1989 colony park wagon rescued for sister :-)

I own a 1990 colony park wagon, my sister had just hit a deer with disastrous (for the car, not for her) results to her 1996 camry, and wanted something. I told her I knew how to do almost everything on my panther body, and could fix one up for her.
She goes to college in Iowa but was home for winter break.
For $850 I found a 1989 colony park woodie wagon just north of Lancaster PA (I live in Baltimore MD) with 84,000 miles and some nice goodies, like the heated windshield and 3.55 limited slip differential!
We then spent what should have been a relaxing holiday, pulling all-nighters to get this fixed up in time! It cost us about $1200 in parts, and 50+ hours in labor, to do everything. But it's a great wagon now, and for $2000 there's no cleaner car you can buy, let alone a full size wagon. Her first day back in iowa she texted me that she moved a mattress, bed, and dresser, in one trip! Can't do that in any other vehicle, that ALSO got 22mpg highway!
All that is left is some body work, which you'll forgive us if we ignore. We're pretty poor.

I was reminded of why most sane people buy new cars...
My god, was it a lot of work.
But a good question would be, what DIDN'T we do to this car?
It should want for almost nothing in the next several years, and should live to 30 years old no problem.
We assumed that nothing was maintained and just went from there!

My philosophy is that if I'm going to be a poor 20-something buying a sh*tty beater car, it has got to be the best maintained, smoothest-running sh*t beater car on the streets. I don't like ignoring steering play for months, living with an exhaust leak for months, considering blown shocks optional, etc. I work at sears on Sunday, and do see some such basket cases, where all the owner ever wants is an oil change no matter how desperately some other matters need attention. If it starts up and moves it's good is their philosophy...

So anyway!
I mostly hang out on grandmarq.net, and posted small photos (my sis is supposed to send me better ones), and a full list of EVERYTHING done here:
http://www.grandmarq.net/vb/showthread.php?45852-new-car-for-sister-finished-and-delivered-)

 

i wondered what happened to you... glad we have made a wagon nut out of ya!

 

Good job! Just proves that you can get ahead with hard work and determination. That deer turned her car into lemons and you made lemonade. :2_thumbs_up_-_anima

 

Arghhh! The link won't work for us non members. Can you post us up some here when you get some? Great job helping your sister out.

 

Yup! Sorry I never made it back to pittsburgh.
My own car has been running great. I need to realign the steering wheel after replacing the pitman arm, but that's about it for any recent repairs!

Photos attached, and here's the post from grandmarq.net:





Bought a 1989 white woodie colony park for my sister two weeks ago. It had 84,000 miles and was in relatively good shape; owned by an elderly couple yada yada. We paid $850, and you can do worse for the money. I've seen 230,000 mile GMs for sale in my area for $500, and those are just going to be worn out.
Less rust than my own garage-kept 1990, and a lot of thing still worked There was some wetness around the valve covers but no other fluid leak that I could see. The tailgate lock actuator was frozen stuck in the unlocked position, and the antenna shaft was crimped. The right front window motor and lock actuator were both dead. The carpets and leather could use some cleaning and the steering wheel needed a cover. It needed tires, more for dry rot than tread depth. On the upside, it did have some upgrades: 100amp alternator and heated instaclear windshield, power steering cooler, transmission fluid cooler, and 3.55 posi rear differential.

My sister is replacing a 1996 camry, and goes to college in iowa, so we were going to fix it up in the 2 weeks of her christmas break, after work and on saturdays for me, before she drove it 900 miles and 16 hours back to iowa from baltimore.

I drove it home from lititz PA to baltimore MD to let the restoration begin! I didn't quite make it, though; I got 50 miles out of 70 before the right front caliper started locking up. oops.
Among other problems, in addition to the giant list my sister and I had already planned for this car, we found out once we got into it that the water pump was in fact leaking, as was the fan clutch; and after we did those things and drove it for a couple days, on a very cold day we decided something was not quite right with the heat (so out came the dash!), and on almost the last day, the idler pulley bearings suddenly went, which was a small thing but an annoying surprise (do bearings ever give any warning? One day it made no noise, then the next I start it up and suddenly I hear this bearing whine. I was scared when I initially thought it was coming from the a/c clutch pulley...).

Here was our list of EVERYTHING to do, which includes a lot of things assumed not to have been done and are part of routine maintenance after 23 years and 84,000 miles, and some things, like the water pump and dash R&R, that I'd hoped not to have to do:

differential fluid flush
brake flush
power steering flush
coolant flush
oil change
engine air filter

professionally undercoated

4x new tires, mounted & balanced. threw out wheel locks and replaced with regular nuts.
4x new shocks. Rears had been replaced with carquest at some point but were soft, fronts were original and leaking/shot. Did all four.

both front calipers, and rubber lines, given that the RF had frozen on me. Premium napa pads, which cost as much as the calipers! Put police calipers on (cheaper).
both front rotors, again, given that the RF had been overheated and was likely warped. These cost more than the calipers & pads together *sigh*
both front wheel bearings just because

new battery, and all three battery cables. Cranks like new now!

5x door latch striker bushings; all were missing.
removed tailgate lock actuator; frozen
replaced RF door lock actuator; had a NOS one on hand
replaced RF window motor. It had formerly been replaced with a refurbished motor already, which had failed again...
replaced front speakers with upgrade.
replaced LF door handle with cleaner junkyard handle; also tan interior of course.
installed wheel cover, cupholders
blind spot mirrors
new keys cut
replaced crimped/snapped antenna mast with new.

valve cover gaskets
cleaned egr, iac; new gaskets
vacuum lines under and behind intake. some were more rotted than others; line from charcoal canister in particular.
pcv valve, screen/filter, & grommet
upper intake gasket, because it had been removed.
brass tv bushing installed.

O2 sensors as wear item/ just because. If I'd remembered how much of a beast teh passenger side was, I wouldn't have started, hah!
spark plugs and wires. plugs looked to have been replaced recently-ish, wires still said 1989 on them!
new brass rotor & distributor cap

The ENTIRE cooling system, and i do mean ENTIRE. I know on my own car I had a lower radiator hose fail on the highway and overheated it (though I pulled over the instant I saw the temp gauge approaching the red, a moment before Check Engine came on), and then the very next day, with a new lower radiator hose, the heater hose split. She's driving 900 miles to iowa, and we couldn't risk anything like that. At 23 years old and friable rubber, a failed coolant hose is an inevitability.
SO:
9x hoses: 4 heater hoses (3 actually: replacement has 1 molded hose with the whole length of 2 joined hoses in the original), upper and lower radiator hose, 2 egr cooler hoses, bypass hose.
radiator: It looked good when I bought it, but once on a lift with the fan shroud out, noticed it just starting to seep where the passenger side tank met the fins. Far from dripping/rupture, but not going to get better, and we're going for perfection and a long life for this car here!
radiator cap: $5 no-brainer insurance.
thermostat: $5 no-brainer insurance
fan clutch: sadly, it was dripping grease once I had the fan out and could see it properly. Not otherwise on my "just because" list, and added $30 to the repair bill.
heater core: likely partially clogged. In fact, when we pulled the dash out, we found that the temp blend door was binding and was fixed with some penetrating oil at the shaft on the blend door; but we had the dash out anyway, so what the hell. The hard part was already done.
water pump: also didn't seem to be dripping when I bought the car, but once I was taking it apart and could see and manually rotate the pump when I was doing the drivebelts, saw that grease was coming out of the snout and some roughness to the bearings. $35 and 5 unplanned hours later got 'er done *sigh*

while doing heater core and lubricating climate box cables, also replaced instrument cluster bulbs while I had it out.

 

I work at a volvo dealership now, as of this past July, so I had a bay to bring it into.
Most of my coworkers laugh at me, but one of the service managers applauds my restoring these old wagons

My coworkers insist there are better options for cheap&reliable transportation... but then I see that one spends literally thousands on his jeep and volkswagon, another bought a nissan for $300 but it NEEDED AN ENGINE, and another (younger, stupider) bought an overpriced caprice that he still doesn't have running 2 months later. I'm not sure what's wrong with it; a lot of steering/suspension at the least.
And a guy who likes to flip cars and invited me to the mannheim auctions, most recently bought a mercury mountaineer that needs an engine... that he didn't guess at.

So, you know, my sister could do a lot worse for $2000 fixed up.
looking at that list, I'm sure you'll agree, this wagon ought to want for nothing for tens of thousands of miles!

And if an alternator goes next month, for this car, that'll be like $80. And if the transmission needs rebuilding at 120,000 miles, that'll be $1000-$1500. Still a lot cheaper than many a modern car!
I see the repair bills our volvo customers pay; they're terrifying. 5 hours to install a $300 radiator ($800), 6 hours for an alternator on volvo's v8 engine (you need to remove the driveshaft and jack the engine up to get it out). $7000 for a transmission. Twenty-odd computer modules, none for less than $400, and some of them die quite frequently.

And then you can look at that huge list of work that we did for under $1200 in parts. For example, brake calipers were just $15!

 

That's great, that would have been 2 yrs worth of work for me,lol. I like those turbine wheels on that car.

 

Good job Bernini. That CP is way too nice not to be loved and driven. I know your sister is going to love it.

 

Wish my sister wanted one. I'd set her up!

 

Hah! Yeah, just found another colony park on craigslist... if only I can convince my godmother that she wants it (fixed up)! ...she drives a 1995 honda odyssey with 300,000 miles on it, so she's the next close friend in line who will be needing a new ride.

I had my sister and a friend of ours helping out, too. Late late nights in the shop with snacks and pizza!
That last night I was so beat, my sister reassembled the dash, and our friend did the doors. My sister without any tutelage, either.
Although... she didn't quite bolt up the steering column all the way, or get the gear indicator collar resecured! oops! I even told her that she could walk across the street to home depot and get a large hose clamp, but no no, electrical tape had it down tight... Hopefully she's fixed it by now.

But if you take a look, this is a ton of work we did to an 84,000 mile wagon, with almost no rust, a dirty but otherwise unabused interior, and the owners did clearly do *some* regular maintenance (clean engine, so regular oil changes; new rear shocks at some point, fairly fresh spark plugs), and only teh valve covers leaked any oil.
This was in good condition; no basketcase.
And we still found $1200 in parts worth of work to do on it, that took almost 50 hours. At a ford dealer, you'd be looking at a $6000-$7000 repair bill for a car that, if totalled, an insurer would give you a grand for.

Is it any wonder people dispose of old cars?

Because we did the work ourselves, because it started in good condition and ended in perfect operating condition, because I know these cars now and I know that from this day on it will be cheap to maintain (in a way that, say, a lincoln or volvo with their electronics issues may not be), this worked out for us. But the equation is not always in favor of rescuing a car, and emotional attachment, nostalgia, the pride of owning an increasingly rarer car just by virtue of age, have to factor in to even the scales.

 

For case in point, I work at volvo, and a coworker is trying to sell me his 2002 V70, "wouldn't it be better than that old ford you're driving?"

...the difference being that my old ford has 122k miles, with rebuilt transmission with 20k miles, HO engine with just 2k miles on it, and a list of loving care that includes everything we just did to my sister's colony park, and a bit more. It's in better shape than many 10yr old cars, and parts are cheap.

This v70 has 220,000 miles (impressive for those cars, really) and the list of work it requires is 2 pages of line items long. The list of parts prices, even at *my* prices, is around $2500 just in parts. And the interior is "roached" (trashed, ruined, etc.).

He'll sell it for $200, but... some cars are beyond saving, it just needs to be acknowledged. You can't make a fine marble carving with veinous and fissured raw stone, and if you're going to invest your time and loving care in an older wagon, it needs to be one that's starting from a good condition in the first place.