About 2 weeks ago the exhaust patch job me and my friend half completed at the beginning of the winter failed on highway 16. The pipe between the muffler and the rear bumper was rusted out and and sheared off at the rear muffler bracket which it's self is rusted out. For the time being that section of pipe has been removed since nothing was holding it anymore (I don't think I have the funds to have it done presently).
With the nice weather recently I decided to do some work on it last weekend. There were a number of bulbs out on it (under hood, under trunk lid, under dash, passenger side 'don't hit my door light', and one of the vanity mirror lights). Two were fuse style mount types, and I surprisingly had them on hand! When I was going through a box of TV tuners (I got from the estate of someone who also worked on cars) to find a suitable sub for the one in my first gen Zenith color set I happened to notice one of those bulbs. After pulling one out I was shocked when I went back to look for a second one later, and actually did find another one (that must be a magic box
). I also got the normal types changed too.
I decided to check the brake and power steering fluids while I was at it since they are on the short list of important fluids in it that I've yet to check since getting it. I'm glad I did, both were low. The back chamber of the brake reservoir was down a good ~2" below the lip (1/4" is the max safe drop) and the front while not as bad was also over 1/4" down....According to the manual excessive fluid drop is indicative of brake lining wear so I'll have to look into that when I can.
The Power steering level test revealed another problem...It instructs in the manual to warm the car, work the steering back and forth a few times, turn it off, and check the level, and after a few stop to stop rotations of the wheel I noticed that at the stops a small bit of smoke appears from the driver side of the firewall. It would appear that the power steering unit is leaking when the wheel is at the stops, but fine otherwise. Now that I know I'll keep some steering fluid in the trunk, and keep an eye on the fluid level until I can get to a doing proper repair.
I drove it down to a parts place along highway 16, got the fluid and bulbs, installed them, got insulted by a random looser, and as I was starting to appreciate the improvement in steering and braking on the way home I started hearing a scraping sound....Upon checking it I found one of the two fuel tank mount straps broke and was hanging. Ugh!...I swear to god(!) there must be a tribe of gremlins living on highway 16!...I'm at 2 trips and as many undercarriage related failures driving down that road in that car...
I think I'm going to replace that strap before I take it for any drive more than a couple of miles.