So it's been about 2 months with the Bonneville. Aside from the grand dropped on the new transmission, I haven't done a whole lot of work. Mainly because I've been busy with work, money is tight, I don't have a place to work on it, etc... Excuses, excuses, I know.
But there is another reason too. The car has been running fine. Aside from the transmission, the only real complaint I have is the A/C. Earlier this week, I had to do some travelling for work. I went on a 220 mile trip. It was one of the hottest days of the summer, in the upper 80's, and the A/C just couldn't keep up. The first problem is that you have to have the fan cranked all the way up to even feel air come out. So I have weak air flow, but the air was cold, at first anyway. About 100 miles into the trip, there was a noticeable difference in temperature from when I first started. By the time I reached my destination, the A/C was still blowing cold air, but just barely.
So this probably means I need to get one of those A/C recharge kits. I'll do a little bit more research before I start screwing with it thought and totally ruin it. The fan or blower or whatever though is a little bit more scary. As far as I can tell, recharging the A/C just involves hooking up a bottle of coolant and re-filling the system. God only knows what's wrong with the fan though...
But other than the A/C being a total dick I can't complain about the rest of the car. Yeah, it probably needs new shocks or struts or whatever, but it's not a major issue. I should probably get new tires though. (Yeah, I think I've mentioned that in every post. One day!) I've got another big trip coming up in two weeks. 450 miles for this one. I'll let you know how it goes.
Oh, pictures. See, I have this problem. But I'll get more into that next time...

First long trip

Over the weekend I took the car on the first trip of any real distance. It was about 90 miles each way. All of it was on regular 2 lane highway. There were a few things I noticed.

1. The A/C is putting out cold air, but the fan seems weak.


2. New tires. I NEED new tires.


3. Shocks (or struts? I don't know the difference to be honest with you) will be needed as well.


4. My headlights SUCK and I did not feel safe driving at highway speeds after dark. Even with the brights on, it felt like they weren't reaching out as far as they should. That is the first thing I need to fix.


5. Gas Milege. My gas gauge is inaccurate so I couldn't figure out what kind of milege I was getting.

It wasn't all bad though. In fact, there were some positives.

1. Passing. When I was leaving town I got stuck behind a semi. I pulled out to pass and saw I was in a convoy. I put the pedal down and flew past them. Nice to know it can handle a little speed.


2. The radio works good, but not great. It can pick up some distant stations, but has trouble holding onto them. I'm still waiting for someone to tell me which aftermarket head units have the best tuners.

Okay, so that's only 2 positives, but I was mostly on the lookout for problems.

I'm still trying to decide what the first big "project" should be. Tires are going to be the first thing I'm going to buy, but those will be put on by a shop.

Oh, pics are coming soon.

*just a quick note. I know I said the headlights need to be fixed first. When I said "project," I meant sort of a big-ticket, high-dollar repair.

Is this what happens?

It's 5:30 on a Saturday morning, I'm outside with my dash ripped apart and fiddling with the antenna wire. Is that what happens when you're a "car guy?"

Well, at least I get better radio reception now. It's a temporary fix. I moved the antenna wire around until I found a "sweet spot." I was reading the manual for the CD player and it said an adapter might be needed. I found half a bent paper clip wedged into the hole for the antenna wire.

It makes me wonder how many other things on my car have been "Macgyver'd" together...

So, here's a quick rundown of some things that need replacing

• Tires - I can get Goodyear Eagles at Sam's Club for $75.53 a tire which adds up to %302.12. I'm sure that amount will go up with installation and disposal of the old tires. (They always find new and innovative ways to screw you)
• Serpentine belt - not even sure, but it can't be too expensive, right?
• New stereo - I figured I should include at least one fun thing on the list. I don't know, maybe 300 bucks for a decent one?

I'll post more later in the day and hopefully get some pictures up.

Just how much is all this costing?

Let's take a look at the invoice from the repair shop. We'll start with the parts first.

Parts:

• 1 USED TRANSMISSION - 350.00


• 11 QUARTS DEXRON (TRANNIE FLUID) - 2.72 A QUART - 29.92


• 1 TRANSMISSION FILTER KIT - 24.99


• 1 SEAL - 20.89


• 1 SEAL - 4.24


• 1 SEAL - 4.09 (That's how it's listed on the invoice. What those 3 seals do I have no clue)


• SHOP SUPPLIES - 17.89 (No clue what those are. Nuts and bolts? Rags?)


• TOTAL COST OF PARTS - 452.00

Now onto the labor.

• MYSELF - 57.00 On the invoice it has my name and 57.00. I'm guessing that's the flat fee to have the car looked at. I probably should have asked.


• DIAGNOSTIC SCANNER - 25.00


• TRANSAXLE ASSEMBLY - 501.60


• 3 GALLONS OF GAS - 12.00 (Hey, gas is only 3 bucks a gallon at the repair shop!)


• TOTAL COST OF LABOR - 583.60

With tax, that came to a grand total of $1079.07. I guess that's about what I expected to pay and it's pretty close to what they quoted me. Here's the problem though. Half of what I paid went to labor. Ouch. If your a mechanic and you're reading this, you probably think that the price of labor is justified. And I agree with you. The guys at the shop know their stuff. They ripped out my old trannie and put the new one in, and it only took them a day and a half. They could have probably done it blind-folded. I have no idea how long it would take me to do it. That's the whole purpose of this little adventure though. Just because I don't know how, does that mean I can't? '

Again, no disrespect is meant to professional mechanics. If mechanics were doctors, a transmission specialist would be a brain surgeon. But at the same time, working on cars isn't brain surgery. It's not rocket science.

The way I see it, there are two main reasons why people don't work on their own cars. Time and money. Time, because who has time to read and try to make sense of a service manual? Who has time to pull an engine? Who has time to try and diagnose a problem, then troubleshoot it?

Money. Ah yes, never enough of it when you need it. Just a basic set of tools will run you... well, tell you what. Go to the MAC tools website and check out how much a set of regular old wrenches costs. Here, check out the link. No, they aren't kidding either.

http://www.mactools.com/Mac/Mac+Products/Catalog/Hand+Tools/Wrenches/Sets/Fractional/SCl15K2KS

Time and money. Those two bastards are such a buzzkill. I know I don't have nearly enough of either. But I'm not giving up. Not yet anyway.

First Post

So instead of re-type my tale I'm just going to copy and paste my first post from http://www.pontiacbonnevilleclub.com/

In the past 4 years, I've had the wrecker haul away 3 cars. My latest was a 94 cutlass. Apparently that car thought it would be funny to start the engine on fire. So about 2 weeks ago I found a guy who was selling a Bonneville. "Well, it's got some miles on it. But I replaced the transmission and it's been running great for me."

So I go to take a look at it. It's in pretty rough shape. A few dings here and there, one of the fog lights is missing, there's scratches here and there... The inside is about what you'd expect for a car with 233k on it.

"I put an auto-start on it awhile back," he said. "I had to bypass some stuff so the remote locks and trunk don't work." I shrugged it off. I've never had a car with remote locks so it's not a big deal. We talk for awhile and it turns out he's a mechanic, although he works on semi's, but hey, a gear-head is a gear-head right? Plus his daughter's been driving this car. So it's probably been kept up pretty good. He goes on to tell me some of the stuff that's been replaced. Water pump, fuel pump, something with the ignition, etc... He said he's fixed a lot of the little things that go wrong with this type of car.

I took the car out for a test drive. It handled nice through town. I took it out on the highway and it seemed to get up to 80 with no problem and say there. (I don't usually drive 80, but I figure I'd floor it to see what happened.) It seemed like it was a runner. Besides, all I needed was a car to last me a year. My credit isn't the best, but I'm in the process of rebuilding it. According to my budget, in roughly a year I'll have enough saved up for a down payment, and my credit should be restored so I can get a good rate on a loan. So I cut him a check and the Bonneville was mine.

So everything is going good. I'm very happy with the car. I drove it to work and back for a week, then on the sixth day, something happens. I'm driving along and I notice the RPM's seem to be going waaaay high when I accelerate. Hmmm. That's odd. I get back into town and now the transmission won't shift out of first gear. I check the transmission fluid, it's on full, but looks pretty brown. It's the weekend so I can't get it into the shop.

I have this little thing when it comes to cars. Everytime something goes wrong, I start to think that maybe nothing's wrong and that if I just let it sit overnight, everything will be okay in the morning. I think cars are people. Sometimes they just need a goodnight's sleep. Yeah right...

The shop didn't have an opening until Wednesday. I spent all Monday and Tuesday looking on the internet. Ever done that? Your car gets a tick and you think that maybe with a google search you can cure it? So I started googling the symptoms. "92 Bonneville won't shift" "transmission stuck in first gear" It was from that I learned about this wonderful thing called "lag mode."

"DeWdZ, my tranny's hosed! it wont shift! How much for new one?" someone wrote.

A second, rather helpful person went on to describe that it might not be the transmission afterall. It could be something as simple as wiring, but in order to protect itself, the car goes into "lag mode" so you can limp to a shop and not do more damage. Wow! Cars are awesome and smart!

So I take the car in and I'm excited because the mechanic I talked to did indeed confirm that such a thing called "lag mode," although he called it something else. Whew! I'm getting off easy. Yeah right. He calls me later in the day and tells me the control solenoid is bad and it's going to be a few hundred bucks to repair it with the labor. (I may be wrong what solenoid it was because it didn't really matter after what he told me next.) He went onto say he's worried that the transmission itself is bad, but they won't know unless they take it apart. And if they do that, they'll just end up rebuilding it which will cost roughly 900 bucks, which would be the cost of a rebuit one anyway.

My options were:
1. A remanufactured transmission, which would be roughly $2300
2. A rebuilt transmission, which would be roughly $950.00
3. Buy another car and haul that one to a junk yard.

I told him I'd call back. Once I stopped crying I thought about what to do. I called around, looking for better prices, but found none. Great, another car hauled away to automotive hell. I have the wrecker on speed-dail. But something happened to me. And it was mostly from looking through this forum that I decided not to do that. "NO MORE JUNKYARDS!" I told myself. (Hence the user ID) As I looked through the before and after pictures of your Bonnevilles (or "whorage" as you folks call it) I became inspired. I was not going to let this car die. This car would live to see another day. Not only would it live, it would be alive!

I told him to go with the rebuilt, because even if it craps out, getting another rebuilt will still be cheaper. Bad choice? I guess we'll find out.

So I'm going to restore this beast. I have no delusions that it will be easy, cheap, or quick. I'm not a mechanic, gear-head, or even much of a "car guy." But I want a car that looks good, drives good, and starts every time I turn the key. And I think that with hard work and patience I can turn this car into that car."

I got the car back yesterday and it's running like a car with 233k miles with a new transmission. Knock on wood... I'll get some pictures up later.