JessN16

Sorry for the lag in getting back to you guys. Been busy at work but will contact you both by the end of the Memorial Day weekend. Jess

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1987 Starion ESI 5-speed for sale, asking $2500 OBO. The good: * Southern car with no frame rust. * Suspension Techniques lowering springs and Tokico Blue struts. * Brand-new Yokohama S-Drive tires. Less than 100 miles on the whole set. * About $2,000 in stereo equipment comes with it, including an Xtant amplifier, Kenwood double-DIN radio with 12-disc changer, and Sirius Satellite Radio with active subscription, as well as a pair of Boston Z7 speakers. * Rebuilt steering rack, still in the box I ordered it in (factory one is fine, it just leaks a little) * New factory clutch (less than 1,000 miles) * Tinted windows * Functioning A/C (although it's stuck in dash mode, no foot vents) * Custom adjustable Zirgo cooling fans and new radiator * BSE elimination * Alabama non-JV head * 16G turbo (will need rebuild soon but it's not imminent) * 1988 igniter upgrade * MOMO steering wheel and real carbon-fiber MOMO shift knob, as well as carbon-fiber instrument cluster gauge surround and see-through gauges * Slotted rotors and race-level performance brake pads * Upgraded to 88 flywheel The bad: * Shifter needs to be rebuilt. Will access all gears but only goes in 1, 3 and 5 easily. This must be addressed pretty quickly, and is the reason the car has been parked the last four months. * Needs an exhaust system update. The stock exhaust is still on the car (precat has been deleted) and the muffler is pretty much gone. * Seat leather is hard. * Most of the gauge cluster is non-functioning, including the speedo, oil and water gauges. Odometer still works, though. * Although it has no frame rust, there is one piece of surface rust that needs to be addressed. Something hit the hood, either a rock or a hailstone, a few years ago. It cracked the paint there and now there's a spot about 2-3 inches across, circular, that has surface rust only. The full hood will need to be stripped and painted. * High mileage (207k, I think) * Original 87 airdam is still on the car but just barely. This is absolutely a perfect car for someone wanting to do a motor swap. There's nothing wrong with the block in this car, but the sheer mileage may put some people off. The shifter issue is the only gotta-fix-it-no-matter-what problem it has right now. The car wasn't just running when I parked it, it was my daily driver. Car is located in central Alabama. Jess

Obviously, it's looking like a no-go for rebooting the "Scottsboro Meet" this year. There is a chance it could take place sometime in the summer, but more likely we're looking at 2012. Also, if it does take place later in 2011, there's a chance it could run parallel with the British Motoring Club of Central Alabama (I'm a member of that club as well, and when someone found out I planned meets in the Scottsboro area, I have a feeling I'm going to get drafted). Whatever happens, I won't be in a StarQuest when I come, so I hope that'll be OK with you guys. Sorry for the lack of updates to this point but quite frankly, I've had a lot of stuff to deal with since November and very little of it has been good. Jess

A friend of mine worked some crap job in college and his boss told him, "There are two ways, my way or the highway ... actually, there's just my way. There is no highway." I thought that was so over-the-top, and yes, I'm going to use it on someone some day just to watch them ignite. Even better that Mr. No Highway, about a month after the above event, was arrested for having both an underage girl and some drugs in the car simultaneously. Not good, not good... Jess

I used to have one. I owned #2417. Great thing about the serial numbers on that car were that they were sequential. You could introduce yourself to other Bricklin owners as "Hi, I'm #2417." The car was one of the safest ever built. Doors had massive crash beams in them and the window only opened down to your shoulder. Car had a full roll cage and I think if an 18-wheeler hit it from behind, it would total the truck. The problem was that they were seriously overweight, had a borderline-dangerous rear suspension and the brakes weren't nearly enough. I owned one of the 351 Windsor cars, which were the most common and the least desirable, since they only came with an FMX 3-speed transmission. Noisy, leaked water all over during a rainstorm. But all you had to do was hit the door switch, and on a car like mine that had been converted over from hydraulic to air doors (reason? with hydro-doors, if your battery went dead, you were stuck in the car or outside it), and you'd hear "PSSSHH!!" and people would come from miles around. Including the girls. Rear end in all the cars is out of the AMC Javelin. A lot of Bricklin owners financed some improvements by switching out the rear end to a Ford Nine and then selling the stock rear end to Javelin collectors. Lift the hood and you'd see parts from every manufacturer: Ford motor, AMC washer fluid basket, GM steering column, etc. The cars were not painted. They were acrylic overlays on top of fiberglass, making a composite sandwich. The color was mixed into the acrylic batch from the get-go. If you scratched the car, no big deal -- the stuff underneath was body color. Mine had been repainted over the factory color. The original motors were the 360 Javelin, and you could get them with either a 4-speed stick or an auto. Not a lot of AMC cars with the auto trans in them. Designer steering wheel and rims. If you've got factory steering wheel and rims, you probably could sell them and buy an entire car. O-60 on my car was around 10 seconds. The poor Windsor could only make 150-175 hp with all that emissions gear. For some reason, the AMC engine didn't have to have it, and it made 200+ HP and the car would move. High-speed cornering, though, was basically done by the Hail Mary method. And those cars wouldn't drive for ^$ in the rain. I miss mine, but they're a full-time job. And you MUST have a garage, or the sun will heat-warp the body panels and then it will leak all over you. Always right over the crotch, too. And about five years ago, State Farm quit writing insurance for them, so the only option left is collector car insurance. Jess

I see that thing and all I can think about is how many sets of front tires you'd go through given all that camber. Jess

If you're serious about investing, always take the lump sum. You'll end up making more in the long run because your interest will be compounding on your investments. Plus, on a lot of these lotteries that pay in the form of an annuity (i.e., a certain amount over a 20- or 30- year period), those payments stop on your death. They do not necessarily transfer to your survivors. So if you punt off after a couple of years, away goes the money. Always read the fine print. Now, if you don't care about trying to play the game of can-I-use-compounding-interest-to-beat-the-annuity-payment, you can take $20 million lump, just invest it into a bunch of tax-free municipal bonds at 5 percent (very doable right now) and end up taking home $1 million federal and state tax-free (provided you invested in bonds from your home state, or a U.S. territory) every year for the rest of your life (you'd have to reinvest every time a bond got called, but that's not a big deal). I think I can live off $1 million tax free forever, by the way. So now we've turned $20 million lump into a series of $1 million tax-free annual payments, and assuming I live to 70, even though inflation is eating into my take-home (bond interest doesn't index for inflation), getting $40 million tax-free over that time period, I promise you I feel good about my standard of living. And I just kept myself from blowing it all on the front end by locking it into a laddered bond structure. Jess

Shelby, You'll be happy to know that I do, indeed, own an ohm meter now. Exactly how to use it, well, that's another story. But I do have one. Jess

Did a lot more testing with it today and now I'm not sure that I don't have an exhaust leak. I definitely have at least one and as many as three ticking lifters. One is ticking all the time. The other two come and go, and when they're all three singing together, it's hard to hear anything else. But I heard what sounded like a big exhaust leak this morning after a 30-mile trip, and it showed up again after the return trip. I got out, popped the hood, let the car cool down a little and the leak seemed to go away. However, I also have more information from the A/F gauge that supports an electrical problem: On a completely cold motor, my A/F readings are very precise. There is only one or two LEDs lit up at any given time. But when the car gets very warm, and the running/driving problems begin to show up, the A/F gauge goes somewhat nuts, with five or six LEDs lit up at the same time, and everything is very erratic. So here's where we're at in terms of what I think is causing this: 1) CTS 2) Lifter set 3) Exhaust leak? 4) TPS 5) Bad 02 sensor At this point, I'm going to swap in a new CTS, check my codes and that's about as far as I can go. I need more experienced ears to listen to the noises it's making before I go tearing down the hot side of the motor looking for a leak. Jess

Beats me, Shelby. This car has always run a little warm. And it's already got a 180 t-stat. Jess

It didn't start when we re-did the fans. The fans and radiator were done about seven years ago, at the same time we did the BSE on this car. These running/driving problems started about two years ago. Then, the car quit running for other reasons and it stayed parked until earlier this year. We fixed those other electrical problems, but the crappy running condition is still with us. Jess

I've had those other things (gasket, bad manifolds, etc.). This is definitely a lifter. We installed this head nearly six years ago and it was a little noisy from the start. There are some good aspects of this lifter -- if you're a half-quart low on oil, it gets loud. I guess I don't even need to use a dipstick anymore. Sounds like someone hitting a piece of pot metal with a small ball hammer when it starts making racket. Let the engine get warm enough or the oil lower than that, and at least one other lifter gets into the party, too. Jess

Update from tonight... Swapped the wires on the CTS, took it for a spin, no change. It's definitely temperature-related. And I'm in a good position to know pretty much exactly what temp is causing the problem: A few years ago, Grant (pure_insanity) and I installed a new radiator and changed the factory fan system out, installing aftermarket Zirgo fans. For the primary fan, we wired it to come on with a temp sensor at 180. For the secondary fan, we put in a variable control, so I could make it come on at whatever temperature I needed it. It's currently set between 190-195, and I wired up status lights on my dashboard so I could see precisely when it kicked in. Well, the problems come right before the secondary (195) fan kicks in. Starts running like crap all through the powerband, but worse on boost when the engine is loaded up, as described before. I made my last run tonight very late, when air temps had cooled into the upper 70s. I could never get the car to warm above 195, so the problems only came in very faintly. But earlier in the evening, when the air was still warm and the car could get a good heat in it, it ran like utter crap. And, the warmer the engine gets, the louder those lifters get. When engine temp is below 195, I barely hear the lifter. So something is happening here that is directly tied to a temperature of 195 degrees F. Either the TPS is having a resistance issue, 195 just happens to be when the lifters can't get a good oil supply/start failing, or an injector starts going downhill at that temp. Or maybe the CTS is just flat-out bad no matter how it's wired. I'll be checking codes in the next day or two and that should give more info. But I'm encouraged that I'm getting good work done here in regards to eliminating possibilities. Jess

AutoBodyGod, I'm sure the head needs it, but any kind of motor work is WAY above my comfort zone as a shadetree StarQuest owner. What you suggest will have to wait awhile, I'm afraid. Jimmy, you're right, my CTS is two individual wires. I may flip them tomorrow and go for a spin and see what I get. Jess

For the past 3 months -- and for about a year prior to this car sitting up for 2 years -- I'd been having a running/driveability problem with the car. It was hesitating under boost at low RPM, such as if you were to engage 5th gear at 50 mph going up a slight hill, and accelerate. The bottom end of the torque curve felt choppy. The problem has just gotten worse since I got the car running again. It's the same story nearly every time -- car is great for the first 3-5 minutes after it's cranked, when everything is cold, then it gets worse the warmer the engine gets. This past week, the problem got so bad it was almost stalling. I was having so many electrical issues, I felt that's what it must have been. Well, I finally got the electrical taken care of, and the problem was still there. And now I think it's mechanical. For one thing, I have a lifter making a ton of noise. It's an Alabama head, non-JV, and it's always been a little noisy. But now it's a da*n sewing machine. But what is going on really feels like ... like I just don't have a turbo connected to the car. The turbo in this car is a 16G, and it was built and installed back around 2002. However, if the turbo is bad, it's hiding it well. The car is not burning oil, and is not leaking oil. After a few spirited runs tonight, though, I noticed the hot side of the turbo glowing a little. The car has no pre-cat, but does have a main cat. But the cat was not glowing, and there's no rotten egg smell. The car is also running a little rich at almost all times, according to the A/F meter. I know my mileage sucks all of a sudden, and that didn't use to happen to this car. The car is not running hot, and there are no signs of a head gasket failure. One thing did help a little tonight, but not much: Plugging up the BOV. Things I haven't checked: The TPS, and the codes. I'm stopping by Radio Shack in the next couple of days to get a 12V LED. I suspect the 02 sensor is probably in need of replacement. But those loud lifters have me thinking this could be a mechanical problem. Jess

Just wanted to tell everyone that this is now fixed -- or more appropriately, it fixed itself. Jon Burgess and I took the cap off the fluid reservoir, pumped the clutch about 10 times and I guess we burped an air bubble out of it. Problem hasn't come back since. Jess

These things are plug-and-play for cars equipped with replaceable-element lights. Here's an example of some H7 replacements on eBay: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/2-X-Car-H7-18-SMD-LED-Xenon-White-Headlight-Bulbs-Light-_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQitemZ400138498405QQptZMotorsQ5fCarQ5fTruckQ5fPartsQ5fAccessories Just wondering if they were functional, or if they'd hurt the car. Looks cheap enough for me to take a chance on one, at least. Jess

It hiccuped a few times on the way home yesterday. Can't figure out what it is unless I'm about to lose a fuel pump, which would not surprise me. The other suspect is the ECI fusable link, which has been subjected to some extreme conditions lately (failure of the 87 igniter, for one) and was very hot the other day when I popped the hood. By the way, my Conquest does this too. Lost a fuel pump on Mother's Day a year or two ago. We have it towed home -- and the tow truck driver hooked her up properly, I watched -- and the next day, when the guy at the shop got in it to put it up on the rack, the right front outer tie rod end came completely apart all by itself. Had it done that on my trip the day before, it would have broken in the middle of a very nasty bend in the road. Jess

A couple of weeks ago, I had to switch my 87's igniter over to the 88 version after, among other things, a literal meltdown and near engine bay fire. So imagine my dismay this morning when the car starts bucking, and then dies on the side of the road on the way to work. I'm thinking, this just cannot be. So I open the hood, and what do I find? The little water hose that connects the turbo water line to the thermostat housing has sprung a leak, and is spewing water and steam everywhere. After using a lot of towels to pop open the radiator and reduce pressure, I duct-taped the hole up on the hose so I could refill the car with water and drive home (note: The reason I just happened to have duct tape with me was that I had to re-duct tape the front airdam before I left for work.). So now I have to figure out why the car died, and I assumed it was because of water getting in my new connections near the new igniter. But nope, they were dry. So I pulled the coil wire. It, too, was dry. I then checked all the spark plug wires, and even pulled the distributor cap and rotor off. Everything was dry. At that point, nothing to do but button it up and try to limp it home and switch cars, and it cranked up on the first shot and made it back home without a hitch (the duct tape patch even held). So why did it die? I don't know, but if it hadn't died exactly where it did, I would have gotten onto the freeway and been 10 miles away from the nearest exit. By that time, I would have run it completely out of water and goodness knows what I would have damaged. This is the fourth or fifth time in this car's life where it has done something completely inexplicable to forewarn me of a bigger problem. Sometimes, these things just want to live. Jess

Voted. Jess

Just did 636 miles in one today, Dallas to Prattville. I've been stranded twice in Jags, once in an old one that lost an alternator (fixed it the next day, drove it on in) and once in Knoxville, the only time I've ever had to make special arrangements. By contrast, our old Sigma and the three StarQuests I've owned have left us in more places than AT&T has bars. heck, I've spent more time in rental cars and hotels on account of my dad's Lincolns than I have with our Jags. I guess my point is I've reached the place in time where I've only got a certain amount of money to allocate to "significant" repair and upkeep, and I have to choose between what has become a glorified playtoy (the Starion) or a car I can actually work out of. Melena and I figured it up tonight: The Starion has been operational now during parts of four months over a two-year period. In each of those four months, it encountered a problem and needed to be either towed home, or to a shop. The other 20 months, it was dead in the yard. Jess

Every time I've replaced a slave cylinder, the total bill has been over $200. I think the master cylinder was about the same the last time, $200. The fluid was drained the last time we did one of the two (I remember because they charged me for new fluid). The talk of selling the car is mostly pent-up frustration. If you go back to the time before this car was parked, it was making at least one trip to a service center for something every month or two. By contrast, our two Jaguars haven't needed anything other than tires or oil in over a year. Jaguar gets a bad rap for maintenance anyway. It's not as bad as the stories. I guess my point is that most things I do I have to send in for repair. That includes ANYTHING -- no exceptions whatsoever -- that require the car to be off the ground, which by definition means clutch/suspension/rear end/etc. I cannot and will not work under a car in my yard. So either I end up getting the car towed every 4-5 weeks, or I have to take a half-day off work to drive the car down to the one shop that will work on it. I just can't do that. Jess

Man, I hope you're wrong about that, because we're still not altogether sure that we're going to be keeping this car. Having to replace both the slave and master cylinders would likely trigger a sale. One of them is already fairly new, I forget which, if not both of them. I know I've had 3 or 4 slave cylinders in this car over the last nine years. This car seems to eat them for snacks. Jess

I realize this is strange advice from a guy who is about to add a third Jaguar to his yard, but I would not touch an Audi or a VW, especially not a recent model. From a reliability standpoint, they are crap, and there have been no exceptions in my personal experience. My father-in-law had one of the New Beetles. Electrical system makes old Lucas Jaguar stuff look like NASA. First cousin had a Jetta. It never spent a consecutive 10,000 miles without having to go in for major surgery. Co-worker had one of the newer convertibles based on the Golf line. Her windows and headlights wouldn't always work, and then out of the blue lost a computer to a massive short circuit and the repair bill was $2k-plus. The only Volkswagen I'd consider owning is a Corrado, and even those have their issues. I'd rather own an old Alfa Romeo, and yes I'm being serious. I don't care how fast/smooth they feel. Jess