Project Chronicle

I really have reached my "peak" of how much more work I want done to any one car this year, but I am making an excuse for the S6. The bumpers were awful after years of being bashed around when the owner would leave Martha's Vineyard for his Central Park apartment in New York City. Animals, down there. 

Anyway, my local collision center and friends have taken on a few side projects over the years, and with this being a quiet week for them, they pulled off the bumpers and began the process of fixing them. I say "fixing" because both bumpers had plenty of filler in them, and if you've ever tried to repair bumpers that have already been repaired, it's not easy. 

Making it extra tricky is that the front bumper is specific to the UrS6, owing to its flared front fenders. The only surprise we found (aside from how much filler was already in the bumpers) was the need for a replacement rear bumper shock. We knew this was a possibility as the bumper was pushed in on the left side, and removing it confirmed the shock absorber was completely collapsed. 

The shop may also see if they can sand an obscure part of the paint to determine if there's any chance of bringing it back to life, but I'm not optimistic. 

There comes a time when a project is finally to the point that you can drive it - for an extended period - and you realize it was all worth it. 

More than other efforts, I struggled at times to understand if restoring this rare 1989 Isuzu Trooper RS - code for short wheelbase and 3.77 gears - was worth it. I had to move it multiple times, starting with going from Massachusetts to Maryland, where I thought my brother would hook me up with a shop to work on it (he didn't.) I then decided to haul it back north to a shop that was all of 15 miles from where it was originally found as they promised to work on it (they didn't.) I was about to lose all hope when a chance encounter on Instagram of all places led me to a guy named Jay Gaston who offered to bring the Isuzu back to life as part of a moonlighting gig he had working on Japanese four-wheel-drives. 

Jay did everything he promised and then some, revealing the Trooper was a healthy truck under years of faded paint and gummed-up fuel systems. However, as is often the case, it was not just bad gas that needed resolving. The floors were gone, as were the rockers. There was a heavily compromised control arm assembly on the driver's side. The time in the body shop was far from cheap and made me question my decisions on a very personal level. 

But finally being able to drive it for 30 minutes like any other car and finding out it fits like a warm glove with the perfect door placement so your arm rides on the window sill with your hand gripping the vent window frame - all while it bounds happily down the road like some metaphor involving a labrador puppy - well, that's the stuff, kids. That's what you hope for when it's all done. All the mental anguish caused by small problems that become big and only you alone can solve make owning a restoration project a master's class in project management. 

This Trooper RS is a honey, and we are psyched to finally give it a forever home after sitting in a western Massachusetts junkyard from 2005 to 2020. 

The long-term single owner of the 1995 Audi S6 Avant I bought in September is a well-maintained car. I received a stack of paperwork from the shop that looked after the Audi indicating as such. But like most "special" cars owned by someone who wasn't an enthusiast, the cosmetics clearly weren't a priority. It didn't help that the S6 was basically an "island car," which means it sat for months at a time outside. 

The paint was just bad. Dead. No shine. And a ton of swirl marks, because I'm guessing when it made the annual trip to Manhattan (where the owner lived when not on the Vineyard), it was taken to some God-awful brush-style car wash that roughed up the dead paint even further. 

I use Griot's Garage products for dealing purposes, mainly because they are easy to use and allow you to build a system pretty efficiently. I also finally got adventurous with the different orbital buffer pads, using the orange correcting pad for the first time in tandem with Griot's "Complete Compound." The result? The paint is much improved. There's still a ton of swirls - those will likely always be there - but the S6 now looks far more presentable, and as you can see here, the paint still pops nicely from 10 feet away.

There's a little thing called "service position" on Audis of a certain age. You see, as cool as old Audis are, they did this kind of dumb thing where they jammed the engine bay so full of motor that there was no room left to actually work on the car, save for changing spark plugs and the valve cover gasket. Anything on the front of the engine necessitated removing the entire front end. 

So, as my cheap-as-chips S6 Avant went into the bay for a long overdue timing belt job, I got to see just how much labor happens before the actual labor happens. And realize that while all this labor is happening, there will be more labor happening when the front end is put back on. It's insane. 

Bumper, grills, lights, radiator, rad support - all off the car before you even touch the timing belt. When this work was started, it was also realized the main pulley for the timing belt was junk and the tensioner was squealing with glee. I found a pulley in Germany, new in the box (and otherwise obsolete); the tensioner is seriously NLA but someone fortunately figured out that a bearing from a Volvo is the same part as originally supplied in the Audi, so that will be swapped in as well. 

I'm looking forward to actually driving this turbocharged five-cylinder wagon, and still very glad it was as cheap as it was. 

As we know by now, I've had some unfortunate surprises related to rust on the '89 Trooper RS. The first was the driver's side floor, which was effectively, gone. What I thought was floor turned out to be a very robust carpet pad and when lifted away, there was daylight everywhere. 

While this was a monumental job in and of itself, we weren't out of the woods. Jay - my mechanic - noted that the driver's side control arm assembly was compromised by rust. Not the arm itself, mind you, but what it bolted to. There had been, at one time, a little housing that held the brake line and likely also provided some reinforcement to the shims that were used to align the front end. That housing was effectively gone on the driver's side, along with the plate that lent support to the motor mount. Needless to say, there was no avoiding this work given how deep I am into the truck. Not going to roll the dice on life safety. 

Take a look at the pictures and you can see the night and day difference. After grabbing a panel cut from a Trooper frame with the housing intact, we learned that Isuzu overhauled the front suspension in 1988, so the cut we got didn't line up with my suspension geometry. I called a friend who had a pretty rusty truck in his yard, and he managed to carve out enough of that section of the frame to give us a useful amount of metal to repair the bad areas on mine.

The work is done; the before and after is hugely satisfying, even if it means this second phase of bodywork isn't going to be much cheaper than the first. 

Every now and again, I'm reminded that you never know how and when a contact or friend will chime in with a great idea. 

I've known Dave, the owner of Auto Europa on Martha's Vineyard, for as long as we've been making an annual trip for our anniversary. I stopped in years ago because he was the only European shop on the island; later, it was because he owned a few Eurovans and given I owned one, his advice into the model's durability was invaluable. 

Dave and I hadn't talked since our trip in September of '21, so when he pinged me out of the blue in June, I figured it was for good reason. Turns out he has a customer who has owned an Audi S6 Avant since new and was going to donate the car. See, people who live on the Island tend to be of some means, so the prospect of trying to eek out $5,000 for a tired wagon that would then have to be transported off the island didn't hold much appeal. 

The S6 is a pretty special car. Two years of production, with the wagon accounting for under 500 total units sold stateside. The AAN engine is a legendary motor, a turbocharged five-cylinder with 227 horsepower and 258 lb-ft of torque. It also responds to modifications quite well, with the ability to put down 300 b.h.p. or better with minor tweaks. 

Now, we won't be modifying this example. It's bone stock. It needs cosmetic help and is long overdue for a timing belt job. There's a bit of a stumble, too, which I suspect is due to a bad coil. The S6 has always been in the back of my mind as a car to buy, especially in fast wagon form. With this car falling in my lap for mere peanuts, I am looking forward to giving it the refresh it deserves and enjoying it for years to come. 

One of my favorite things about old-school cars is single-stage paint. It's a shame the industry moved away from this (though I understand why) as there are few things more rewarding than scrubbing off some chalky, faded paint and seeing original luster come back to life in front of you. 

As we near the end of the bodywork phase on the Trooper RS, my body man Nelson started to buff some small areas. He sent me these photos as they capture what the rest of the truck will eventually look like. It's absolutely incredible and probably one of the most rewarding moments of this journey; when I laid eyes on the Trooper in a salvage yard in Western Massachusetts, I was pretty confident the paint would come back to life. Now I have near infallible proof that it will. 

Before I picked the truck up, I had never looked at the odometer. It wasn't until it was being loaded I peered in and saw it had just 55K miles. From the lack of wear on the pedals to the cleanliness of the interior to the perfect compression numbers, we had all the evidence we needed that this mileage was genuine - but buffing ou that small corner of the fender leaves no doubt this is one of the lowest mileage short wheelbase Troopers in existence. 

We took the LX450 to Martha's Vineyard this past week, where my entire goal of getting it over-serviced was driven by the goal of driving it on the beach. So, we did this and it was awesome. Combine the experience of driving overland with the shoulder season dynamics of there being far fewer people on vacation than at the height of the summer and we had the whole place to ourselves. We cannot wait to do it again.

Prior to leaving, I grabbed my Scan Gauge tool out of the Eurovan so I could turn off a pesky check engine light with the dreaded P4101 code, which is usually an impossible-to-find vacuum leak. In keeping it hooked up, I was also able to monitor the temperature. 

Now, a few things were happening in the background that gave me pause: one, I didn't hear a fan roar when the aux unit should kick in, and I didn't notice a dip in the RPMs when said fan kicked on. I also saw on the first drive out onto the beach with low range selected that the temperature gauge moved ever-so-slightly (which, in this truck, it never has.) 

I have driven the LX pretty regularly since I got it, and never noticed the temp gauge so much as wiggle. I chalked it up to my being overly-cautious in my first time on the sand and also having low range engaged. However, this was the definitive "canary in the coal mine" moment. 

When driving home, I kept an eye on the Scan Gauge and noted it was sitting right at 194, which is exactly where it should be. Once or twice, it kissed 210 on the island, but with operating temp range being 180-210, this was not out of line. However, a diversion into congested Providence to pick up a cake saw the gauge move in dramatic fashion towards the red, and temps spike to 220. We had to keep shutting the truck down and waiting for gaps in traffic to make it home without overheating, but given the water pump, thermostat, and radiator are all new - and combined with the silence of the fan blade assembly - I am very confident we have a dead or dying fan clutch that may have given up the ghost when the truck was working hard over the sand. 

Needless to say, I ordered what is known as a LandTank modified Aisin fan clutch that is customized to trigger the fan at 95 degrees and also uses a higher-threshold fluid to ensure steadfast, high-performance operation. Hopefully, there's no long-term damage caused by the brush with the danger zone and this modification otherwise makes what was an excellent first outing with the truck repeatable without the panic of a rising temp needle. 

I have been on a bender with the Lexus Land Cruiser. Here's why: we leave for Martha's Vineyard in a few days and I want to drive it on the beach. This means my wife and two young children will be in tow. 

So, that's why the A/C had to work; why the leaks had to be stopped; why the bodywork couldn't be dented; and so on. It was a mixture of having it be comfortable and also not look like a heap (my wife is more concerned about that last part than I am.) 

The A/C was a big deal; the truck is very comfortable inside. But grinding my gears on a personal level was the trashed driver's seat and the not-much-better passenger bucket. The good news is a company called L-Seat out of Houston sells very reasonable genuine leather kits, and in a color called "Oak" which is a very good match for the Lexus leather. 

I took the truck up to my new go-to for upholstery work, Charles St. Auto and Boat Top. Dave, the owner, works very quickly and does great work. The kit also included new material for the center armrest and armrests above the door handles. I also spent a ton of time steam cleaning the entire cabin, removing what stains I could, and refreshing the rest of the leather. 

Overall, it feels clean; smells good; and the front buckets will make both me and my wife very happy to spend a week in this truck. It goes back to Lexus tomorrow for a very quick check-over before we leave the mainland.