This is been long over due for an update. Many bizarre things going on in my life right now.
First the new transmission and TC work very well. The road manners are much improved so that the car is fun to drive. Not all went well, blew a transmission cooler line about ten miles after the install. I got lucky, I was close to my house and was able to coast all the way home. It was down hill the whole way. It turns out that I'm not the only person to have hose problems with a 4L70E, it seems that under some conditions the pressure in the hose can reach 350PSI for brief periods of time, combined the possibility of high temperature it was hard to find a good enough hose. I have also heard that Dexron VI transmission fluid will attack common rubber and that special hose is needed. I ended up spending about $100 for hose and fittings to make a PTFE hose set. PTFE was the only type of hose I could find that would work at 350 PSI, 300 degrees and work with Dexron VI
As life now gets it the way.
This is the short version.
One of my neighbors dead trees fell across my driveway and dented the fender of my Buick. Two weeks later Another tree fell and hit my Buick again and also did major damage to my Genesis. Two weeks after that I had to get a lawyer since the homeowners insurance would not accept responsibility. Genesis was to be towed to a dealer and was lost in route to the dealer and could not be found. I was told I should report the car stolen since no one could find the car. I ended up reporting the car as stolen with my car insurance. Five weeks later my car insurance company found the car in the service department in another dealers service department. Now it is the beginning of November, another tree fell, hitting my house with a limbs punching holes in my roof. House has been repaired but not covered by anyone's insurance at this point. Around Thanksgiving I settled the claim on my Buick with my car insurance Comprehensive coverage. Damage to the Buick consisted of a dented fender and a crack in the windshield. My Buick was within $50 of being considered totaled. The Genesis is still in limbo as I write this and still has not made its way to a collision shop in spite of many phone calls. The shop where the car was improperly dumped, won't release the car until they are paid storage fees. It's now in the hands of my car insurance company to resolve.
Back to more automotive things. I bought a replacement car after the Genesis appeared to have been stolen. I test drove a chevy SS. The one I drove must have been a dog. It drove real nice but acceleration was not good. Anyway I drive too much for a car that gets 15/21 MPG. I ended up with a 2014 Infiniti
Q50S Hybrid. This car is fast 0-60 in under 5 and mid 13's in quarter. I range from 31-35 mpg in the 4500 miles that I have put on the car so far. The GF is mostly responsible for this choice, she never liked my Genesis.
Now back to topic.
I have been fighting numerous problems with the Lemans. The most serious is a soft brake pedal poor breaking performance and the inability to lock up the brakes. Since I assume that the problem is bleeding, I took the car to a shop to have the brakes bleed. It was a total waste of money, they changed nothing. Since I appears that I'm on my own to fix the problem, I order a pressure bleeder kit. Well I go to bleed the front brakes and can't get any fluid to come out the bleeder screws even with 30 PSI of pressure on the bleeder. After a couple of nights of fooling around, I removed one of the bleeder valves and found that it had stuck closed. I had installed the type that had a check valve to allow for one person bleeding. I obtained some regular bleeder screws for local automotive parts place and then find that the seats are now messed up and I can't stop the bleeder screws from leaking. At least the Wilwood caliper uses a screw in assembly, but I had to order a replacement set. OK install new bleeder hardware and I can bleed front brakes. This doesn't say much about the shop I got to bleed the brakes, since it is certain, they had no flow out the bleeder screw.
Now to do the rear brakes. My impact gun won't remove the lug nuts. I had to use a three foot breaker bar, one broke, one was bend and threads on all the studs were messed up. I have no idea on how the shop managed to do this.
I spend several days obtaining replacement studs. I have Moser axels and I couldn't find any studs the correct size locally. Ended up buying Moser packaged studs from Summit. I told my GF that I would tow the car somewhere to get the work done, except now the car is in my basement and it would be impossible for a wrecker to retrieve the car. A flat bed truck won't clear a tree near the basement door.
I used a front end ball joint service kit to press the studs out. I used a stack of oiled washers and a grader 8 nut to pull the studs in.
Now I can bleed the rear brakes. All seems well, the brake pedal feels harder. Need to drive car to find out for sure.
While I had the car in my basement I deal with other problems. I had a whistle a high speed where the passenger window was not against the seal hard enough. I reworked the seals and adjust windows. Now it seems to go up and down better. The slight gap in the window and seal is now gone.
I took this time to also adjust the driver side window which didn't go up and down unless the door was open. Adjusted tracks on that side. Window goes up and down much better now.
Now to the bad part. Started on why the engine has a slightly rough idle. It also sometimes backfires at moderate to wide open throttle. In neutral the engine didn't seem to rev smoothly. Since four years have gone by since I first cranked the engine, maybe one of the injectors is not working right. I had already changed the plugs and replaced the GM wires with MSD wires a few months ago. Since rough idle can be caused by fuel, spark or compression, I have already eliminated spark, I have only fuel or compression left. Since I have no way to check injector flow, I will check compression. If compression is good, the only thing left is injectors. With only 166 miles on the car, the compression should be good, but by checking compression I would rule out anything but the injectors. Well . . . . .
The compression test was not good.
170, 200, 155, 180, 175, 160, 170, 165 I think 205 is normal
I have no explanation of what happened. All of the miles were short trip around the block. In my case the block is about 5 miles and has 1 mile of interstate. This allows for varied speeds and should make for a good break in, since there is slow speed, high speed, stops etc.
Anyway I have no idea what to do next. I'm not very good with hard core engine repair. That's the reason I bought a brand new crate engine. I'm open to suggestions if anyone has any.
Some carnage shots
This tree broke at the top and the roof and fell down the front, overhanging the front of the house by 10 feet.
I was working on the Lemans, installing new transmission cooler lines when the tree hit my Buick and Genesis. A very loud noise. The piece of tree almost hit the Lemans.
Buick Wagon got hit again
Genesis Damage - The tree hit, bounced off and broke into pieces. The open hood of my Lemans kept me from seeing the hit. The hood stopped caving in when it hit the top of the engine.
