A Newer Project!

[njsteve]

I did some research on those axle snubbers and it turns out that they were made of some inferior foam material that decomposed ten minutes after original warranty coverage. Most guys install aftermarket urethane snubbers, or originals from the 93-97 cars which used a more durable rubber material.

[njsteve]

It was a nice day so I had the boy do an oil change on the car. I instructed him on the safe way to jack up the car and where to place the jackstands. Hysterical to watch an 80-pound kid try to turn a wrench on the drain plug. All he succeeded in doing was to rotate himself around the underside of the car. I then told him to brace himself against something and then try again. That worked a little better after I loosened it.

I was able to locate the engine VIN and take a photo of the spot, That only took about 25 attempts to get the light in one spot, the mirror in another spot and the camera in a position to capture it all.

The machine-etched VIN is on the back of the engine mounting area that mates with the transmission bellhousing. It is directly blocked from view by the driver's side catalytic converter. You can reach it with a mirror and then see it in reverse. I was thrilled to see it matched the car's VIN.

Here is the general location. The silver rod is the handle of the mirror.



And the actual VIN, stamped in a dot matrix format, as viewed on the mirror face.

[njsteve]

This evening me and the boy drove the car over to my buddy's garage and rebalanced the tires. The prior owner had religiously brought the car to Pepboys every couple months to get the car aligned and the wheels balanced. Besides losing the lug nut lock key, the Pepboys tire "experts" method of balancing the tires consisted of throwing the wheel on the machine and then adding another weight. They never bothered to remove the existing weights. The result was 4 rims with half a dozen weights on each rim.

So we pulled all the weights off and rebalanced each rim. Turns out each wheel only needed an ounce or less of weight.

The boy had a lot of fun using the impact wrench to remove the lugnuts. Had to train him to take his finger off the trigger....after half of the lug nuts skittered across the garage at hyperspeed.

We then headed home and made it into the garage ten seconds before a thunderstorm hit. Timing is everything!