And a busy Sunday too
Published Sun, Jul 29 2007 7:08 PM
Saturday was a beautiful day, if a bit busy. I had plans for Sunday though. I wanted to replace the Vehicle Speed Sensors on my PT Cruiser, and I wanted to get Zach's car running again, replace the seat belts, and fix the tweaked trunk lid (oh no... it wasn't in an accident, I meant to drive it into that ditch). When I woke up this morning, wouldn't you know it... it was raining.
Fortunately the rain quit after an hour or so and things dried out a bit. I put the PT Cruiser up on Jackstands and crawled under for a look. I couldn't find the speed sensors. Back into the house to read the manual again. OH.
So I have to remove the air cleaner housing. And the battery. And the battery tray. And the battery tray bracket. Oh look! There's five years worth of corrosion on the battery terminals. Cleaning that out is going to be fun. Into the house for some baking soda and water. Let that work on the corrosion for a while.
It turns out the easiest job of all of those was fixing the trunk lid. A little work with a wrench and a hammer and it closes and latches again, although it's still not quite straight. That's not because of the hammer though. It's because the entire back end of the car appears to have been permanently twisted by over a half an inch.
Time to wash off the corrosion. Yuck. Oh how lovely. The battery tray bracket is not just bolted in with four rather stiff bolts that are impossible to get at with the engine in place... it also looks like there were a couple of spot welds. I'm not getting that thing out any time soon.
The seatbelts were a royal pain in the backside. There's electric cabling for both of them and I sliced up my fingers trying to get it re-connected under the seat. Not on the seat or the cabling... on the bits of window glass that somehow ended up wedged under the seats from that time a couple of years back when one of Zach's friends took a sledgehammer to the windows in a fit of rage. Most of the glass had been cleaned up, but I discovered the bits that were missed.
Getting the output shaft speed sensor out of the PT Cruiser wasn't too bad. There's no way in heck that I can see that I'm going to get the input sensor out though. Getting the replacement output sensor in place turned out to be more difficult than I expected. I couldn't get the threads started. I tore up the back of my hand on those lovely little plastic points for the retainers that hold a bunch of the wiring harness to the battery tray bracket.
Break time. Time to go pick up a day bed to replace my younger son's bed. His bed is going into Zach's room. Zach's bed is going to the dump. This was easy. It was also a pleasant diversion from under the hood of the PT Cruiser.
I was watching a commercial on television the other night. Not deliberately you understand, but you can't avoid them. Anyway they said something about oil and water not mixing. I can attest to that. They also said blood and oil mix pretty well. They were right about that too.
Anyway, the bed's delivered. Time to go out and work on the speed sensor again. What do you know. It goes in without a problem. That break was just what I needed. There's still no way I'm going to get the input shaft sensor out to replace it. Hopefully the problem is only in the output sensor...
Time to put it all back together. Ooh that went quick and I don't even have extra parts. Off the jackstands and around the block. The speed sensor works at least, because the speedometer is working. Hey! The check engine light is out too.
I think I'll declare victory on three out of four tasks today. I still haven't got Zach's car running yet. It's acting like it's not getting any spark at all. I know I put it back together according to the diagram I made when I took it apart.
I don't really know that the PT Cruiser's problems are fixed yet. I really wanted to replace both sensors, but so far it looks like I didn't make things worse. I won't really know until I've driven it a while, sat in some stop and go traffic and find out if the speedometer and computer controlled transmission go haywire or not. If they don't, I'll really be able to declare victory. If not... it's back to the drawing board.
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Perri Nelson responded with:
 | Grrrr!
Now it looks like I may have accidentally disconnected the fan motor on the PT Cruiser. When the car sits at an idle for a long period of time, such as when waiting in the drive-thru the temperature starts to climb. As long as the car is moving the temperature stays normal.
This is less than pleasing. Replacing the output speed sensor did fix the speedometer and transmission wonkiness. Now I have to find out what's going on with the cooling system... again. |
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