SAmadei

POR15 the cancer and bondo it mercilessly... strip off as much flake as possible... seal it, prime it with spray cans and take it to Earl Scheib... or some other cheapo respray joint, considering that Earl Scheib has discontinued business as of 2010. I was going to do this yesterday, but didn't get around to it. I think you could be right in that it's a bad u-joint, but while driving the truck today I noticed it's coming from around the driver's side footwell, so I'm still a little baffled. Personally, I don't like running a vehicle on a jack... and I've had some bad U-joints that were quite quiet. I would jack things up, put it in neutral and watch for play by turning the wheels forward and back. Sometimes I'll get in the U-joint with a crowbar and see how much it wants to move around. I would jack the driver's side front end up and, again, with the crowbar, look for lose components and just generally shake things up as much as possible. That sounds like CV joints. You should be able to find junkyard CVs pretty easily. Of course, I've driven on trashed CVs for years without issue... Fragged CVs could also explain your mystery driver's side noise. I test ball joints by looking at the wear indicator or by lifting up on the knuckle and seeing how much play there is. Lower balls support the weight and are usually the problem.

Unfortunately, my chassis manual collection only ranges from 1965 to 1982. I question... what Buick is this? If its a Skylark or Special, it might have a special chassis manual. Normally, the bolts have serrations that lock it into the frame, like a giant lug stud. If its free spinning, I think one needs to cut the nut off and use a BFH to pop the bolts out. I imagine at that point, holes in the frame will need repair... I'm not sure if you can get oversized control arm shaft bolts. Otherwise, I suppose a skilled welder could close up the holes and retap the holes. If they are not freespinning, its just a matter of getting them free. IIRC, they were a bear on my '95 Caprice. I imagine they would be harder with 30-odd more years of rust. Soak with PB Blaster... set on fire...hammer... quelch... set on fire... hammer... put huge cheater bar on socket and use physics to break stuff. Repeat as needed. ;-)

I agree 40 mpg is fantasy, but I suppose GM did some testing that gave them some weak footing to brag 40 mpg. The economy runs sound like they were on mountainous roads and have a lot of fuel wasting acceleration/deceleration... sure, they probably resulted in accurate numbers, but not numbers that marking wants to hear. Considering they had the semi-automatic 4 speed tranny in '37, I'm sure that it helped mileage in some sort of rigged test that GM got 40 mpg on (or 39.5 mpg rounded up).

I really want to find out what the true deal with the tank dates are. I'm still hearing conflicting storys with exactly what needs to be done once they expire.

Sounds like it need PB Blaster, heat and percussive therapy.

Love the CNG... but GM needs it in more models. I'm waiting for my CNG G8.

Yeah, pricy. These come up in decent shape for about 1/3 the price, so I'd pass... but I do like the '67s.

This is a falsehood. I know plenty of people who are fine driving a stick, or prefer it... even in econoboxes. AC and CD stereo are standard... and the automatic, according my my source is $1770... granted, pricy. And working out the difference to $20 monthy is also bogus... because $20 a month still adds up when you are broke... you just went through that with your car situation, and should understand that problem the most. I don't consider the Fiesta to be particularly attractive... and its a moot point if you don't have that $20. Why stop at $20? For $80 more a month, you can get into a completely diferent class of car. If Nissan is truly hiding costs in the TTL, dest and doc fees, it sounds like you have your next expose article... but $11.7K has been what I was hearing for the cost of the 2012, not $10,998. Either number is the cheapest car in the US.

Its the cheapest car sold in the US. For that, you don't get quality, styling or performance... you simply get "new". Its a step up from 1986... when $3995 got you a Yugo. The Versa's styling looks just as brain damaged as every other Renault-influenced Nissan, such as the Juke or the Moron-o, and it is within 10% of the rest of the hit-with-ugly-bat entry-level craps. Same goes for performance... its within 10% of the competition. As for quality, it seems to have enough quality to avoid being unfavorably compared with the Yugo after 8 years on the market. In the end, you aren't walking and you have $2000 in your pocket to easy your pain over its shortcomings. Now, I'm not saying the smart money is on the Versa... smart money is on buying a used car. But there are plenty of people who value new over everything else. Sure Nissan botched it up. That why its being sold as the cheapest car in the US.

The Versa is shunned here because you can hear the engine while its running, it doesn't have SatNav and electric bun warmers standard and because the dashboard isn't so soft you can use it for a pillow. I like basic transportation, and have only 1 gripe with my GF's Corolla... its too small. I'd love a V8 Caprice with no options beyond a radio, AC and power windows/locks for dirt cheap.

We're waiting for photos...

Yep. Good eye.

Heh, heh... LOL. No, the Volt will definitely make it more model years, regardless of the disaster it's sales could be. GM let the Aztek embaress itself for 5 model years. That said, the reading around the interwebs on this shutdown is not a positive for GM. GM should have done ANYTHING to hide this... move some other car into Hammtrack or something to cover the shortfall... even if GM was building throwaway Impalas or something. Maybe move Caprice production there and finally sell a few to the civilians.

As a restoration advertisement tool, it's a fail. Note that the air cleaner is offset... and painted wrong... its not a good thing if your resto shop doesn't know that the drivetrain is offset to the passenger side in many cars.

Saw my first Volt "in the wild"... It was dusk and the lighting in the front made it look very strange... the headlights don't appear very bright to other vehicles... but this particular car might have the headlights pointed downward too much.

Agreed. I thought the title was long gone. If I was buying cars again, I'd grab it for with a title and put a '59 doghouse on it, as the 1960 nose is perhaps one of my least favorite Pontiacs ever.

Wait, guys, I know its a Maverick... I labelled it as such at the top of my post... I was calling it a Maverick/Comet because at the time I discussed it in the other thread, I couldn't remember if it was a Maverick or Comet. I suspected it was a later one ('75-'77) due to the coffin nose.

I also snapped a couple shots of the Maverick that lives in the Brooklyn hood a few days ago... and still looks surprising good, considering Brooklyn is hell on cars... This is the Maverick/Comet (couldn't remember which it was) that I talked about in the Comet 4 door cheers/jeers. Later that day I also saw a black '68 Cutlass coupe... still being driven to the stores by its older owners... unfortunately, the car was real rough and likely too far gone.

Today was a good car day... Blue '72-ish Plymouth Satelite. Big scoop on hood... jacked up in the rear. '65/'66 Mustang... light blue metallic notchback. Engine sounded like solid lifters and straight pipes... could hear it from 1/4 away idling... as it headed out of Coney Island. Also saw 5-6 more of those darn FIATs. It's insane. Not one, but TWO nice '81-'85 Olds Cutlass Supremes coupes. Also peaked at a pristine yellow '55 T-Bird and a Model A... at a Honda dealership in Bay Ridge... WTH?!?

For $500, I don't think you could go wrong... after all, you have $175 already spoken for. Yeah, I'd say $500 profit for parts would be realisitic. Plus a little $$ for the scraping of the remains. I'm surprised the owner would want to keep the engine. LOL.

I don't think the (mostly) New Yorkers on Jersey Shore are the FIAT type. Its too plain and inexpensive. Now if FIAT comes out with the super-guido douched out edition for six figures, they might get interested. Maybe MrDetroitMetal would do a photoshop of a Jersey Shore tuned FIAT 500?

Interesting idea, but at some point, one of them has to have his name on the title/insurance and thats the person who will suffer if the auto is misused. I question if its possible or too much effort/money to form an LLC, with the vehicle registered to the business.

I don't care if you read them. Others do and I'm only pointing out counterpoints to your overly optimistic propaganda.

Sounds like a good candidate to get your hands dirty on... just don't dump a lot of money into it... go junkyard all the way.

Li Ion batteries are the only game in town until we find a lighter, more reactive element than lithium... that gets involved in an easily reversable chemical reaction that produces electric. Please consult your periodic table, and you will see few alternatives. We've spent over a century testing compounds... but the bottom line is that we didn't get to Li Ion by guessing. We looked at the elements and found one that has the specifications that lead to a battery that gives a decent specific energy. Its very possible that this fantastic breakthrough will not come. The compounds we can make from a finite bunch of elements do not guarantee we can make a super battery. Oh really?... seems Apple has filed patents to switch off batteries and move to hydrogen fuel cells, so you'll be refueling your iPhone and iPad and it will emit water vapor. The paradigm of fueling and emissions sounds more like the advertisement about a world where everything was gasoline powered, than the sleek battery powered future the EV optimists are forecasting. The bottom line: the very smart people at Apple have seen the forecasted future of the battery (and the ultracapacitor) and don't see the power they need... for a smartphone or tablet! Do I believe it will come to this?... no... I think we will just suffer with crappy batteries... just like we have for a century. And yet the break through discovery of the century has not been realised. Amazing. Just spend more money. Common sense and existing technologies are not the answer, but undiscovered science will save us! So you are of the belief that the more R&D money we throw at cold fusion, the faster we get functioning cold fusion, since its only a matter of testing every compound we can invent? Then we could be skipping this battery mucky-muck with its caustic chemistry and just invent Mr. Fusion. Edison tested filaments for less than 2 years and came back to a carbonized filament based on bamboo (first used in 1854) for his historic 1880 bulb patent. General Electric didn't use the tungsten filament until it was already done in Europe in 1906. Edison was better at stealing ideas and being a businessman than an inventor. Of course, this was also done in an era of science when we weren't able to predict ahead of time the characteristics of the missing elements on the period table or of molecules that had not been made in a laboratory. We can do that today... and so when we need a material for a particular task, we can immediately eliminate hundreds of thousands of compounds. This is why we aren't attempting to build a better battery in 2012 with bamboo filaments. Oh, and that post about the 54.5 mpg EPA thing... I really don't think that Americans will allow it, once people see what cuts they have to make.