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What Did You Do With Your SSR Today?

1M views 15K replies 567 participants last post by  Stlhotrod 
Blessed today first car show of the year Top 10..1979 newer...75 cars/trucks...
Congrats! That is one sharp ride. :thumbs

First show for our new R is in about three weeks. Sponsored by the car club we just joined. Local, not a big one so good for sticking our toes (tires?) in the water. Clay-barred, waxed, interior detailed and scheduled to be cut, polished and waxed again in about two weeks. Fingers crossed the sun graces us with its presence!

Next door neighbor has a 1951 blue Chevy pickup. We'll be parked side-by-side. Ought to get some "then and now" double-takes! Not expecting to win anything... just in it for the fun. :smile2:

Congratulations again voodoophantom... should be a great summer!
 

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Spark Plug Wrestling

Not something I did today, but yesterday I replaced all of the spark plugs and spark plug wires in our new-to-us 2005 R. I was too tired to write about it last night.

OMG, I’ve changed probably hundreds of spark plugs over the years, but I’ve never had a vehicle where every, single, one fought me tooth and nail. I have to say, it’s probably one of the most brutal R&Rs I’ve ever done.

There was another one, a friend’s Monza (another Chevy) that was a contender. It required undoing the passenger side motor mount to raise the engine enough to remove the rear spark plug. But even in that case most of the plugs and wires came out willingly.

The R has about 55K on it and I know the plugs are supposed to last 100K, but it had an intermittent miss at idle and the exhaust odor was pretty bad. After firing it up I needed to get it out of the garage right away to avoid smelling the place up. I’ve run a couple of tanks of premium Tier 1 fuel though it now so I knew it was not burning it right. I’m not a big believer in additives like fuel injector cleaner and such so I thought I’d start with the plugs and wires and see if that would help.

So long story longer, it was a real test match between my knuckles, the R’s wires - almost all of which refused to come out in one piece - plugs that were near seized to the block, and almost no space to work with. Did I say brutal? Blood was shed.

What would normally take a half-hour to an hour on most cars took me well over five hours to finish.

There are probably a couple of plugs that could have come out a bit easier from underneath, but I have yet to get jack stands and what-not to do that kind of maintenance.

The previous owner had the R programmed and tuned by Joe at Left Coast 32 so I got in touch with him. He suggested using NGK TR6 (PN 4177) plugs gapped at .028, saying that’s what he’s doing at his shop and that I’d really like the performance. I was going to go with popular after-market wires from MSD or Edelbrock but after reading multiple postings here and elsewhere saying there isn’t much to be gained by spending three or four times as much, I decided to use GM/ACDelco OEM wires.

I made sure to use the prescribed anti-seize on the plugs, dielectric grease on the connections and so on and in the end I did show them who's boss and now have all new plugs and wires in place. Woo hoo! :grin2:

It’s been raining here so I haven’t been able to put the R through its paces, but idling and some quick revs in the garage indicate that things are much better. The exhaust odor has improved 100%. Now it really doesn’t smell at all.

I’ve attached photos of one of the plugs I pulled (next to a new one). All of the ones I pulled looked almost identical, fairly normal, no ash, no oil, etc. (which is great news), but as you can see, they were more than ready to be replaced.

Although I’m feeling pretty beat up by all of the bending, twisting, turning and other gymnastics I had to perform on this job, I’m glad it’s over and I’m glad I did it.

One downside is that I dropped one old plug and it didn’t hit the floor. Even crawling around underneath and feeling for it in as many nooks and crannies I could slip my hand into, for the life of me I could not find it. So sooner or later it’ll either be road kill or someone will discover it when its on a lift.

On a positive note, my cuss jar is now overflowing!

This work should last me a good, long time, but in the future (mine or someone else’s) it’ll hopefully be an easier job. And apologies for the novela here, but I thought it was worth sharing.

OR maybe it’s something for the folks at a Chevy dealer to tackle… a good way to get back at ‘em. :wink2:

In any case, we’re really looking forward to some sunshine and top-down adventure! :sunce:

UPDATE: The sun came out this afternoon so I took it out and cleared out some carbon, well as much as the local law will allow. I did punch it from a stop light and hit 40 MPH (the speed limit on that particular stretch of road) in what seemed to be a split second. So performance seems to be a few notches higher now. And it sounded grrrrreat! :D I hope my trials and tribulations won't intimidate anyone. It was a good learning experience that allowed me to get (really) up close and personal with the heartbeat of America. :)
 

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Sorry to hear of your misadventure(s). When I saw the picture of your painted cover and before I read your text, I thought to myself "I hope he removed that cover". I too been known to charge ahead in my excitement to get the job done without giving full thought to consequences. Now you can proudly relate to the Chevrolet commercial showing the owners and their trucks with their "battle scars".

Dave
Thanks for the sympathy Dave, but hey, you live and learn right? Or in my case, maybe I'll never learn, but my permagrin is still intact! :grin2:
 
Just finished putting together a "memorialization" book for our R. Terry, the gentleman that owned it previously kept all of his receipts for all of the maintenance and mods. They were in a couple of file folders so I thought I'd take it to the next step.

I scanned in all of the paperwork so I have a file on my computer and I created a thumb drive backup and tossed it in the safe. If something ever happens I'll have some documentation for the insurance company.

Then I put each one in a plastic sleeve and added them to their respective binders, one for mods and one for normal maintenance, earlier warranty work, etc. I'll take them along to shows and such.

I think there's value in having "provenance" as they say, especially for the next owner(s) after I'm long gone. Wife thinks I'm crazy of course. :wink2:

Something to do on a rainy day... waiting for the sun to shine!
 

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Dropped our R off at the detail shop today for a cut, polish and wax this morning. [Biting nails]

Sprinkled on the way there. :| Clearing up now so should be safe on the way home. Keeping her in the garage as much as possible before the upcoming car show on June 1st. :wink2:
 
Got the R back from the detailer's this afternoon. Cut, polish and wax. Swirls are a thing of the past fender blue jean rubs are gone, running boards are scuff-free and she glistens. The owner said the paint on SSR's is really very good. Apparently the clear coat is tough as nails. Now she looks like she's ready for the prom!

I'll attack the few surface scratches they couldn't get out with the Dr. ColorChip kit that's on the way. I've never used it before but saw some pretty good reviews here and elsewhere. Fingers crossed that stuff works... for the price it should.

Now if I can just keep her sparkling for another week or so. "Oh honey, you don't mind if I take your car to Home Depot... do you?" 0:)
 
Two things today...

#1 Hadn't looked under the hood since getting our R back from the detailer yesterday (they didn't do the engine or interior). Noticed that whatever they used to wash/clean it left some kind of spray residue in the engine compartment. It appears to have ruined several pieces of bling that Terry installed including the air cleaner cover, the fuse box cover and other bits. :crying: Photos attached. Come to find out that it's NOT that plastic chrome everyone uses, it's high-grade aluminum. Phew!

#2 On a better note, I was able to replace a weather pack connector for the engine coolant temperature sensor. When I was changing the spark plugs and wires I had to remove it to get to the #1 plug. The little retaining clip was very brittle and snapped right off. Thanks to Stlhotrod I was able to replace it myself. All of the details are in this post if anyone's interested.

Now I'm hoping those chrome mod pieces can be saved. If anyone knows of anything that will get rid of what look to be permanent water spots I'd really appreciate it. I don't want to have to fight with the detail shop. They have a very good rep around here so if they can't be fixed I hope they'll do the right thing. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Boy, color me embarrassed! :redface: After looking closer at the billet parts in question and finding Dragon2U's post about them, it turns out they're made of really good quality aluminum. D'oh! :imsorry: So after more research I see that they should clean up nicely with some Mother's Mag & Aluminum Polish. I'm going to hit the parts store tomorrow and get busy! Feeling much better now. :rock:

UPDATE II Here's my post with before and after photos of the renewed aluminum billet parts.
 

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So in a post a little while back I was whining about spots that showed up on our R's engine compartment billet parts after it was detailed.

Dragon2U came to the rescue, suggesting that I use Mothers Billet Polish to revive them. The local auto supply stores didn't carry it so I ordered it from Amazon, received it yesterday and went to work. I tackled the worst offenders first, then all of the rest including the various caps and such.

Miracles of miracles, all of the billet aluminum I polished turned out super nice... close to chrome! The smaller parts I did by hand and on the larger parts like the fuse box and surge tank covers I used a Mothers Cone polisher attached to my drill. Some of it took two or three tries to smooth everything out and there are still a few scratches that could be buffed out, but for now they look pretty darn good.

I'm not sure what they used to wash/clean it before detailing but the spots left on those pieces were pretty nasty. The exterior detailing came out great though. They were able to remove years of swirls and light scratches here and there. They commented on how good the original paint was.

Thanks to Dragon2U and everyone else that chimed in. Much appreciated!

One more thing off of the old checklist. :cool
 

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Thanks for posting -- the metal polish I have been using doesn't seem to work as well as this!
AMAZON here I come!
Between the polish and the polisher cone thing I was impressed. A good bench grinder/polisher could probably get every last scratch out, but that's for another day (and more allowance $$). :wink2:

Guess I should say that I don't work for or have any relationship to Mothers products... other than liking this particular one because it seems to really shine! (Get it, see what I did there? :grin2:)
 
Had same problem with water spots, used diluted CRL, easy wipe on wipe off, spots gone. Also can't figure out why parts houses don't carry the Billet polish.
I have some CLR (I think you said you used a 50/50 water mix?) but I was hesitant to use it near some of the painted parts. Probably would have been fine though. These spots seemed like more than water spots though. They were pretty tough. Just glad they're history.

Forgot to mention that the surge tank cover was getting a bit loose. So I went ahead and pulled it off polished it on my workbench, scraped off the residue on the back and the tank (silicon?) and used some 2" 3M auto body tape to reattach it. What's old is new again!
 
Enjoyed our new-to-us R's first car show!

Started at 6 a.m. helping out the car club we recently joined set everything up. Heavy mist all morning so besides setting up tents and placing signs I must have wiped the R down two-dozen times. It finally dried out around 11 a.m. so the top came down and the rest of the day was great.

Since the club sponsors the show each year (for more than 10 years now) we couldn't enter our R with the other 175 or so participating vehicles but the club members did get a special area to park their rides.

Lots of curiosity since we had the only R there. Everything from "what in the world is it?" to "man I'm glad to see this here... you can only look at so many '57 Chevys and '65 Mustangs!" So it was good fun meeting and greeting folks, most of which had never seen an SSR in person. The downside is that they had no idea what kind of modifications to the interior, engine and what-not had been done. Most probably figured it came from the factory like that. :wink2: Although one guy couldn't believe Chevrolet would ever sell a vehicle with "those huge wheels!". :grin2:

We get people walking up to us in parking lots here and there asking about it, but it's nice to be appreciated by a crowd of genuine "gear heads" now and then.
 

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Spent a couple of hours installing and running the wiring for a backup cam in preparation of installing a new stereo head unit. Based on advice from several folks here I went with an Auto-Vox Cam 6 which mounts behind the license plate. It's a little more apparent than I'd like, but not too bad. Certainly worth knowing what's going on behind our little beast.

For power I used a Posi-tap connecter on one of the backup light's wires and connected the ground wire to a nut that's just behind the plate/backup light frame.

It's been a while since I crawled around underneath a car and I have to say, keeping the wires from the rear end up the passenger side away from the exhaust was a little bit of a challenge. Per recommendations from some of the experts here I used the plastic plug under the passenger seat to bring the video wire into the cab. I hate cutting holes in anything, but it had to be done. ;) I sealed it up inside and out with silicone afterward.

All-in-all and with a little creativity, some split wire loom and cable ties it all worked out. Now fingers crossed it works! :smile2:
 

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Just heads a up, that license plate nut I believe is mounted in plactic. May have a problem with ground. Good luck.
Thanks! The one I used is part of the metal frame behind the bumper. I double-checked it with a circuit tester between the backup light wire and the bolt and it worked fine. I added an O-ring to the negative wire, soldered it and secured it through the bolt from the back. Here's a photo.

Thanks for thinking of that though! :thumbs
 

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:smile2:



Nice job on the clean installation. Have not seen a mini "nerf bar" or whatever you would call that rear hitch add on. Did you make that.


It’s actually a “Bully” brand hitch step... step is on the bottom side. I like that someone bumping into the back might hit that first. ;)




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