Well, I finally got my car to the shop. Since it has no plates we had to take it in my stepdad's trailer (where he usually keeps his '69 Camaro). Of course, there were more problems before hand tho. Yesterday when i was taking the car off the jackstands n just getting it ready to be taken, i found the rear right tire was popped. i guess the rock i used to keep it from rolling had a jagged edge and popped it. and all my lugnut wrenches are stripped, rusted, and broken so i had to go digging through all my family's cars for a lugnut wrench that fit mine (finally found one in my uncles 95 saturn)

but yea its at the shop finally, i'm gonna have the guy replace the starter, fix the tire, tranny fluid, oil change, oil filter, air filter, engine coolant, windshield washer fluid, and remount the rear view mirror. i also wanted them to do the front end alignment but they dont do that there.

its mostly stuff i wanted to do myself, but i just wanna get the car running as soon as possible and i guess i can pick up from there.

 

oh crap, i posted this in the wrong forum. can a mod move this to the v6 forum? thanks!

 

Get her running! I think its a good idea to hire people for timee reasons.

Just gets you behind the wheel sooner!!!

 

i think u should try to do most that stuff urself. Most of what u mentioned is easy if u just take a little time...

save u alot of labor charge...

 

No doubt, if the hardest thing you were gonna do is change the starter, you should have done it yourself. You would have saved alot of $. Other than getting the car aligned, which usually doesn't cost all that much to get done.

 

How much did they charge ya to do all that TAMike

 

do all that stuff your self...well except mabey the starter..and spend the money u save and get a 70$ alignment

 

i was in the process of changing the starter myself, but for some reason i cant get one of the bolts off. ive tried everything. so i said screw it, ill just have a shop do it. maybe an impact gun will work (i hope).

and without a running car and my busy schedule, its hard to find time to run to walmart to get all the fluids and whatnot.

in the future, tho, i plan on doing that stuff myself.

 

lol i think it would be cheaper to go out and buy an impact gun then it would be for a shop to do it, but thats just me i love to work on my car but if yo udont have the time you dont have the time. quit your job then youll have tons of time. JK

 

no job, no car right now i'm tryin to get all the hours i can just so i can pay off the repairs, and i havent even started paying for insurance yet.

ill probably get an impact gun next year, when i start going to auto body at my vocational school. then again, i might not need it since we can work on our cars there.

 

i am damn lucky. i live in an apartment, but my dad has a garage at his house. if i can put up with my stepmoms bitching i can use it whenever. he has a compressor with a tank that is bigger then me. an engine hoist. one of the best floorjacks i have ever used (that i got for him) 8 jackstands, alot of airtools, and two crapy wealders that are only realy good for small projects. between him and myself we have any socket i will need, oh and the best part. they just bnuilt a napa like 5 minutes from the house.

 

haha, thats sweet. you lucky bastard.

 

oh man... bad, BAD news. i just spoke with the guy at the shop, and he says to pass inspection a lot of things have to be replaced. he says the fuel lines are leaking, brake lines are cracked and ready to burst, the catalytic converter is broken, and he said something about tying the rear end? (i couldnt really understand what he said and dont know wut that means anyway)

anyways im lookin at $1000-$1200 worth of work. i was hopin i could leave some things alone but this stuff sounds pretty bad.

any advice? i can already tell im gonna be havin nightmares about this

 

Take your car out of that shop and take a look at the crap yourself. The fuel lines shouldn't be hard to tell, the cat he's probably bull****ing, brake lines he could be telling the truth he could not. I get it home and take a look at it for yourself, lot's of shops pull the old "Oh you got thousands you need in repairs before this will pass" and you either need 1 cheap little thing or nothing.

 

the car's back home now. the catalytic converter is definitely broken, the piping right before it is like cleanly off-center by like an inch (i was wondering why it sounded so loud when i was driving it home).

theres no noticeable fuel leak but some of the lines are rusted and my friend told me that gas can be seeping through the rust and i just cant see it.

and i havent looked at the brake lines cuz i dont really know where to look, as stupid as it sounds. im just gonna assume theyre as rusted as some of the fuel lines are tho.

of course, none of this stops me from taking it around the block a few times just so i can listen to that beautiful v8-like exhaust (thanks to the broken cat LOL).

my uncle is workin on gettin me a new cat, tho. are most bolt-on or am i gonna have to find someone with a welder and weld it on?

 

oh yea, one more thing. a few times ive started the car up and revved it while in Park, so my friends could listen to it or whatever. when i rev it hard, like 3500+ RPM, theres like this knocking/rattling noise towards the end of the rev, kinda like something is being thrown around inside and it scares me. makes me wanna rev it less and less. if i rev it gently tho it doesnt make that sound.

 

Dynomax makes a direct bolt on one i think its like 100.00 from summit or jegs.

 

LOL kinda same story with me, cept all the tools are mine cause my dad hates automotive stuff. My stepmom is the freakin DEVIL and wont let me anywhere near the house, I have to park 2 houses away when I go there and I havent been inside the house in like 5 months. *** I hate her, ANYWAYS dayum, thast some small stuff to be takin it to a shop Right now I'm in the process of changin my clutch in my apartment buildings parking lot But I broke a bolt off inside the flywheel so I gotta go get a bolt extractor

 

does anyone know what that noise im hearing might be?

 

rod knock??

 

thats messed up