I wander what's wrong

Cosmetically, the Impala is in terrible shape.  Mechanically though, it's pretty good.  It is however a 164,000 mile car.  At that mileage, stuff is bound to be worn out, particularly if parts of it haven't been properly serviced.  Case in point, my outer tie rod ends.  While they are greasable, one side had the grease fitting broken off.  It was pretty loose.  It's easy to check, have someone move the steering wheel back and fourth while you look at all the steering system joints.  If you see any play, the joint is bad.  While one side was ok, the other was on the verge of failure, so I decided to replace them both. 

First things first, any time you monkey with the steering system, you need to recheck the alignment.  The method shown here will often get you close enough.  The first thing I did was use my calipers to measure the length of the original tie rod end.  I measured from the edge of the adjusting sleeve to the center of the grease fitting(or, at least where the grease fitting used to be).

Then I used a tie rod puller(which is actually a pusher) to remove the tie rod stud from the knuckle.  I picked up my puller at Harbor Freight.  It was cheap, and it works great.  Alternatively, you can use a pickle fork, but I find the puller is easier.  If you don't want to buy one, they can be rented from many auto parts stores through their tool loaner programs.  Notice that I still have the nut loosely on the stud.  Sometimes it takes a whole lot of force to break them loose, and this keeps the tie rod from flopping to the ground when the stud pops.

You can see here just how bad this joint was.  There was no more grease in it, and it had tons of play in it.  It could have broken at any moment(also, no the pic isn't backwards, this is the other side, the worse of the two).

A vice grips on the shaft and penetrating oil on the sleeve threads will help get the old end out.  With the old rod end unscrewed, the new one gets screwed in.  Using the calipers, the new end is adjusted to be the exact same length as the original.  The threads of the adjusting sleeve also get a very heavy coating of antisieze so they aren't too stuck when it comes time for an actual alignment.

Repeat for the other side, and that's all there is to it.  No more wandering, and no fear of careening to your death with every pot hole.  Once both sides are done, you can verify your toe settings with a tape measure.  While not laser accurate, the tape measure method works fine for most people.  Next summer, I'm going to replace the rest of the suspension/steering joints, and I'll get an actual alignment then.

You might also notice that the sway bar bushings are gone, and the bumpstops chewed up.  We'll deal with those in a future post.

Where's my Hazmat suit?

It doesn't matter what rubber gloves cost, or how many I go through.  They are a necessary part of this project.  I don't mind getting my hands dirty, but this car was disgusting and gloves were an absolute necessity. The Viper had a dirty interior when I got it.  This car was leaps and bounds worse.  As I previously mentioned, the former owner of this car was a "larger gentleman with poor personal habits."  I don't think the guy was aware that car interiors are something that can actually be cleaned.  I mean, you saw the carpet.  I felt like I needed a shower or three after just driving it home.  Getting everything clean is a big part of the reason I ripped the entire interior out.  Everything needed to be scrubbed, rescrubbed, and scrubbed again.  Dawn, Simple Green, and a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser are absolute necessities for things like this.  Here are just a few examples of just how dirty this car was.  After leaving a few clean spots, the difference is ridiculously huge.  The seat and center console seen here are representative of how dirty the whole car was.  Gross.  Just gross.  And it's not like this is a $500 beater that you wouldn't care about, it's an Impala SS...

At my age, it's not surprising that I need a rug.

The original carpet in the Impala was a write off. I decided that before I even started taking the car apart. Once it was out, it went straight to the dump. I'm surprised they didn't charge me a hazmat fee. I got a new carpet made by Auto Custom Carpets. Rock Auto actually had the best price with shipping, so I ordered through them. This giant carpet comes in a tiny box, so the first thing I did was unfold it and leave it sit in the living room for a week to start relaxing the shipping creases. Then I set it in the car, and let it bake in the sun for a week. This type of press molded carpet has a plastic backing that softens with heat so for the really stubborn creases, I used the heat gun to soften the backing and worked the creases out. I installed the carpet from back to front, using the rear footwells as my starting point. For what the carpet cost, the fit was "good," but not "great." I spent a day fitting it, though if you've never installed a carpet like this before, plan a whole weekend. The only place I used glue was the rear footwells, and that was mostly to hold it in place while I was fitting the rest. Since it's heat moldable, I could have spent more time tweaking it for a perfect fit, but for this car a good fit is more than good enough.

This just floors me

So the carpet is out, and the interior stripped, what's a guy to do?  Take preventative action of course :)  The floor in the Mighty Caprice™ rusted from the inside out.  The salt water dripping off my boots for ten years took it's toll.  I didn't want a repeat performance with the Impala.  It's very rust free, and I want it to stay that way as long as possible.  There was just a little bit of surface rust starting to show on the floor.  Here it is after a through wire brushing:

To stem the rust that's already there, I wanted to use a rust inhibiting coating.  There are many on the market that actually kill any existing the rust, and help prevent new rust.  My product of choice is Eastwood's Rust Encapsulator  Way back when, I used it on the bottom of the Mighty Caprice™.  Several years later when I had to replace the trans, you could very clearly see on the driveshaft which side was facing down and got painted.  The Rust Encapsulator works well, and isn't as hazardous to your health as some products like POR15.  I painted all the rusty spots, and places that might rust in the future:

I know from the Mighty Caprice™ that the rockers and base of the B pillars will rust too.  This inside out rust is the hardest to prevent because you can't see it, and you can't really get to it.  One of the things I'm going to do is back coat as much of the car as I can.  My primary back coating is Amsoil HD Metal Protector.  It sprays on thin and penetrates down into cracks and seams, then dries into a tough, waxy film.  While I had the interior out, using the little red hose on the can, I sprayed around inside every screw hole and opening I could find, and it only dripped out the bottom in a few spots.  I used a can and a half just inside the rockers, A and B pillars, and the part of the rear wheel arch inside the door jamb vent.

Keeping my hose in line

If you recall, I replaced the power steering pump on the Viper some time back.  The new pump started making a bit of noise the other day, and, not being the type to let things go too long, I checked it out.  Turns out, I was low on fluid.  Here's why:

That's the power steering return line to the reservoir.  In the past few months, it's cracked and split.  Undoubtedly it was initially damaged when I removed it to replace the pump, I just didn't notice, and it got worse from there.  It didn't help that it's 17 years old.  This particular line goes from the PS cooler to the reservoir and is so easy to replace, I didn't bother taking more pictures.  Since it's a return hose, it's not one of the special crimped high pressure lines.  Just take the airbox out, suck the fluid out of the reservoir with a turkey baster, undo the quick clamps, remove and replace.  Everything is easily accessible once the airbox is out of the way.

Actually getting new hose was a bit interesting.  It says right on it that it's 11/32" PS return hose.  So I went to Advance Auto to get some more.  Turns out Advance doesn't sell PS return hose in bulk, they sell it in individually bagged 1' and 2' sections.  Because of this, even though I told them what size I needed, they actually had to look it up on the computer.  Sigh...

Fish bowl for life!

I don't understand window tint.  I mean for a lot of people, the purpose of the tint is to make your car look cool, because chicks dig cool cars, right?  But how can chicks dig the driver if his windows are tinted and she can't see him?  Sure, if you live where the sun is always beating down having dark windows will help keep the interior cooler, but I'm from Wisconsin.  "Hot" is a thing we do for a few days once a year. Plus, every friend I have with non-factory tinted windows has been hassled about it and has had to have it stripped at least once for a "fix it" ticket.

Since this is a winter car, I actually want the sun beating down and warming the thing up.  The tint on the Impala was bad too.  It was old, and cheap tint, so it was purple and bubbly.  You could barely see through the back window.  And the Driver's door wasn't tinted, the guy said it was replaced a few years ago.  I've razor blade scraped tint off before.  Many years ago, I de-tinted my Dad's '56 Chevy.  I must have taken me a week or two, and that had less glass than the Impala. 

I actually thought about paying to have it stripped, but I'm a cheap bastard so it was internet to the rescue again.  I looked into the best ways to remove old tint.  I didn't want to razor scrape a car this size, and I also didn't want to risk damaging the rear defroster. The internet, as usual, had the answer: ammonia and garbage bags.  What you do is spray the tint down with ammonia, cover it with a black garbage bag, and let it soak in the sun for awhile.  The door windows were easy, the rears not so much, but the plastic still clung to the wet tint.

This works AMAZING.  The door glass tint all came off in giant sheets.  Because of the bubbles and the defroster lines, the back window came off in chunks, but they were very big chunks.  All told, it took less than an afternoon to strip all the tint.  Really, the hardest part of the whole job was breathing inside the car filled with ammonia fumes.  Fish Bowl for life!

I feel like I should be stuffing singles somewhere...

I spent a whole day stripping the interior out of the car.  EVERYTHING except the B pillar covers and door panels came out(I already scrubbed the driver's door panel, the rest I'll clean later, and the B covers only stayed because I couldn't get the seat belt bolts loose).  Even having taken most of the Caprice apart at some point, it still took me most of a day. 

I think I'm going to throw up.

The floor in the Mighty Caprice™ rusted from the inside out.  All those years of salt water dripping off my boots took their toll.  So, high on the list for the Impala were some preventative measures on the floor from the inside.  Like everything else inside this car, the carpet was pretty dirty.  I figured since I was going to have the carpet out anyway, I'd scrub it up good and put it back in.  Then I started taking the car apart.  Here's what it looked like under the Pass seat:

Then, I got the carpet completely out.  I used many, many(many) nitrile gloves in the process:

And here are my thoughts concerning reusing this carpet, courtesy of The Oatmeal:

And thus it beginSS

Fair warning for future Impala posts.  Many titles and important words that contain S's will be replaces with SS's.  Because I can :)  If you noticed in the first pics of the car, the drivers side mirror was missing.

The cheap tint on the back window was not only purple, but very bubbly, and almost impossible to see through.  That left the right door mirror as the only rear viewing option.  It desperately needed a driver's side mirror(plus, to be road legal in the US, you need a driver's door mirror).  The very first thing I fixed was the mirror, mostly because it was a straight forward and easy job.  One of the nice things about these cars is that because they made so many of them aftermarket parts are cheap and abundant.  This being a low budget car, I bought a low budget mirror instead on an original GM.  It's a power, heater mirror, and was only $50. 

Installation is so straight forward and easy I didn't even take pics.  Pop the door panel off, unplug the plug, remove the three nuts holding the mirror onto the car, reverse to install the new mirror.  Conveniently, it's molded in black plastic.  The polish on the plastic was actually pretty good, so I didn't even bother painting it.  It obviously doesn't match the black paint exactly, but just from gathering dust in the driveway you can't really tell.  Most people will never notice that it's not painted.

Just a pic

As I've said before, I also use this space as a photo dump for posting pics on various forums.  Some guy on the Impala forum found a spring on the floor of his car and didn't know where it came from.  I happened to see it in my car so I took a pic.  That is all.

More random photos...

I has a box...

Another random pic for use elsewhere, this one is the dimensions of the Gen II Viper cam sensor.

Another random pic for use elsewhere, this one of some machined Delrin.

Woo! Random pictures!

LEGO!