My '95 Caprice Classic STW, "Sally"

[Arquemann]

Freshly rebalanced, highway turbovibrator 9000.
If it's not raining tomorrow I'll check what's fucked, tires or rims. "They're shit" -tire shop guy. They were busy so I didn't get to ask if it's the tires or wheel or both.

[Arquemann]

Well whaddayaknow, the cheap chinese tires are shit.
One rim has about 1mm of runout on the outside edge, others are pretty damn close to round. I'd like to believe that a 1mm out-of-round would disappear with 235/75r15 tires and a soft suspension. If it's too much, Imma just buy another set of steelies for fucks sake.

Oooooh boy the tires, they all have 2-6mm of runout at the tread surface. I get to send another angry email and waste even more time again!

[sly]

yeah... crap tires. I've had bent wheels only bounce at low speed (below 15mph) and smooth out at speed with good tires.

[Arquemann]

I changed the diff fluid today, the old fluid didn't look bad at all. Not that dark and still had some golden hue in it. It also had a felpro gasket with some RTV in moderate application.
Originally I intended to put in 75W -110 or -140 to maybe try quiet down the diff, but the only 140 available locally was 30€ a liter and there was no 110 in stock anywhere without ordering.
Spec is 80W-90, that's what I put in it, Mobilube HD 80W90 GL-5. The new stuff probably won't do anything for the whine, but atleast it won't worsen my MPG, like the thicker stuff might do.

Also changed back to the winter tires. I'll be sending back the new summer tires, but they'll take them still mounted on the rims. They'll check, replace and rebalance them. Better not bullshit me, if the wheels are visibly out of round and shake as much as they do in my car, image how they'd feel in a modern unibody car with tighter suspension.
Only thing is that I have to return them by MAIL... Knowing our mail, I'll have to protect the wheels somehow, and the biggest inconveniece is to actually mail four 235/75R15 tires, mounted on heavy alloy wheels. Heavy, large and cumbersome. And all the post "offices" in my town are just a counter and a closet in the corner of a minimarket or such.

[Arquemann]

Summer tires are back on with center caps, shiny luggies and all! I mailed them back to the supplier after the last post, they replaced two of them and rotated the other two on the rims. According to their (quite precise) testing, 3 of 4 wheels have 0,7 - 0,9mm of runout, one is fine at <0,5mm. They did a road force balance on them to get the best out of them.
I haven't had them up to speed yet, but I'd expect most of the vibrations to disappear.

Also made an appointment to fix the AC next week!
Can't polish a turd but you sure can put sprinkles on it.

[sly]

Nice

[87gtVIC]

Good looking rig.

[Arquemann]

Well, the AC repair didn't go as planned. as seems to be the norm with my stuff.
New compressor, new drier, new seals on opened connections, vacuum checks out, oil and refrigerant refilled.
Aaaand the clutch doesn't engage....
Shop troubleshooted it to the low pressure sensor, 12v there, but not at the relay. I picked up the car yesterday.
It was not a faulty low pressure sensor. Fastforward about 3 hours of me fucking around with a test light, a multimeter and my laptop.

The tune on the PCM has some wonky parameters enabled/disabled that causes the AC to not kick on. Live data showed "AC request ON", but the PCM output did nothing.
I loaded a stock tune to the PCM and now I have cold AC! Fixing things with a computer is something I really don't like.

Also fixed the droopy trim on the driver door and currently going mad about the pass. front door panel squeaking like crazy. I think I need to remove every door panel on both cars and line them with bitumin mat or smth...

[gadget73]

usually the PCM will disable AC when it senses an overheat or full throttle condition. Since a stock tune fixes it, it must not be a sensor input problem. Guessing someone has adjusted a paramter in a dumb way, my guess is somewhere there is an AC cutout RPM or temperature and someone used a dumb value.

[Arquemann]

Spent about 1,5 hours with the pass. front door panel, took it off, dismantled it, I put furniture felt pads and grip tape pretty much everywhere there was plastic-to-plastic contact.
Managed to greatly reduce the squeaking of the door panel! Hopefully it should be quiet in driving. The squeaks from bumps and constant road unevennesses is what annoy me.

I found a parameter difference tool in TunerPro, there's 2 error checking parameters that could be what's not allowing the AC to kick on:
- A/C Low Charge Diagnostic Error (true in modded tune, false in stock)
- A/C Evaporator Temperature Diagnostic Error (true in modded tune, false in stock)

The latter one I know for sure needs to be false. I read online that many B-body tunes are based on F-body tunes, which have an extra sensor (evaporator temp sensor), that B-bodies don't have.

[sly]

Looks like it may be a simple fix then. Annoying in finding, but easy to change.

[Arquemann]

There's something wonky with the new compressor. On Saturday I drove quite a bit, at some point the belt started squealing if on the throttle any more than to keep up speed on flat ground.
It was the new compressor which was causing the belt squeal, except it did it with clutch engaged or not, which made no sense.
On sunday I took off the belt, all pulleys seem fine. Cleaned the pulleys with brake clean and got a new belt. Didn't squeal for atleast the 5 minutes I had it running afterwards, haven't driven it around yet.

Mornin' light made the Caprice purple. 3.30AM, was a bit of a late night.

[87gtVIC]

3:30 am and it is starting to get light out! I'd love that. I am happy here in new york when the sun starts peeking its head just before 5 am

[Arquemann]

I had to take a quick 40min blast of highway and back without stopping, starting my way back the car wouldn't blow cold properly, blower on max would barely be a gentle whisper from the vents. Put the HVAC on vent mode for a while and it was all good a while later. I think the evaporator froze shut. I had the ac on normal mode instead of max ac for the last 15 minutes of the drive and it blew cold just fine all the way home.

Something sheetmetal-ish is rattling like hell in the front left corner now. New noises yay!

Also I think the rear shocks are totally blown out now. Bouncy bouncy boing boing.

3:30 am and it is starting to get light out! I'd love that. I am happy here in new york when the sun starts peeking its head just before 5 am

This close to midsummer it starts to get light out at like 2.30AM, it doesn't even get properly dark before that. I drove home around 4AM and had to put on sunglasses.
In contrast to winter where at worst there's like 5 hours of daylight...

[87gtVIC]

Quite the swing you get over there with the sun.