Despite the following tales, man I still love this car. I really haven't driven too much since April with both myself and the kids doing work/school from home, but it was enough to catch a couple of expected service items.
1. The original front passenger air bag finally went, I put an Arnott in to match the other corners and hopefully that'll be the end of those for a while.
2. Burned up one O2 sensor so far.
3. Shredded my drive belt one day. That was a weird one, driving through town and all of the sudden a big red battery symbol blows up my dash, ac stopped being cold, and the power steering was gone. Figured I lost the belt, but was trying to calculate if my batter could run the 16 sparkalators long enough to limp me into maap so at least I'd have some tools and wouldn't need to call the Mrs. for yet another broken car rescue. Without the water pump, the aux fans were running full tilt and temps stayed fine getting there. What a pucker moment though. We pulled all the bits of belt out and burnt the crap out of our arms trying to reach down from the top. With out a lift or proper stands there wasn't any real good way to under and check the components. I was afraid something seized up and that caused the belt to fail, so even if I put the new one on it might happen again. Defeat admitted, I called in a tow. Turned out that nothing was wrong/locked up, so Hank at Mountain Valley Motors finished cleaning up the front end, put the new belt on, and that was that.
4. I did the first oil change on it, nothing exciting but after getting it all angled in the correct driveway slope on the ramps to feed the driver side drain plug, I see that the oil cooler plug is on the passenger side and angled wrong...after I drained the pan. Wasn't going to move the car and do the cooler so it got 7.5 quarts of new and kept about 2 of the old. Also forgot to get my blackstone sample but maybe I'll remember next time. Catch can had whatever this is, 3 or 4oz?
![[Image: h8gddn3.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/h8gddn3.jpg)
5. Transmission - I had been getting hard shifts when slowing at a 3-2 or 2-1 downshift and was starting to dread the 150k mile 7 speed was showing its age. Turns out resetting the TCU/adaptive shifting whatever cleared it right up. It also fixed the inability for the car to coast downhill, for a while it would deaccelerate when you would take your foot off the gas down a hill, it would make all kinds of wonderful snap, crackles and farts like it had a burble tune on, but it was kind of annoying. I don't know how much of a grandpa I was driving going to school and work to make the TCU map the transmission like this, but I promised the car at least 1 WOT for each 5 miles driven in the future.
I'd still love to pick up a second transmission and matching TCU to send off to Weistec to bulletproof with their kit. https://www.weistec.com/722-9-bulletproo...erter.html
And might as well go for the TC, who doesn't want to launch at 4k from a stop sign? https://www.weistec.com/722-9-torque-converter.html
A few random photos of it doing wagon stuff. The bike racks have come in super handy this year, and the balance bike cracks people up when they see it.
![[Image: 3WDXb94.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/3WDXb94.jpg)
![[Image: 01r9qAr.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/01r9qAr.jpg)
![[Image: QCwbra4.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/QCwbra4.jpg)
![[Image: 0bXkKyD.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/0bXkKyD.jpg)
![[Image: Z7Rbdxy.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/Z7Rbdxy.jpg)
Oh, and that one time the kids wanted to bring their GT3 to Cars & Coffee. I should have taken a better photo myself before we left the house.
![[Image: TGjOrMG.png]](https://i.imgur.com/TGjOrMG.png)
1. The original front passenger air bag finally went, I put an Arnott in to match the other corners and hopefully that'll be the end of those for a while.
2. Burned up one O2 sensor so far.
3. Shredded my drive belt one day. That was a weird one, driving through town and all of the sudden a big red battery symbol blows up my dash, ac stopped being cold, and the power steering was gone. Figured I lost the belt, but was trying to calculate if my batter could run the 16 sparkalators long enough to limp me into maap so at least I'd have some tools and wouldn't need to call the Mrs. for yet another broken car rescue. Without the water pump, the aux fans were running full tilt and temps stayed fine getting there. What a pucker moment though. We pulled all the bits of belt out and burnt the crap out of our arms trying to reach down from the top. With out a lift or proper stands there wasn't any real good way to under and check the components. I was afraid something seized up and that caused the belt to fail, so even if I put the new one on it might happen again. Defeat admitted, I called in a tow. Turned out that nothing was wrong/locked up, so Hank at Mountain Valley Motors finished cleaning up the front end, put the new belt on, and that was that.
4. I did the first oil change on it, nothing exciting but after getting it all angled in the correct driveway slope on the ramps to feed the driver side drain plug, I see that the oil cooler plug is on the passenger side and angled wrong...after I drained the pan. Wasn't going to move the car and do the cooler so it got 7.5 quarts of new and kept about 2 of the old. Also forgot to get my blackstone sample but maybe I'll remember next time. Catch can had whatever this is, 3 or 4oz?
5. Transmission - I had been getting hard shifts when slowing at a 3-2 or 2-1 downshift and was starting to dread the 150k mile 7 speed was showing its age. Turns out resetting the TCU/adaptive shifting whatever cleared it right up. It also fixed the inability for the car to coast downhill, for a while it would deaccelerate when you would take your foot off the gas down a hill, it would make all kinds of wonderful snap, crackles and farts like it had a burble tune on, but it was kind of annoying. I don't know how much of a grandpa I was driving going to school and work to make the TCU map the transmission like this, but I promised the car at least 1 WOT for each 5 miles driven in the future.
I'd still love to pick up a second transmission and matching TCU to send off to Weistec to bulletproof with their kit. https://www.weistec.com/722-9-bulletproo...erter.html
And might as well go for the TC, who doesn't want to launch at 4k from a stop sign? https://www.weistec.com/722-9-torque-converter.html
A few random photos of it doing wagon stuff. The bike racks have come in super handy this year, and the balance bike cracks people up when they see it.
Oh, and that one time the kids wanted to bring their GT3 to Cars & Coffee. I should have taken a better photo myself before we left the house.