The Red Camaro's latest problem? Leaking power steering lines. This on top of the struts, brakes and anti roll bar she already needs. Not to mention an alignment. It's what you get for using a twenty year old car as a daily driver.
I spent last weekend getting at the leaky line; there's another that might be leaking but I took care of the one that I was pretty sure was leaking first. It was a difficult and messy job. Something tells me "The General" didn't intend for the power steering lines on 3800 V-6 powered Camaros and Firebirds to ever need replacing since they made getting them out to be damn near impossible. I can only imagine how bad the V-8 cars are to work on. BTW, there's no youtube video on how to replace power steering lines on these cars so I was on my own.
My little girlie hands are good for something and that's working in confined spaces like this. It took a while but I did get that leaky upper line out but not before I broke it. Lovely. With power steering fluid leaking worse than before I had to get that thing out or pay a shop a handsome stipend to do it for me. What's more, I'd have to get a tow truck since with the engine running, what was left of the power steering fluid would gush out with the force of a fire hose. Ever steer a power steering car with power steering that's not working? Makes "manual steering" cars feel like overboasted old Buicks in comparison.
In the two years we've have had this car a lot has gone wrong with it. Save for having a shop change the spark plugs for $200, an incredible amount of money, I know but they're impossible to find let alone wrench them in and out, I've made all the repairs myself saving us thousands. If it wasn't for my mechanical ability and inherent frugality there's no way we'd still have this car. Then again, if I didn't have those traits I don't know if we would have bought this thing in the first place.
Last spring it was the rear brakes. The rear cylinders needed replacing, yes, this thing has drums out back, and I broke the cross over brake line on the back axle when changing the right rear. Great.
That lead to my breaking the line that went down the left side of the car. Holy smokes what a job that was to replace. Not to mention finding the replacement parts in the first place too. By the way, watch out for those chain parts stores. The people behind the counter mean well but many of them really have no idea what they're talking about. Oh, they may act like they do but more often than not, when it comes down to heavy duty work like this, I've found they don't. At the end of the day, for us DIY'ers, you're really on your own. Good luck.
Last winter it was lingering engine performance issues because two of the three coil packs were bad. Again, bad advice from Autozone had me chasing my tail. Not fun.
Over the summer the driver's door lock stopped working.
There's been power window issues as well.
Let's not forget that she still needs struts up front, shocks all around and the front brakes need to be redone.
There's going to come a time when something will go wrong that I can't fix and The Red Camaro will be toast. Until then, my creeper will be at the ready. Stay tuned.
No comments:
Post a Comment