, look how clean it is! it doesn't get any cleaner than that!"Uh... you just put in new OIL! LOL that was entertaining as hell. Anyway after double and triple checking for leaks and proper drain plug seating on both sumps I pulled away happy.
The price for the flush was below quotes I've researched, and they did indeed change the Bilstiens filter before flushing my car (something you want to look out for). The car actually runs cooler after the Bilstien flush. From everything I've read this machine is the real deal at cleaning out the bottom half, it uses pressure and heat, and a soaking cycle to get everything. Next up is a "Motorvac" machine cleaning of the fuel system, same principle except for the upper half. These things are way better than simple pour in stuff.
Anyway the bad news doesn't stop at the cat scratches... While at JL I had the wheels cranked so far over I noticed that the insides of the front tires where EXTREMELY worn... I had been checking tread and pressure at fillups but somehow had neglected to run my hand across the INSIDE of the tire. The car points straight as an arrow, and with no vibration I thought I was being thorough enough. Obviously I was wrong. Good news is there's enough room on the stock chamber plates to adjust, according to one of the guys at JL, who then pointed at his Blue 96 GT and said he had to get after market CC plates on his to get enough adjustment room to correct the same problem. I took it to my shop at work and rotated them. I inspected everything I could get at; my rear shocks have oily dusty residue on them below the top part, the fronts are fine... Finally as if that's not enough, the dog bone has a coating of oil on it... Nothing in the front or trans is leaking (car sat in the shop after the oil change for at least two hours and no oil spots) so I assume it's coming from the differential.
Hellish week, started with 400 dollars worth of a top problem and turned into needing new tires, two new paint repairs, one window, rear shocks sooner or later, and a leaky differential and after all that I didn't have time to wax the poor thing... Although I probably could have in the time it took to write this book of a post :)