Friday, February 17, 2012

Say It Ain't So Pickled Petey! Say It Ain't So!

Peteys age is starting to show! When he was purchased last march he had 92,222 miles on him. Now hes got over 108,000 miles! Since my last post Ive been busy switching jobs and making a major move to North Carolina. Now that all this is done I will be able to focus more on keeping my Petey nice and happy.

However with the age comes repairs and theyre starting to show their ugly expensive heads (fortunatly around tax return season!)

The first noticable issue was the fact that shifting into reverse has become a pain. The amazing folks at PTCL (link to the right) helped me narrow it down to the Bushings. These bushings are basically rubber grommets that keep some rod thingy in place. The bushings eventually wear out and need replaced. This is supposedly going to cause my shifting to improve significantly! So of course I ordered my booger bushings (from Ebay). But ive been too busy to install them, so shifting into reverse is still a PITA until Ive got the time to do it. If it doesnt fix the problem then ill look into more expensive repair options but having performance bushings will be nice either way, and theyll never need replaced!

Also ive ordered a whole lotta Lights to change up the outside of my cruisers look (Brought on by my drivers side low beam light burning out!). So ive ordered all LED lights for the back lights (reverse, brake, turn, and 3rd brake) and new headlights (same as installed before the GP Thunders) as well as chrome turn signal bulbs for the front. The one ive installed more recently is the tail lights. I found that the stock bulbs on my tail lights actually make them look pink instead of red at night time. So I got some red LED lights off ebay for a few bucks a peice. The result, Check it out!



After changing them I noticed that there was what appeared to be water in the lower brake lights, both of them in fact, right and left. Upon attempting to remove the water I realized to my horror that the stock bulbs MELTED the tail light so now theyve got a permanent appearance of rain in light! I have since contacted the person I ordered from and am awaiting a answer, hopefully replacements will be offered and theyll make a note of this defect on the page they sell them from.

Also today I was sitting idling in a parking lot when I heard a weird noise... Bubbling in fact! I looked and noticed Petey was headin in the RED! I quickly turned him off and ran under my hood and noticed that my coolant thermometer was reading into the red, after letting it sit and cool down I drove around and no overheating or bubbling noises (so I think luckily it was only boiling coolant vs exhaust bubbles!) Im assuming im suffering from the ever popular dead fan issue which seems to happen on alot of PTs. This issue will be repaired soon once the income tax check arrives!

Till then, Fingers Crossed!