Some little things

There are a ton of little things that needed to be done on the Impala.  Here are a few of them.
If you noticed in my original pics, the right tail light lens is crunched.  I asked the guy about it, he said that it happened when he first got the car.  He parked it, and it rolled into a truck in the parking lot.  I thought it was odd, but no biggie.  Then I parked on a slight incline.  Or at least tried to anyway.  Up to that point, I'd always parked on flat surfaces.  Turns out it never really locked into park, but the shifter moved far enough to get it out of reverse.  The shifter always had kind of a wandery feel too, it didn't solidly click into the gears.  So, under the car I went, and this is what I discovered:

Yeah...the shift linkage was loose and flopping around on the transmission side.  There's supposed to be a washer and cotter pin on that.  Ten years this guy had this car, and drove it around like this.  It's a two minute fix.  It literally took longer to jack up the car and put it on jack stands than it did to fix.  Properly installed, it clicks into the gears, and actually locks into park.


Next up, the brakes. 
They were kind of grindy sounding.  Took the fronts off, and found new rotors and new pads.  Took the rears off and found this:

Yup, down to the metal backing. The new pad on the right shows what they're supposed to look like.  While I was at it, I un-siezed and relubed the rear slide pins.  More ineptitude from the guy...

The last bit, surprisingly, has nothing to do with the guy, but B-bodies in general.  There is a plastic tee in the heater hoses that has a habit of getting old an cracking.  I know mine was original so it was only a matter of time.  I was swapping the silicone hoses from the Caprice anyway, so I replaced the tee too.  The hose sizes are 3/4x3/4x5/8.  I tried piecing together a metal tee with hose barbs, but couldn't find the right fittings at any of my local hardware stores.   Then I stumbled across something.  Unlike hose fittings, Pex tubing is measured by OD, not ID.  It turns out that a 1x1x3/4 Pex tee is the perfect size for our heater hoses.  It's shorter than the stock tee, but there is enough extra length in the hoses to make it work, and I'll never have to worry about it breaking again.