CDsDontBurn
6th Gear Poster
She got the name "Dirty Bird" because she was parked in my driveway for so long. I would go outside and wash her once, maybe twice, a year in her time of sitting on my driveway - roughly 5 years. In between these washing intervals, she would get dirty and my kids would say to me, "Look dad, it's Dirty Bird!". She wasn't named "Pearl" anymore after that.
Why was she parked you ask? For two reasons: A massive transmission leak at the front pump seal and failing suspension. So over the years I've been gathering all the parts needed to make this build happen. I have a detailed PARTS LIST showing what I've purchased and what still needs to be purchased.
Now that the parts have been collected, she is back in the garage, where she has always belonged. I cleaned her up real good, inflated the 15yr old tires to 32psi, added 4qts of ATF, dropped in the battery from my DD, added some fresh fuel, and she fired right up! After a few minutes of letting her warm up I drove her around the block with the family before driving her into the garage.
The day I drove her into the garage, about 10 minutes later after driving her and lifting her front end up, I had this little puddle of ATF. I cleaned it up and placed a cardboard under the transmission. Even with the nose up, she's still leaking ATF as seen in the second picture below.
So after bringing her in I began to disassemble the front end suspension components.
Wanting a good suspension setup, I opted for the Bilstein insert mod as some of us here have already done thanks to @MadMartigan and @gunn for exploring this.
I am excited to finally be able to get this started and get her back on the road. When she's done, she'll be manual swapped and I'll be rowing my own gears with a huge grin on my face
.
Why was she parked you ask? For two reasons: A massive transmission leak at the front pump seal and failing suspension. So over the years I've been gathering all the parts needed to make this build happen. I have a detailed PARTS LIST showing what I've purchased and what still needs to be purchased.
Now that the parts have been collected, she is back in the garage, where she has always belonged. I cleaned her up real good, inflated the 15yr old tires to 32psi, added 4qts of ATF, dropped in the battery from my DD, added some fresh fuel, and she fired right up! After a few minutes of letting her warm up I drove her around the block with the family before driving her into the garage.
The day I drove her into the garage, about 10 minutes later after driving her and lifting her front end up, I had this little puddle of ATF. I cleaned it up and placed a cardboard under the transmission. Even with the nose up, she's still leaking ATF as seen in the second picture below.
So after bringing her in I began to disassemble the front end suspension components.
Wanting a good suspension setup, I opted for the Bilstein insert mod as some of us here have already done thanks to @MadMartigan and @gunn for exploring this.
I am excited to finally be able to get this started and get her back on the road. When she's done, she'll be manual swapped and I'll be rowing my own gears with a huge grin on my face
.