57k Mile LX9 Alero [[swap]]

[slowalero]

There she sits in "before" state on the Go-Jacks.

This is what's holding up the coupe project. (See Alero Swap Round 2)
I turned on a side road and stepped on the throttle enough to kick down to second gear (from third @ 30 mph) and the motor bogged hard, like it was locked in fourth even. So I lifted and I felt it go back into third firmer than it ever has before. Quite rough.

This road is called Hilltop Rd. so naturally, it's a hill climb. Once I got to the top and could fully lift, both the tach and speedo dropped. I nursed it to my friend's farm and left it there until lunch.

The winch broke earlier in the roll off, so I couldn't tow it the way I wanted to, so I drove it and had my buddy follow me in his 4.3 Sierra. It would move with the motor screaming @ 5 grand and the car leaving at a walking pace. About a mile down the road @ 70 mph and 5500 rev's, it started spitting parts at the floor boards. Eventually I had to stop and make a right and that's when the good noises happened. Lots of loud bangs and chugging and the car stopped moving.

I'll have to post the pics of the spider gears and snapped cross shaft.



I dropped it out of the bottom, cradle and all. Steering hoses, harness, cooling module-everything. The cradle is back in the car with large bolts clamping the wheel bearings together. The cradle is getting blasted and repainted probably in Toyota 202 single stage black. I don't have a love for Toyota colors, 202 is a generic single black and Almond Beige was the only touch up can I liked @ Auto Zone. Flushing the EBCM and the rest of the brake lines, and flushing the steering as well. The rack is getting a degreasing and a good aluminum paint if I can find it. DEI makes a foil hose wrap @ Advanced Auto that will serve as the OEM sheathing on the one steering hose. Also getting new outer tie rods and an alignment here. I want to scuff the brake lines and douse them in some light color too. Not sure how far I'll get on that, most likely just the scuff is in store for them.



This is the new tranny getting prepped for paint. It's an RPO FR9 transaxle, which means it has the 3.29 ratio differential from a Grand Am GT. $200 plus core with 106k on it. Kinda leery of the mileage, but my last Alero went 212k on it's tranny. We'll see. It's got new axle seals and bushing, and converter seal from GM waiting to go it. Apparently I need some J tools to do these axle seals. Have to look into that one. I gotta seal up the converter and bead blast that and coat it black. Have an aftermarket filter and pan gasket for it too. Gotta get it in the car and running to get the dirt off the pan floor so I can change the filter. That and there will be a little Sea Foam in there to clean the valve body some.

Started taking the engine apart. Been spending some quality hours on smoothing and cleaning up the UIM. I need to get moving on the engine tear down. That's getting new head gaskets, bolts, metal intake gaskets, intake bolts, rocker cover grommets, oil pan gasket, PTFE rear main, front end gaskets and seals all from Fel-Pro. New Delco 41-101 iridium plugs, GM upper and lower rad hoses, GM LX9 timing chain, and a secret part I haven't seen anyone use yet. Most voices say it can't be done...

[slowalero]

Good lucking buying a new one of these. I'm not giving out the GM p/n either. They're also obsolete from GM, you gotta get it from Vintage Parts. If you want to salvage an oldie, you can pry one off a second generation Aurora, but you probably knew that already. I don't like the old school conjoined characters so I wanted mine to look modern and individual. I didn't like the idea of cutting it as I'd have to realign them and it would reveal raw plastic w/o chrome plating and that seemed stupid. The other idea was to paint it black, but that also seemed hokey. So, I had the boys mix up some WA526F, or Redfire Metallic. I had to use a 36 grit sanding disc to scuff the chrome enough where I could paint it body color so it would look separated. Neat, huh?


This is my "new" tranny. Have yet to do the seals but here it is painted Almond Beige Pearl. I had problems with the Dupli-Color touch-up paint and temperatures so I got some advice from one of the older guys here from a '72 Skylark GS Stage 1 were restoring, and that was a base clear. I shot the trans in engine clear, threw it in the booth for an hour @ 155 F and laid the Beige on, followed by more high temp clear and another bake cycle. The engine will look like this too, not last years color even though it's the same paint.


Here's another shot of the blown differential from the pallet after extraction. It actually pushed the axles in the case and bent the engine brackets. Ouch.



Here's my smoothed over UIM. It's got about two hours in it already and I need to go into the crevices with a Dremel or something to really take it home. I also hacked off the EGR brace since I'm not hanging 38 lbs. off the side anymore. The EGR port only houses a brake line tee and the TCE block-off plate. I cleaned up my FPR clearance some more too. It needs better port matching now. On to the rest of the engine.

[pocket-rocket]

I'm doing my subframe and suspension parts with satin black extreme chassis black from Eastwood. It's supposed to be some good stuff, and it should be at $60/quart...

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

[slowalero]

Eastwood makes some good stuff. My dad and I used it on his '69 Impala frame. We brushed it, I'd rather spray it but nonetheless it's a quality product. I'm about to take on a rolling chassis restoration for a '66 Skylark, I'll probably use it again.

I like OEM cheapness on my car lol, so single stage black it is.

I was doing some rereading of this post and found a member had suggested the use of LX9 Uplander exhaust manifolds. Just located some at a local salvage yard for $100 for the set, pick 'em up tomorrow. I know they still aren't headers but they're better than 3400 tubes.

Here's some candy. It's an authentic '72 Buick GS Stage 1 we've been restoring this car for over a year now, and we finally got a finish both we, and the customer approve of. It's all waterborne-primer, base, and clear, and yes, the stripes are painted on. Right now it's being sanded to level the stripes and more clear to come.

[pocket-rocket]

That looks sweet! It looks like you guys are pros at what you do.

We repainted my car last summer (my friend used standard paint not water-borne). The Z34 badges on the side were painted on before the clear, just like the stripes on that GS. It makes for a very clean and smooth look.



Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

[slowalero]

Upon installing the new seals, I soon realized I was missing the stub shaft at the differential side of the transaxle. I peeked around inside with our bore scope and didn't see the snap ring lying in the bottom. I realize they're designed to stay in the groove but weirder things have happened.



I blasted the converter and gave it some color. I hate rust. Even if no one ever sees it but me.




The colors Duke, the colors! New GM seals and snap rings. Only looks like this for a short time.




This is the only silly thing on the car. PPG Vibrance Colors 51591 Light Lavender and VW LW2A Maliorange axle nuts. Completely ridiculous, I know. These will only be seen @ the track when I change sneakers...




Blasted side mount painted with complimenting bolts. Frog Tape and finesse are your friends when it comes to not chipping paint. This was before the seal change, and the side cover bolts are now black. You'll see why.




What a pain in the ass! So the savages that extracted my trans from the car didn't care about the guy buying it so they must have dropped it on the connector to snap one of the lock fingers, causing the connector to fall into the trans. This posed a good size dilemma. I wasn't sure how deep the harness went in so I practiced surgery on the blown example to find that if I were to perform this task on my new trans, I would need both the valve body and separator plate gaskets as well as the potential for a new harness. After tinkering with the extracted harness from the blown trans, I discovered that this connector was incredibly easy to push the terminals out. So after a dozen photos and All-Data confirmation, I re-pinned the giant round connector and reinstalled as originally designed. Although it made changing the axle seal cake.



Valve body gaskets-$40 each
Trans harness-$30
Thinking outside the box-So priceless...

[slowalero]

Can't find what I want online so I made my own.




Not 100% satisfied how this one came out. Some opportunities here; don't use high adhesion masking tape-it peels the chrome off and, I need to use fine line tape to create the tight lines between light bays.