[The Shit Volcano]

Okay, Slim Jim. You're the resident car expert on PR so I thought I'd ask you for some advice.

My Chevy S-10 pick-up is almost twenty years old and is very close to 140,000 miles. It normally works very well. In fact, I have gone 300 miles on half a tank of gasoline in the sucker. However, during my move down something happened.

As I pulled into Carson City I slowed down to 25 miles per hour. The truck started acting like it was out of gas. It rocked back and forth (very lightly) and almost threatened to stall on me. This happened off and on through town, then it stopped as I got out of town and returned to highway speed.

I pulled into Gardnerville and once again slowed down to 25 miles per hour. Once again, it did the rocking, almost-stalling thing.

It performed perfectly well after this. In fact, most of the time it is fine. But every time I go down to 25 miles per hour it starts rocking again. One car guy I know said it might be a cracked vacume hose. I've looked under the hood and didn't see anything unusual except for a worn fan belt (which I will have to replace). It didn't seem worn enough to be the cause of the problem and it is not loose.

Oh, and while climbing a mountain the other day my damn truck overheated. I opened the hood and found coolant bubbled out all over the damn recovery chamber.

Any idea what is going on?

[Dr. Strangeturd]

All I can say is 80's model GM products go forever. HELL YEAH for the '85 Fiero GT!!! I love that thing, probably more than anything.

[AssBlaster2000]

The rocking when you slow sounds like you have warped rotors or need to replace your brakes.

[The Shit Volcano]

Never thought of the rotor thing. The brakes are out, because it doesn't happen when I actually brake, just when I lift off the gas and let it slow down on its own. It's weird!

[Slim Jim Junkie]

Never thought of the rotor thing. The brakes are out, because it doesn't happen when I actually brake, just when I lift off the gas and let it slow down on its own. It's weird!

What happens is that if a vacuum hose is no good, air bypasses the sensors (Or carb depending on vehicle) and then when that happens, there is a large amount of air, but a small amount of fuel, and that makes the fuel hard for the spark plug to ignite. That leads to bizzare behavior and sounds from the engine. While vac hoses may look okay, they might have small cracks that let air in and make them useless. In other cases, if the vacuum hose is restricted to the automatic transmission, it will signal the transmission that the vehicle is crusing rather than accelerating or decelerating. This might cause the transmission not to downshift, and may keep the torque converter locked, making the engine work too hard. Vac hoses last about 5-10 years, depending on grade of hose used, amound of road salt vehicle experiences, and amount of heat vehicle experiences.

Always replace them one at a time, otherwise, you might misroute them to different emmission controls and sensors, causeing the vehicle to run even worse. This becomes especially crucial on vehicles such as yours, which have a large number of vacuum operated sensors and emmission controls.

In other cases, what may cause a vehcicle to do out is when the air intake passage is unclean. When the butterfly valve closes, and the air must travel through a tiny idle air passage, the smallest amount of crud can cause poor idling.

If this is the case, spray the butterfly valve bores with carb cleaner and scrape with an old toothbrush, spray the idle air passes with a crapload of cleaner, because a brush can't fit inside. Also, get a can of Techron from an auto parts store, or a Chevron or Texaco gas station (Price probably higher ther).

In any case, to keep crud from building up in the engine again, buy gas that is Tier One approved. The auto manufacturers, and fuel companies teamed up to create gasoline with a chemistry that better destroys and repels crud. Chevron, Texaco, 76, Exxon, Mobil, and Quicktrip are the only stations I know of.

[The Shit Volcano]

Thanks for the advice, Slim Jim! The car was given to me a while back, so I had no idea what shape the inside was in. The vacume hoses are most likely WAY over 10 years old because the son's of bitches at the place I was taking the car turned out to be ripping me off. They turned out to be charging me for work they never did, and then some young hick in the garage slammed a hammer or something into my freshly-painted car door just because he didn't like the political message on my bumper sticker. (Assholes!)

Anyway, enough of those crooks. They are back in Oregon and I am personal friends with the guys who run the garage down here.

[Dr. Strangeturd]

Damn, I know who to go to with car probs!!!

Slim jim--ever work on a Fiero?

[Slim Jim Junkie]

Slim jim--ever work on a Fiero?

No, I never worked on one.

The only midengine cars I worked on was one 3rd generation Toyota MR2, and one Porsche Boxster.

[Dr. Strangeturd]

It's a complete pain in the ass isn't it?

I'll be doing some routine stuff to it this summer and after being under it to change my drive belt a couple times (I fucked up the first time) and oil and stuff, there's not much room.

I've heard of guys putting 350s in them!!! Talk about a rolling deathtrap...the V-6 has more than enough balls for me.

As much as I hate it...I love it.

[Slim Jim Junkie]

It's a complete pain in the ass isn't it?

I'll be doing some routine stuff to it this summer and after being under it to change my drive belt a couple times (I fucked up the first time) and oil and stuff, there's not much room.

I've heard of guys putting 350s in them!!! Talk about a rolling deathtrap...the V-6 has more than enough balls for me.

As much as I hate it...I love it.

I only replaced tires on the Porsche, so I couldn't tell you if it was a pain or not, underhood. The Toyota wasn't too much of a challenge.

Anyway, I never knew of 350s being fitted to Fieros, HOWEVER, I have read of some guys that fitted Northstar V8 engines.

[The Shit Volcano]

Well, my car goes in for surgery on Thursday. Well, see just how bad it is. Probably every damn hose in the fucking car is cracked. The guy thinks the fuel filter is screwy, too.

Thanks again for the advice, Slim Jim. Hope car school goes well and I'll keep you updated on the prognosis!

[Dr. Strangeturd]

I only replaced tires on the Porsche, so I couldn't tell you if it was a pain or not, underhood. The Toyota wasn't too much of a challenge.

Anyway, I never knew of 350s being fitted to Fieros, HOWEVER, I have read of some guys that fitted Northstar V8 engines.

It's tight under the hood, trunk, whatever the fuck it is. That's all I'll say.

I want a V-8 in mine, but damn, I'd be dead in 3 days.

My famous last words would be, "Man, how fast do you think this thing can go?"

[The Shit Volcano]

Mine would be, "See, I told you plywood won't support a truck."

[The Shit Volcano]

OH I AM SO FUCKING PISSED AT BOB STONE!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, the truck went to the car hospital on Thursday, a very nice place in Mammoth Lakes know as A-1 Motors. The mechanic checked out all the vacume hoses, which were in working order. He said the car needed a tune-up, so he performed that. He also replaced the fan belt, which I knew needed replaced before I went in there. Something in the back of my mind said we missed something, though.

He advised me that at some point I needed to get the fan clutch motor fixed, but the part wasn't available unless he ordered it. So I said I would wait until I dealt with Gordon before dealing with that.

So we climbed into the car, pulled out of the driveway, drove down the street, and turned onto another street with a traffic light. The light turned red and we stopped. The car threatened to stall, rocking back and forth worse than ever. That was the first time it had ever threatened to actually stall on me.

I pulled into a parking lot and stopped the car. Then I started it again. It refused to start, glaring at me with battery and check engine lights all over the place. I thought I had flooded the engine and tried to start it again. Reluctantly, it coughed to life.

Now the idle in my truck is set so high that it rolls at twenty-five miles an hour on the flat. It barely rolled at two. The idle was so slow that the truck felt like my parents' old four-cylinder Volvo. I drove back to the mechanic's place, since I wasn't about to take this car two hours into the boondocks in this condition.

The car was perfectly fine in park, but when I switched into drive it waited a few minutes and then started coughing, threatening to stall. This disturbing behavior would stop when he tugged on some wires, but then it would stubbornly start right back up again.

Since the mechanic's assistant, a young woman working for her certification, had replaced the spark plugs she suspected that one of them had been bad going in. She opened up the hood and looked. Sure enough, there was a blown spark plug. Little etches of electrical lightning were all over it. So she replaced the spark plugs again.

Cough, sputter, chug-chug-chug. That wasn't it.

The head mechanic went over the vacume hoses again. No leaks. Most of them were newer than I remembered. I guess the GM guys replaced them in '03 when they were working on the engine. He checked for clogs in the system. The catalytic converter was already clear.

His assistant took the distributor apart. Little bits of rust fell everywhere. It seemed odd to me because the distributor looked brand new, like it had been replaced only a couple of years ago. It looked about as new as my windshield wiper motor, which I had replaced in '04 after it blew out. Twice.

"That's not right", she said. So she cleaned out the distributor. Nothing. The car continued to sound like a little old lady about to drop from a heart attack.

He wanted to check something else he suspected, which at this point I can't remember. Unfortunately, it meant breaking a gasket, which he'd have to fix. (It was worn out anyway.) So his assistant rented us a car. By now it was seven o'clock and started to get dark. We had a two hour drive ahead of us.

He and his assistant checked the wires, many of which were incredibly old. So he re-wired the car.

Cough, sputter, chug-chug-chug. That wasn't it again.

He replaced the fan clutch motor, which was about to fail anyway. The motor rocked the inside of the car so violently that it's sounded like a dragging tin can for two years. Perhaps it was pulling things loose.

No luck. The car continued to act like that old lady. Finally, he called the GM people. He knew it was an electrical problem, but he couldn't hunt it down. The GM people informed him that the distributor was failing. In fact, the distributor in my car was THE WRONG ONE!!!

It turns out the people at Bob Stone, the place in The Dalles where I used to take my car for maintainence, put in the wrong fucking distributor! No wonder the car has been sluggish since 2004! No wonder it won't climb a hill worth a shit! No wonder it's a Chevy pick-up that has been behaving like a fucking Ford Focus!

Sure, it was brand new. But there was only so long it was going to work in the wrong vehical. This truck will run under some of the worst abuse, including the wrong parts. It ran for five months with a leaking head gasket. But even a Chevy can only hold up so long.

I know exactly what happened. The geniuses at Bob Stone discovered that I needed a new distributor. They typed it into the computer and discovered that *gasp* parts for an old car are hard to find! So they didn't bother. Instead, they just stuck in whatever was available. Knowing the guys that worked there, they knew it would eventually fail and I would be back to spend more money. What they didn't count on were three things:

A. It's a Chevy, which means it can last for quite a while before it will throw in the towel and admit defeat.

B. One young conservative asshole in the garage didn't like my bumper stickers and slammed a tool into my $4,000 paint and body job. Plus I discovered from other mechanics, some of whom were friends, that Bob Stone wasn't doing half the work I was paying them to do. They just said they did, washed the car, and billed me for it. So I stopped going there.

C. I moved. Even if the dealership was the last option available, I wouldn't be going to Bob Stone anyway. So, nyah, nyah, nyah!

So I will add the rest of this story to "People I Want To Shoot..."

We will know tomorrow how long it will take to get the right distributor. Last time I had to hunt down parts for the Chevy it took eight days to find the right ones. It's the only annoyance of having a car that is almost twenty years old.

For 31 miles to the gallon, I think I will hang onto the car even if I have to hunt down parts for it.

[Dr. Strangeturd]

Trust me, mine's 21 years old, and I have no car payment and dirt-cheap insurance. Now if I need a part though, i'm royally fucked in the ass with a big rubber dick.

May our old cars live forever, TSV.