Right you are Art. I am beginning to wonder how much of what the seller told me was true. So now I have a car with 235,000 mi but no idea how much is on the engine. He was mechanically challenged and had only owned her for a year and a half, so he might not have known about the engine swap. What he said was that he drove it daily, but it needed about a dozen minor things fixed. He was paying a mechanic to do things like brakes, shocks, one front bushing, tune up & distributor. I believe he was realizing how much money he might have to spend and gave up.

$1200 for a car with over $1000 spent in repairs & tires in the last 18 months.

The injection issues are on the back burner for a couple of days but I am positive this has the older 2.2 Jetronic because there is no second control module. It ran pretty good going down the road and got 22mpg at 80. I found a second rubber seal in one spark plug connector and that plug was not exactly the right color, so the slight miss at idle has probably been fixed. Mechanic? What mechanic?

What was I thinking? The last time I did this much work on a car I was 16, way over 40 years ago. Yesterday got the track bar bushings & fuel filter done. Must have caused a connection problem because now the fuel pump won't work. I have been finding rotted wire insulation. Also a lot of cracked vacuum hoses. If it isn't something, it's something. Back to it this morning.

Track bar bushings: I am convinced that they were fine, the bolts just not tight enough. I'll bet that most people who pay mechanics to change them have the same issue and get taken for the labor. Next is an inner tie rod end & boots. That should be fun. The rack is tight. Then the U joints, carrier, transmission mount, speedo cable seal, front wheel bearings, exhaust pipe and we will be driving her. That is what we bought her for. This is not a restoration project. It is a car to drive on gravel roads that will save us money.

DL is short for Daisy Lilly around here.