By Ted Berner

GTwildfire

I cleaned the shop and laid down a 4′x6′ piece of plywood for use as a work surface to rebuild the 4T65E trans for my ’01 Grand Prix GT, and got all shop tools organized in preparation–now I’m just awaiting the rebuild kit. Tightened the strut bolts on my Malibu, trying to pin down a steering or suspension issue that allows 45 degrees of slack in the wheel, so far unsuccessfully. For the Camaro, found a glove box door and got a couple spare sealed beams at the U-Pull-It, then replaced the driver side window motor.

How about you? What did you do this weekend?

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

I took my Escort GT up over the border to Vancouver on an end-of-summer mini road trip to be with my grandma on her 90th birthday. Before I went, I threw on a header gasket to fix a leak that had been causing my Escort to be enveloped in a cloud of exhaust whenever it came to a stop, and swapped out my never-quite-right E3 spark plugs for some NGK V-Powers. Between fixing the leak and installing the new plugs, the car felt like it gained about 15hp, restoring the low-end torque I’d been missing for months and completely getting rid of the bog-off-the-line issues I’d been living with. I went hammer-down the whole way up and back, and it was awesome to be out on the open road with my original road-trip car all squared away and feeling like a million bucks.

How about you? What did you do this weekend?

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

I went to the Pull A Part in Tacoma, but it was a fail. While I’m generally up for some leisurely junkyard sightseeing, this time I was on a mission to get some body panels for my diesel Escort project from specific cars that the staff told me were in the yard, but which were nowhere to be found once I got there. So it was basically a wasted trip, apart from the fact that I got to see some derelict gems like this Plymouth Volare wagon, and mourn over a completely demolished AMC Eagle. I should have used our one hour of sunshine for sanding and priming, which I got to spend the rest of the weekend doing indoors. Cough.

How about you? What did you do this weekend?

By Chris Bicknell

Bick66

I decided to spend my weekend in the driveway. It started Friday after work when I installed new axle-back exhaust with Flowmaster American Thunder mufflers on the Corvette. On Saturday, the Impala got a new starter and battery–two of the few wear parts not replaced last year. Back to the Corvette on Sunday, I changed the oil then removed all four wheels so I could clean the wheel wells and insides of the wheels. And the new exhaust sounds sweet–not bad for 340 bucks shipped, plus $0 for installation!

How about you? What did you do this weekend?

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

My weekend started a little early: on Thursday afternoon I headed to Group 2 Motorsports to shoot video of my Escort GT getting some vintage NOS Koni adjustables installed as part of the car care video series we’re doing for Quaker State. It was only the second time since the restoration that I’ve allowed anyone else to work on my Escort–the other time was for alignment–and I have to say it was a little nerve-wracking, but well worth it. These particular struts, which every first-gen Escort owner spends their whole life trying to track down–a set of them shows up on eBay maybe every two or three years–absolutely lived up to their reputation, and the GT now handles better than new. So I ended up having a pretty decent Labor Day weekend bombing around in my favorite car, though I’m going to have to pay for it by working today while everyone else is off. Oh well!

How about you? What did you do this weekend?

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

I took my first few swipes at some bodywork, with my diesel Escort as the practice car. In hindsight, I maybe could’ve found something more replaceable and less tricky than a rear quarter of a previously wrecked unibody car to practice on–like a fender–but hey, once I started grinding off the solidified vegetable oil cement below the gas filler door from the previous owner’s greasecar experiment, I was committed. It’s been a pretty steep learning curve.

How about you? What did you do this weekend?

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

I’m in full-on bodywork mode on the diesel–having gotten it back from the frame straightener, I’m rarin’ to iron out all of its many lumps and get a couple coats of paint on it. Though I didn’t get as far as I wanted to on it this weekend–I frankly got a little bogged down in the acquisition of supplies, cleaning, and prep–I did manage to get the rear cargo area stripped out, de-rusted, and re-painted, and I got the jump on the bit of surface rust that was starting around the shock towers. Take that, cancer.

How about you? What did you do this weekend?

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

I had a great night at the Valley 6 Drive In with Chris and the Impala. Though The Expendables and The Killers turned out to be two of the most forgettable pieces of fluff in Hollywood history, it was awesome to get the convertible out under the stars on an uncharacteristically warm Seattle night.

How about you? What did you do this weekend?

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

I put a new starter in my diesel Escort–it’s nice to have the little thumper running again. Then on my Escort GT, I finally installed the new radiator Chris got me for my birthday.

How about you? What did you do this weekend?

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

I had one of those thwarted weekends where I’d hoped to get a lot further than I ultimately did. I’d planned an oil change and a new radiator, thermostat, and hoses for my Escort GT, and a starter for my diesel Escort. Turned out the new starter mounting holes are threaded differently from the ones on my original, and matching hardware is going to take some tracking down–ditto for the GT’s lower rad hose, which is an obsolete two-years-only deal. So I had to settle for the oil change, and I threw in a new fuel filter for the GT and my new pressure cap on my old radiator just for the hell of it. On the upshot, I might not even need to change the radiator now after all, since it’s running cooler already.

How about you–what did you do this weekend?