The Semi-Unofficial Pistol-Forum Car geek, gearhead, hot rodder, and vehicle thread

[Bucky]

40* is still below the minimum temp for summers, regardless of it not being freezing, ice or not snowing out. That's why you're losing all your traction. At that temperature the tires are beginning to turn into something resembling a hard plastic more than a grippy rubber. It's simply not an acceptable temperature to be driving on summers. Different summer compounds will lose traction quicker than others, but you're about 20* below where the tires start to lose grip. At 40* you're well outside the capabilities of the compound to function properly, and depending on the tire you're also destroying it since it can't flex properly and starts cracking. Anything at or below 45* is generally considered a no-go.....not "ehhh, well, maybe kinda", the answer is "no". The "Ehhh, well, kinda maybe"-zone is between 45*-60* (for most summers), where the tires are starting to lose grip but the compound is still pliable enough to not be in danger of destroying itself, and still has enough acceptable grip for driving safely.

Duly noted. I’ll change my cutoff point to 45 degrees. Also, under 60 was and will continue to be cruising’ mode, not hard use.

[awp_101]

Could less power be the answer?

[awp_101]

I saved this years ago but have never found out anything about it other than that it was probably taken at Bonneville.



Chopped, channeled, the windows replaced with plastic.

[TGS]

I'm on a trip and this Tahoe has a pretty bad oil leak when warmed up. Oil pressure has stayed good but it left a pretty big pool of oil last night, and on the drive gave me a low oil warning light.

Dipstick reads at or above the hatch-mark, sometimes all the way up to the little s-shaped bend in the dipstick. Take it out, wipe it down, stick it back in for a reading....same thing, every time, hot engine or cold engine.

How the heck am I supposed to know how much oil to add to keep it alive until I can get it home to a shop? Any recommendations, @JRB or anyone with experience on this Tahoe?

[OlongJohnson]

Nevermind.

[JRB]

I'm on a trip and this Tahoe has a pretty bad oil leak when warmed up. Oil pressure has stayed good but it left a pretty big pool of oil last night, and on the drive gave me a low oil warning light.

Dipstick reads at or above the hatch-mark, sometimes all the way up to the little s-shaped bend in the dipstick. Take it out, wipe it down, stick it back in for a reading....same thing, every time, hot engine or cold engine.

How the heck am I supposed to know how much oil to add to keep it alive until I can get it home to a shop? Any recommendations, @JRB or anyone with experience on this Tahoe?

All of those Gen V Chevy V8's have a pretty interesting oil pressure regulator that basically switches between a 'low' and a 'high' setting - approximately 36-40psi low and approx 70psi on high IIRC.
The dipstick *should* be accurate regardless, but there's a different fault code for low oil pressure vs low oil warning because of those oil pressure settings. No telling what it may be with the info available, but going easy with low load and low revs will make a difference in oil pressure, and thereby hopefully can reduce the leak rate in the meantime.

Is there a CEL on? Does the low oil warning persist after that first big puddle, or did it go away on a cold start?

[TGS]

All of those Gen V Chevy V8's have a pretty interesting oil pressure regulator that basically switches between a 'low' and a 'high' setting - approximately 36-40psi low and approx 70psi on high IIRC.
The dipstick *should* be accurate regardless, but there's a different fault code for low oil pressure vs low oil warning because of those oil pressure settings. No telling what it may be with the info available, but going easy with low load and low revs will make a difference in oil pressure, and thereby hopefully can reduce the leak rate in the meantime.

Is there a CEL on? Does the low oil warning persist after that first big puddle, or did it go away on a cold start?

No CEL. The low oil warning will come on once every now and then, seemingly no pattern.

Getting a dipstick reading I can trust is the annoying part. Looked at some posts on a Chevy forum and it seems to be a common thing, with some people saying "just drain the oil and put 8 quarts in".

[JRB]

No CEL. The low oil warning will come on once every now and then, seemingly no pattern.

Getting a dipstick reading I can trust is the annoying part. Looked at some posts on a Chevy forum and it seems to be a common thing, with some people saying "just drain the oil and put 8 quarts in".

I love a lot of GM products, but the average Chevy forum tends to make me fear for the future of humanity.

So long as the truck is parked in a level spot, right before pulling the dipstick out, I prefer to rotate the dipstick handle a little while it's still fully inserted into the tube. Just wiggling it about 45-60* back and forth will help make the actual oil level obvious. There's a similar problem with vague oil levels in other modern vehicles, and this trick sometimes helps those vehicles too.

There is enough space in the sump that even if you put 0.5qt over the max fill, you'd be just fine. So I'd pour a half quart in and see what happens. If the light continues to pop up, add another half quart. Hopefully whoever deals with maintenance for your stuff can get it addressed soon.

[Welder]

I just bought two cars in the last 5 days. A front-ended 04 Acura TL 3.2 auto with 203k mi for $600 and an immaculate 08 Accord coupe V6 / 6-speed with 214k mi and an oil-burning problem for $2300.

The TL I really only want for its 17"x 8" wheels which I'll use on my 04 Accord for auto-x. Talked to my customer who owns a scrapyard / metal shredder and he said the 3 cats on it are worth my $600 purchase cost, then I've got 4 good doors, a trunk lid, a passenger seat, and a good auto transmission which I think are worth another $1500 together. There are other small parts I could dink around with, but I think I'm going to just pull the listed parts and then take the rest to the shredder and sell it across the scale. I think I'm going to keep the 3.2 V6 in it for a possible future project. It might've been hurt by driving the car after it had a blown radiator, so I'm considering it's value at zero even though it does run. There's a little noise in the lower end.

The Accord was kind of an impulse buy, but that V6 / 6-speed is pretty rare and I wanted to see if I liked the 8th generation version of what I own as a 7th. I've got the oil draining on the lift, and I know these have a problem with badly-designed oil-control rings, so I'm fully figuring it needs a different engine but I'm going to see if I can get them cleaned out with the old shade-tree trick of a couple quarts of ATF idling in there along with fresh oil for an hour or two. One step further is to do the same thing but use diesel fuel in the crankcase....but in an aluminum engine I'm pretty sure that if it wasn't dead before, it would be after! A replacement J35Z3 will cost between $900 and $1800 at yards local to me; I don't want to use the J35Z2 which came in the automatic cars because of the VCM and probably other differences.

Anyway, it's been an interesting week.

[JRB]

I just bought two cars in the last 5 days. A front-ended 04 Acura TL 3.2 auto with 203k mi for $600 and an immaculate 08 Accord coupe V6 / 6-speed with 214k mi and an oil-burning problem for $2300.

The TL I really only want for its 17"x 8" wheels which I'll use on my 04 Accord for auto-x. Talked to my customer who owns a scrapyard / metal shredder and he said the 3 cats on it are worth my $600 purchase cost, then I've got 4 good doors, a trunk lid, a passenger seat, and a good auto transmission which I think are worth another $1500 together. There are other small parts I could dink around with, but I think I'm going to just pull the listed parts and then take the rest to the shredder and sell it across the scale. I think I'm going to keep the 3.2 V6 in it for a possible future project. It might've been hurt by driving the car after it had a blown radiator, so I'm considering it's value at zero even though it does run. There's a little noise in the lower end.

The Accord was kind of an impulse buy, but that V6 / 6-speed is pretty rare and I wanted to see if I liked the 8th generation version of what I own as a 7th. I've got the oil draining on the lift, and I know these have a problem with badly-designed oil-control rings, so I'm fully figuring it needs a different engine but I'm going to see if I can get them cleaned out with the old shade-tree trick of a couple quarts of ATF idling in there along with fresh oil for an hour or two. One step further is to do the same thing but use diesel fuel in the crankcase....but in an aluminum engine I'm pretty sure that if it wasn't dead before, it would be after! A replacement J35Z3 will cost between $900 and $1800 at yards local to me; I don't want to use the J35Z2 which came in the automatic cars because of the VCM and probably other differences.

Anyway, it's been an interesting week.

Absolute score, on both cars! Those 17x8 wheels on the TL are made by Enkei, who not only produce a hell of a lot of good aftermarket performance wheels, they do the load engineering and other certification testing for some other seriously high end wheel makers including Ray's Engineering aka Volk Wheels in Japan. Plus being native Honda fitment they're naturally hub-centric and you can put a fantastic tire on a 17x8. Well done! As you probably already know, any of those J-series V6's are worth trying to save as well - they respond to turbocharging VERY well

The diesel trick does work fine in aluminum motors, because the cylinder liners are still iron. But be careful with quantity. I prefer to just squirt a little diesel down the spark plug hole, enough to get diesel around the whole piston, and let it sit until it all drained past the rings, let all the diesel drain out of the oil pan drain, then slowly rotate the engine by hand, lather rinse repeat. Tends to clean a lot of gunk out of the oil pan too, doing it that way

I'd try Dexron 5 ATF, Seafoam, Marvel Mystery Oil, etc first, but if those failed I'd use this diesel trick to free up the rings in 1999-2002 vintage Toyota 1ZZ-FE's, which had problems with rings seizing up and oil burning at low ass miles for a Toyota, like 100-150k.