Into the Fire

Fires raging in the southland today. The biggest, most news making one in Malibu. Didn't all that burn down just five years or so back??? Funny thing, though, they keep going on about the hurricane force winds whipping up these fires, but its near perfect calm just a few miles away at my home.

Janis has been running like a Timex. The last major thing I had to do was to put in a starter, just a couple of days after I bought it. I did the brakes a few weeks ago, and it had gotten a flat a couple of weeks ago when my wife was driving it, right near home. I went ahead and bought a full new set of tires after that (no small amount of money, once you add in disposal, mounting and balancing, and road hazard insurance) as well as bought a lifetime alignment. I also picked up an outside passenger's side mirror and a new block of window switches at the junkyard's 1/2 price day. I had a problem with the transmission not wanting to upshift a week ago. I suspected a vacuum modulator problem or line going to it, and the first thing I found googling it said exactly that. Easily fixed problem. Still not a speed demon, but gets great mileage.

Friday morning, I head out to go to work and warm up the glow plugs and start it up as normal. She runs for a couple seconds, then stalls. Hmmm, that's strange, she never stalls. I go to crank her again, and I can hear the starter engage and try and turn the engine, but it doesn't go. Hmmm. I give up and drive the Storm.

I have a couple theories at this point as to what could have happened. The one I hoped for was that the engine got on a compression stroke and the starter didn't have quite enough to kick it past there. I'd had that problem on the Maverick before. The next, slightly less desirable possibility was that the starter just gave out. It has starter history. The last option in my head was that the timing chain jumped or broke. If that happened, it could be a semi simple fix on up to catastrophic failure, with valves bouncing off pistons and such.


Saturday I got out there and managed to get the engine to crank backwards a bit, then it cranked fine. Cranked, but didn't start. And something didn't sound quite right. I had my wife crank it while I attempted to observe the cam through the oil fill hole. The cam was turning, but I noticed something else... the valve cover was rising up about an eighth of an inch on every revolution. Ut oh...

Didn't know exactly what I'd find, but I pulled the valve cover off to check into it. Turns out the cam shaft is broken into three sections, as well as the cam shaft pedestal. I'm seeing dollar signs. The cam turns out to be about $150, plus another around $80 for a timing chain and gears. I'm not going to go through all that and not replace the timing chain. Not to mention several other incidentals that would no doubt arise.

I found a guy who has a complete engine in an 81' that was rebuilt around six years ago. $250 complete. Sold!!! But, it's all the way out in Simi Valley, right out near the Malibu fires. It was like a heavy fog out there, and my shirt smells of smoke.

My dad made the observation that I buy more than a few cars and end up putting in new engines within six months. I guess this will be the fourth time I'll have done that, only one of them being planned before the original purchase. If it wasn't for the tires and alignment (and the fact that I rather like this car) I'd probably cut my losses and look for another. Oh well, its been several years since I've done this, it's time.