Project Chronicle

My mechanic Jay called with the good news recently that the long-standing (and unintentionally long) Lexus LX450 / Toyota Land Cruiser project has finally hit its point of substantial completion - from the mechanical side, anyway.

The rebuilt engine has been turned up and run, with no apparent issues. Jay claims it runs well with no obvious issues arising from being torn down and rebuilt piece-by-piece after the long-festering headgasket issue revealed that the internal coolant intrusion has led to corrosion materializing between the head and the block. 

Jay has not only mated the decked and refreshed head with the cleaned-up block but also installed an Old Man Emu lift 3-inch lift kit, which looks fantastic in the photos he sent me. There's also a new ARB brush guard as well. A Gobi-X rear bumper is en route, and some IPF driving lamps will also be installed. Then, we kick it over to my body guy Nelson to fix the rust in the rear inner fenders; I may have him stick a slab of metal in the back to replace the rusty rear cross-member, but not sure if it really matters with the monster rear bumper on there.

More to come, but big time milestone days, for sure. 

When you see a car finally wearing a consistent shade of paint after years of being naked or otherwise clad in shoddy paintwork, it's a big moment. It's as close to being reborn as a car can be. For the 190E 2.3-16 Cosworth project, this represents a major milestone that hits just shy of its fifth birthday in my possession. 

Smoke Silver has never been a particularly sexy color, but it is a staple of 1980s-era Mercedes-Benz products. The Cosworth came in either this champagne-tinged silver or black, and while the latter is harder to find, I have fond memories of my Dad's 300E that wore the same color. Right now, the car is supposedly looking good but I'm no longer in RI so I can't even view it. But the guy painting is said he'd just like to buff it out a little before turning it over. 

Then we begin interior re-assembly, which is far cheaper to have my body guy do than to have the actual mechanic's shop take on. So, we're still a few days away from it leaving the body shop for good, but it's safe to say the hard work is finally done. 

A few days ago, the SRS light popped on the E55. When I purchased the car, this light was illuminated for unknown reasons, but it was cleared and off for the better part of four months after it spent a week at my shop in Rhode Island. 

Now, I'm a week away from getting it inspected here in Maryland and the SRS light pops on (because of course it does.) After reading numerous old forum posts, the consensus seems to be that the Foxwell NT530 scanner and code reader - a Chinese made device with virtually no customer support - is the way to go, especially since they sell it with Mercedes-specific coding and a 38 pin connector for attaching to the car via the fuse box. 

I got it from Amazon for about $200 and gave it a whirl today. Historically, getting rid of an SRS fault code has been quite tricky, with most owners telling folks in this predicament to suck it up and go to the dealer; thankfully, my code was wiped clean with ease, so kudos to this Chinese-made scanner for building a product that actually works and saved me a trip to the shop.

One of the final projects completed before I left Rhode Island was to fix some small rust spots on the frame of the Audi S6's windshield. The idea here is that the S6 may very well live outside at times, and any rust currently on the car is likely to get worst with prolonged outdoor exposure.

The job was pretty simple: remove windshield, remove rust, paint, installed used windshield I procured last month. The rust thankfully had not gone deep into the A-pillar but because of the need to do this job quickly and without matching the roof, there's some flaws in the paint. Mainly, there was so much wax on the car from when I was desperately trying to bring the trashed finish back to life, that small bubbles appeared as the paint dried. It's meaningless - I'm the only one who will notice it - and the price paid for the work was more than fair.

The windshield is a nice bonus, as it's a very clean piece of PPG glass that takes the place of another aftermarket windshield that had cracked and had numerous chips. 

It's not the most rewarding project but it will help reduce the possibilty of the S6 beginning to rust as it resides outside. 

One of the better updates I've gotten lately from Jay is that the engine is back in the LX450. Which means we're:

- a few days closer to it being fully tethered to the car and getting its first start (right now, the bellhousing is loosely attached, but that's it);

- a few weeks closer to it going to the bodyshop for rust repairs in the rear door inner fenders;  

- and then off for a quick stereo install, and hopefully, headed down to Maryland to resume daily driving duties. 

I haven't driven it since January, so yes, I'm excited to see it comes this far - but we're not home yet. 

Progress is progress these days, no matter if it's an inch or a mile. 

We pushed through an incredible amount of work before moving to Maryland, with the Audi S6, BMW 325is, and Mercedes-Benz E55 all getting long-simmering projects wrapped up before leaving town. 

The E55 was a pretty solid car overall, but a few lingering issues remained: the A/C showed signs of previous dye testing and my shop assessed that the evaporator and compressor were in need of replacement. Well, we charged the system back in May and guess what? It lost barely any refrigerant, meaning the system was far tighter than expected. 

We did flag a few other issues, including a weak auxiliary cooling fan (replaced); a busted HVAC resistor (caused the system to run full-blast at all times); and a fan clutch near death based on how slowly it was rotating. With those components replaced, we now have a fairly buttoned-up HVAC system, and hopefully have bought some time before the evaporator and compressor someday do reveal themselves to be problematic. 

I also elected to have the shocks replaced, as the car still had the OEM Bilsteins and it had previously been lowered on H&R springs, which I believed contributed to a very harsh ride. Koni Sports were swapped in and definitely increased the composure of the ride.

With all that done, the very daily-friendly E55 is already more so than before.

The bulk of my recent move to Maryland is complete, meaning the parts from the garage are in a storage unit down here and the three cars (+1 for the Eurovan) that were ready to leave are safely on the ground. 

This was a big lift and doesn't even get into the usual stresses and hurdles of moving out of state. The S6, E30, and E55 got loaded up on a trailer with a new hauler who was extremely competent and affordable, a rare combination these days. 

I'm always amazed by how you can tell whether you're working with an experienced transporter. The way they latch the cars down, the condition of the truck and trailer, and their general confidence when faced with challenges. We couldn't get all three cars on until we arranged them in the order you see here, to the point that the Audi had to kiss the bumper of the E30 to fit. But the E30 has a thick, rubber insert running the length of the bumper, so you can get away with this in order to get the cars on. Not so with any other combination. 

Overall, it's a relief to have this much done. The 911 will come down in the coming weeks, with the Trooper RS and LX450 unknown in terms of an arrival date. And the Cosworth, of course, is anyone's guess.

I swung by Jay's 4WD today to leave my beloved Trooper RS with him while we move on down to Maryland. Jay will fix the leaking headgasket and button up a few other details while it's there, which hopefully won't be for an extended stay.

In addition to dropping off the Trooper, I also checked out the LX450 which is getting closer to completion. The engine is reassembled and awaiting installation. Jay also installed the three-inch lift kit I bought from Old Man Emu, so plenty of other work is getting down while he prepares for the labor-intensive aspect of dropping the engine back in. Jay recommends getting a different caster kit than what came with the kit, along with longer rear sway bar brackets. 

Jay removed the full wiring harness to make egress easier, and also cleaned up some old heater hoses that serviced the now-inop rear seat heater. The truck still needs a good deal of sorting before it's running and driving, but at least we can see some major work has been done and that we're on the home stretch. 

While I hadn't intended to put any more money into the Trooper RS before relocating - especially with the news that the headgasket had started leaking - logistics demanded that I do something with the truck before moving it over to my mechanic Jay's house as a fall/winter project. 

The bodyshop I use has been performing some smaller projects so I can focus on simply maintaining the vehicles going forward rather than also dealing with cosmetic repairs. When the bulk of the rust was repaired on the Trooper, it was a grueling, messy project. The shop hit a breaking point where they just wanted the truck out of the way, so we left one section of rocker un-repaired on the passenger side.

With a gap in their schedule and the Audi S6 Avant not quite ready to come over to the bodyshop to replace the windhshield and fix some very small rust on the A-pillar, the Trooper slid in to get the remaining rocker rust taken out and repaired. As of now, the RS is effectively rust-free - which will make parking it outside at Jay's place for the colder months a little less unnerving.