Once back in the 1990s, I worked on a 1984 Tempo that came in on the hook as a no-start. The old man who owned that car was hovering nearby watching me work on his baby (personally, I wouldn’t have given him $50 for that rusty old car at the time).
The seats were torn, the inside was worn, and the engine was destroyed, but she liked it enough to drop some fairly serious cash into getting it back on the road.
That particular Tempo was one of the early ones that had a carburetor on it, and since I had worked on those cars at the Lincoln Mercury dealer when they were brand new, I was familiar with the plumbing. To begin with, there was no gas in the carburetor, but the gas needle was reading something other than empty. While that gauge could have been wrong, I chose to poke around under the hood before pushing the car into the shop. This one had a strange little two-wire solenoid mounted, so that it bisected the fuel line (the fuel line had been cut at some point by somebody and this solenoid installed), and the ground wire for that solenoid was connected in a very easy to see place up by the cowl. The ground screw was rusty and a bit loose, so I spun it out, shined the metal, reconnected it securely and that opened the solenoid. Fuel filled the reservoir, and the car started.
The old man was surprised that I had found it so quickly; he told me that he had installed the solenoid as a theft protection device right after he bought the car brand new. I guess he had a hidden switch somewhere that energized the solenoid. I didn’t tell him that his anti-theft solenoid was now unnecessary, because nobody would even consider stealing that rusty old ride. Nevertheless, he was joined at the hip with that car and loved it dearly.
I have, for the past 37 or so years of my life on the wrench, experienced in an intimate, yet somewhat detached way the love some customers have for their cars. To the technician who wrenches on 30 or 40 cars a week, that car is just another machine in need of a field fix. But to the person whose fanny keeps the driver’s seat warm, that ride is their best friend, even if they don’t always treat it in a friendly way.
These are sweet little engines when they’re running right, but bleeding the air from the cooling system is kind of dicey. The book says there are bleeders, but we couldn’t find any, so we filled the block through the upper radiator hose. The thermostat was in the other one, like on some Camrys and VW Rabbits.
This story has some satellite tales to go with it, but the title vehicle is a 2004 Chevy “Classic” that quit running, and now it was spinning slower than normal and they didn’t know why. The man and his wife came to ask if we could have a look at it, and I agreed. They spoke of how much she loved that car and how they would do just about anything to get it going again.
She said during our initial conversation that the temp gauge never showed the car to be hot, and so she wasn’t sure why it quit. But from what she told me there were some unmentioned reasons why she believed engine heat was a factor. Not the least of which was that they had purchased a new radiator that they wanted us to install.
A day later the little gray car arrived on a roll back wrecker and some of my guys shoved it into service bay No. 6. It was interesting for me to learn that this car and the Malibu are listed as two different cars even though they look like practically the same.
Holes Incapable of Fire
Identifix spoke of timing chain issues with this platform, and the engine didn’t sound normal while spinning, so the timing chain was a possibility, to be sure. We screwed the spark plugs out and checked the compression to find none. Not a single ounce on any hole. Had it jumped time and bent valves?
Peering into the spark plug holes with a streamlight, the tops of the pistons were clearly visible, and right away I pointed two things out to my guys. To begin with, there was no carbon at all — the pistons looked really clean. Second, there were significant beads of coolant resting on two of the four too-clean pistons. This cooling system had experienced an epic failure, and an engine would be in order, so I buzzed the folks at LKQ and priced out an engine with less than 90,000 on the clock. They opted for the engine and would pay the extra dough for a year’s worth of parts and labor warranty. I got the engine coming, but we had a lot of other stuff in the shop that bears short mention here.
Cases in point, we had two Chrysler products that needed transmissions. One was a 2003 Neon that was full of fluid but had no engagement in reverse, and the other one was a 2007 Dodge Charger that would sull up like an opossum and stop pulling after a short drive. It was full of fluid as well, and I priced out transmissions for both cars. The transaxle for the Neon would cost more than the transmission for the Charger, believe it or not. We ordered a transaxle for the Neon after she gave us the green light, but it would be slow getting to us. LKQ didn’t have one, so I had my industrial sales guy at Advance check his network of salvage yards. The Charger transmission I picked up at a local salvage yard, and one of my guys hammered that one out in a fairly short period of time, for a student anyway.
It’s not hard to see how they’d love this 2007 Charger. It was enough of a cream puff to warrant a good used transmission, and I paid the $50 core charge for the old transmission. This’ll make a good trainer unit.
Checking the fluid in that Charger’s Mercedes transmission with that $88 dipstick tool is an interesting experience for those who haven’t done it. The tool is a fairly long cable with millimeters marked out on a tempered blade at the business end of the cable. The filler tube is capped with a “hands off” message of sorts. There is no dipstick, and you shove the tool into the tube until it touches the bottom of the transmission oil pan. This dipstick tool enters the pan vertically and the flat-buttoned bottom of the graduated blade touches the trans oil pan. There is a temperature/fluid level graph you’re supposed to use in order to determine whether the fluid level is correct.
This critical fluid level check is the trend on some (not all) modern transmissions, and quite frankly, this way of checking the fluid makes more sense than Ford’s stand pipe or GM’s remove the plug method. You can do this check with the tires on the floor.
Repeat Business
Speaking of cooling systems, we had a small war going on with a 2006 Mercury Mariner that kept throwing P0128 codes. The dash gauge was reading kind of low and we threw a thermostat at it, but the problem persisted. With a temp gun aimed at the water passage where the sensor was and those numbers compared to scan tool readings, we found just more than 200 degrees actual temperature and a sensor reporting 60 degrees less than that. So a sensor was in order. When the sensor was replaced, reality and the reading were more in agreement. Case closed, right? Wrong!
This 2006 Mercury Mariner fought us tooth and nail with bad thermostats and temp sensors. That P0128 would stay gone for a week to ten days and then come right back. We finally got it taken care of.
The Mercury’s P0128 returned the following week, this time with the temp gun agreeing with the sensor, and we found the engine was running at 160 degrees. Another thermostat was in order, and we popped one in there. This one warmed it up to 195 degrees or so, and the sensor still agreed with the temp gun. A week later, the P0128 was back, and this time the thermostat was OK, but the sensor we had installed was now reporting 30 degrees cooler than the gun, and so we had to replace the sensor again. That finally took care of the P0128, but what a ride that was. Some seemingly straightforward repairs aren’t so cut and dried when the quality of the parts comes into question.
Speaking of repeat repairs, my son came to town on a sweet little 1998 Camry he uses on trips, but he told me he had a nasty oil leak that was dumping a quart of oil every 150 miles, which translated to a half an oil change on a 300-mile trip. The problem was, he had a shop in the town where he lives replace the oil pan gasket in a failed attempt to repair that leak and the charges were north of $400. When we first got it up on the lift, there was oil all over the place, but a dye test confirmed what we suspected. Folks who are familiar with these 2.2L Camry engines know that the oil pump is a common leak point, and that’s where my son’s Toy was leaking oil. An oil pan would have to have a serious breach to lose the kind of oil this baby was dribbling.
I had one of my guys remove the timing belt and the oil pump cover to find that triangle-shaped O-ring type rubber seal cracked and flattened with heat and age, which was no surprise. After our repair, my son and his wife drove back home without having to add oil, and after I sent photos and a synopsis of what we found, the other shop (a franchise chain store) refunded the $400-plus for its misdiagnosis.
This 1999 Taurus had no heat and no flow to the heater core. It’s a wonder it wasn’t running hot. But after replacing the pump and flushing the rust she was warm again.
A Snowballing Heater Job
While Garrett and Daniel, two students, were jerking the engine out of the Classic, they managed to break a $15 cast aluminum support bracket that had to be ordered from the dealer. Because the replacement engine LKQ brought us came out of a Cavalier, there was some parts swapping in order before the engine could be dropped into the Classic. The torque converter seal also needed to be replaced on general principle, lest we find ourselves with a transmission leak at that point. That’s an oft-overlooked easy preventative fix when doing an engine swap. But that isn’t the snowballing heater job the header is talking about. Actually we encountered two of those.
Snowballing heater No. 1 was on a 1999 Taurus that had no cabin heat whatsoever, but the blend door and its actuator were working famously. The heater hoses, however, were very cool in spite of the fact that the engine was running nice and toasty at 210 degrees. It was full of coolant and the thermostat seemed to be operating, but there was (quite predictably) quite a bit of rusty mud in the cooling system. And so we took the Taurus to the wash rack behind the shop, removed both heater hoses, and ran a nice vigorous flow of water through the heater core, shoving a lot of rusty mud out of that heat exchanger. But when we started the engine with the hoses disconnected, there was no flow of coolant at all. So we shoved our water hose into first one heater hose and another (engine off) and shoved another large quantity of muddy looking rust out of the heater hose piping. Still no flow with the engine started. It was water pump time for the Taurus, and when we saw the eroded impeller on that old pump, we knew why there was no flow.
Willie’s timing chain had been rattling for many a mile, to the point that a simple blast of air blew this square hole into the timing cover. Our surgery revealed the need for a used timing cover and a new chain and oil pump kit.
Having witnessed this exercise, Willie, another student, was experiencing a no-heat situation on his 2002 F150 and asked if he could have a look at possible reasons for his cold cab. After all, winter weather was biting us at this point and who enjoys long cold drives?
It was easy to jerk the water pump off that 4.6L, and while there was only a small amount of erosion visible on his pump, he figured he’d replace it anyway. I had warned him that he might have blend door problems, and I don’t think he ever checked to see if his heater hoses were hot. Well, there was a lot of crud on the timing cover right below the water pump, and when he applied shop air to clean that off, he actually blew a square hole the size of a sugar cube in his timing cover. Right beneath that square hole, you could see the timing chain, which had worn the cover to paper thickness at that spot, which had simple air pressure to blow a hole in the timing cover.
Exploratory surgery revealed those all too familiar broken chunks of nylon bouncing around in the cover — chunks that had once been one with the chain guide on the passenger side bank. He remarked that he had been hearing a rattle in that area for quite some time, and the next time he hears that rattle on one of these modular Ford engines, he’ll know what that means.
My youngest son paid more than $400 to have this oil leak fixed on his 1998 Camry, only to have it dump two or three quarts of oil en route from Augusta, Ga. An oil pump seal (between the cover and the pump) took care of the real cause. The franchise store refunded his money when I sent photos.
Willie did some eBay shopping and found a timing cover and a complete chain set for a good price, and he began the grand adventure of doing his first one of those babies.
Conclusion
Time would fail me to tell of the 2006 Solara that came in for an oil change and came back 15 minutes later with a bad alternator, or of how Willie’s F150 engine ran great when he was done but how he had to replace the almost new power steering pump because it simply wouldn’t work after everything was reassembled. Or how the Chevy Classic’s published cooling system bleed procedure speaks of bleeder screws on that engine and there aren’t any. We filled the block with coolant by pouring it in the top radiator hose, which works famously and doesn’t hurt a doggone thing. We also used my electrical roulette method to check the cooling fan (always smart after replacing an engine that destroyed itself with heat), and made sure it cycled several times. Everybody was happy, particularly the customers. And that’s a high you can’t buy.
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