Chevy & GMC Vans

Replaced a bunch of vacuum and PCV lines. Amazing what the PO had done to rig the thing together. Instead of spending 20 cents on a piece of vacuum hose, there was what looked like aquarium tubing, electrical sleeving and plastic drinking straws all pieced together just in the 12 inches or so from PCV valve to TBI vacuum port.


Lump

bought some no-window rear doors yesterday and they actually match my van...white with primer showing through :P they were already pulled off by cutting the hinges with a torch...

hope i can get my extremely temper-mental air compressor working long enough to run my air hammer to push all 8 pins out to save myself some hammer swinging...

Grumpy ate its serpentine belt on the interstate this morning on the way to work. Pulled over for a quick look and the van seemed to be good enough to limp to the next exit, thing was actually able to limp the remaining 13 miles to work on the surface streets. No power steering or brakes, no juice from the alternator, no cooling fan or water pump, but everything stayed in the safe range.

I love these vans!

Hmmmm, will it limp the 18.6 surface street miles home?

Grumpy did indeed make the drive home, and then to the LAPS. Plastic tensioner pulley went MIA and the belt wrapped around the water pump pulley. Had to pull the fan and water pump pulley to get all of the old belt out, but overall a pretty easy job that I performed in the parking lot.

Did I mention that these vans are amazing?

Well I replaced the wiper switch today and it was a Pain in the butt hope that fixes the phantom wiper problem I was having.

Mrbarky wrote:Well I replaced the wiper switch today and it was a Pain in the butt hope that fixes the phantom wiper problem I was having.

Hmm, may not... A common problem was bad solder joints on the wiper box under the hood. (Easy fix though with a solder iron and maybe a bit of solder.)

Matt is correct. There was a safety recall on the printed circuit board. The dealer was replacing them free of charge.

Smiliesafari wrote:Matt is correct. There was a safety recall on the printed circuit board. The dealer was replacing them free of charge.

They weren't replacing all of them. For some reason my 96 never qualified. (But I had resoldered mine anyway long before this became a big issue.) This problem was widespread and also affected fullsize pickups and probably other GM vehicles.

I will let you guys know how it turns out there was a good amount of play in my switch but now its nice and tight so we shall see

Idler arms and U-joints changed...... Rear U-joints were so rusted in, my vice snapped pressing them out went and borrowed a press from CT and that did the trick. The front U-joint was so bad when I took of one of the bearing caps off all that came out was a dust powder. There were no needle bearings left. All in all a pretty easy straight forward repair. Didn't even loose any blood for once.

Only thing I can say is have stripped bolt removers handy because those little 5/16 bolts are easy to strip.

well so far so good no more phantom wiper hopefully stays that way

replaced ball joints went for 100mph test drive and appears to have eliminated the shimmy (for now at least)

Geez Pierre....I would have thought it had something to do with the '999000' shocks you were using

thanks to those shocks my 100mph test drive was fun, not scary

i now know why the older folks on here take their trucks to the shop my legs are sore from the 1000 squats i did installing my ball joints lol

Mrbarky wrote:I will let you guys know how it turns out there was a good amount of play in my switch but now its nice and tight so we shall see

you might have it right, I get a phantom swipe every now and then. pulled the circuit board and all the solder joints are solid. my problem is in the turn signal switch. I feel your pain, tearing down a steering column is a major undertaking, especially if it's a tilt column.