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Activity |
| April 11, 1999 | Initial purchase. |
| April 15, 1999 | Recharge air conditioner with R-12 freon. |
| May 3, 1999 | Change speedometer drive gear to 30-tooth to better match the oversize tires. |
| May 4, 1999 | New fuel filler cap. |
| May 25, 1999 | Alternator rebuilt. |
| June 23, 1999 | Install Autozone rebuilt starter motor. |
| July 28, 1999 |
R-12 refrigerant installed 4/15 has leaked out. Air conditioner is converted to R-134a refrigerant. A/C hose blew later that day. :^( Still no a/c. |
| July 30, 1999 | Install new MoPar voltage regulator. |
| August 7, 1999 | Install AmsOil Series 2000 0W-30 synthetic motor oil. |
| August 29, 1999 | Stock water pump failed. Installed new high-output aluminum pump. |
| September 19, 1999 | Leak in power steering hose. Installed new hoses. |
| October 23, 1999 | Right front wheel bearing failed on Sept. 19. Race was welded to the stub axle. Lovely. Many hours, two trips to the welding shop, and two parts shipments from K&D later, all is well with the wheel bearings. Wish I could say the same about the power steering. It's still leaking fluid from the area where the steering column enters the rack. |
| October 31, 1999 | Replaced seals in power steering valve assembly. Leak fixed. Steering wheel is off-center, though. |
| November 1-10, 1999 | Stripped and repainted engine bay side air vents. Carefully stripped top of scuttle vent. Had cracked alternator bracket welded; painted it and re-installed. Idler pulley for water pump belt was missing; painted and installed junkyard replacement. Installed new fan belts. Fixed some broken connectors on the alternator wires. Fixed a loose wire on the cigar lighter. We can't be having that radar detector lose power without warning, now, can we? :^) |
| November 12, 1999 | Left front freeze plug, the one behind the engine mount, seems to have failed. |
| January 5-7, 2000 | It was a rubberized replacement freeze plug that popped out. Installed new steel plug. |
| January 10, 2000 | Re-aligned steering wheel. Fixed loose horn wire. Horn now works for the first time. Horn toggle switch on dash has no wires connected to it, so I don't know if I'm hearing the "city" horn or the "highway" horn. It sounds like a "city" horn to me, but I think I can hear an air compressor start up just before the horn sounds. |
| March 6, 2000 | Installed redneck-engineered rear mounting brackets on the leaf springs. These brackets are 1.5-inches longer than stock and are a cheap and effective fix to the sagging rear springs. The local welding shop made them for me for $15. I took them one of the old brackets and said make me a new one that is 1.5 inches longer. |
| May 15, 2000 | Noticed some leaking around the radiator cap when the engine is hot. Installed a new 16-pound cap. |
| May 20, 2000 | Began installing the new air conditioning kit from K&D. This kit contains everything to replace all the components in the engine bay and convert to R134a refrigerant. Removed the old Mopar compressor and the old plumbing. Installed the new Sandin rotary compressor, so at least I can still drive the car. |
| May 30, 2000 | As part of installing the new a/c kit, I removed the radiator and took it to a radiator shop for a check-up. The guy said someone had used Bar-Leak or the equivalent at some point, and half the radiator tubes were plugged. No wonder the damn thing was having cooling problems! It's all cleaned out now, I should have no more cooling problems. Based on messages on the Jensen-cars list, it appears the 16-pound cap is too much, I'm switching to a lower pressure rating, something in the 7- to 10-pound range. |
| June 14, 2000 | Installed a new starter solenoid after noticing sparks flying out of the old one every time I cranked the starter! |
| June 21, 2000 | Bloody alternator bracket cracked again, in approximately the same place as before (see Nov 1, 1999 above). Someone mentioned that the alternator is a GM unit, not a Chrysler. I need to take the car to the auto-electric shop and have the experts tell me what kind of alternator I have. If it's a GM, I'll replace it with the correct Chrysler unit, maybe that will keep the alt bracket from breaking. |
| July 10, 2000 | Installed a new high-performance 160-degree thermostat. Using a brewing thermometer, determined that the coolant stabilized at 162 degrees after 10-15 minutes of idling the engine, but the temperature guage was nearly into the red. So there is still a problem with either the temp sending unit or the temp guage. |
| July 22, 2000 | Fixed a broken ground wire on the cooling fans. Installed new temp guage sending unit. Fixed fuel filler electric door opening mechanism, a wire on the rocker switch in the dash had come loose. Fixed horn rocker switch by using innards from the one Frank Schwartz gave me. The in-town horns still don't work, though. There is a click in the engine bay, so the horns themselves need work. The air horns still work fine. |
| August 3, 2000 | Removed the tires from the car and took them in to be balanced. I am too paranoid about a broken wheel stud, so I won't let the tire shop touch the lug nuts. |
| August 4, 2000 | Remounted the tires and took it to the same shop for alignment. They said one of the tie rod ends is too sloppy, they can't do an alignment. Keri at K&D said that when the DPO had the rack rebuilt, he did not renew the tie rod ends. So I ordered tie rod ends, as well as alignment shims, and will get the alignment done once the new tie rod ends are installed. |
| August 19, 2000 | Installed the new floor mats, which came from Griot's Garage. The mats fit perfectly. See a picture here. |
| August 24, 2000 | Installed new tie rod ends. Carefully bent radiator overflow tube toward the front of the car to allow for mounting of a/c condensor. |
| August 25, 2000 | Had front end aligned. Discovered small leak around radiator overflow tube. So I wasn't careful enough. [sigh...] |
| August 26, 2000 | Pulled radiator and had radiator shop fix overflow tube. Reinstalled radiator. Also fixed broken connector on ground wire from alternator to alternator bracket. |
| September 28, 2000 | Flushed engine block twice with Prestone Super Flush and backflushed twice with water though the heater hose. Seems to run a bit cooler now. |
| April 16, 2001 | Installed carburetor heat shield (Mr. Gasket part number 3712). It's a flat aluminum plate with various spacers and gaskets. Click here for a picture of the gasket (courtesy of www.jegs.com). The shield had to be trimmed so as not to block access to the coil mounting bolt. Click here for picture of the trimmed notch. |
| April 19, 2001 | Installed new battery. |
| April 19-26, 2001 | Oil pressure guage is reading zero. Yikes! Grounded guage wire, guage reads maximum, so guage is working properly. Had mechanic check oil pressure with mechanical guage. 60psi at warm idle, 70psi when he revs the engine. Problem has to be sending unit. Ordered new sender from K&D. Gauge works fine with new sender. |
| April 25, 2001 | Installed heat shielding on fuel line from fuel pump to carb. Haven't had any more vapor locking problems since installed the carb heat shield and the fuel line shielding. |
| September 20, 2001 | Removed incorrect Flex-a-lite twin cooling fan setup and replaced with correct shroud and 3-fan setup. Damn those Timic fans move some air! It runs a lot cooler now, I'm much less worried about overheating than before. Also installed a PSM1 fan controller. PSM1 used to have a web site at www.psm1.com but they have gone out of business. |
| September 25, 2001 | Installed new voltage regulator. Also installed new cruise control sensor to make speedometer work properly. Even though it worked OK before, it bounced around a lot. The old sensor finally failed. With the new sensor the speedo reads steady at all speeds, so obviously the old sensor was causing the bouncing. Here is a picture of the sensor. |
| October 1, 2001 |
Generic voltage regulator turned out to be crap. Upon K&D's recommendation, installed Mopar Performance part number P3690731. This regulator puts out a constant 13.5 volts and was designed for racing applications. However, other Int owners report good results. It's sort of a sledgehammer solution to the problem, but with this car, too much voltage is way better than too little. Also installed modern electronic turn-signal flasher to replace the old-style bi-metallic flasher which had failed. |
| December 22, 2003 | Been fighting a charging problem for months. Finally conceded defeat and took it to a repair shop. They rebuilt the alternator and fixed some shorting wires. Odd, I'd had the alternator checked a couple of times and it always checked out OK. All's well that ends well, the Star is charging fine now and I'll be able to drive it more than the few miles the battery would allow. |
| May 22-26, 2004 | Getting it ready for J2004E. Installed new 5-row radiator. Finally got around to installing relays for the headlights. |
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