1952 Pontiac Chieftan - Mr. Connolly's Car

A goal of mine in 2015 is to finish writing about every car in my life that has had some sort of impact on me. Today, I look back upon the Pontiac Chieftain that belonged to the kindly gentleman who lived across the street from my family and I back in Baldwin. Coincidentally, that family shared our last name.

Between 1949 and 1958, Pontiac's top of the line model was the "Chieftain"

We always referred to Mike Connolly, who lived across the street from us, as "Mr. Connolly". We never batted an eye about doing so although you could possibly understand how that could be a bit awkward in the same way you feel a little bit awkward addressing someone who has the same first name as you do. Even though we had the same last name and even shared what I understand to be the least common spelling of "Connolly", we were not related. My parents had a nice relationship (which is saying a lot considering how difficult my parents were to get along with) with Mr. Connolly and his wife, Sally whom, and for whatever reason, we did not refer to as "Mrs. Connolly". In an event, I remember Mr. Connolly, who had to be at least twenty years older than my father, being quiet, kind and keeping mostly to himself. A tinkerer of all sorts, he kept a meticulous home and took exacting care of his old, seemingly gigantic, black, Pontiac sedan.

Chieftain is the leader or head of a group, especially of a clan or tribe.

Pontiac offered two models for sale in 1952; the Streamliner and the upmarket Chieftain like Mr. Connolly had. Riding on a generous 120 inch wheelbase, the Chieftain was available with inline, flat head sixes and eights and had Hydramatic (automatic) and 3 speed manual transmissions available. Mr. Connolly's Chieftain had the odd looking flat head 8 and an automatic transmission. I remember sticking my head under the long, open hood of his Chieftain and marveling at the massive, old engine that seemed like it came out of the 19th century what with the spark plug wires coming out of the top of the engine and all. And that's what was so odd about that car; it really wasn't that old. Not by today's standards anyway.

My older son in front of the house I grew up back in Baldwin. Through the trees to his right you can see the garage doors of Mr. Connolly's house.

My memories of that car probably date back to the early to mid '70's so that means that it was at the most, twenty, maybe twenty two or twenty three years old at the time. Certainly old but it seemed so much older than that because of how different it looked from everything else on the road at the time. Older kids than me in the neighborhood used to chide Mr. Connolly about his old car, goading him about getting a car that was more with the times and frankly, I agreed with them. However, seeing that Mr. Connolly was retired and on a fixed income, it makes all the sense in the world to me now that he was holding onto a car that was working for him. Cars back then were as expensive as they are today (adjusted for inflation) after all.  

Motor Trend tested a 1952 Chieftain sedan, recording a 21-second quarter-mile time at 95.24 mph and 16.4 mpg. Abysmal numbers for an automobile today but on par sixty years ago.

I went on several jaunts into "town", (that sounds so quaint being from Long Island and all, especially growing up in Nassau County), with Mr. Connolly and found the car to be something out of a movie set in the 1940's. Seating position was way up, seat springs were very "springy". The car smelled musty, the dashboard looked like an old fashioned radio and Mr. Connolly drove it very slowly. I'm not sure if he was driving it slowly or the car was that slow. With maybe 115 horsepower from that odd, flat head in line eight, the car was not exactly overpowered.

Overlook Place is named so because the street overlooks a county park on the other side of that Dead End sign. Mr. Connolly's house is directly to the right of my son in this picture.

Still, as far as cars go from my youth, nothing personified someone quite the same way that that Pontiac personified "Mr. Connolly". Whenever I see one at a car show or online, I can't help but think of him and his wife Sally puttering around Overlook Place and Fairview Avenue or coming up Foxhurst Road from "town". Thing is, though, apparently, Mr. Connolly didn't see the Chieftain as "him". One day, sometime in the mid 1970's, a canary yellow, rotary engined Mazda RX-2 appeared in his driveway were the Old Pontiac had always been.

My Brother's 1966 Plymouth Valiant - That Ancient Little Car

 

My first foray into the seedy world of used car shopping was in the summer of 1976 when my parents bought a cheap used car for my freshly graduated from college, ten years older than I, brother. At first, 12 year old car wonk me was beyond excited at the prospect of "car shopping". However, I quickly found that it was an exercise in pain, suffering and ultimately, futility. Without the Internet, used car shopping  boiled down to pouring through ads in the local paper, pouring through ads in the local Pennysaver, daily scanning of community bulletin boards, chasing down any and all cars with for sale signs taped to their rear windows and word of mouth. Going to a used car lot was out of the question because those cars were way north of their budget. Many times we found ourselves driving literally all over Long Island in hopes of finding something suitable. The worst was when we would find something good and it would, invariably, had just been sold.

 

 

With nine out of ten of those traipses having been fruitless, even a dyed in the wool, washed in the blood car nut like me would beg off from going after awhile.  So, when my parents found a 1966 Plymouth Valiant,  just like this one, save for a black interior and not red, not a mile from our house they bought it immediately if for no other reason than to put an end to the seemingly endless search. As you can imagine, car wonk  that I've always been, I was none too thrilled with their purchase.

 

Reason I was so upset was that not a week before they had miraculously found a 1967 Dodge Dart GT, just like this but in light blue, that I fell madly in love with. Although I was a long five years removed from even getting my license, I knew that there was a chance that whatever car my older brother had,  it could be handed down to me one day. In theory at least. My dreams crushed when my lawyerly father and brother scared off the seller with some sort of "contract" for repairs if something was to go wrong with the car within the first 90 days or something. Crazy. While that Dart did have a bad exhaust and over heated on the test drive, I thought the contract ridiculous but it was amazing how quickly the seller backed out of selling the car to my family. Amazing what you can accomplish by "acting as if". My father was certainly no lawyer and my brother, who was to attend Michigan Law School in the fall, was at best a wannabee as well at the time.
 

 

Then, they bought this thing. Or something just like it. The only redeemable thing about this librarian on wheels was its cool sounding, "Slant Six", in line six cylinder engine. I have no idea if it was the 198 or 225. Remembering how frumpy and plain that car was, I have to imagine it was the smaller of the two engines. If this car had the available for 1966 273 cubic V-8 would it have made any difference to me? Oh, most indubitably. As it was, I had little love for that ancient little car. Even in 1976, that 1966 Plymouth seemed quaint, dumpy and old as dirt and it was only ten years old at the time. However, a ten year old car, nearly forty years ago, was much older than a ten year old car today is. Regardless, where that Dart oozed cool through every cubic inch, the Valiant was as uncool.    

 

 

The new for 1960 Plymouth Valiant and very similar Dodge Dart were Chrysler's bow shot at compact European imports like the Volkswagen Beetle. Offering no significant technological innovation above and beyond being simply smaller versions of Chrysler's full size cars, they were, nonetheless, quite popular. Especially the redesigned 1963-1966 models. They were so popular that nearly one-fifth of Plymouth’s half million units sold during the 1963 model year were Valiants. The Valiant and Dart were significantly updated for 1967 leaving the 1966 models, like my brother's car,  looking like something off the set of "The Flying Nun". The subtleties between a '66 and a '67 make all the differences in the world. 

 

Turned out I never had to worry about that Valiant being mine or not one day. Not a month after we got it, my brother rear ended a Datsun station wagon. While the Datsun looked like it had slightly backed into something, the Valiant was totaled. My parents, apparently still exhausted from shopping for the Valiant, did not replace it.

1980 Buick Century - Is It Any Wonder GM Went Under?

I've had up close and personal "pit seats" to GM's remarkable decline in market share from 46% in 1980 to  less than 20% today. 

 

 

Much to Mom's consternation, Dad replaced his 1972 Cadillac with this 1980 Buick Century he bought, used, from a rental fleet company in 1982.

 

Now, there is no doubt that due to the influx of Asian and European makes throughout the 1980's that GM's once massive, near monopolistic share of the market would have shrunk significantly. However, more importantly, GM lost the bulk of that market share because they manufactured and sold cars like this 1980 Buick Century. A 1980 Buick Century that my World War II veteran father bought in 1982 to replace his 1972 Cadillac. It was just the latest in a long line of incredibly bad automobiles that my father had.

 

  

Please forgive the DeSuMa Deutscher SuperMarkt and the Euro tags. With only that picture at the top of this blog of my father's Buick, I had to find additional pictures of a 1980 Buick Century to illustrate this blog further. These pictures of a Century in Berlin, Germany, are all I could find.

 

When I was a wee little nipper growing up in the vast concrete and asphalt jungle of south Nassau, New York, vehicle break downs were a part of life. Not just for my father but it seemed everyone. Long Island roadways seemingly clogged with breaking down hulks or steaming, hood open calamaties on the side of the road; smoke and steam pouring out. One of my earliest childhood memories was of my father struggling to keep his Rambler alive because of a cracked engine block. The Ford Ranch Wagon he replaced it with having myriad electrical and mechanical issues; I remember it leaving us stranded on the Wantagh Parkway when the points wore out. My father flagging down someone who would then go to a service station to tell someone there that someone was stuck up on parkway. Life before cell phones and all. The Buick Electra and Cadillac DeVille that came after that (I guess he was doing better at work) offered no respite from unreliability. At least, one could argue, that those cars, including the wonky Rambler, had some semblance of romance to offset, to some degree, their awfulness. But that Century, every bit if not more so as horrible mechanically as anything he had before it, lacked even a shred of je ne se quois. 

 

This car is virtually identical inside and out to the Oldsmobile Cutlass sedan of the same vintage. This the embodiement of GM's famed "badge engineering".

 

That lack of mechanical reliability not to mention lack of elan or flair didn't bother my father as much as the lack of fuel economy that the V-6 powered Century delivered. Or didn't. After all, he bought the car Hertz' Used Car Sales lot on  Sunrise Highway for the wonderful mileage he thought it was going to afford him. The carbureted Buick V-6 with all of 110 horsepower and 190 foot pounds put out through a 2:29:1 rear end pushing a rolling brick of a car returned 12, maybe 13 miles per gallon in town. Certainly better than the 5 maybe 6 mpg the Cadillac gave him but still. I recall my father's enthusiasm when it returned 19 miles per gallon on a family traipse up to Mystic Seaport.  

 

The first Buick Century in 1936 was named such to denote the car's ability to accelerate to 100 miles per hour, or as they referred to England, "doing the Century". My Dad's Century was so underpowered that it struggled to get to 100 mph let alone do the century.

 

Then stuff stated breaking. With only a limited 12 month warranty from Hertz on the power train and thirty days on everything else, "everything else" started going on it the second those thirty days were up. The legend of GM "Metric" transmission failure being all true as well. At least that was covered. When the AC blew out on another trip I thought my brother and I would suffocate in the back since the rear windows did not go down. They didn't stop working, the rear door glass couldn't roll down since there wasn't any room in the door as the angle of the door was compromised by the rear quarter panels. When mom would light up a Pall Mall it was all we could do to not barf all over the "panty cloth" upholstery.

 

 

My Dad's Century had steel wheels not the alloys that this car has.  The rear wheels on my Dad's Century rusted onto the drums making them impossible to remove.

 

In addition to being unreliable and delivering mediocre at best fuel economy, the Century was not a good family car because it was just too small inside. The drive shaft "hump" taking up a remarkable amount of room in a car that was approximately the size of a modern day Buick LaCrosse; the LaCrosse's rear passenger compartment being as spacious as it is because of the space efficiency lent to it by being front wheel wheel drive. We missed the spaciousness of that Cadillac, that was for sure and we gave up a lot for the sake of fuel economy. Many American families did thirty, thirty five years ago. Many of those families then moving onto space efficient, fuel efficient, superbly engineered makes and models from Asia and beyond. Is it any wonder GM went under?

 

 

Going from a car as large as a 1972 Cadillac to one as small as this Buick Century always perplexed me. Seeing the apparent err in his ways, Dad replaced this Century with a 1979 Cadillac that proved to be every bit as mechanically unreliable as anything he had before. Including of course, this Century.

 

This picture was taken between February of 1982 and June of 1983, a sliver of time in my life when I had that red Comet parked behind my Dad's Century. When I replaced that Comet with my beloved Cordoba, my father quickly fell in love with the size of the Cordoba and the power of its 360 V-8. What's more, the Cordoba's fuel economy was not much worse than what the little Buick V-6 could muster. Not to be outdone, my father got rid of the Century and replaced it with (drum roll and fan fare, please) another Cadillac (a 1979) that was, no surprise, every bit the hunk of junk anything he had before it was. BTW, if you look closely at this photograph you can see my father behind the wheel of his Buick Century.  

 

 

 

 

 

Little Red Corvette - Pandora Strikes Again

 

 

I didn't plan on rebuilding most of the rear brake system this winter but you make plans, the Corvette laughs.

 

 

The brakes on this car were never that good and I found out why; the rear brakes weren't working. When they failed is beyond me. Apparently, there was a small hole in the "cross over line" that carries hydraulic brake fluid from the left side of the car over to the right rear caliper. Think leak in your aorta.  Almost an entire can of PB Blaster and a week of yanking and tugging and I had it out. Pictured is the new line "installed". It got slightly bent out of shape with my attempts at pushing it through the exhaust system hangers and that funky drainage pipe thing. I guess that's what it is. I still haven't figured it what it is exactly. There are several odd tubes that look factory installed under here that I've yet to figure out what they're for. Most likely drain pipes for rainwater. By the way, I had to partially dismantle the exhaust system to get the line in. If anything, this project has cured me of my claustrophobia.  

 

 

In getting the old cross over line out I also had to remove the lines that go to the calipers. The factory spec replacements I got from are completely different from what was on there and they required quite a bit of finagling to get into place. Thanks to crude line drawings I found on the internet, I was able to figure it out. Cray cray.

 

 

Problem is, they fit counter intuitively vs. what was in there before. Apparently, it would seem, someone had done some brake work on this car. You can see here that they lie almost on the caliper which is, honestly, quite weird if you ask me. Just like about everything else on this car. And then, just as I thought I was almost finished; disaster struck. I was attempting to open the inside bleeder valve, yes, there's two bleeder valves on the rear calipers on 1968-1982 Corvettes (shoot me now), and the little bastard broke off on me. You can see the broken bleeder screw on the left side of the picture just above that rusty bolt. Quite the common problem. Now I have to replace the caliper. Either that or buy a set of tools to drill that thing out and reset it. It'll be less expensive to get the caliper off. Pandora strikes again.

 

 

I keep telling myself this is all worth it, that this too shall pass and that a bad day on the Corvette is better than a good day at work. Seeing I enjoy what I do for a living, that's saying a lot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1978 Buick Riviera - Do We Have to Call it a Riviera?

I've never seen why and how any person would have paid a relative king's ransom to purchase a 1953-1966 Cadillac Eldorado seeing how similar it looked to other Cadillac models. I feel similarly about 1977 and 1978 Buick Riviera's and LeSabre coupe's. However, back in the '50's a Cadillac was a Cadillac; Buick never made any bones about their LeSabre being "less" than an Electra and in more ways that just having a lower sticker price. Above, right, is a 1977 Buick LeSabre. The car on the left is a 1978 Buick Riviera decked out in LXXV Anniversary (75th) regalia.  If you can't tell the difference well, friend, you're in the right place. 

Amazing what ad agencies could do decades before Photoshop or Adobe Premiere. Buick went so far as to attempt to create the illusion that the two-year only Riviera harkened back to the legendary original of 1963-1965 vintage. Perhaps the folks who saw an overstuffed and overpriced LeSabre cried afoul and where the ones whom Buick didn't dedicate their Free Spirit to. 

Which came first, the 1977 Buick LeSabre coupe or Riviera? I can hypothesize that someone "upstairs" either instructed a designer to put a kinky rear quarter panel uptick aft of the center post ala a 1963-1965 Riviera or this was an early mockup of a 1977 LeSabre. "Stop right there! That's going to be our 1977 and 1978 Riviera!" Seeing how many makes and models designers had to draw up at the beginning of the Great Downsizing Epoch the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. 

Here we see that kick-up behind the door on this 1963 Riviera - no center post for these airy beauties.  These cars were, if anything, distinctive and shared even little mechanically with any other GM make or model. There certainly ain't an ounce of LeSabre in this design. 

No LeSabre in the lovely design that replaced it either come 1966; above is a '67. On these "second-generation" Riviera's, Buick shared Riviera's "E-body" shell with the front-wheel-drive Oldsmobile Toronado (and come 1967, the Cadillac Eldorado). However, seeing that then Buick President Edward D. Rollert was hesitant to embrace new and unproven engineering, in a display of autonomy (or hubris) rarely seen today at multi-divisional conglomerates, Riviera remained rear-wheel-driven. Explains the somewhat odd proportions and stance of these cars as they literally are a front-wheel-drive car with rear-wheel-drive. 

For 1970 Buick botched things up adding fender skirts to the design - adding fender skirts rarely if ever improves upon an existing design. The inverse is mostly true as well. Sales ran aground for these one year only Riviera's that looked like more like a bloated Skylark than anything unique, different and distinctive like Riviera's had been.  Bill Mitchell made few mistakes. 1970 Riviera's are one of them. 

Riviera distinctiveness carried over into 1971 even as the Riviera moved to GM's new-for-1971 "B-body" making Riviera more LeSabre than Eldorado\Oldsmobile Toronado. Distinctive doesn't always mean mass appealing as these "Boattail" Rivera's are amongst the most polarizing designs in GM's history. You either love 'em like I do or think they're grotesque. 

Sidenote: There is speculation that the Buick Riviera was to move to General Motors intermediate "A-body" for either 1969 or 1970 using the 116-inch-long wheelbase used on the luscious Pontiac Grand Prix and Chevrolet Monte Carlo. Gosh, can you imagine a Riviera Boattail with the proportions and scale of a Grand Prix or Monte Carlo? 

Funny how removing what makes a design polarizing can neutralize anything remotely interesting about it. For 1974-1976 Buick hit CNTL-ALT-DEL on the boat tail and came with this thing. Hello darkness, my old friend. Have to admit, though, while there might be some familial resemblance to other big Buick's of the same vintage, this is still no LeSabre in drag. Still doesn't mean I have to like it. 

The LeSabre\Riviera "B-body" relationship continued come 1977 although the plan was already in place that the Riviera would move to the smaller E-body (Eldorado\Toronado) come 1979. And that time it would become a front-driver just like the Eldo and Toro. 

I can't blame General Motors for not whipping up an old E-body based Riviera for just 1977 and 1978. However, seeing how little effort it seemed they put into dressing up a LeSabre (or dressing down a Riviera to make the new LeSabre), I've always wondered why they even bothered. 

The 1979 Buick Riviera that replaced these was heralded as a watershed of efficient design and engineering even though, aside from disparate styling details, it differed little from an Eldorado and  Toronado. Motor Trend even awarded it their "Golden Calipers" as their Car of the Year which I find amusing. I had an '82 and I found it to be the worst car I ever had. Pretty as a picture but as reliable as the Titanic after it hit the iceberg. 

These Riviera's may have aged better than probably anyone would have thought at the time. And they do make for interesting car show fodder as I can't tell you that I've ever seen a Buick LeSabre of this vintage at a show. Stuffed with an Oldsmobile 403 cubic-inch V-8, leather interior and all Buick luxury baubles-and-bits, you could do a lot worse with your late '70's, height of the "Malaise Era" dollar. But... do we have to call it a Riviera? 

Little Red Corvette - Human, All Too Human

I've given to calling our Little Red Corvette, "Pandora". 

 

My wife and I bought this beautiful car going on three years ago to celebrate our twentieth wedding anniversary. I knew it was far from perfect when we got it - but what's an old car that's not a project? After three summers of non stop problems, I decided to not store it this winter so I could make much needed and time consuming repairs. My plan was to do mostly interior work with some rewiring of very fried, shorted out electricals. No sooner, though, had I finalized my plans than  Pandora's box opened.

 

The power steering  valve body, which was always leaking and is problematic on these 1968-1982 Corvettes, completely gave out late last summer. No problem since I was going to have the car all winter and I could make those repairs. I guess putting that vintage radio back in would have to wait. Then the rear brakes failed. Great.

 

It's been an interesting process researching and doing the work on this massive project. I now know more about "C3" Corvette brake systems (and Zora Duntov's unique independent suspension) than I ever thought I would. Lucky me. The work hasn't been easy but with a handy creeper, PB Blaster and the heavy duty mechanics overalls my wife bought me for Christmas it's been as smooth a process as it could be. I've finally gotten to the point where I'm putting the car back together. Or so I thought.

 

This past Sunday afternoon this hot bitch of a car kicked me in the nuts. Again. Perhaps it was naive of me to believe that I could just bolt up this new rear cross over brake line to the blocks and strap it down to the differential. Yeah. What I didn't anticipate was the exhaust system being in the way blocking this thing's path across the back of the car. I had broken up the old brake line when I was removing it. Just as well.

 

Now I have to drop at least one of these exhaust pipes to make way for the cross over brake line. Aye, Carumba. I think I'm just going to cut the brackets that hold these things up and replace them rather than risk breaking a hanger bolt off and having to rig a solution to something that appears to have been rigged in the first place. This exhaust system, as good as it sounds, looks like something someone paid very little for at a discount muffler shop on the bad side of town. 1975-1982 Corvettes did not come with "real" dual exhausts. A "y-pipe" split the exhaust out of one catalytic converter so it looked like these cars had duals when in fact it had one exhaust split.

 

One thing you hear little about with regards to the tale of Pandora's box; at the bottom of the box is hope.

In reality, hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs man's torments. ~Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 1878

1984 Cadillac Seville - "Now That Is A Beautiful Car".

One day long ago, Margie, the cashier in the hospital cafeteria I worked in throughout college and whom had to have been pushing 60 when this '84 Seville was brand new, looked out the plate glass window of "The Caff" that overlooked the doctors parking lot. A shiny new Seville, not unlike this one, was parked out there rubbing bumpers with a gaggle of Mercedes-Benz' and BMW's. Exhaling a deep inhale of the perilously perched Parliament on her lips, she pushed the smoke onto the window while murmuring, "Now that is a beautiful car". Incredulous, 19 or 20 year old me burst out laughing, "Oh my god, you've got to be kidding me. Really?" 

She was none too amused at my scoffing at her sentiment. Looking back on it now she probably just thought I was some insensitive young jerk who enjoyed disrespecting older folks. While nothing could have been farther from the truth, what I was really remarking about was that I thought these cars just all out ugly as sin. I didn't "get" what Cadillac's 1980-1985 hunchback Seville was all about back then and I still don't. However, I do, after all these years, somewhat understand and begrudingly appreciate what Cadillac was at least attempting to do. 
  

After World War II, there was a nostalgia movement for pre-war "classics" like this 1933 Fleetwood Cadillac V-16 Phaeton Convertible. People like 60 year old Margie (in 1984) grew up believing that cars like this were for the rich, famous and powerful and exuded class and success. Explains the deluge of neo-classic coach builders in the 50's and 60's that built custom looking, "classic" cars over contemporary chassis. Ford attempted to do something very similar with their 1983 Continental sedan. Chrysler too with their 1981 Imperial. In my opinion nobody really did the retro-bustle back thing well but nobody did it worse than Cadillac did. 

Hopefully you'll look at these cars now and appreciate what they were an attempt to be as opposed to what you believed them to be. I still think they're horrible looking not to mention absolute bull shit mechanically but I digress. Older and wiser me telling young me that what Cadillac was attempting to be as opposed to what they ultimately were. Remember, "Best of All, It's A Cadillac".

Winter Is Not A Good Time For the Heat to Stop Working In Your Car

 

The heat in our Tahoe stopped blowing hot on the driver's side about a couple of weeks ago.

 

Still blew warm on the passenger side so I knew it wasn't a heater core or coolant issue. What an age we live in, though. No sooner had we noticed that we had a heating problem than I was able to deduce, by using my iPhone, that the issue was most likely a bad actuator. A trip to our local Chevy dealer's parts counter and consultation with a friendly tech confirmed my diagnosis. Our 2006 Tahoe LT has dual climate controls up front so it needs this device to help regulate the passage of cool or warm air into the cabin dependent on the seperate dash settings for driver and passenger.

What killed me was the cost of the part; $263.56 Holy crap. The tech at the dealership told me that they sell a lot of actuators as they become problematic as they get older. Add three hours of labor at $100 an hour on top of the cost of the part and you can see how new car dealership service departments can afford to have gourmet coffee in the waiting room. The tech gave me this print out of our Tahoe's HVAC system and hit I the internet when I got home for some instructional videos. I did not buy the part from the dealership.
 

 

I don't know why there is but there are millions of videos for do-it-yourselfers on the internet. Perhaps these people just like helping out people and I think that's great. Not all of them, mind you, are created equal. I found a couple of different videos about replacing "Temperature Controls" but this gentleman at 1AAuto.com came through for me once again. His videos are the best. Over the last year he's saved me nearly $2,000 in repairs between my 2002 Monte Carlo and now my Tahoe. His videos outline everything you need to know to do what would be very expensive repairs on your car or truck and better yet, they sell the parts you need at a steep discount from the dealership prices.

How much so? How about $74.99 for this actuator the dealership wanted $260.53 for. Booyah.  NAPA wanted $140 for it - less expensive than the dealership but still almost double the 1AAuto.com price. The toughest thing about this job was twisting my body, arms and hands into position to get under the dashboard. I've never thought myself fortunate for having  small, delicate hands before but the more repairs I do on my cars I find myself lucky in that regard. It's also been stupid cold of late so that didn't help either.

 

Onto the next project. Whatever that may be.

You can do your own repairs to on your out of warranty car or truck and save a bunch of money. Have faith in yourself, take your time, do the research, plan ahead and remember, a tow truck is your backup. Cheers.