Proud new owner of...

[General Geoff]

turns out the previous owner royally fucked up the turn signal wiring in an attempt to get it to flash regularly with LEDs. Now I have to figure out what he removed and spliced to get it back to original spec.

[General Geoff]

slightly false alarm. Turns out the jury rigged wiring is for the aftermarket blue glow/white face instruments, not the turn signals. The signal flasher was just unplugged, and some genius decided to tuck the wiring harness to it up into the dash where it's invisible. I just happened to feel it while groping around in there. But now the turn signals work.

[General Geoff]

Gave the car a quick wash, cleaned up the leather and door jambs a bit, got new wiper blades. Still on the old tires till I can actually get to a used tire place while they're still open... But she's basically on the road now. I feel so bad replacing these tires, there's so much meat on them, but they have dryrot to hell


I put about 150 miles on her over the weekend. No CEL, no overheating, nothing out of the ordinary except the expected clunking. Gotta get her up on stands to more closely ascertain the problem there.

[General Geoff]

READY TO ROLL


Got a new (used) set of Michelin V-rated P215/60R16 tires on her, passed inspection and emissions. Now the car is nice & legal. Still no CEL, no leaks, smoke, nothing. I want to reattach the stock trim pieces and badges before I take another set of pictures, so either today or tomorrow...

[General Geoff]

At this point this may as well be a blog by me, with the enormous volume of responses in this thread...


Burst a brake line in the taurus, I'm gonna order up a set of 14 prebent stainless hard lines with all the correct fittings, to replace all the lines in the car; since, you know, if one line burst from corrosion, the rest probably aren't far behind. Also going to replace the master cylinder while I'm at it since it's old and the seals are probably ruined now that the pedal fell to the floor.

[devnull]

Wow...so pretty much the brake fluid had never been changed?

Or was it external corrosion?

[General Geoff]

external. baaad external.

[DiRF]

I'm definitely familiar with that... a 10-year old car, which spent only 4 years outside of a garage, lightly-driven with only 15,000 miles... had its brake lines burst and had to have the fuel lines replaced as well...

...THAT'S how corrosive beachside weather is.

[General Geoff]

Lines came in, replaced them all over a 12 hour marathon of swearing, knuckle busting, and getting so dirty my face was black by the time I was done. With the help of a few friends, everything got sorted out by about 2am. After installing the new lines, I put in a new master cylinder, and then bled the hell out of the brakes. The pedal is just a tad spongy, but not dangerous in any way. Next time I have it up on stands I'll bleed em again, but I don't really want to touch brake fluid again for the rest of the year.

[Jarlaxle]

So...the capacitor and wiring clusterfuck was the Maxima, right?

Did you save the SHO's old tires? You know, for a burnout contest?