tl;dr: my old iX came back to me, and it's in scruffy shape. The rear brakes suck. I'm going to remediate it to a point...
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The long version:
My '91 iX spent several years in the hands of a family member who unfortunately wasn't a very good caretaker (I'm going to skip that part of the story). The car is still titled to me, and I recently got a letter from the state that it had been reported abandoned.
I'm intending to use this thread to document where I go with it and get advice I'll inevitably need.
Here's what it looked like when I last saw it:
(that's the reflection of a cloud on the hood)
I contacted the shop, got some details and made arrangements to go pick it up. I asked them to do a quick check of the car, and they said it ran fine (surprisingly well, yadda yadda, could drive home) but was in scruffy shape inside and out. It needed a battery and a brake-light switch. When I picked it up they noted that the car needed rear brakes.
I reclaimed the car. It now looks like this:
:(
That pic is actually a bit gentle. The clear-coat has failed pretty much everywhere. The IS front spoiler is missing (guessing that was stolen - the clips are perfect :shifty). Various bumps I haven't begun to catalog. The drivers seat bolster is borked and the leather on both seats (think they're E30 M3 seats - can't remember where I got them) isn't great. The inside is a mess.
I got it as far as my buddy's place 90 minutes from where I live. I was pretty much planning to take it there anyway since he's got a lift and I wanted to have a hard look at it, but about 20 minutes away I hit some sudden construction traffic and had to brake pretty hard. After that, I could hear the left rear brake dragging on the rotor and braking was markedly worse than it had been (though we got on the highway pretty much immediately on the trip). The last 20 minutes was fairly slow off-highway driving. That turned out to be lucky.
I left the car with him, planning to address the brakes and then get the car to my house for further attention. His (awesome) son removed most the significant amount of crap that was left in the car. It's still in need of a deep cleaning.
I had rear rotors and pads delivered from Amazon, as well as a caliper rebuild kit, and yesterday I took the train to go do the brakes and get the car home.
The left side of the car has a pretty good dent just behind the door, and the rear wheel on that side is the spare (the other ASA wheel is in the trunk). Whoever put the lugs on that wheel is an asshole - they all required a big breaker bar and some gorilla-strength from my buddy to get them off (the other side came off easily). I laughed at how thin the pad was, until I realized I'd driven it on the highway at speed for 90 minutes. I'm an idiot for not looking more closely at them, but put a little too much faith in the fact I'd asked the shop to check it out. A lesson for the future: trust but verify. Somewhere in Rob Siegel's "Ran When Parked" there's a pre-flight checklist for putting an unknown car on the road. I'm going to find and re-read my copy of that book (it's a fun book anyway - I pre-ordered a copy of his new one not too long ago). Anyway, guess which rotor this pad was installed on:
The piston on that caliper was stuck waaaay out, and rusted in place. It took a *LOT* of... coaxing... to get the piston out to do the rebuild. We called around the local auto parts places, and most of them weren't even carrying a reman caliper any more for this car (which is shared with the E24 and others I think). So we made the best of what we had. There was some pitting on the piston wall (and the slide pins) that we cleaned up. It was so far beyond normal travel I don't think the rust is in an active area of the piston, but I went ahead and got a good used pair of calipers from eBay to swap in at some point.
I prepped the rotors (wire-brush, anti-seize), and brake-cleaned/mounted one rotor. I was cleaning off the other when my buddy called me back inside.
Amazon had sent the wrong rotors.
And of course, nobody locally stocks iX-compatible rotors any more either...
AutoZone was able to have a set in today, but I wasn't able to stay overnight. My buddy picked them up and will probably slap them on and finish the job, including a brake-bleed. I'll go get the car ASAP, clean it up a bit, and then I'll have to decide what to do with it.
More to come.
------------------------------------------------------
The long version:
My '91 iX spent several years in the hands of a family member who unfortunately wasn't a very good caretaker (I'm going to skip that part of the story). The car is still titled to me, and I recently got a letter from the state that it had been reported abandoned.
I'm intending to use this thread to document where I go with it and get advice I'll inevitably need.
Here's what it looked like when I last saw it:
(that's the reflection of a cloud on the hood)
I contacted the shop, got some details and made arrangements to go pick it up. I asked them to do a quick check of the car, and they said it ran fine (surprisingly well, yadda yadda, could drive home) but was in scruffy shape inside and out. It needed a battery and a brake-light switch. When I picked it up they noted that the car needed rear brakes.
I reclaimed the car. It now looks like this:
:(
That pic is actually a bit gentle. The clear-coat has failed pretty much everywhere. The IS front spoiler is missing (guessing that was stolen - the clips are perfect :shifty). Various bumps I haven't begun to catalog. The drivers seat bolster is borked and the leather on both seats (think they're E30 M3 seats - can't remember where I got them) isn't great. The inside is a mess.
I got it as far as my buddy's place 90 minutes from where I live. I was pretty much planning to take it there anyway since he's got a lift and I wanted to have a hard look at it, but about 20 minutes away I hit some sudden construction traffic and had to brake pretty hard. After that, I could hear the left rear brake dragging on the rotor and braking was markedly worse than it had been (though we got on the highway pretty much immediately on the trip). The last 20 minutes was fairly slow off-highway driving. That turned out to be lucky.
I left the car with him, planning to address the brakes and then get the car to my house for further attention. His (awesome) son removed most the significant amount of crap that was left in the car. It's still in need of a deep cleaning.
I had rear rotors and pads delivered from Amazon, as well as a caliper rebuild kit, and yesterday I took the train to go do the brakes and get the car home.
The left side of the car has a pretty good dent just behind the door, and the rear wheel on that side is the spare (the other ASA wheel is in the trunk). Whoever put the lugs on that wheel is an asshole - they all required a big breaker bar and some gorilla-strength from my buddy to get them off (the other side came off easily). I laughed at how thin the pad was, until I realized I'd driven it on the highway at speed for 90 minutes. I'm an idiot for not looking more closely at them, but put a little too much faith in the fact I'd asked the shop to check it out. A lesson for the future: trust but verify. Somewhere in Rob Siegel's "Ran When Parked" there's a pre-flight checklist for putting an unknown car on the road. I'm going to find and re-read my copy of that book (it's a fun book anyway - I pre-ordered a copy of his new one not too long ago). Anyway, guess which rotor this pad was installed on:
The piston on that caliper was stuck waaaay out, and rusted in place. It took a *LOT* of... coaxing... to get the piston out to do the rebuild. We called around the local auto parts places, and most of them weren't even carrying a reman caliper any more for this car (which is shared with the E24 and others I think). So we made the best of what we had. There was some pitting on the piston wall (and the slide pins) that we cleaned up. It was so far beyond normal travel I don't think the rust is in an active area of the piston, but I went ahead and got a good used pair of calipers from eBay to swap in at some point.
I prepped the rotors (wire-brush, anti-seize), and brake-cleaned/mounted one rotor. I was cleaning off the other when my buddy called me back inside.
Amazon had sent the wrong rotors.
And of course, nobody locally stocks iX-compatible rotors any more either...
AutoZone was able to have a set in today, but I wasn't able to stay overnight. My buddy picked them up and will probably slap them on and finish the job, including a brake-bleed. I'll go get the car ASAP, clean it up a bit, and then I'll have to decide what to do with it.
More to come.
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