'96 Century general project thread

[LeftVentricle]

I took the wagon on a 3000 mile road trip last month, and it performed admirably. No issues, averaged 27 miles per gallon, with a couple tanks hitting 29. The trip itself was unremarkable. We went to visit my wife's grandparents in Russell, KS. Coming from Las Vegas, I am unused to things closing at 9 pm, as I found out when I went to get a nip of booze for the wife at 9:30.

There was an enormous rain storm that I had to drive through without my wipers, since the passenger side wiper blade decided to fuck off the arm. That was fun, and not at all harrowing.

Not much else to report. I will probably spend some quality time with my yellow '92 Century sedan in the near future. It has quite a bit of deferred maintenance that needs to be addressed. Oil change, transmission service, engine and transmission mounts. I'll make sure I take pictures of the mess that is the mounts.

OH! And I applied a new badge to the wagon. This is probably one of the very few cosmetic modifications I will do to this car: Buick tri-shield and Century name badge on the tailgate. This generation of Century has name badges on the quarter panels, but they fell off long ago. That, and my "RUNNING IN THE 90'S" and Roadkill bumper stickers.



And today's edition of "What made you think that was a good idea?", fridge on the roof.

[Purple pit]

Oh, well guess that leaves him out.

[robertisaar]

OBD2? don't look at me, what little I've dealt with it, I'm not super fond of.

[Purple pit]

You may have to PM some of the major players here. Ben or 3X00 mod or Robertisaar(spelling?).Forgetting a few others(sorry guys). Milzy could help too. Can't help much other than to say: yes on the wideband. Oh and if you got a better R/T time would have had a 16.

Could always do a cold air intake to help match the exhaust mods. With a heat wrap for those hot NV days. Not sure on the size of your down pipe, just know that the one on my car is a restriction.

Very true on what is the most important!

[LeftVentricle]

I keep joking about how, maybe if I had just taken a shit before I went to the track I could have made it into the 16s! SO close I can taste it!

I think I'm about at the limit of what I can do without going into more serious modifications. I will more than likely be doing up a complete exhaust, probably using the manifolds that came with the Malibu engine. The routing is completely different than what is stock for my car, so it'll have to be custom from the manifolds back. Toward that end, I have purchased a Magnaflow 14266 muffler, which is specified for an F-body. Transverse mounting, 2.5 in, dual 2.25 out. Will mount in the stock muffler's location. That will have to wait though.

I also purchased HP Tuners. I haven't done anything of note with it yet, other than turning off reporting of those EVAP codes I talked about in the video above, and changing the tire/gear constant to match the shorter tires so the speedometer reads correctly. I am a little intimidated by the program, I'll be honest. WAY too much potential to fuck something up. I don't see how I can figure out why the PCM continues to report a lean running condition, since when I logged a couple of drives, it didn't report anything about the air-fuel ratio. Do I need a wideband for that, or can I do something to change the fueling without one? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Beyond that, I don't know. Since this is the family car, reliability and good fuel economy are of paramount importance. Delving deeper into mods tends to jeopardize both of those things, as far as I've seen.

If anyone thinks it would be of help, I am attaching my current tune and the log I recorded.

[Purple pit]

Nice! Got any more plans to lower the ET?

[LeftVentricle]

Lightness + shorter front tires = over 1/2 second improvement in ET. No mechanical changes. Before and after.



Also, on today's edition of "Inappropriate Burnouts"...

[Purple pit]

Looks like hand welds. If they are good ones then you should be just fine.

[LeftVentricle]

I bought the radiator from Genesis Auto Parts. Made by Silla.

[robertisaar]

that radiator an ebay special?

if it's any indication, a lot of the cheaper radiators I've seen/installed tend to have end-tank seals in surprisingly short amounts of time, making all aluminum units rather attractive.

[LeftVentricle]

Minor update.

I don't know if I mentioned this, but my yellow '92 sedan had some interesting kludges when I bought it. One of them was a toggle switch that powered the fuel pump. Since it was literally lamp cord going straight to the battery, it needed to go. I found out that the reason that switch was there was that the relay and fuse had gone out. Why someone would go to the effort of hot-wiring the pump instead of replacing a $10 relay that took less than five minutes, I'll never know. The problem lie in the fact that they directly wired the fuel pump to the battery and switch, inside the tank. This pinched the o-ring that seals the top of the tank where the sender goes, and allowed all manner of outside air and water to get in and rust the inside. As a consequence, it clogs filters every few weeks and has eaten three pumps.

I bought a new tank and sender from Rock Auto and slammed it in today. I didn't take pictures, because I'm sure most of you know what it's like to pull and replace a fuel tank. Hopefully that's the end of that issue. It damn well better be.

Also, since I didn't want to soak myself in coolant, I hired a mobile mechanic to replace the water pump. The gasket had been leaking for a while, and with another Las Vegas summer approaching, keeping the engine cool is a priority. $211 was totally worth not having to do it myself.

Speaking of keeping things cool, I got a hold of this:


All-aluminum radiator to replace the plastic one. It seems to be put together pretty well. Only cost $100.












I will be installing it tomorrow most likely. I will take a few pictures of that though. I have a 2500 mile road trip planned for spring break, so making sure I don't end up on the back of a truck in Bumfuck, NM, is kind of important.

[LeftVentricle]

It doesn't seem like anyone's really following this anymore, considering how dead this forum has been since the software changeover, but I picked up some 16" Grand Am SE wheels and put on Nexen 225-45 tires. I bought them for occasional racing purposes, since the shorter tire changes my effective final drive from 2.97 to 3.16. Hopefully that will let me pick up a tenth or two on the strip.

I may go back to the yard and grab the other two and put on some tall tires for the rear, like 225-60, give the car some old school rake.

[LeftVentricle]

[Purple pit]

That kind of thing is the worst. Knowing that you could have changed the outcome by just changing your mind on what to do at a given time. Thinking too deeply about that can drive you nuts though.

[LeftVentricle]

Always hate the feeling like every time you let your guard down and live a little you have to pay for it one way or another. It's not true, but hard to avoid thinking that way when things like this happen.

That's almost exactly how I felt. If I had continued on with the rest of the Roadkill group and camped out at the track and had even more fun, my mother-in-law probably would have parked the yellow car in the driveway that night, and it wouldn't have been hit. Me wanting to be somewhat responsible and only have a little bit of fun seemingly led directly to someone fucking my other car up.