So I started up the IROC today, and that all-too familiar feeling of nostalgia flooded over me.
Not to mention I had recruited a slight mob to help me move the car "safely" from one friend's house to another. They were all pretty impressed to hear a 305 rumble like she did after being pretty much dead for 1.5 years. And of course there are so few 3rd gen convertibles around, it always gets some looks.
I have huge problems, mostly the fact that I'm no longer military and the car is still registered/wearing Florida tags. So to get it on the road I have to get it registered/titled in the communist-wealth here, which means it has to be safety-inspected.
Well let's just look at what that will take, shall we?
1) Brakes. The reason it's parked to begin with. I had to replace the rear-end 2 years ago. The replacement rear-end (junkyard special) had drums rusted solid from being outside for years...so I removed them, with full intentions of adding new brakes soon. Not sono enough however before the open rear lines caused the proportioning valve (I assume) to go out and something went out in the Master Cylinder (maybe seals from the sudden pressure drop of fluid dumping out when I hit the brakes?)
1a) Summary: I need a complete brake system for an '89 IROC convertible with a 1994 auto rear-end...including every last thing on the axles....yes, even the drums themselves.
2) The shifter. Previous owner did a ghetto ass install of the shifter, bypassing the nuetral-safety switch. Besides the obvious problem of it starting without having to be in park or nuetral, the transmission will not shift into Overdrive without it. Don't know why, but it won't. Sucks on the highway, let me tell you. Also, the shifter (B&M ratchet-style) won't ratchet all the way to 1st gear.
3) For some reason stepping on the brake makes the parking lights come on. I have read that having the wrong bulbs installed in the taillights/blinkers can cause this very strange problem.
4) The car will not run with the MAF connected. It runs fine in limp mode (no MAF) but this is not how I want the car to run.
5) Because of the above, the plugs foul very quickly and on average runs on 5-7 cylinders max at any given time. The slight advantage is it sounds like I got a mean-lumpy cam in it...hehe. This is assisted with the very decent catback with a Flowmaster dual-chamber on it.
6) In it's year hiatus...neighborhood kids broke my driver's seat. Hell it might have been my kid (ore-divorce when she lived with me), but someone broke my seat, it's no longer connected to the floor.
7) Aftermarket steering wheel...horn not connected. I hope that 89's didn't come with an airbag from the factory or this may really suck come inspection-time.
8) Heater core bypassed due to it exploding. Yummy anti-freeze in my interior one day while at work. Didn't take long to diagnose that one. Started to disassemble the dash to replace it, literally the next day the brakes went out.
9) Windows have been sitting too long, last night barely got them moving, the motors might have seized up from lack of use. I'm pretty sure the car chuckled when I tried to use the door locks.
10) The tranny slips badly. Since the day I bought it, the tranny has been in dire need of refreshing. The belts/clutches are fried (evident by the 1/2" of sludge on the pan-magnet when I changed the burnt ass tranny fluid right after I got the car). The tranny will NOT do the 2-3 shift under power, I have to let off throttle for it to shift into third.
There's the top-10 reasons it's gotta go into storage (which of course, after 6 months of storage, the repairs will have paid for themselves....but I'm not bright enough to realize this as I type it and will store it rather than fix it anyway).
All this being said (are you actually still reading this shit?) the car ran a 15.5@89 the day I got silly and took it to the test and tune. That's right...limp mode (no MAF), slipping tranny (won't 2-3 shift under throttle), convertible 305 TPI...ran a 15/5@89 MPH. WAY too fast for that car. My '91 that was MINT was considerably slower than that. The engine has been rebuilt and at least been touched up a little on the inside. no idea what, but something...the bottom end (looking at the block with the car on the lift) is spotlessly clean...it's been worked on.
SO!!!!!! The question I pose is...how much do you think it will cost for all this? I have my ballpark figure, which I won't share for the sake of making you come up with something...but I have to do something. I'm about to be sharing space and money with GF and two kids...times are changing!
Seriously, some of you just straight up skipped form the 2nd paragraph to this line, didn't you?
And of course... :tweetz: