1985 Monte Carlo SS - My Ongoing Story
 

I picked up a black Monte Carlo SS in February of 2017. It was in really good shape with no rust issues anywhere and a semi new paint job and decals. The only visible issue was a small tear in the seat under the driver's butt. Other than that, it was solid. Just over 100,000 miles. Here are some pics.

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I am going to chronicle my ups and downs as I continue to clean her up

These look like the stock wheels although it appears that they were painted gold and black. I actually kind of like the look but the previous owner for some reason took a sharpie and wrote 35psi over the gold paint on every wheel.

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The car was leaking coolant when we inspected it before buying it. We got scared because we couldn't find the leak and we ready to walk away from the sale. Eventually we saw that is was coming from a hose which was easy enough to replace so we towed her home.

The next day we replaced the heater hose, filled her with coolant and she hasn't leaked since. :-)

I finally got insurance on the car and got her registered and put plates on so yesterday was the first time I took her on the road. She ran well but the engine was running way too fast. Today was the first time I had any free time so I brought her over to my buddies house for a quick inspection before I have to get her officially inspected by next week.

On the way to his house I stopped to pick up some egg sandwiches. It was about 12 degrees out at the time and when I went to open the drivers door it was very loose. I could tell the mechanism behind the handle broke because you could just lift the handle without any effort. Luckily the passenger side was good so I had to enter the car through there and slide across the bench to the drivers side. I could still open the drivers door from inside the car though. The engine was still running too fast.

I eventually got to my buddies house with the egg sandwiches and we put the Monte up on ramps and pulled the oil drain plug. Nothing but black oil came out. The magnet didn't have any shavings on it which was cool. I know the car was garaged but not started for about 4 years prior to me purchasing it.

Next up, the oil filter. What a pain. We tried metal strap filter wrenches. We tried the wrenches you put on the end of the filter. It wouldn't budge at all. We finally grabbed a huge pair of channel locks and she eventually broke free. I have no idea the last time the oil and filter were changed but like I said, I know the car hadn't been started in 4 years prior to it being put up for sale. We installed the new filter, put the drain plug back and filled her with 5qts of 10w30 Pennzoil. (Go Joey Logano!)

There was too much play in the front so we ordered new tie rods, sway bar and associated parts.

We pulled a plug out and while it looked like it was in good shape, the gap was only about 35 when it should have been 45. That's a project for another day because they aren't all that easy to access.

Disc brakes have plenty of meat left but we're unsure of the drums since we're kind of unfamiliar with them.

Greased up some of the fittings up front.

Tranny fluid seemed good and contemplating flushing it.

Next up, the door handle. With the help of youtube we finally got the door panels off. You could clearly see that we weren't the first ones to take the panels off because there was only bare metal once we got the panel off. Someone must have pulled the door strap out or something because it looks like a new piece of sheet metal was welded and ground down to hold the screw.

Anyway, you could clearly see that the rod that attaches the latch to the exterior door handle came out and was no longer attached to the handle. It was an easy enough fix it you could fit your hands in there but naturally that wasn't easy. We both took turns attempting to attach the rod to the back side of the door handle and about 90 minutes later my buddy finally got it. We didn't want to rod to fall out again so we just a weld on the other side of the arm so that it can't fall out again. I'm sure there was a cotter pin or something there before that broke off but now we don't have to worry. :-)

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I took the opportunity to clean the door since we had the panels off. We then hit all the moving parts inside the door with lithium grease before cleaning the door panels and reinstalling them.

We weren't planning on working on the door handle today but that was an awesome surprise this morning. lol On the plus side, it's all lubed up now and working better than before.

Lookin good, I just bought a 87 m.c. and trying to find out how many lube points there are on the car, do you remember how many on your car?, also is there a lube fitting on the u-joint?. Thanks Ken