1. Your 'new' Brick has low miles, but just age takes its toll on things. With the front wheels off, and the car safely on jack stands, check the boots on the steering rack. Grab the outer tie rod on each side and shove back and forth laterally; there should be no looseness. Look at the sway bar links; the rubber bushings above and below the sway bar are probably worn, so replace these with poly bushings from IPD or fcpgroton. Plan on replacing the bushings at the rear of the A-arms (the bushing carriers have 3 bolts attaching them to the frame/body) before too long. When you get your confidence up, then we'll sucker you into doing your rear trailing arm bushings!

2. Your kickdown cable probably needs adjusting. You do this right next to the throttle cable... I can't tell you from memory which way to adjust it, but careful experimentation will guide you. Or, get a manual!

3. In 20 years of 240 ownership spanning 500K miles, I've only had to replace accessory bushings on the alternator, and that was determined by obvious misalignment of the alt pulley (and the symptom was nasty belt squeal). The tension adjustments on the AC and PS belts are enough of a nuisance that I'm disinclined to change the mount bushings until they fail.


4. The lower hose on the flame trap is a molded part. Buy 2-3 flame trap kits from fcpgroton when you order your oil and air filters from them. Too cheap to bother with saving 2 bucks by using generic hose.


5. If you have the Denso part number from the alternator, you can either research brushes on line or go to a decent alternator rebuild shop.

6. A recent post regarding a tranny swap mentioned a 3M spray-on undercoating product as being helpful in reducing noise in the passsenger compartment... he sprayed the underside of the tranny tunnel before the new box went in.

Somewhere along the line, you need to acquire a spare fuel pump relay (junkyard unit resoldered will do fine). Go thru the 700/900 FAQs for general maintenance info. Fresh fluids all around, esp your trans. BTW, it's highly likely that the trans is an AW70 or AW71, not a ZF unit...

Good luck!
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Thank goodness we don't get all the government we pay for. -- Will Rogers