It suddenly dawned on me last week, looking at a vehicle license renewal notice for my '93 245, that I'd sort of *ahem* forgotten to renew the plates on my '63 PV a couple of months earlier. Apparently I've been driving around for a while with expired plates.

Well, need to get that fixed. So I dropped it off at the garage nearest my house for the state inspection. And apparently it flunked. With a minor laundry list of items.

- loose bushings on both front upper control arms
- leak in exhaust pipe
- worn front brake pads
- loose 'trinon bushings' in rear suspension

Loose bushings. The PV has those neat metal-on-metal bushings and all those gease fittings. The little rubber seals on mine split and died, I've sort of been babying it along by wrapping a little tape around the remnants of the seals and greasing it more often. But still, the upper/inner bushings, expesically on the right side, have develops some slop. And, upon further inspection, the upper-outer on the right side as well. So after a little snooping around on the inter-webs, I ordered $300 worth of bushings (each one is around $100) from Swedish Treasures. Both upper-inner bushings, and then one more order for the upper-outer last night after jacking it up, taking the wheels off, unweighting the suspension, and wiggling it around. The left side is actually pretty solid, just a very slight amount of slack in the upper-inner bushings, but I did notice the wheel bearing was allowing a little wiggle, maybe that's what they felt. Still sounds good when rotated, so just a quick snugging of the wheel bearing retainer nut?

The leak in the exhaust pipe - very minor thing, guess they were feeling picky that day? I have a 4:1 header leading into a 2.25" exhaust system, earlier this year the tip of the pipe broke off where it bolted to the header collector (with a trouble prone 3-bolt flange). I took the opportunity to try and reduce the leaks and hassles coming from that area and welded on a V-band clamp there. Only slight problem being I did it in place, and couldn't *quite* get all the way around on the header collector, there's a tiny spot where it's not welded. I guess I'll have to take the header off to complete it? Or maybe just stick some putty there and 'heat wrap' the header to obscure it. Heh.

- Worn front brake pads - I thought this was going to be a minor issue. Maybe 10 years ago I swapped some 122 discs brakes onto the front, using some junkyard mid-60's 122 parts. Even used the junkyard pads. It's all worked fine. But when I took out the old pads, the pistons were looking a little crusty and were very reluctant to retract. Plus the rubber seals were rotten, dry, and falling off in flakes as I forced the pistons back. Plus, once the pistons were back, they were fairly well wedged. Dragging would ensue if if just stuck pads in. *sigh* Looked around, found 'loaded' calipers for $55 each (45 core) and ordered them. One less hassle to worry about - checking to see how hot the front wheels are after driving it to check for dragging brakes. Now I'm just hoping the company I ordeed them from actually has them, they seem to be in short supply.

- Rear 'trinion' bushings? I'm assuming they mean something amiss with the rear suspension? Mine has 48 year old rubber bushings back there, and I've been thrashing the car around with a 175-ish HP snorty B20 for along while, I certainly wouldn't be surprised if there were some beat up rubber bushings back there. I ordered a full poly kit from IPD. But last night I jacked the rear end up in the air to pre-emptively start PB-Laster-ing all those 48 year old nuts (I'm especially thinking the torque rods are not going to cooperate), and I really didn't see anything amiss back there. Nothing loose, nothing chewed up looking, axle wasn't free to move around in any direction I tried (including tipping the diff nose up and down). Now I'm not entirely sure I want to hassle with that whole mess of one-piece nut-bolt-rust-lumps. On the other hand, I'm thinking it might be a good time to take the axle a little further apart and intall that limited-slip diff I've had sitting around for about 8 or 9 years.

Ah well, I've sort of neglected this thing for a while. It just keeps on going. I've been spending all my car tinkering time on the wagon (16V turbo engine takes a lot of time and effort), I guess I've been slacking on keeping this in good shape.
--
'63 PV544 rat rod, '93 Classic #1141 245 (now w/16V turbo)