Why Not To Own An Old Car

I've spent over a two weeks now fighting with my car. It started with my car losing it's timing and mis-firing like crazy. This happened only once in a while, and always at an inconvinient time and location. It also usually just started back up after a short rest.

Then one day it didn't. As I was leaving Wal-Mart it stopped in the intersection coming out of Wal-Mart and Cornhusker road. That sucked. We ended up chaining it and towing it down Cornhusker road until we found a place to jump it and limp it away.

It turned out that the electric fuel pump had died, so we tore it out and popped in a new one.

That didn't work very long. I got stranded again, and it seemed like the battery just kept draining out. The fuel pump was kicking just fine, so we decided it had to be something with the power system. Since the alternator was reasonably new, and we had had troubles with the power regulator before, we replaced that first. Plus a regulator is cheaper than an alternator by $20+. It seemed to work for about two days, then I had to limp it home from Stephen's house on a Thursday night by charging it up off the truck, then getting as far as I could before it died again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

This time we pulled the alternator, because we metered it and it didn't look like it was making any current. I took that in to O'Reillys and they told me that it was, in fact, dead. I bought a new one, brought it home and spent a good two hours bending and prying things to make it fit. Upon starting of the car it squealed like crazy, but the meter jumped a little bit, so I assumed it was fine, maybe the bearing was a little rough and would wear smooth.

So then I decided to tighten the valve covers, since the were leaking oil a bit. I also decided to wipe them down, make them shiny again. I got all the way to the back of the left bank, and went to take off the PCV. Tink. The grommet had been eaten away and I just knocked the metal PCV into the head. Not cool. I spent a good twenty minutes with a screwdriver trying to fish it out, because there was no way I was taking that valve cover off, they're too hard to put on in the first place. I eventually got it and stuck some tape over the hole.

Well, I charged it up and it ran fine for two and a half days. Then on the way to school it was running a bit rough, and since I was low on gas I figured it was just trying to push vapor. I pulled into QT, fueled up and, big surprise, it didn't turn over. The battery was dead again. A kindly QT attendent gave me a jump and I raced home on the boulevard, barely making it there before it got rough and died again.

My father came home and we pulled the new alternator, thinking it had a bad bearing and that was making the squeal as well and not building a charge. Turns out in reality I had attatched the ground to the wrong pin. I completely missed the little "GND" on the alternator when I put it back in, and just hooked the ground up to where I thought it had been on the old one. I mean, it's all grounded to the case right?

Well, with the re-wired alternator in there we metered it again. The jump was from 12.3 or so to 14.8, so it had to be working. As a bonus it stopped squealing. Go figure.

It got me around for another two days no problem until Friday night. I went over to Stephen's again, sorry if I'm spelling your name wrong in here (like you'll ever even read this). A bunch of people were there we ate, we played catch-phrase, it was lovely. I was Kyan's ride home and so around midnight we went to leave. Got in, it fired up and then died. It absolutely refused to start back up. I checked everything I could think of and came to the conclusion that the fuel pump wasn't running for some reason. Seth gave us a ride home (thanks again....like you'll ever read this) and on Saturday morning I headed back out to get my car.

We checked the pump to make sure it was well grounded, it was. We checked to see if it was getting power from the line, it was. Conclusion, dead fuel pump. A two week old $40ish fuel pump just died. We swapped it, I got covered in gasoline, and all is now well.

I'm almost afraid to drive the thing after the last few weeks. Lesson to learn, don't buy a car that's over 30 years old. Okay, I take that back already. I love my car (Riley is it's name now, according to Kyan) and I wouldn't trade it for something new. But boy are there times when I'm pretty sure it's out to make me miserable.