Every time I 'had' to move her I needed to jump start the car. Given the awesome weather here, and my burning desire to actually drive her around town, I took her over to Advanced Autoparts. They ran a quick diagnostic on the alternator and battery. Alternator good, battery bad. So I sprang for a new one with 800 cold crank amps vs. the 600 she came to me with. Flawless since the, she fires right up.
So I have spent the last 10 running every errand I can think of, just to get out and on the road.
We went to the vet:
And to the hardware store:
All sorts of places. Even a beer run. One thing that drove me crazy was the the accelerator pedal was sticky. It went from idle to 40% power right away, needing a lot of pressure to get it to move. the result was a few stalls and a frightened kids from the noise. I removed the air cleaner and liberally doused all the moving parts of the linkage with lube. Smooth as butter, although I noticed a lot of the washers and tiny bushings were cracking. *sigh* more to rebuild. Now the throttle has a steady linear pull to it, no more having to goose it just to maneuver in a parking lot.
Next, I took a long look a the steering. It has a lot of slop in it. The power steering is working, but there is a definite 'float' to the car and it take 1 to 2 inches of turn to correct it and start to feel her move. It also it makes it hard to correct the strong pull to the left under moderate braking. I jacked her up and (safely) slid under her. WOW. Wrong move. I mentally spent $2000 in bushings and bits just looking. There isn't a single rubber piece that looks even remotely in good condition. I think my front brake job just turned into a complete front end rebuild. Still researching all that, but it looks like a PST kit is in order.