Jimmy Buffet's Conch Cruiser - 1947 (vintage) Chevrolet Advance Design Series

To us car wonks, the best part of the video for Jimmy Buffet's 1974 hit song "Come Monday" is the "Conch Cruiser". Sadly, there's not much footage of it in the video, so I can't tell what year it is specifically except for it being part of Chevrolet's 1947-1954 "Advance Design Series". '54's have a unique front end design that's different from the one he's driving in the video so, if anything, it's safe to say it's not a '54. . 

New for 1947, Jimmy's Chevy truck was the first post War pickup truck design sold in the United States. With integrated headlights, a cab with seating for three and a horizontal grill, at least design wise, it was a radical departure from anything any manufacturer had offered prior. They were built off the same chassis and used the same in line six-cylinder engines the previous Chevrolet pickups did. There were no diesel engines or all wheel drive systems available. You get stuck, get your mules and horses to pull you out. All electrics or even hybrids were the stuff of science fiction. 

Jimmy's truck had many "car-like" features the old design did not have. There was a front opening hood instead of one that was a split and opened on each side, a "swing-out" windshield rather than fixed, wipers on the cowl not affixed to the roof, door hinges no longer visible front the outside of the vehicle, thicker padding and insultation to make it quieter, there was a large glove compartment, an ashtray and even a radio. Imagine that. 

These came in three "series". The "3100" half-ton, "3600" three-quarter ton and the full-ton "3800". The weight capacities referring to the truck's "payload", a vehicle's capacity it can safely carry within its truck bed and passenger cabin.

Bed lengths varied with series and payloads. It appears the Conch Cruiser is a 3600. Note the length of the bed on the MODEL 3604 and the two sets of ribs in front of the rear fender. That's what Jimmy is driving in the video. 

Shame the Conch Cruiser was crushed into a metal triangle at Carlos' junkyard after it was impounded. I'm sure when it was "compacted", many a story and inspiration for song went along with it. And I'm sure Jimmy and his truck have since been reunited. 

1972 BMW E9 CSi - Knives Out

The wife and I finally rented the old school who-dun-it, "Knives Out" the other night and we loved it. Loved it so much we watched it again right after we saw it the first time. I guess being in quarantine does have some perks. Actually, we would have liked to have watched it several more times since there's so much going on in the film we know we missed something the first or second go round but those Red Box late fees do pile up quickly. Funny how Daniel Craig got top pilling - he was the only member of the cast my wife and I thought was miscast. 

I know I missed something important every time this 1972 BMW E9 CSi was on screen.

These cars were known internally at BMW as "E9" and design and engineering work dates back to 1962. The first E9 went to market in 1968 and was known as the 2800 CS. It was replaced by the 3.0 CS in 1971; the biggest difference in the two models being an increase in the engine's bore pushing displacement to three liters opposed to two point eight liters in the previous CS. 1971 also saw the introduction of the 3.0 CSi like the car in the movie - the "i" denoting the fitment of Bosch fuel injection helping the overhead cam, inline six make some two hundred brake horsepower.

BMW commissioned the famed German auto body builder Karmann to build the bodies for all E9's. BMW sold them through 1975. They were replaced by the E24 or "6 series".

There's something special about old BMW's that today's do-everything-superbly BMW's lack. It's a visceral thing that's sadly lacking in just about everything they have now save for maybe their M4 coupe. This E9 is made note of in the film but ads nothing to the plot, it's a fashion accessory if nothing else for Chris Evan's character.

The car in the film was originally sold to a buyer in Milan, Italy and came to the United States in the 1990's. It was sold into a local collection not far from where major shooting of "Knives Out" took place outside Boston, Massachusetts. The car was repainted in 2000 and most recently had a thorough mechanical going over. The interior is completely original and is allegedly in good shape save for a little wear on the driver's seat. Considered a "driver's car" by E9 cognoscenti, denoting it's far from showroom condition, it was sold after shooting for the film was completed.

2002 Dale Earnhardt Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS #899 - Oil Pan Gasket Replacement (The Dale Rocks On)

About two years ago I had "The Dale" in a shop for a problem with the emissions system. Like those shops seemingly always do they found stuff that needed to be done that totaled, bless their heart, more than five-thousand dollars. With the power steering rack, water pump and the oil pan gasket all leaking it sounded, at the time, like a terminal diagnosis. The most expensive of the repairs was for the replacement of the oil pan gasket. Kid you not.

The conversation went some thing like, "...doing the pan is a fairly labor intensive project...we have to lift the engine partially out of the car to get at it." Attempting to sound unflummoxed, I politely told him I'd pay for the emissions work but I'd pass on the myriad other recommended repairs. Seeing they charge $125 for diagnostics I really appreciated the free heads up. "Hmm", I thought, "lifting the engine out of the car...this could be interesting". How could I possibly pass up on something like that?

Would it have been fiscally prudent to sink that kind of money into a, at the time, seventeen year old car with some 150,000 plus miles on it? Honestly, to keep the good old boy on the road the work needed to get done but not at that rate. If I didn't think I could do the work myself I'd shop the repairs around to get a break. You'd get a second opinion from doctors why not get one for auto repairs?

Although hardly environmentally responsible, I didn't dive in and replace the gasket immediately since it wasn't leaking that badly. Sure, I'd have to add maybe a quart of oil between changes and top off the coolant every now and then, the power steering rack hasn't given me any trouble, but everything was quite manageable. At least up until about six weeks ago when the wife noticed massive amounts of oil on the driveway that resembled the world's largest Rorschach Test. This picture here is after I scrubbed the driveway; oil was literally ponding on it. To make matters worse I had lost roughly three quarts of oil in the three weeks since I last changed it. These blobs on the driveway telling me that it was time to put my money where my mouth was. Immediately.

It's by no means a complicated job but what makes it cumbersome is that the oil pan is blocked by the engine mount bracket on the passenger side of the engine. This is the bracket looking up into the engine from under the car. The engine mount itself, a massive hunk of rubber, bolts to the bottom of the bracket and then to the aluminum sub-frame the engine, transmission and steering rack sit on. You can't remove all the bolts until the engine is supported up top with an engine lift or "cherry picker"; if you do the engine would come crashing down. The cherry picker is also used to lift the engine up about four to five inches so I could get the bracket and mount out after unbolting it. Toughest thing about any of this is getting at the bolts for the mount - best to have small hands, fortitude, and time. It wasn't easy and the fear of rounding off a hard to get to bolt slowed me down big time. One bit of advice, "break" or loosen all the bolts before removing them. Best to know they're all loose rather than get stuck on one that won't budge with several removed.

 

Surprise, surprise, this repair is not something that's covered extensively through youtube videos. This video here is about as comprehensive a study on the project as I could find out there and it's got its flaws like most DIY videos do. Our well-meaning host glossing and mumbling incoherently over many important details like sizes of bolts and techniques but at least it was something that could help me connect the dots on a job I never knew even had to be done let alone done before.

I won't bore you with the myriad trials and tribulations of a job that took me the better part of three weeks to complete. It took that long because of Covid-19, other projects, cold weather, laziness, losing parts, not having the right tools, time sucking trips back and forth to Autozone, and Lowes, being super careful, blah-blah-blah. Watch the youtube video and you'll get a pretty good idea of what I went through. All in, start to finish, if I didn't dilly-dally I could probably bust this out in about five or six hours. The one thing I can tell you, honestly, is that you do have to have a certain degree of mechanical intuition and aptitude to do something like this. If you really don't think you do, don't even think about it. Shame it's such an expensive repair to do. I wonder how many otherwise perfect running GM "W-bodies" with the 3800 engine have been scrapped over the years because of a steep repair estimate to replace, of all things, the oil pan gasket.

Old cars will seemingly bleed you to death with endless repair bills but it's still less expensive than replacing the whole car. I do not believe it's wise to fix a two-thousand problem with a twenty to thirty thousand dollar solution. I'm lucky too in that I can do a lot of repairs myself and I actually enjoy doing them. This job ran me about $150, and that included the gasket, lift rental and tools I had to buy. The net savings is off the charts of course  since I got estimates ranging from $800 to $2,000 to do it. Best is "The Dale", now with 215,000 miles on it, rocks on. That's my older son, who's now twenty-three, on the day I first got this car going on ten years ago.

1999 Pontiac Bonneville SE - The Pickin's Are Pretty Slim (When You're in Quarantine)

Seeing how slim the picken's are these days for solid, cheap old cars, I guess people are strictly adhering to social distancing guidelines and that's good. Real good. Thing is, if I needed a good cheapie quick, I'd be screwed. There's not a lot to choose from within a hundred miles or so of our home here on Cleveland's west side. That's why today my dive into the discount bin comes up with this oh-so-'90's, 1999 Pontiac Bonneville SE. For sale at Motor City Auctions outside Detroit, which is a solid two hour drive from here, at $3,900 and with just 62,000 on the ticker, this is about as good a deal as I'm going to find out there these days. And I could do a whole lot worse although I would want to do a whole lot better. 

First things first, though, I'd have to be really, really desperate to seriously consider this thing. Taken solely as a transportation conveyance it's fine. Actually more than fine. Spacious, practical, a decent handler considering it's senseless bulk, reasonably powerful and fuel efficient, there's nothing inherently awful about this car. The problem I have with it is its styling. These big Bonnies were just flat out fugly. 

Part of GM's "H" and very similar "G-body" front wheel drivers first debuting in 1985, this '99 Bonneville was the last model year for not only GM's first updating of the platform that began with Cadillac in 1989 but for the platform's run in general. In an upsizing move straight out of the 1960's, GM added just shy of a foot of additional sheet metal to their Cadillac deVille's, Buick LeSabre and Park Avenue, Oldsmobile 88 and 98 and our Bonneville here. Chevrolet, and someone explain to me why this was, never got an H-body. 

It was an upsizing for the sake of upsizing - there was no increase in interior volume and, subjectively, the styling was hit or miss. The Oldsmobile 98 was the best looking of the lot, the Cadillac Sedan deVille was fairly handsome, the Coupe deVille was an ill proportioned mess. The Buick's were just awful and then there was perhaps the worst of the over-styled bunch, our Bonneville here. 

Which is sort of ironic given that, again, subjectively, the first H-body Bonneville was the best looking of the original H's. Thanks to oldcarbrochures.com for the above picture of a 1987 Pontiac Bonneville SE. 

Also didn't help that these cars were awash in 1990's GM plastic and fussy design. 

Still, given the mileage and my personal familiarity with the powertrain, again, if I was desperate, I could do a lot worse than this car. 

2003 Chevrolet Malibu - More Fun with Error Codes (Error Code P0230)

Our younger son is toughing out the dregs of his senior year at Ohio University taking online classes while in quarantine. As if the poor kid hasn't been through enough with this whole thing, what with his senior year upended, graduation canceled and his summer internship put on hold until at least the fall, he called me about a week ago to tell me his car, a 2003 Chevrolet Malibu, wouldn't start. A mechanic in the town where the school is diagnosed the problem as a bad fuel pump and estimated $760 to fix it. Wow. And that's with a AAA discount. I thanked them for the diagnosis, paid $111 for the diagnosis and had the car towed two-hundred and five miles back home. No, I didn't technically  pay for it, AAA offers one "free" tow per family member per year up to two-hundred miles. I paid an additional twenty bucks or so for the overage. All in not a bad deal. I've used it once before in thirty-nine years of membership, might as well get my money's worth. 

I've done fuel pumps on fuel injected cars before and this one was, admittedly, on the tougher side of things. As with most fuel injected cars the fuel pump is inside the tank and you have to "drop the tank" to get access to it. Why is the pump on the inside of the tank? Who the hell knows. Anyway, some cars, like my 2002 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, have a trap door in the trunk over the tank for fairly easy access but most cars, surprisingly, do not. Not having a lift and the tank being half full didn't help matters either. Still, I got it out, the new pump, which ran me $80 at AutoZone, went in and with the help of my strapping, twenty-three old older son, got everything back together and ready to rock a joyous, six hundred dollar savings of a repair before dinner.

Much to my horror, the car wouldn't start after we finished. After I got over the initial shock of failure I feverishly scanned through my mind the steps we took reassembling everything. What could it be? You can't mix up the fuel lines, we were meticulous with our wiring, the mechanic who diagnosed the problem said the relay was good, all fuses were fine...what the fudge?!? I deduced, to my older son's dismay, it was a bad fuel pump. I consulted with my son's friend who's a Porsche mechanic and quite experienced for such a young man with all the foibles of American cars and he agreed, "bad fuel pump, Mr. Connolly. It happens. Especially on the cheap ones from AutoZone." 

However, to make matters worse, all reviews online that I found about the pump I bought were glowing. Why did I have to get stuck with a dud? I dismantled everything, pulled out the pump I bought and returned it to AutoZone and, of course, I got another one just like it. What are the chances two new cheapie pumps could be bad, y'know?

This time I hooked up the wiring for the pump first to test if the primer motor would kick on for one to two seconds when the ignition key was in "run". This is was with the pump still out of the car. Wouldn't you know it? Nothing. Zilch. Although, the fuel gauge was working which told me power was getting back there. Strange. It was at this point I decided to embrace my mantra of, "a tow-truck is my backup". I reassembled everything and dusted off my dented ego and called AAA for a tow to my wonderful mechanic Rick whose shop is less than three-miles from my home.

Before the tow truck came I reread the mechanic's diagnosis and I was fuming at myself for not checking it sooner. There was no print-out on the receipt that mentioned "bad fuel pump" but instead, "error code P0230". Autoservicecosts.com defines Error Code P0230 as a fuel pump primary circuit malfunction. "This indicates that the fuel pump primary circuit is experiencing a problem when it is commanded on/off. This code is usually set when there's an incorrect voltage detected by the PCM". In the thirty to forty minutes between my call to AAA and the tow trucks arrival I watched a couple of youtube videos of mechanics, or what appeared to be mechanics, trouble-shooting this error code and I quickly deduced that figuring out what it ultimately meant was a above my pay grade. I silently cheered as the tow truck left my driveway with the Malibu on its flat bed.

The next day Rick called and said the problem was not with the fuel pump but with the fuse box or "block" in the engine compartment that houses the relays. While the relay was fine, it appeared the port where the relay for the fuel pump goes had shorted out. How and why? Who knows. It's a seventeen year old Chevrolet; shit happens. He found a used block, installed it and the total came to just under, gulp, three-hundred dollars. More than I certainly wanted to pay but all in considering what I paid for the diagnostic and the "cheap" fuel pump itself, I'm still ahead of where I'd be had I gone with the mechanic down where my son goes to school. A long way around the block to save several hundred dollars but the net-net is some savings.

The cake frosting was that Rick, who's a wonderful human being, said that the short in the fuse block probably burned out the fuel pump. I had told him I changed the fuel pump twice and he may have been just saying that to be nice but I'm taking his comment as gospel since that infers I didn't waste my time or my older son's time swapping out the fuel pump twice. Furthermore, I have the piece of mind that there was no way in hell I was going to figure out the error code P0230 was pointing towards a bad fuse box.

If I've learned anything with these damn error codes and check engine lights is that the codes you get are a "symptom" of something that's wrong. Trouble codes give you little more information than to put you or a mechanic in the ballpark of where you need to be. The rest boils down to good old fashioned detective work.

1981 Lincoln Town Coupe - Why'd They Even Bother?

With the advent of four door sedans, why did people continue to buy cars with only two doors? Especially through the 1960's and 1970's? Well, years ago they were less expensive but as time moved on, cars with only two doors usually offered buyers something that sedans didn't - a styling moxie, flair and a fashion statement above and beyond the practicality first sentiment of sedans. And they were quite popular. Granted, they didn't have to compete with the likes of today's stylish, do everything cross overs, but image conscious buyers tolerated their intrinsic impracticality because they appreciated an automobile that appeared to have something more going for it than it actually had. However, it made no sense when a manufacturer offered a two-door automobile that was nothing more than its four door version. Case in point, this 1981 Lincoln Continental Town Coupe.

Granted, we were not exactly fans of Lincoln's brick-like '70's Continentals, although...we wouldn't kick a 1970-1972 Continental Coupe out of our garage, but this soulless, slab sided beast made the rest of those oafs look like they were designed by European artisans. Seriously, Lincoln, the hell were you guys thinking here? Just like GM's much ballyhooed downsized 1977 models, Ford's "Panther-body" full size cars, introduced at Ford and Mercury for 1979 and Lincoln in 1980, were far better transportation conveyances than what they replaced but from a visceral perspective, something went awry.

Its not as though it was the first time that Lincoln did little to differentiate a two-door Continental from a four-door model save for it having two less doors.  When Lincoln finally introduced a coupe version of their seminal "suicide-door" 1961 Continental in 1966, it was little more than a Continental four-door with two less doors. Although, seeing how rakish the four-door was, it made for a fine looking coupe even if there's a little too much Ford Galaxie in the granola for our tastes.

When Lincoln updated Continental in 1970, eschewing the suicide doors on the four-door for something more mainstream albeit far less distinctive, they made some effort to differentiate the coupe from the sedan. These 1970-1972 Continental coupes are, in our opinion, again, pretty neat.  Not perfect, mind you - they're pretty thick south of a very low belt line and are too broad in the beam past the end of the doors. Why anyone with the means would spring for this and not a Coupe de Ville of the same era is beyond us but you know what they say about taste and armpits.

The nadir of '70's Continental design coming in 1975 with this tragic updating. GM didn't fair much better with their pillared coupes but any semblance of youthful aspiration clearly went out the fixed rear side windows here. The more formal rear rooflines extenuating the Continental's bolt straight lines that had all the styling flair of tipped over refrigerator. At least Lincoln had the good sense not to add opera windows to the Continental coupes like they did with the sedans. Lincoln had to sink these battle ships come 1980 what with the government cracking down on gas mileage regulations.

For their downsized 1980 Continentals, it appeared Lincoln used the lines of their mid to late '70's Continentals not so much as design inspiration but as a template to start from. The Ford LTD Crown Victoria and Mercury Marquis didn't fair much better but riding on a three inch longer wheelbase, the Lincoln's somehow looked even more out of proportion. How is that GM's 1977 downsized full sized cars looked nothing like what came before yet all, well, sorry, most, were still unmistakable for what they were? Look, we get that designing an automobile is very hard but you'd think that Ford could have done a better job styling these cars than they did. Sadly, when it counted most, it appears they played it safe and it cost them. Cost them, wait for the pun, big time.

When Lincoln moved their vaunted and venerable "Continental" moniker to a Fox-based sedan for 1982, what was the Lincoln Continental Town Car became simply, the Lincoln Town Car. There was no more "Town Coupe" and that was just as well. Why'd they even bother in the first place?

Much like the term "brougham", back in the olden days a vehicle that was a "town car" was one with an enclosed passenger compartment and an open driver's seat. "Brougham", pronounced, "brome", stems from Lord Brougham, the chap who designed the original horse drawn carriages. Somewhat ironically given the humble origins of the terms, both "town car" and "brougham" were used by various automobile manufacturers over the rest of the twentieth century to con-notate luxury.

2009 Honda Accord - To Thine Own Self Be True

I've been stepping up my used car shopping efforts lately in hopes of finding a deal so good that I can't pass it up. Despite the fact that I can probably fix what's ailing my 2002 Dale Earnhardt Chevrolet Monte Carlo currently for maybe a couple of hundred bucks, with almost two-hundred and fifteen thousand miles on it, my wife had told me several times that, "it might be time". I found this this quasi-interesting 2009 Honda Accord EX-L coupe the other day and I was intrigued enough buy it to break quarantine and take it for a test drive. My time spent amidst "the virus" was time well spent. Did I buy it? No. Of course not. 

Why not? Well, it's not that it wasn't a solid car or a great value or the fact it has a salvage title. To make matters even more tempting it has just over eleven-thousand miles on it and an all-in price, car, tax, tags, doc fees and whatever, of $10,300. Wow. How could I walk from such a deal?

Because it's ugly. Honestly, as much as I liked the car I just can't get over that since 2003, Honda's Accord coupe styling has been awful. I blogged about it here not too long ago and it's funny to review that blog and see that everything I felt about them then is still true today. More importantly, my sentiments so strong, perhaps it's more like contempt, that I could turn my back on one with very low mileage on it and a near absurdly good asking price. Salvage title and all. Read more about my take on cars with salvage titles here.  

How could there be a 2009 Accord with only eleven-thousand miles on it? Apparently, it was a snowbird's "Cleveland car" and they barely used it. They took it for a jaunt one day last summer and got into a bit of a fender bender. I saw the before pictures and it really wasn't bad. The left front fender, front fascia and hood all had to be replaced, but here in Ohio if the sum of the cost of the repairs of a damaged vehicle plus it's salvage value exceeds its actual cash value or what is known as "book value", then the vehicle is deemed a total lost. Odd that Ohio has such an aggressive junking policy when their stance on vehicle safety is as lax as it is; you should see some of the tin can jalopies up here people use for transportation. Wouldn't be surprised if Governor Dewine changes that.

In fairness, this car does look better in person than in two-dimension, might be the silver that I'm usually not that fond of but it's not so much better looking that I was like, "damn, that's my ride". There are certain angles on this car that are just awful; like this one. I mean, this is so bad it almost hurts. That's a shame because there's so much to like about this car. The interior was cavernous for a car with such a relatively small foot print, the driver seat was an orthopedic throne, the dash layout brilliantly intuitive, the 3.5 liter V-6 was a buttery, powerful gem, Honda rates it at twenty-hundred seventy-one horsepower - felt more like well north of three hundred, it handled better than any Camaro or most Corvettes (ok - older Corvettes) I've ever driven. Damn. What a car.

Is it shallow of me that I can't see past it's questionable styling enough to jump on it? To some extent, I guess, then again, to thine own self be true; where I to buy this car knowing I felt this way about it's styling, wouldn't I be, in some odd way, be lying to myself? Us coupe buyers are a fickle bunch - just because a car is a coupe doesn't mean we're going to like it. That's like thinking because my wife is blonde I find all blondes attractive. I want an automobile that makes me smile every time I look at it despite even if it's a heart breaker. Now, granted, there's a fine line with that sentiment but I hope you get my gist. I like cars that are more than an appliances and this very, very capable car is really nothing more than a fancy looking dishwasher or stove. 

I'll stick it out with the Monte Carlo and fix whatever's wrong with it. It's old and breaks my heart on a constant basis and I wouldn't have it any other way.