I did not want a cold air intake, Part Two.

It's easy to get used to ordering stuff from Rock Auto.

I think my K&N filter killed my MAF sensor, or at least shortened it's life. The oiled filter allows some oil to mix with the intake air. Over time this will foul the hot wire in the MAF. I started having problems that lit the little wrench icon on the dash. The car also went into restricted mode which noticeably reduced the power. The first couple of times I just turned off and restarted the motor. That reset the sensor and it ran fine for a while. 

The last time it did that I pulled the intake tube and cleaned the sensor with MAF cleaning spray. The fix didn't last as long as the last time. The code reader provided a code for the sensor. It was time to order a new unit.

This small unit was not too expensive from Rock Auto. Like a halogen light bulb, it's critical to keep your fingers from touching the actual wire. Body oils will also damage the wire. Luckily the wire is well protected, it would take a lot of effort to contaminate the unit. 

The sensor is easily accessible on the back side of the intake tube. The next time I need to clean the sensor I'll just remove it from the duct.

After removing the electrical plug, it's just held on by two allen head screws. It was easy to remove the screws and replace the old unit with the new one.

It was a couple of days before I got a chance to test out the car. Our Christmas decorations are stored on the shelves that run around the perimeter of the garage ceiling. It's usually possible to remove them one at a time, but when replacing them it's easier and safer to pull the car out of the garage. 

Luckily our atmospheric river has decided to take some time off, so it was a nice day when I backed the Mustang into the driveway. I've been keeping both of the Mustangs in the garage, no need to get them dirty. In fact, the '96 has been in there since late September!

I fired up the engine and let it warm up a bit. The red wrench icon didn't light up, so I decided to take it out for a test drive. I wanted to drive it at higher speeds, so I drove it down to Morgan Hill on US101. The round trip totaled over 35 miles. So far so good. I'm guessing that the MAF sensor is fouled over time to being exposed to oil residue from the air filter.

I had ordered the new sensor from Rock Auto, it cost a bit under 40 bucks, not including shipping. That's not too bad for the cost of doing business. I wonder how long the new sensor will last.

I would have preferred to have the stock air box set up. I might find someone who would swap me for my open unit. I will admit that it does look kinda gnarly with the open filter.

 So how did that front bumper turn out?

Was it worth the money? Absolutely.

I was enticed by the coupon for bumper paint at Almost Everything Automotive in Fremont. It offered the service at 329.00. I didn't read the small print. After speaking with Frank, the counterman, and receiving an estimate, I found that it was going to cost me 100 bucks over that. The small print stated that larger bumpers would cost more. Frank explained the process and the options, it was going to be a mask and spray. Nothing wrong with that, that's what you'll get at that price point. I decided to remove the cracked front license plate mount, the shop would just mask around it, better to take it off before. I've done that before, removing the loose bits is better than having them masked off, sometimes the paint will start to chip around the edges of the surface. Frank had also pointed out that it was possible that dirt might get kicked up by the paint spray, or fly out of seams. It could land in the paint and make a rougher finish. Final cut and polish was not included or recommended. After I removed the plate mount I opened up the hood, and used a leaf blower to blow any loose dust from the under hood and headlight area, top and bottom. Then I carefully washed the bumper paying particular attention to the seams. I know that the shop was going to wash the area, but I doubt that they would be as thorough as I would be. 

I found that labor at the shop that fixed my Daughter's car in Davis was 140.00, I suppose that it's even higher in the Bay Area. With the cost of paint and supplies, plus labor, the shop has to crank these jobs out quickly to make any profit. So I try to make it a bit easier on them by doing some of the prep work beforehand. I won't sand the surface for them, they could say that my work was responsible for any potential problems. 

As I've said before, don't go in looking for perfection, you're not going to find it on the low cost menu. You should be looking for good work that improves the look of your car. Good prep is the basis for a good paint job, that takes time, and time costs money. 

When I went in to pick up the car I was quite impressed. The finish was smooth and shiny. I didn't see any over spray on the black part of the grille. The color match was good, though it was slightly darker. It's not easy to match 16 year old faded paint. Maybe the new paint will fade a bit after a while. Still I am quite satisfied with the result. I plan on replacing the front license plate mount. 

I also decided to have them add some pinstripes to the sides. I suppose that I could have done it myself, but I just wanted it done right, and especially, right away! The cost for this was 200.00, The color selected was Camel, which matches the interior color and set off the exterior. They came out very nice. It's just a little touch to personalize my car. I'm not going to add a different set of custom wheels, the original chrome wheels are in great shape and suit the red color. My interest is to clean up and detail the car the best I can. My goal is to preserve and maintain it in the best condition that I can. 

I'm going to order some touch up paint for some chips on the left passenger door, as well as some spray color and clear, There's a faded spot on the left rear wheel opening. 

I plan to clean the running boards just like I did the rear bumper pad. I wont use any protectant as that could make the surface slippery, which would be very hazardous. 

Today when I went out I saw something that I initially thought  was a pine needle stuck to the left front fender, but it was a pinstripe end that had come loose, I called the shop and they said to bring it in. I know that these are vinyl stripes, but many OEMs use similar stripes but I thought that they need some time to properly bond to the paint.

I brought the Nav in and they fixed the droopy pin stripe. That only lasted for a week, The forward tip of the stripe has started to raise up a bit. I called the shop and they said to bring it back. I took it in today and they fixed it by applying a little clear to the edge. Will this be a permanent fix? I hope so.

So my review is mixed; I'm happy with the paint which is the most important thing. Not too happy with the stripe, though it does look good. I probably should have bought some striping tape at O'Reilly's and done it myself. I guess that's what I get for thinking I'm a high roller!

As soon as I brought the Navigator home I looked for a replacement owner's manual and warranty book package. I was lucky to find a complete set in the leather folder on E Bay for thirty bucks! That was a find that made me very happy. Those manuals are now sitting in the center console. 

I ordered a new replacement front license mount, it set me back 13.00 plus shipping. I found that the old mount was held on by regular nuts and bolts. That caused me some problems trying to get a wrench on the nut behind the bumper. I plan to install the new mount using nut-serts. I'll detail the process in a future post.

Now that the monsoon has passed, I look forward to washing and waxing the Navigator. So far I've put 1,000 miles on the odometer and it's been running well. I drove it in some of the heaviest rain in recent memory. That should bode well for the future.

 Adventures in Bargain paint. Part One.

This is the worst area.

Another car painting adventure! 

Getting my Navigators front bumper resprayed.

A lot of things happen in 17 years.

My Navigator is 17 years old, there is no escaping that fact. Mileage is only a bit more than 109,000. So it hasn't been used that much. But it's lived a bit already. Overall the paint still looks pretty good. There's a few chips here and there, even what looks like a pellet gun divot on the left rear side. Along with a faded portion on the rear wheel well trim. I decided that with such a big repair to the front bumper I really wanted the repair to be done the best as reasonably possible. If it wasn't for the area of clear coat failure, I would have just touched up the chips and called it a day. 

This will be done at the Almost Everything Auto Body shop in Fremont. 

I have prior experience with this shop, they painted my '70 Mustang Highland Green, and they did a pretty good job. They fixed a dent on my Son's Porsche Boxster and he was satisfied, the repair wasn't even noticeable. 

There were a few coupons on their website, bumper paint for 329.00, well I didn't read the small print. Large vehicle bumpers are more, certain paints are extra. My Nav's bumpers fit under both of these two exemptions so the price of the estimate was 100.00 more. 

After they wrote up the work estimate I read the small print on that document. They won't disassemble any parts, it's just mask, and spray. They warn that underlying defects will show through the new paint. There might be some over spray. Dirt may be kicked up when the paint spray hits body seams and such. I had mentioned this in a post years ago. I plan to wash the front bumper thoroughly, and will clean out any seams and use compressed air to blow off the radiator, under the hood and under the bumper area, before I drop it off. I will also remove the front licence plate mount. This way I'll make sure that they'll paint the bumper under it. Besides, it's cracked, maybe I can fix it or find a replacement.

They also state that they won't polish the paint after it's dry, since it's only a single stage repair. There's bound to be a bit of dust on the surface. I think that I'll be able to hit it with some Meguiar's cleaner wax and smooth it out.

It sounds like they aren't going to do much, doesn't it? You'd think that for 400 bucks you'd get more, but no. Costs have been steadily rising in auto refinishing. I imagine that body shop labor has to be at least 140.00 just like the mechanic's labor was in Sacramento. Supplies are also expensive, especially the paint itself, I've read that a gallon of paint can run several  hundred dollars. I'm pretty sure that they will blend it on site, making just enough paint to do the job. 

There aren't a lot of shops that will do a complete paint job. The shop that repaired my Flex, Caliber Collision, did a great job blending in the repair. When I asked them if they would do a complete repaint, they told me no initially. Then they quoted me some crazy high price. 

The current budget re-spray at Almost Everything is 799.00 with a 100.00 savings coupon. That's for small to midsize vehicles. Something as big as the Nav would be extra. I also had to pay Miracle auto painting extra to paint my old F250. I added a few extras when I had my '70 Mustang painted; a complete base coat/primer coat, and a UV protectant added to the color coat. I recall that the base paint was 599.00 (coupon!) and I added another hundred dollars or so, for the extras. 

Almost Everything's best paint respray in the original color is 4,300 bucks! That is for a true base coat, clear coat job. That's a lot of money. That's almost as much as I paid for my Nav, I don't know of too many twenty year old cars that would be worth painting at that price. 

I was satisfied with the paint job on my Mustang, but I had my expectations held in check. I have to remember this when I pick up the Nav. I'm sure I will be able to find some faults, but I have to be realistic. I told the counterman that I wanted to make an improvement in my cars' looks, but I was looking to do it at a low price. 

I decided that I would even pop for a professionally applied set of pinstripes, just a little detail to set my car apart.  I certainly don't plan on swapping out the nice chrome wheels that came stock on the Nav. They are in perfect shape. I'm not into putting custom wheels on my cars, when I swapped the wheels on my '96 Mustang it was for a set of OEM New Edge '99 wheels. 

I guess that I wanted the pinstripes to look nice and straight. These will be vinyl stripes. My 40,000.00 (new)  Jaguar XJS had vinyl coach lines as well. These pinstripes are setting me back two bills, but like I said, I don't plan on any other modifications, and I figure I might as well get it all done at once. 

Bargain paint prices aren't the bargain that they used to be. But consider the alternatives. Trying to spray paint your car at home would call for a sizable investment in equipment, and materials. You would need an empty two car garage as well as some skill. Respraying an entire car is probably illegal in your city. It is in mine. There's a good chance that your neighbors might call the police or fire dept, to report suspicious smells in the neighborhood. Trying to use spray cans becomes more expensive as the number of cans increases and spray can paint isn't very durable. Plus the smell might  also be reported.

The best course is to take your car to a shop like I did. Do a reasonable amount of prep, and pay your money. I think that the wisest choice is to stick to the lower priced options, even if you pay a lot more you're probably not going to get a show level paint job. In a few days you can pick up your freshly painted car. I assure you that it will look much better, if not perfect. Pay a couple hundred bucks extra a month on your credit card, and you'll pay it off in less than six months. It will be worth it, I've been happy with every car that I've had painted. You just have to have realistic expectations. 

The other alternative is to just keep on driving a junky looking car. Be honest with yourself though, if you really want a nice car, the best bet is just to buy a newer car.

I'll share how well the job turned out in my my next post.

 Today was the first time in a while that I spent most of the day playing with my cars.

My new Dream Team?

I took the '06  Mustang out of the garage and used the waterless car wash to clean it up. It's running great and I plan on putting some miles on it. I put over twenty miles on it running a couple of errands. 

The damaged area is not readily apparent.

I want to drive my Navigator as much as I can this week and see if any problems develop, or are hinted at. Cosmetically it's good, except for a small failed area of clear coat on the front bumper, which also has some rock chips. I plan on having the bumper repainted in a few months but I plan to touch up the other chips around the vehicle myself.

Kind of a twenty footer on this.

Just some chips on this side.

I might try to blend the repaired area in with the original paint. The hazard with these type of repairs is that they sometimes make the area look worse than before! 

The black plastic step plate on the rear bumper was discolored and whitish looking. I spent some time with a few different products and made quite an improvement. I tried the water less wash first, as they claim that it can refresh plastics. I didn't make much of a difference. Then I tried a spray that claims to renew black plastic as well as other surfaces. It smelled like a volatile solvent, similar to brake or electronic contact cleaner, and after a couple of applications, it started to clean the surface pretty well. Then I used 303 protectant, which brought even more of the original semi gloss color back. This refresh made quite an improvement to the tail gate and bumper area. 

Dual exhaust pipes are the 
Hot Rodder's staple.

I also got under the rear of the car to try to polish the dual tail pipes. First I washed them down with Castrol Super Cleaner. They were covered with a thick stubborn coat of dirt and surface rust. It was apparent that they hadn't been cleaned in years. After I removed all that I could, I switched to  Simichrome polish and steel wool. They will never look like new again, but the shiny pipes are now more noticeable. I love dual exhaust, either the traditional tailpipe on each side, or a dual outlet single muffler. These are a legit performance system that eliminates the second muffler or resonator and splits into two pipes. I didn't notice these pipes on my first inspection, but I'm happy that they're there. A system like that costs over 500.00 and it gives the rear of the Navigator a muscle truck vibe. 

I always add door edge guards to protect them if the edge hits a pole or wall. I bought a 15 ft. coil of chrome edging from O'Reilly's. This is a better solution than the individual trim pieces that I've usually bought. I'm not going to line every opening with the stuff, but I know that some guys like to do that. 

There are quite a few chips in the front bumper and left side door cladding. I'm going to order a small bottle of touch up paint and a spray can of clear from Automotive Touch Up Paint I'll touch up the chips and see if I can improve the look of the front bumper. 

There is a set of tan colored, heavy plastic Goodyear floor mats in the car. They were pretty dirty and nasty. They look like a low buck WeatherTech copy. I pulled them out and found the original carpet mats underneath in good clean condition. I hit the plastic mats with more Super Cleaner and a scrub brush. They came out looking like new. The interior of the car looked pretty good already, but this just adds to the total impression. 

I had gone down to AAA earlier to transfer the Nav into my name, and to pay the use tax. Which is just another name for sale tax. Of course the original buyer paid the sales tax on the first transaction, but the State always wants it's pound of flesh. 507.00 for transfer and tax. It wasn't a surprise, it works out to about 10% of the price.  Luckily the registration is good until June next year, that saved me a few bucks. At least for now.

So I'll be doing some low buck cleaning and freshening up, until I save up some more dough.

Unfortunately the car was missing the owner's and warranty manuals. It's not easy to figure out how everything works on complicated cars. With my Flex, I just looked in the manual when I couldn't figure out on my own how something worked. The Nav 's manual is over 500 pages, almost half of that deals with the complicated entertainment and information systems. Luckily, I could get a PDF copy for free. I'll get an original manual from EBay later. The first electronic assist that I disabled was the easy driver exit mode, where the seat slides back every time you open the door. I would disable the power running board deployment, except that my Wife loves that feature. She is vertically challenged and has enough trouble climbing into my F150. The Nav also has adjustable control pedals, with two person memory. These are features that make any vehicle more comfortable for shorter people. This is also in my Flex. Ford had made these features available in a wide range of models.

Top of the line models like the Navigator came with many features that will later spread down through the line. Sometimes these features are outmoded by the time you buy the car, such as a disc based navigation system or a high zoot stereo system that is based upon a cassette player. My Navigator has had the original stereo head unit replaced with a Pioneer touch screen unit. The original system was also touch screen based, but maybe it failed at some time. The stereo was set up to display info in Spanish, the seller said that he didn't know how to change that, but he had figured out the functions that he needed. I went online and found a video that explained how to switch the language display on this unit, and it only took seconds to restore the system. Like the dual pipes, I hadn't noticed the single CD slot on the stereo, I thought the unit didn't have a CD player. While looking online, I saw that several of these lower priced units didn't incorporate a CD player, as most people now stream music through their phones. Being the old skool kind of guy that I am, I was very happy! I actually prefer the simpler open slot player to the tilt screen access type, simpler is better, with less that can go wrong. The system sounds okay to me, I'm not an audiophile, I grew up listening to a single speaker AM radio in the dash of my Dad's station wagon. 

These two make a nice pair of vehicles with differing functions.

If the notion of having two Mustang convertibles seems kind of redundant, then the idea of having two large SUV/CUV vehicles would seem even worse. The two vehicles are seperated by twelve years, the Navigator is a body on frame truck platform, while the Flex is a unit construction FWD platform. They drive differently, and the configuration, layout, and interior space is different. 

I bought my Navigator as a hobby car, I could have bought a '50's or 60's vintage car instead.  If the Nav turns out to be good enough to serve as a reliable transportation car, that's just a bonus. It still gets better mileage than any old car alternative.

Considering that I've also have a '07 long bed F150, and have had two Mopar minivans, as well as a V8 Explorer, I will offer my observations of these different vehicles. The market has moved away from truck based SUVs in favor of unit construction platforms, at least in the smaller models. The Escalade and Navigator remain on the heavy duty platform while the other smaller, Cadillac and Lincoln models are now CUVs.  

Ford has chosen to follow a turbo charged future. Most of their models are available with a turbocharged four, six, even a V8. Since they only provide extra power when they are spooled up, they can provide better economy when not under load. Since they are small displacement engines, all of this power carries little penalty, quite different from the old days. Back then, the big block V8 just added weight and pumping losses when it wasn't under throttle. Then it sucked down the gas through it's carb's four venturis.

My Flex was available with a turbo V6 that produced almost 400 hp. Impressive but unnecessary. The N/A 3.7 V6 produces 285 hp. which I have found to be more than adequate. The new Navigator comes with a dual turbo V6 that produces over 400 hp. This is basically the same engine that's in the Raptor. Previous Navigators have always been at a bit of a disadvantage compared to the Escalade, which has a 6.0 liter V8. The Navs have gotten a bit better gas mileage, so it's always a trade off. 

What matters to me is good acceleration and effortless cruising speeds. I'm happy to trade off some maximum performance for better mileage. I've never drag raced anyone from a stop light, and don't anticipate that happening in the future. 

We have experienced a period of extremely high gas prices here in California. Local prices were well over 6.29 a gallon. I kept looking for the cheap stations that held their prices to 6.00 or less. Prices are lower now, I found many around 4.29 a gallon. There are even a few in the high 3.00 range. 

Gas is still expensive, and most people run up high weekly mileages commuting. Lucky for me, I'm retired and most of the places I routinely go to are relatively close. I try to combine errands into one trip when possible. We do rack up the miles on our weekend road trips. 

Of course as I always say, all fuel consumption is relative. When I need to carry big/long stuff I drive my truck. But then there is only space for one passenger. The Flex and the Navigator can carry things up to 6 1/2 ft. long in the back and it's possible to fold part of the sets down to preserve some passenger space at the same time. The Navigator runs behind these other two vehicles in fuel economy: Flex, F 150, Navigator. But the difference between best to worst, is only around 4-5 mpg. It's not like I have a 35 mpg. vehicle in the fleet as an alternative. Well, I do have those two Mustangs.

My Wife is okay with the Navigator,  I think that she actually likes it. She told me that if we want to take it somewhere, we'll just fill it up and drive it, no need to agonize or apologize for the fuel mileage numbers.