Digger914

Not the best weather for taking pictures So Bob stopped by on a sunny day and he left his hard top at home

So the car's been sitting for a while and now it's bucking when you try to drive it, it could be vacuum causing your problem, or it could be a bad wire, or loose connection, it could even be a bad sensor. Before you get too carried away with this check your engine codes by turning your key on off on off and back to on and wait for the code to start flashing on your check engine light. All codes flash in two number groups with a couple of seconds pause time between the first number and the second. When you're engine light flashes five times and then flashes five times again, it's done talking. If you have no codes put your foot on the brake with the car in gear and run the engine RPM up, if it starts to bog bump and behave badly you're looking for an un coded engine problem. If you get a nice smooth steady RPM climb under load and it wants to bog bump and generally misbehave when you try to drive it, you’re looking farther down the powertrain towards transmission connection speed sensor, engine controller, check for codes first and get back to us with what you find.

Cover removal? Under dash is screws and the part flexes enough to get out with twist and pull where needed, the lower pannel directly below steering collum is quarter turn quick connect, this part doesn't flex and the lock parts break easily and are hard to find [part# 6032719] If you can't get NOS an aircraft quick pannel connect can be filed to fit. The fun part is removing steering wheel and lock plate as the pinch is probably where mine was pinched with one wire squeezed flat between switch and collum until the insulation had enough and gave up. A piece of tape and put it next to all the other wires and it was happy.

Believe it or not the removal is really easy once you get the car up high enough to work and see what you're doing, if you have air tools, wobble sockets, extensions and a hoist! If you're going under with jack stands a creeper and limited hand tools you might want to consider having this done at a shop. If you do take it on yourself, get the tallest jack stands you can find and remove the serpentine belt first. Your replacement part will tell you where the bolts are and if your part doesn't come with pully attached borrow or rent what you need.

Bishko reprints the factory service manual and they are available in the literature link for all years Chrysler TC at rockauto.com

Hand wash with mild detergent not automated car wash. Don't take the car out in the direct sun, or the rain, or go anywhere that something might dent or rub the trim. You can't protect this stuff and enjoy driving the car, but you can restore the lettering when the color goes away.

For not being an electrician you did a darn good job of figuring out and documenting a circuit. That horizontal mount Paddle switch was a GM dealer only item and ten times the price of the Radio Shack lever arm Micro switch. Don't know if the switch itself is still available through GM dealers without buying the entire assembly, do know that the lever arm Micro is still available at the Shack and can be substituted by changing the harness connectors and making an offset mounting bracket. Personally I would have gone to the bone yard and pulled the assembly from an 80 to mid 90's Cad Fleetwood before changing the harness connect and making an offset bracket to mount a Micro, but the day will come when even these parts will be impossible to find and fabricating a new circut will be our only choice for repair.

The bad garage band sounds like an onboard amp problem. http://www.allpar.com/stereo/speaker-repair.html Had basically the same experience and spent months checking the bone yards for fresh old mini vans to supply my onboard amp needs. The how to in this article does work to get the job done, I decided it was easier to find amps than fix them. The tape can be a bit of a pain to make it work like new, http://www.allpar.com/stereo/Infinity-II/index.html a little contact cleaner on the tape switch goes a long way, fooling with the eject mechanism can be a real pain. The plug diagram in this article will let you feed MP3 into the radio and if you want to go a little farther you can add a remote controll CD deck to the factory radio.

Is this Guinness book worthy? In the back is the oldest know operating TC and at 90+ years old, could the oldest TC be driven by the oldest TC owner operator?

If everything seems to be running like it should, check the MAP connector contacts, reseat the MAP connector if things look good and lift neg battery cable to clear code, if the code comes back replace the MAP.

So I thought I would like to see this momentous event for myself and Googled up Miami Vice Freefall to find that it is the three part series ending event. As much as I would like to see the TC on TV, three hours of old TV for 30 seconds of TC is a bit much. Did you happen to catch which part this trilogy this scene is in?

I used Rustolian Black Gloss the good thick stuff not the spray and an artist brush. Don't try to be to artistic, open the trunk, get some paint on the brush, touch the tip inside the recessed letter near where you want it to go and let the paint flow into the letter area. If you overflow the letter dab up what you can with a cotton swab and when it's good and dry give the whole trim piece a gentle rubbing with 000 steelwool to clean, polish, sharpen the letter definition and generally dull the gloss to match the paint you still have on the trim strip.

What you can't buy you can build, but waiting for Mr. Arizona Parts to come back from his annual vacation away from the heat is probably your best bet to get a good used wire harness. I know Pheonix is a bit of a haul from Tuscon, but I have heard rumors that he has a hundred of these little gems parked in the desert waiting for someone to come and see what they have to offer and it might be worth the time to make the drive. If you want to shop Arizona Parts for your good used wiring harness needs you will need to wait until the 25th. You could e-mail him now and he will get back to you, or your could try TC Parts today, but I think the quickest way to find what you need will be to post a thread and say what you need, never know who might have an extra one laying around.

It's amazing the difference a little black paint can make and how it can turn a LeBaron? into a Maserati. While you're spiffing yours up don't forget to freshion up the black on the back trim. Make it easier for the curious to read.

The relay is common to both, but each door has it's own actuator. Would have to see the size of your hands to tell you if replacing the clip is going to be difficult. I have some pretty big mits and needed to use my pinky finger fingers. If you have a manual it tells you how to remove the door pannel, it doesn't tell you how brittle plastic gets with age and heat so be very carefull when removing the switch trim, use your thumb to push the upper curved section as far in and up as you can before you try to lift at the back tab. The rest of the pannel is locating the fastening screws and lifting up before trying to pull it off. The clip itself is such a standard part for cars that they are sold in bubble packs and can be found in the HELP rack at most auto parts stores, for what they cost get new, if they popped off once without breaking they will pop off again.

This is a GM part, our top pull down is a modified GM trunk pull down and these complete units rum around $5 at U-pull yards. If you're very carefull you can drill a small hole through the side close to the contacts, go to deep you kill the switch for ever, but if you're lucky you get a hole in the right place big enough to spray in some contact cleaner and you get a good working switch. Wouldn't hurt to pick up a second hand trunk pull down assembly, we tend to eat gears and the Cadillac trunk will kill a switch, even break the housing, but it almost never eats the gear.

Standard part yes, actuator Eh----, with noise now in both doors more likely the clip that connects to the lock, also a standard part.

I never had any trouble getting in and out of my MGB, or the old XKE, with or without tops, just had to tuck a little tighter. On the Allante the actual opening to the passenger compartment could be the same size, can't say as I've never measured either, the Allante does stand a little higher than the TC and it is easier to get in and out of than the TC when the position of the top determines the tuck. At 6' 3" I tend to notice the things that will hit the head.

I did read in one or more of the poke fun at the TC and compare to the LeBaron for it's shared styling articles that they were both drawn on the Pinifarina board. I couldn't remember which one I saw this in so I Googled [ Pinifarina Chrysler Lebaron and got a page full of TC connections ] and I haven't got the slightest idea why their name isn't somewhere on the car.

It was probably a Cad Allante, body styling was done by the same people and they were both built around the same time. The body for the Allante was made in Itally and flown to the states for final assembly. They are a bit taller and wider, the extra size didn't add anything to passanger seating comfort, but they are a little easier to get into with the top on.

I remember reading that your light at the back of the counsel didn't work, if it wasn't the bulb you should check the wire harness - below the carpet on the passanger side while you have the seats up to work on the counsel and yes you can do this to change out the lighter socket.

The secret to a good paint job is good preperation and restoration is considerably more involved that good preperation. People do this to make a car with crusty clear look good until they are ready to paint, or they don't want to paint at all. It's color sand to clean and feather, then high speed buff with multiple grits of buffing products topped off with the polymer of your preference. When clear starts to go, it keeps going. Anything you spray on failing clear is eventually waisted and extra work to remove and do it right. Clear goes where it goes, when it goes. If you have a great looking hood and the fender tops on either side are bruning out, color sanding those tops to the natural break of a body line is where you strip the clear to and then you squirt that section with clear, after that it doesn't take much when it's dry to make that lapping line dissapear. When that new car trade in; is the 20 year old car that belonged to the little old lady that only drove it to church on Sunday and it sat in the sun every day of the week, this is something that's done all to often to turn that sun baked turd of a car into a real tutsy pie. It looks great for about 3 - 4 months or carwashes and then you need to wax it again. Or it's something that can be done to save factory paint one pannel at a time, not everyone has access to an auto paint booth, or even a clean garage, but if you put you hand to it, you can probably find an old tent at the thrift store and make a booth big enough to safely squirt a car one pannel at a time. This is what you do for scuffs and scratches that don't go all the way to metal on an expensive and impossible to match metalflake paint and sometimes you can even do the ones that go to the metal. If you see one of those at the auction, or it comes in on trade, you can take it as a prize if you know a miastro that can save a 7 grand paint job. That is an art form that takes real talent and body shops will tell you it can't be done.

So I got tired of I tired of being complemented on my clean old Lebaron and took a little paint to the grill. When the paint was dry I treated myself with a trip to the old A&W Drive-in, the place where old cars go on a Sunday afternoon, I pulled up alongside a 61 Ford Falcon and was nose to nose with a 90 Cad Allante. We nodded to each other, he finished eating and left before I did, but on his way out of the Drive-in he drove back in again, made a complete circle and slowed down to read the name on the back of my car. I don’t know if he knew what he had been looking at, but I’m pretty sure he knew it wasn't a Lebaron.

When you start losing clear coat it gets pretty crusty looking and someone with the touch can color sand the cloudy clear coat away without hurting the paint underneath, take the oxidation layer off the faded paint that’s already lost it’s clear coat, without cutting through the paint, clean, buff and polish the car till it shines like it does with clear coat and wax it to last for months at a time. You will have to wax several times a year if you go this route, but if you’re only loosing the clear and want to keep the factory original paint, or make it look good till you’re ready to paint, it will get the job done. This is something you can do at home with a couple hundred dollars worth of tools and supplies, but it’s also like playing a musical instrument. Unless you were born a virtuoso you need to take a few lessons and practice, practice, practice, practice, until you get good at it. If you’re thinking about doing this and you get a chance to watch a master at work, it’s worth the price of admission. If you want a lesson in paint restoration, go in the morning and bring doughnuts. The old saying, you always pay for what you get, but you don't always get what you pay for and the best paint job I ever got was a Maaco Supreeme paint the whole car TV advertized special. I paid full advertized enamal paint special price, but after my car had sat in their yard for several days without being touched, I started bringing a dozen assorted doughnuts to the shop every morning on my way to work. A full week of bringing doughnuts every morning and my car still hadn't been touched, eight days into bringing doughnuts and the painter asked me which car was mine. On the twelth day I got my car back and it was not the taxi cab quality TV special paint job. When considering paint and upholstry work, do not underestimate the power of doughnuts.

Color sand and high speed buff. Making a car that needs a paint job look like it doesn't is an artform all to itself. If you're asking the question, odds are you aren't ready to do this, very few people have the knowledge and the touch. I'm not one of them. If you're lucky enough to find one of those people within a couple hundred miles of where you are, it's worth making the trip and spending the money just to see it done.