The Real Bev > wrote:
>
>We could probably do that ourselves, we have a little 5" lathe that
>hasn't moved for 40 years. Not gonna do it, though. The car is at the
>point where stuff is just going to start breaking and I don't want to
>deal with it any more. I really am superstitious about this -- fix one
>thing and the car will deliberately break something else.

Do it! Press the bushings out... if you don't have an arbor press, you
can put a drill bit into your drill press upside-down and use the rear
of the bit to press the thing out. Take them to a motor shop and see if
they can match them.

If the originals are just pot metal bushings that are part of the casting
(which would be something horrible only GM would do), then measure the
diameter of the shaft and go to a motor shop and see if they can find
something to fit... then drill out the casting to press them in.

If you have to machine bushings, don't try and ream the center. Scraping
the oilite will seal up the pores in the metal which are holding oil in.
Use a drill bit on the lathe to do the center, and use a newly sharpened
drill bit and run slow and cool.

And yes... the car WILL break something else soon. A lot of engineering
on the part of GM has gone into making sure that everything in the car
will fall apart at the same time. My statics professor in college had
worked for GM and thought this was such a wonderful and ingenious practice.
I was (and remain) kind of horrified by it.

>>>I truly wish my mom had asked us before buying this POS. A "luxury" car
>>>with 85,000 miles on the clock should NOT need this much crap in
>>>addition to the crap it's already demanded.
>>
>> GM quality has improved a lot since this car was made. It hasn't improved
>> enough, mind you, but things are much better today.
>
>Never again. The 73 Dodge pickup is made of real metal. It goes, it
>stops (well, it needs some serious brake work, but it stops if you
>pump), and its problems are understandable by humans.

There is a reason why the US car industry lost badly to the Japanese in
the seventies and eighties.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."