I still drive my Oldsmobile Intrigue, but it won't be driven until I save enough money to buy a new thermostat housing assembly, a belt, and 3 gallons worth of Dex-Cool ready to use coolant since my water pump is leaking (I have a new one in my house that I bought years ago). Hope I can afford the parts with these prices going up starting this week.

That and it needs the front suspension replaced along with valve cover gaskets due to an oil leak (I lose a quart every 2,000 miles, which is a slow leak, but adding a quart of oil every 2,000 miles isn't ideal for me and I know it's those gaskets since the one spark plug was coated in oil. Thankfully, the car still runs regardless and the A/C works (well, 95% of the time) along with the heater and 3 of the 4 windows (bad motor for the driver rear).

Michigan is brutal on suspension... My Triumph Spitfire actually bottomed out on a pot hole once...

bjwil1991 wrote on 2025-03-17, 08:11:

I still drive my Oldsmobile Intrigue, but it won't be driven until I save enough money to buy a new thermostat housing assembly, a belt, and 3 gallons worth of Dex-Cool ready to use coolant since my water pump is leaking (I have a new one in my house that I bought years ago). Hope I can afford the parts with these prices going up starting this week.

That and it needs the front suspension replaced along with valve cover gaskets due to an oil leak (I lose a quart every 2,000 miles, which is a slow leak, but adding a quart of oil every 2,000 miles isn't ideal for me and I know it's those gaskets since the one spark plug was coated in oil. Thankfully, the car still runs regardless and the A/C works (well, 95% of the time) along with the heater and 3 of the 4 windows (bad motor for the driver rear).

Ouch, I feel where you're at, had a couple of decades on the shoestring beater treadmill. Gotta get your training in to do waterpump, jumping jacks, it's the curse of the transverse V6 waterpump, you need to reach from on top, now you need to go underneath, on top, underneath, on top, underneath 🤣 Though maybe you get enough slack on the driver side engine mount that you can drop it halfway out the bottom with pass side mount off, and do it all from there.

So cheap part place I've dealt with before is rockauto.com they have closeout items, they buy out stock from liquidating stores or distributors and sell it cheap with short or no warranty, but often you're getting the brand name top quality part for less than the price of the chinese one. Anyway, I think they'll have your housing for under $10.

Then your front end, maybe you can find decent used parts on car-part.com which is my go to for finding major assemblies or parts that are hella spendy new, or can't be found new. Sometimes you can even get stuff shipped to you for cheaper than what you can find in local range.

If you know you need near 3 gallons of dexcool, buying the premix means you're paying 5 or 6 bucks for half a gallon of water, whereas you can go in grocery or drug stores and find distilled/de-ionised water for a buck a gallon or under. I won't use tap water myself due to limescale, I've seen what it does. So can save a few bucks, maybe enough for the housing by getting one gallon distilled water, one jug of concentrate, and one jug of premix for topping up. Now you don't have to mix the concentrate and water if you're putting it in a "dry" system, pour concentrate in and water on top, just gotta be sure you're going to run the engine right after to mix it up well, if it's gonna be sitting overnight before you run it and might be a frost, then don't. If you are really short on cash, there's some wreckers yards sell reclaimed coolant, but I guess it's cross your fingers and only trust it a year or so.

Switch it to a "high mileage" oil, and your leaks may stop and oil consumption slow down to just hit the bottom stop by the time it's due to change. I'd also recommend it for cars over 15 years old regardless of mileage and issues, just because the oil is getting "updated" every few years, which is not necessarily good for older engines, takes out additives they thrive on, to keep alive cheaped out catalytic convertors on 10 year old to new cars.

Edit: Oh I forgot, the godsend to gearhead cheapskates "Free part days" upull/you-pull-it yards can have "free parts day" events where it's something like $60 admission then everything you can carry out of the yard in one trip is yours. By "carry" the usual rule is whatever you can load yourself up with and stagger a few feet out of the yard, so you can get some quite heavy stuff as long as you can lift it. You will want to bring straps and rope and stuff you can make a carryable load with, have it all dangling off you somehow. Also you need tools of course, so having your toolbox on a dolly is a good plan, then you can use that for weight while you bounce around the yard, but have to take all parts off and carry them to "cross the line". EditII: Pro tip is to visit the yard a day or two before the day, and squirt penetrant on any and all of the bolts you might wanna be removing on D day.

EditIII: Actually not sure why I didn't ponder the free parts day potential for getting a Kia 1.6 short block. Can probably just carry one. (I think it's only 315lb fully dressed, so shortblock should be half) I guess the most obvious thing is that there's not going to be that many good ones out there. El problemo grosso is that they're usually like 6 hour events and even with a rocket up my ass it would take a few hours to get into the thing enough to be sure I was getting a good one, and it still will be bolted to the transaxle, so that to do too. So would barely squeak it, if I got lucky first time. If I get the head off and "oh shit it's worse than the one I'm driving." then that's hours down the tubes and I've blown the chance. This would not matter so much if I could "pre-game" but the yards I know that do the event, they're an hour and a half to two hour drive so not real convenient.

feipoa wrote on 2025-03-16, 22:54:

I haven't bought a car since the 90's. I still drive my old cars. Am I helping the environment or hurting it?

that's one of those "it depends" questions

its good you said "the environment" rather than just carbon. It would be true that if measuring only carbon that a new EV, especially if charged from renewables (or nuclear) will not only result in less exhaust locally but also less carbon overall at some point. There is a carbon cost to creating a new EV, its a lot - more than an ICE car supposedly. But even so, if you drive one long enough there will be a point where it has produced less overall carbon than the ICE car, even than an old one. That makes sense to me, its a kind of one time upfront cost.

(its not really one time, but its very front loaded, once made its carbon impact is just whatever it takes in maintenance etc, very low compared to burning gas)

However when looking broadly at the environment in total - thinking about not just the energy in mining, smelting, forming, shipping, assembling and so on - but also the effects of those activities, like mining, on the environment. I mean things like pollutants in rivers next to factories, deforestation to make room or get at raw materials, strip mining and rare mineral mining - just the whole thing. Then I'd see an old car as a kind of sunk cost - its impact happened 15 years ago and the longer you can keep it going the longer you hold off the impact of another new car, if you see what i mean!

I know there have been some calculations on the new EV v new (and even old) ICE carbon question, but i haven't seen a really complex assessment of the environment impact in total. Intuitively i'd say keeping old cars going is better overall, but then we're on a forum full of people who keep old computers going, maybe we're biased 😀

Carrera wrote on 2025-03-17, 10:04:

Michigan is brutal on suspension... My Triumph Spitfire actually bottomed out on a pot hole once...

Yeah it is. One time at I75 & Rosa Parks I hit a section of highway that was just straight up missing. There was a 2ft long gap with just rebar, as wide as the whole lane. My car slowed from 70mph to 50mph in about 1 second and I almost hit my nose off the steering wheel. I joined 6 other cars along side the road that also hit it. (couldn't see it in rush hour traffic with enough time to swerve or slow down) I had a bent lower control arm, two blowouts and both front rims cracked.

Nasty. Things like that you wanna stab the brake real sharp just before them and let off, so the suspension is springing back up as you hit them, then you can sorta hop over it. In RWD maybe even just tap the gas slightly as nose comes up.

Carrera wrote on 2025-03-17, 10:04:

Michigan is brutal on suspension...

That and the roadkill, not sure why, but after passing the boarder in Sarnia there is literally something dead on the side of the interstate like every mile

BitWrangler wrote on 2025-03-16, 23:33:

feipoa wrote on 2025-03-16, 22:54:

I haven't bought a car since the 90's. I still drive my old cars. Am I helping the environment or hurting it?

Running a 15+ year old one is supposed to be better than the invested energy required to make a new one. I wish I could have kept some of mine, but structural rust got them, and there were some with wearable parts that got unobtanium. Car manufacturers were slyly slipping money to the "old cars are terrible polluters" crowd some years back, but that got difficult to prove when the "old" cars caught up to late 80s, 90s pollution controls which are pretty effective if you keep on top of them. With my 88 Voyager, I could have it blowing as clean at the tailpipe as a "poster child" comparison vehicle at the time I compared it, which was a 2005 Civic, when we had the Drive Clean inspections of course. So yeah, up to you for your pain point with having them out of service while parts are found, dealing with other repairs etc, technically you can still pick up a gross polluter charge if you drive by a roadside sniffer and ping it in the nose 'coz your cat is stuffed etc.

My cars are 26 years and 46 years old. I keep them in shape. If you park them outside, you need to regularly coat the under carriage with anti-rust coating, which is a rubberised spray. I have them parked in a garage now. The older car has collector plates, so the insurance and registration are cheap (under $300/yr). The 26 year old car is only about $900/yr. As the car value decreases, so does insurance.

Auto parts became more of a problem since COVID. Mercedes tends to continue making parts longer than many other brands. I mostly need to get most parts from the USA, Germany, and eBay (genuine mercedes only). But even then, I could not find the Bendix caliper rebuilds for my brakes. In the end, I had to rebuild the calipers on my own, even though the pistons aren't readily available in a kit. The good news is that keeping the cars parked in a climate controlled garage (our house), parts tend to last longer.

I drive only about 5,000 KM/yr. The average consumer would likely hvae had 6 different cars by now. I'm sure there must be some online webapp for which the user can input all their details to determine if their objectives have helped or hurt the environment. For example, if I drive 50,000 KM/yr with my old cars, maybe it is more environmentally sound to buy new cars? I don't know. For the small amount of money I put in to keep the cars going, it is almost free for me compared to buying new cars.

I find myself suspicious of the undercoatings, I have had cars that have had it done, and lost the rockers (sill panel UK) in one because water went along underneath it, rusted underneath, that was the rubberized type, it actually held the water under it. Then on another car that had had the sticky oil type, it was up in the middle of some box sections it broke out from, so it didn't get coated in there well or something and it's hard to be sure the job has been done right. So while it seems they hide the visible rust well, so your car doesn't look tatty and have slightly off bits of filler and spray around the wheel arches etc, it feels like it's a losing battle anyway. ... or it's the same as all auto service types around here, 80% of them are incompetent, and while I know which places I can get repairs and tires done without screwups, I don't have any info about undercoating places. So I just try and get the salt off when the weather warms and make sure my driveway drains well (standing on grass/dirt or over puddles really gets them) But I could also use a proper garage.

I had some bad rebuilt calipers a decade or so back, they hadn't been honed out or re-machined and the piston was hanging up on the wear (The kind of thing you get on ancient calipers that haven't been rebuilt, hence why you are replacing them). So I'd probably go the self rebuild route now on anything that needed it.

Those old Mercs, W123 and a bit less the W124 are something else though, half million mile cars treated halfway right. Should have scored a 280D 300D or something years back and kept it up.

BitWrangler wrote on 2025-03-20, 04:11:

I find myself suspicious of the undercoatings, I have had cars that have had it done, and lost the rockers (sill panel UK) in one because water went along underneath it, rusted underneath, that was the rubberized type, it actually held the water under it. Then on another car that had had the sticky oil type, it was up in the middle of some box sections it broke out from, so it didn't get coated in there well or something and it's hard to be sure the job has been done right. So while it seems they hide the visible rust well, so your car doesn't look tatty and have slightly off bits of filler and spray around the wheel arches etc, it feels like it's a losing battle anyway. ... or it's the same as all auto service types around here, 80% of them are incompetent, and while I know which places I can get repairs and tires done without screwups, I don't have any info about undercoating places. So I just try and get the salt off when the weather warms and make sure my driveway drains well (standing on grass/dirt or over puddles really gets them) But I could also use a proper garage.

I had some bad rebuilt calipers a decade or so back, they hadn't been honed out or re-machined and the piston was hanging up on the wear (The kind of thing you get on ancient calipers that haven't been rebuilt, hence why you are replacing them). So I'd probably go the self rebuild route now on anything that needed it.

Those old Mercs, W123 and a bit less the W124 are something else though, half million mile cars treated halfway right. Should have scored a 280D 300D or something years back and kept it up.

I remember paying some specialised company $135x2 in 2006 to do the undercoating on my two cars. I haven't had any rust on the areas that were undercoated.

When I rebuilt the calipers on my W123, the pistons were so badly seized that I had to use the high pressure from a greese gun to press them out. It was an awfully messy job. I couldn't order the pistons, so I used steel wool to de-rust them the best I could. They weren't pitted enough to not for a seal. I could only find the caliper seals.

I have a 240D. It's slow. If you want a W123, you should aim for a 1983-1985 300D Turbo Diesel. They had more horsepower compared to the earlier 300D's.

Could you fill your rockers with high density spray foam to keep the water out?

feipoa wrote on 2025-03-20, 08:55:

Could you fill your rockers with high density spray foam to keep the water out?

Don't do that. It will absorb moisture and hold it in. The best option is to either ensure that any drain holes are clear, to let moisture out, or if you want to - get the interior surfaces sprayed with some waxy coating. Something like https://www.ziebartworld.com/

I own a 1973 Ford Escort mk1 (the UK/Euro/Rest-of-world model - not the unrelated north American car of the same name), had it for around 25 years. It is one of the cleanest, rust-free historic vehicles that I've ever seen in the UK. A lot of that is down to the fact when new someone had it Ziebart treated; they drilled holes in the rocker panels, a-post, b-pillars, door frames etc and had the ziebart treatment sprayed in. It kept the rust at bay for over 40 years until I stripped the car back to bare metal in the mid 2010's and resprayed it.

You can see the plug in the rocker panel / sill panel around the door frame in this picture I took back in 2002 or so, shortly after I bought it:

Definitely worth doing if you own something you cherish and want to keep it forever (for some definition of 'forever').

Of course, one of the previous owners also took it upon themselves to do a homebrew version of this in the engine bay... which resulted in days of work scraping it off....

Incoming comments about 1970's Fords generating their own anti-rust coating from all the oil leaks in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...

😁

Isn't there a type of high density spray foam , or other spray filler, which is water impenetrable? I haven't tested it, but seems like I've sprayed one variant of spray foam which created a glassy surface film.

In theory the closed cell foams should work, they don't work like a sponge like the open cell foams. But I hear there are still adhesion problems so the problems like the rubberised coat can occur where water just gets capilliaried along the interface and held. The long term problem with lighter oils inside sections is that day and night heating and cooling cycles, give partially closed (and count anything partially closed unless it's been welded by an aircraft, pipeline or submersible fitter and inspected ultrasonically) sections their own water cycle, humid air gets in, condenses, it evaporates, condenses in the higher/colder parts, dribbles back down to the bottom, warms up, evaporates again. The result of that is a lighter oil spray washes off in a few years internally. This is also why temperature controlled garages preserve vehicles so much better, no day/night temperature cycle.

Anyway, where I was going was, the lighter oils penetrate better and coat better, but don't stay there, but doing that then putting closed cell foam in should keep them there, it gets in the way of the water cycle and takes up all the room so only tiny amounts of humid air can ever get in there.... unless it sits in a container in the Arizona sun for months and the oil get baked out or something.

Now the heavy waxy or sticky oils don't have the heat and water cycle washing off problem, but any patches uncoated inside partially open sections do. Ziebart process seems very thorough to avoid this and IIRC is one of the more expensive options in UK. In Canada, there's a couple of well known chains that compete on price and they drill and plug rockers but not sure how thorough they are about rest of structure. They also seem about halfway between light stuff and and heavy stuff. They are mass market options and compete on price. This has left little room I think for higher priced, very well done treatments like Ziebart are known for. I guess I will have to investigate the options in the classic/enthusiast market to see if there are any that come near.

Ironically I guess, back when I got my Nissan Versa, I had them leave the shipping/transit/storage protection coating on non-visible parts, like backside of rockers, in engine bay, around doors. Used to be "cosmoline" they used, think it's similar stuff, similar job now, but not sure of the name. Anyway, so 8 years down the line, I'd still got perfect rust free, unsullied metal everywhere that still was, but a pile of mechanical fail (Dealer serviced mechanical fail I might add, I meddled not). The Escape PHEV I just got was already part prepped, and IDK if Ford do that, or whether they use the plastic wrap and covered railcars, so no option to try that again. IDK whether there's too much in the way of sensors, airbags and other active crap buried in the unibody now though to be getting oil hosed into it. At least not without finding the tech info myself first to see where the danger spots are, looking for a vehicle upfitters guide to it.

Oh wow, we do actually have Ziebart licensed places in Ontario, through the UniglassPlus chain, they barely advertise it. Will have to check up on them, though I used Uniglass for glass the other year and was happy.

Edit: This is one for Canadians to jump on, was still poking around the Uniglass site annnnnd ... https://www.uniglassplus.com/promotions FREE windshield chip repairs on Wednesdays until April 30th, booked in advance. Bear in mind only some chips can be repaired.

Hmmm apparently what happens with Ziebart in North America is not what I remembered from UK and indicated by above poster...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2VD5fM6pt

And, slapdash application in recent times..
https://youtu.be/94BiLQKLzyE

I was remembering it as not so hard, staying slightly soft so partially self healing and more breathable.

Yeah, I should have stated - the treatment on my car would have been from some 45-50 years ago (it's a 52 year old car!).

I have *no* idea what the quality is like now; the waxy type coatings (such as this was at the time) are clearly the better quality options though.

Cosmoline is/was pretty common for factory application on exposed parts. There are still sections of it on the crank case of the flat six and front wishbones in my 964 turbo, and that's a 1993 car. The only problem is that it tends to go brown with age and can look unsightly.

I guess it might be the same story as why we don't have lacquer paints any more, solvents got un-allowed for industrial/commercial/workplace use in the early 90s and there was another bunch taken out about a decade ago. So formulas changed.

The Germans seemed to like cosmoline, I guess feipoa can probably still find some in his W123... doors were full of it IIRC, helped a buddy fix a window regulator way back. I may as well just use it for undercarriage, well proven stuff. Dunno if I can find somewhere that shoots it though or whether I'd be on my own.

Yeah, I would spray the inside of the rockers with undercoating before considering high density spray foam in there. I wasn't really recommending this as a practice, just thinking out loud. The rockers on my W123 are definitely not filled.

Would it be better to use bed liner as the undercoating spray, or would it chip off too easily with rock dings?

The worst rust on a W123 tends to be on the lower doors. They definitely aren't coated by the factory there. Inside the door panel isn't pretty either. No factory coating. The worst place for exterior rust is the area between the rubber bumper trim, or tail light trim, and the chassis, e.g. near the licence plate. I do have a small rust bubble appearing under the paint in this region. It hasn't grown at all since I've been parking in a warm dry garage (12 years). I do need to get it taken care of at some point, but it will involve painting the entire car, pulling parts off, redoing pin-stripping, gasket replacements (sun roof), etc. It will be a large job that I'm not really up to anymore, nor ready to dish out 15K for a proper paint job. It's important to have the whole car painted at once so that each panel fades at the same rate, otherwise you'll end up with a bunch of different shades of colour over time.

My W123 was parked outside from mid-2006 - 2013, and although it had covered parking, this is when the [non-visible] door rust emerged. I scraped it all off and coated the inner door jamb in about 2011. Since parking in a garage, there's been no progression of rust.

The truck in that youtube video (second link) was in horrible shape. It looked like the Ziebart guys sprayed over rust? The key is to undercoat the carriage before it has rusted, not afterwards.

Yeah, pointless to paint or spray over rust. That's not going to stop anything.

Remove the rust (chemical converter or physical abrasion down to clean metal or cut and re-weld), etch prime and paint, then apply your sealant.

When we bare metal resprayed my Escort, we etch primed then used POR stonechip before spraying on the body colour. This was the entire underside, arches etc. The stonechip product is a slightly flexible layer, so it doesn't chip and flake off in big chunks like a harder coating.

The only problem is that being quite thick, it has quite a notable texture, as I think you can make out from this underbody shot:

That's way too clean!

Nice Bilstein shocks. When I replaced my shocks with Bilstein, there was the option for standard replacement, or the "HD", heavy duty. I went with the HD, but wasn't sure if the ride would be as soft as the original. I felt maybe it wasn't as soft. Is this the general consensus?

BitWrangler wrote on 2025-03-14, 13:11:

Sphere478 wrote on 2025-03-13, 05:29:

The EV silverado is working its way up to the big container.

I’m going to make a triple wide container house on wheels. Fun little project 😀 going to tow it with the EV.

Triple wide? Pullout each side? Or three sections that you haul out to a site separate and bolt together?

I'm just looking for a little A-liner or something to tug behind my new PHEV.

Three separate trailers and containers (containers with frames welded on)