'96 Century general project thread

[manbearpig]

Pretty sure the only Chevrolet designed engine ever put in an A-body was the 2.2L four banger. The 60 degree V6 is of GM corporate origin.

[LeftVentricle]

Today was supposed to be an easy day of swapping wheels, since my rear tires are nearly five years old and have some decent cracking in the sidewall.


Started like this:


Ended like this, with wheels from a 1992 Silhouette with really good tires. I picked them up from the yard in June of last year, and they've been collecting dust in the garage since.


The headache arose when trying to pull the wheels. My brother had give me some lug nuts that wouldn't fit his car last year, some kinda fancy chrome ones with internal hex, making them a little hard for randos to remove. Unfortunately for me, they were also difficult for me to unscrew, resulting in this:


One broken and two mangled studs. I went ahead and replaced the entire hub, since it was easy enough, and I would have had to pull it to replace the studs regardless, and the rear hubs are original. Painful, at about $100 each. I will do the other one in the morning. A liberal amount of antiseize was applied to the studs and the mounting face so as to prevent such nonsense in the future.

Free shit always ends up being the most expensive, doesn't it?

It also leveled the car back out, which will probably take a little readjustment for me as a driver. I liked the old-school rake the taller rear tires gave it. "New" tires are 205-70-15 all around, while the previous setup was 215-60-16 front, 225-60-16 rear. There's like a tenth of an inch difference in height, so I probably won't even need to recalibrate the speedometer.

[LeftVentricle]

Second verse same as the first, with extra bonus broken studs on the passenger side.


Time for new shoes, it seems.


New hotness.


No such thing as too much antiseize, right guys?


Old hub goes exactly where it belongs.


Quick test drive confirmed speedometer calibration is accurate. Unexpected side effect of new wheels: steering wheel straightened out, where it was clocked a few degrees left before. I had an alignment done when I replaced the struts last year, and the mechanic was obsessed with getting the wheel straight, spending something like two hours fucking with it. I commended him. His efforts have paid dividends now.

[young gun]

Started like this:


Ended like this, with wheels from a 1992 Silhouette with really good tires. I picked them up from the yard in June of last year, and they've been collecting dust in the garage since.

Oh wow quite the rake change there!

That blows about broken studs!

Never too much antiseize on your own stuff

[LeftVentricle]

Time for my quarterly update!

Do some work for once instead of constantly complaining.

Services performed today: Replace blower motor, engine oil change, transmission oil/filter change. Click for bigger.

Begin.


Unhook the battery. The alternator has to be pulled to R&R the motor.


Belt off.


Alternator. It's much easier to just unbolt its mounting bracket from the cylinder head.


Plenty of room.


Motor out. It did not spin freely and made the entire car vibrate when I turned it on.



Part of the reason it failed is that, a while back, one of the bolts for the dogbone engine mount somehow fled, and the engine leaned back, and the fan on the alternator ground into the blower motor, seen here.


All buttoned up.


Up we go. (Take note of the Duralast filter and Walmart oil. Only the best for George.)


I've talked about this before, but the pan on a 4T60E has TWENTY FUCKING BOLTS holding it on. The filter is inside the transmission. If you don't have a drain plug (factory pans do not), it's an absolute mess to drain. Mine is Dorman branded, but a couple other outfits carry pans with drain plugs. If you have a car with a 4T60E, do yourself a favor and get one of those pans.

Then it was time to break this bad boy out.


Quinn digital torque wrench. I bought it last year but haven't really had the chance to use it. It beeps rapidly when you get close to the selected torque specification, then a solid tone when you're there, which was super annoying at first, but I got used to it. Pan to case torque spec is 151 inch pounds.

Engine: Wix 51040 filter and six quarts of Walmart high mileage full synthetic 5W-30.

Transmission: Duralast TF207 filter and five quarts of Dexron VI (recommended by the transmission builder) and a bottle of Lucas.

Now, astute readers may notice that I've changed wheels again. That is because...




I had a blowout. Lucky for me it was not sudden and catastrophic, or I may have crashed. It let go about as gently as it could, but it was a complete failure. This is because the tire was SIX YEARS OLD and I definitely should not have been driving on six year old tires. So I bought two new 16s on the Grand Am wheels and swapped back to those. I like the Olds crosslaces, but not enough to drop, ya know, $600 on a full set of 15s.

[young gun]

First and foremost congrats on the first post of 2022!

I've talked about this before, but the pan on a 4T60E has TWENTY FUCKING BOLTS holding it on. The filter is inside the transmission. If you don't have a drain plug (factory pans do not), it's an absolute mess to drain. Mine is Dorman branded, but a couple other outfits carry pans with drain plugs. If you have a car with a 4T60E, do yourself a favor and get one of those pans.

Haha pretty common to have that many bolts I believe, just as common to not have a drain plug! thankfully there are aftermarket options as you mentioned.

Now, astute readers may notice that I've changed wheels again. That is because...

Yay I'm astute! glad it wasn't catastrophic for you.

Not so astute as I just noticed.... are you a transposition (D-TGA)?

[LeftVentricle]

Not so astute as I just noticed.... are you a transposition (D-TGA)?

I was trying to figure out wtf you meant, since googling that acronym turns up a wikipedia article about a heart defect. I guess it's a reference to my username? In which case, no. My heart is fine. I've been using this name since at least 2006 because it seemed amusing.

As for the Silhouette wheels, I will likely get some new tires on them, since I plan to do some traveling in a few months, and maybe even acquire a parts car in Kansas. So I'll need some extra load tires to handle dragging the carcass back here.

[young gun]

I was trying to figure out wtf you meant, since googling that acronym turns up a wikipedia article about a heart defect. I guess it's a reference to my username? In which case, no. My heart is fine. I've been using this name since at least 2006 because it seemed amusing.

As for the Silhouette wheels, I will likely get some new tires on them, since I plan to do some traveling in a few months, and maybe even acquire a parts car in Kansas. So I'll need some extra load tires to handle dragging the carcass back here.

I'm in the business of hearts so yeah I was referencing that, interesting that you just so happen to choose that!

[LeftVentricle]

1996 Buick Century

P0502 Vehicle Speed Sensor A low input
P0503 Vehicle Speed Sensor A Intermittent, erratic, or high input

Symptoms:
"Service Engine Soon" light illuminated
Speedometer, odometer, trip odometer inoperative
Transmission shifting inoperative/erratic

Suddenly. Stuck in third, then first, then third. That made the trip home from work today, uh, interesting.

EDIT: At first it behaved like it did a few years ago when the fuse for the quad driver popped. Starts in third, access to 2nd and 3rd via manual shifting. Then I shut it off, started it up, and it was stuck in first. After annoying everyone in the city by doing 20 mph with my hazards on for a few miles, I gave it the beans so I could get up to a higher speed and coast. Around 31 mph or so it shifted into third, and I left it there. (speeds verified with a GPS speedometer app)

The cause is a broken wire to the VSS. I will have to hire someone to repair that, because I don't fuck with wiring.

In the meantime, I had little choice but to finally put a new water pump on the Ram (it had been leaking for some time), since I still need to get to work for the rest of the week. This went well, except for the battery being stone dead. Jumper cables hooked up to the wagon eventually got it started, and I left it running for something like a half hour, driving to the gas station for fuel and back home. I shut it off, and it wouldn't restart. Bad battery. $130 later it's fine.

[LeftVentricle]

Cruise cable and module from a 2001 Aurora. This will fit the big throttle body.

[LeftVentricle]

Changed the water pump on the wagon the other day. I took pictures but honestly, we've all done a water pump. It appeared to be the original part for the engine. Recall the engine is from a 2005 Malibu that had, according to LKQ, about 110k miles. I have put around 63k VERY HARD miles on it since installing it. I am not mad that it failed. After ~175k miles, it owed me nothing. Past Daniel had some foresight and bought the part 6 years ago, so the most difficult aspect was spelunking through the garage to find it.

[SappySE107]

Doesn't hurt to post pics or make videos for youtube these days, though it takes more time to document that stuff as well. 175k is good for a water pump and thankfully its usually a pretty easy job on these engines.

[LeftVentricle]

Doesn't hurt to post pics or make videos for youtube these days, though it takes more time to document that stuff as well. 175k is good for a water pump and thankfully its usually a pretty easy job on these engines.

Yeah, letting the RTV cure took longer than the actual work.

[LeftVentricle]

Non-update update. I've been meaning to write up a post about the 2000 mile road trip I took the wagon on during Thanksgiving, but the circumstances of the trip weren't fun. I'm having a hard time coming up with the right words. The car performed flawlessly, and averaged 24.7 mpg, including a high score of 30.9 on the final tank before arriving back home. I took plenty of pictures. I'll give it a shot this weekend, I think.

[SappySE107]

Pretty good fuel economy but thats quite a bit of driving. Was it all highway for the last tank?