I've made the leap from wagon lurker to wagon owner

I had noticed when I got my Roadmaster that the washer line feeding the drivers side spray nozzle had been damaged and the previous owner had inserted a plastic coupler into the line rather than replace the tubing from the delivery hose to the wiper nozzle. At some point over the chill of winter, that plastic coupling snapped and I had planned to replace it. Coincidentally, the factory nozzle on the passenger side had broken as well. Now I was left with no choice but to remove the cowl assembly and repair the delivery hose as well as the tubing in my driver’s side wiper arm.


I dug through my factory service manual to see how to get at the washer delivery hose under the cowl and was disappointed to find that step one, was “Remove the cowl”. Removing the cowl was the very information that I was after. Since I was on my own to figure it out, I thought I might as well document it a little bit. I didn’t get as many pictures of the process as I should have, but it really is easy, it’s just a matter of knowing the order to pull things out and put them back in again.


The cowl assembly is attached to the car with a collection of screws and plastic pins. As most of the screws are concealed, it takes a minute or two to get at all of them. Before starting, I removed the wiper arms and set them aside.


I pried up on the plastic screw cover to get at the recessed screws on each end.






I then took off the engine compartment weatherstripping to get at the rest of the screws.




In addition to the two screws concealed by square plastic covers on either end, all screws and trim plugs must be removed in order to lift off the cowl. The screws are marked here with red arrows and the trim plugs are marked with blue arrows. With all of the screws and plugs out, remove the drivers side of the cowl first.



Once the cowls are off they can be cleaned. In my case there was a mess of leaves and pine needles and whatnot under the cowl vents but on top of the vent screen. As the screen is adhered directly to the cowl it can’t easily be removed. I got all of mine cleared out just with a garden hose.



The washer fluid delivery system connects to the larger fluid hose (shown by the arrow) that runs up to the cowl space from the washer pump. Disconnect the entire tubing assembly and replace it.





It’s likely that the cowl tray will have some debris on it as well. This can be swept or hosed off as required. Leaving this mess in there is just asking for rust later on.





I took the opportunity go over the cowl plastics with some cleaner and protectant while I had it all apart. In my case it was also necessary to repaint the wiper arms so I got those painted while I let the weather seal soak in protectant.





When reassembling everything it’s important to remember that the passenger side of the cowl needs to be installed first. Once that’s in, the driver’s side can go on next, there are two clips on the underside of the driver’s side cowl that hold the fluid hoses in place. It can be a little fiddly to get the hose on the cowl and connect it all to the fluid feed hose before re-seating and screwing down the cowl. An extra pair of hands can be useful.


When reinstalling the wiper arms ensure that they get put back onto the gears in the same location that they came off. If the wipers were in the off position when they came off, it’s a simple matter to put the arms back on so that they are resting against the stops for it to be in the bottom-most position. Use a torque-wrench to get the nuts back in place to 27 ft/lbs. After reinstalling the arms, everything is good to go and they can be tested.


Here we have my finished product. The wiper arms are shiny and new looking as is the cowl assembly. The washer hose has been replaced and it’s ready to go back on the road.



Judging by the state of the intake, I think I got this post and the previous post in the wrong order. I did everything on the same day so it's sort of run together.

Hope this helps out somebody!

 

I would be interested to know if anyone else sees these pix and text in Wiz's last couple of posts as huge? I would like to follow this but a good third of his last posts are off the right side of my screen and the pix are almost too large to view. NOTE that the rest of the page with prior posts are the size that they should be.
Anyone else having this problem....or is it just me?
EDIT:
The reason I asked is that A1Awind posted a pic today on a different thread and it was huge on my puter too. My post here is the correct size so maybe I am having pic problems for some reason.

 

That'll be my fault Fox. I normally resize pics and upload them to my Picasa account before posting. This time I cheated and just linked to the images on my blog and didn't think to check the size first. Sorry about that.

 

OH....no problem, wiz. Glad to know it isn't my puter. It IS difficult to follow, though, when you have to scroll back and forth to read every line of text.
I have this same problem on all of 81X11's pictorial posts too. Not to the degree of these though.

 

Yeah, I know better and usually resize the pics to fit on most screens. I'm in the midst of re-doing my woodgrain trim and was anxious to finish the post and get back out to the garage. I cut a corner and the result was less than desirable...imagine that.

 

Well....I'm just wanting to follow you and that car.....have been from the beginning. It looks like a good car that is just filthy from sitting. Looks like you are doing a good clean up on it. Did you do the mods on the air intake? I can't tell for sure....is the EGR and air box deleted too?

 

It is mostly just dirt. I keep finding weird stuff though. The previous owner was a do-it-yourselfer and didnt care too much about the car. I'm finding trim pieces screwed onto the car, parts and pieces that weren't reinstalled quite right. Most of which are parts that are only rarely necessary to remove. It's almost like the car got dismantled in a border search or something along those lines. Fortunately none of it is major and they're the sorts of things that a guy like me, with only minimal automotive knowledge, can remove, tinker with, repair/restore, and put back.

I removed the resonator and bought a shiny hockey puck replacement with a Buick logo on it. I haven't gone much further. I'm holding off on spending too much money until I have my Parisienne ready for winter. I need a carb, the windshield needs to be resealed, and I want to put a set of snows on it and replace the door seals. Just tackling stuff one step at a time so I don't forget that I'm in over my head.

I haven't done a great deal to it really. I had saved enough money for the car and a number of upgrades. That unexpected transmission rebuild ate almost my entire budget and I've just been driving it ever since. The weather has kept me from the rest. We had a beautiful summer day yesterday and now it's pouring rain again. I'm sitting out in the garage painting the body trim in the hopes of getting it reinstalled tomorrow.

 

CW I know when some of these issues are taken care of you'll be sailing smooth. I'm a little odd when it comes to my personal vehicles. I like them to have silly small issues all over the place. That way I can keep myself busy chasing them down.

This Torino sedan of mine has been a little more than I normally like to handle. Didn't get to drive it once for six months after I got it, we were so broke, and then I do drive it for a few days and a few hundred miles and the RR wheel cylinder explodes and takes out the drum and all sorts of non-aftermarket-supported parts. I buy a parts car and fix the sedan up, get to drive it only to discover over the next 3000 miles that it burns a quart of oil every 50-70 miles. SAE 40 oil didn't reduce it much and the lifter noise (some viewers of my YouTube videos claimed it was a main knock and it'd run forever like that) got to be pretty annoying. So I buy an engine (351C, 4-bolt, possibly a CJ) for $400 and spend $700 having it installed. Takes six weeks to get it installed. Then it won't start. Won't drive once started. I let the mechanic have it back for 3 months and he doesn't do diddly squat to it. So I take it back and start in on it. New battery cables, solenoid, $40 to rebuild the starter, fresh cap, rotor, wires, plugs, and coil, spacer and stud to fit my air cleaner, and an Edelbrock adapter kit for the kickdown rod. Starts great now but no oil pressure and the trans still doesn't work.

I am hoping I just have too much fuel in my oil from repeated failed starting attempts before the starter was rebuilt. I am hoping maybe the sending unit is for a gauge and not a light and it needs swapped out. I am hoping I can find a place who will rebuild my FMX with the new front pump it probably needs for less than a grand.

This is a $355 car I'm dumping thousands into now. At least yours is "nice". I like my car but I wish it was small issues like window cranks and the radio and fluid leaks and not entire powertrain components.

 

Thanks for the words occupant. I'm trying to look at it not as a car with a whole bunch of issues but as a list of small unrelated tasks. It helps me tackle them without feeling like I'm being overwhelmed or that the car is the cause of all the work. Splitting my time between the Buick and my Pontiac helps too.

I'm a freak for Torinos. Glad to see someone else who shares that interest! The Mrs gets very worried each time she encounters yet another model of car that I'm really fond of. I suppose it's a good thing that I have only a single car garage and a two car driveway or there would be an even larger list of small unrelated tasks.

 

I just posted up some pics of my newly refurbished woodgrain trim over in the woodgrain section.

I'm really happy with it.

http://www.stationwagonforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=127487&postcount=1

 

After I finished up with my wood trim I decided to chase down my roof leak today. Whenever it rains I get a steady trickle down the D-Pillars into the rear fenders. It hasn't been a huge deal but it's needed looking at since I bought the car. The driver's side rear fender had almost 2 gallons of water in it when I bought the car. Fortunately filling the fender with EvapoRust put a halt to the corrosion and also cleaned out the fender drains that were plugged up with undercoating.

After reading the forums it sounded like my leak problem was the roof rack so I removed the D-Pillar trim and pulled the headliner down just enough for a peek. There were no water stains on the headliner so if it was the roof rack I figured it must be only the rack rails themselves and not the plastic strips that adorn the roof.

I pulled the roof rack off, resealed all of the holes/screws and put it all back together again but found that my leak was still there. It turned out that there is actually a leak in the roof welds themselves. I was pretty surprised. I ground down everything to bare metal to find that the sealant the GM seems to apply to their welds appears to be passing water. I found the opening that seemed to be leaking and found rust underneath. I painted it with rust convertor and then primer. I'm going to let it seal up and see what happens.


While I was working on the roof I figured I would have a look at some rust bubbles that I noticed over the driver side doors. It turns out that rust was way worse than I thought. The roofline is rusted quite badly from the outside in. It looks like someone has removed the weather seal at some point and reinstalled it too loosely and water has been collecting under there and not draining. I ground off all of the paint/rust and found a number of good sized holes under there. I'm not sure how I'm going to proceed on this one.

 

Here's a shot of that shiny new hockey puck replacement that I bought. I couldn't resist the Buick logo.

 

Well I took the wagon in to a local body guy on Friday to get an estimate on repairing the roofline. My father delivers for NAPA and gets to know a lot of these guys. He recommended a guy who's a pretty straight shooter. The same guy looked over my Dad's pickup a while back and suggested that he not bother fixing it. Dad wasn't attached to the truck, he just wanted it fixed to keep looking better for a few years. The body guy said he could fix it but he figured Dad was better off spending the same money on picking up something else.

I spoke to the owner and he came out to have a look at the Roadmaster. He looked over the roofline and the two leak spots at the back window. He said that he can put in new metal, patch the holes in the back, paint, clearcoat etc for just over $500. It's less than I was expecting (although I don't have any sense for costs when it comes to body work). He also indicated that he thinks the poorly fitting trim might be due to the way the metal lip is on the side of the car and not due to anything the previous owner did as I thought. He expects to be able to make at least that portion of it better than it was from the factory

When it comes right down to it, it's my wagon, so I'm definitely getting it fixed. It might be a different story if it were The Mrs' Sebring or even my Pontiac. Even if I weren't so attached to the car, I have more money into it than I could ever hope to get back out of it in a sale so I wouldn't walk away from it anyway.

The wagon is in the garage now and I'm driving the Pontiac on any day that isn't expected to be completely rain-free until I can raise the money for the repair.

 

Well the weather for Friday was slated to be rain-free so I pulled the Roadmaster out of the garage, roof holes and all, to take it on it's first road trip. Apart from a few short jaunts 20-30 kilometers away, the Roadie hasn't gotten out to stretch its legs much. I figured as long as there was no chance of getting the wet stuff inside the car, I might as well give it a good run. A 300KM round-trip should be a walk in the park.

The trip down went without a hitch, and I got out of the car after 2 1/2 hours without any of the lower back pain that I so often had with my 2000 Grand Marquis. After 9 hours of walking around the swap meet, my back was still fine after a 3 hour drive home.

All day out in the sun had nearly baked us alive so I kicked on the A/C to cool things down until we got out on the highway. The A/C works (surprisingly enough) but often gives a little clunking sound when it gets turned on and off so I don't use it much. (Not that the Canadian weather has given me much of a need to this year)

I did notice all the way home that something didn't "feel" right. I couldn't put my finger on it. I have noticed that the transmission shifts funny right around the 80KPH mark but at 85KPH it's fine, been that way since I had the tranny rebuilt. I didn't have a better answer so I chalked up my concern to that little oddity.

We stopped for a bite to eat once we got back home and as we left the restaurant that's when I really started to notice it. The whole car felt like it was shuddering and when I gave the throttle a goose I got a nasty squeal from the engine bay. I limped it the few blocks to the house with it getting worse as it went. I got it into the garage again and left it there to relax until I could take a look.

It appears that my A/C compressor clutch has worked itself free and is no longer centered on the bearing. I'm glad I made it home without shredding the serpentine belt. I convinced the wife to let me visit the local wrecking yard on our anniversary rather than the road trip that she hoped for but I wasn't able to find another LT1. I didn't learn until later than some Buick V6's have the same compressor so I came home empty handed.

Anyone ever replaced the compressor on an LT1? Anyone know if I can remove the clutch of the compressor and drive it without A/C?

I'm thinking I may order a compressor online. There are a number of eBay sellers with new, used, and rebuilt options. I'm just not sure if I'm up to replacing the compressor myself and wondering who else might have been through it.

 

Use the Autozone repair guides. I couldn't tell you where the giggling pin or laughing shafts are on a modern GM are, if my soul depended on it, but the repair guides on that site are PD Good!
http://www.autozone.com/autozone/

You might check at CrappyTire to see if its one of those 'legislated' AC jobs.