Better Beaters - Building Cars and Daily Drivers

 Electronics, Electrical, and Body computers.

Reddy Kilowatt don't play. Putting the "kill" in kilowatt!.

Oh my!

It seems that '90's cars are smack dab in the middle of potential serious problem status. 

Today I dropped off the Riv's stereo at a repair shop. The stereo is a combo AM/FM, CD and cassette player, a pretty fancy unit. Not as fancy as the one that was in my '94 Seville. that was similar but it had a more complicated cassette player with a next song and repeat function, as well as auto reverse. I seem to remember the CD being a six disc stacker in the trunk. 

The Riv's stereo radio played and sounded pretty good, "Concert Sound" is emblazoned on the door speaker grilles. I thought that the fidelity was fine. The CD player would accept a disc but it wouldn't read and play, then it would eject it. I found an old cassette of mine, Danny Marona* in concert, tried it in the player, but it wouldn't play and got stuck. Luckily I was able to stir it around a bit until the radio would play again. 

I suppose that I could live with just AM/ FM, there are a couple of music stations I listen to, one is a Country station, another is an easy listening "Hits of the Eighties" pop station, there a couple of those.  I usually find them with the "seek" function, and of course, NPR, Nation Public Radio. 

I made the technological leap to CDs and that's where I stopped. I was right there in the middle of the eight track boom, and was relieved when the more reliable cassette format arrived. CDs seemed to have been the best of all. I don't currently have, or plan to get a Smart phone in the near future, so I guess that streaming music will be far off in my future. 

I dropped the stereo off at a shop named Short Circuit and met the owner, Mark. He seemed to be a nice guy and the shop was neat and organized, at least up in the front. He will examine my unit and give me an estimate to fix it. I figure that adding a new player will run me around 300-350 dollars. 

I wasn't planning to add a double DIN unit with a screen, that could accommodate a back up camera and navigation. I'm going to be the only one driving the car and I'm already getting used to it. But it is a bit hard to see over the tall package tray. 

The bigger problem is the HVAC control panel. The fan does not work, the air control registers seem to work, as I can hear them moving as I push the buttons. I can feel heat coming through the vent system but whether or not the a/c functions is unknown. I replaced the control panel with a nice looking one out of a wrecking yard. I've seen some rebuilt units offered on EBay. I replaced the blower motor relay with one from the same wrecked car, the system still doesn't work. I tried driving the car on a rainy evening and the windshield got really foggy. I wiped it down with a towel and I could always treat it Rain X anti fog. 

The HVAC system has quite a few automatic functions, that monitor the interior temperature and work to keep it constant, even when on the vent function. I had watched a video that showed how to fix a malfunctioning control panel. It was disassembled and the resistors were found to have loosened on the circuit board. They were re-soldered and it solved the problem. I took mine apart and found that the control buttons were a series of levers that pressed on what looked like a rubber sheet. Somehow this made contact and controlled the functions. I did my best to re-flow the solder on the resistors using a crude soldering iron. After re-installation it still didn't work, and neither did the wrecking yard unit. 

Instead of throwing money at the problem, I should find a shop that can properly diagnose and handle the repair. I want all the functions to work properly, as well as the a/c. I'm willing to spend a bit of money to insure this. As an old man I expect things to work. Everything else electrical is working fine. 

I sure hope that it can be squared away for a reasonable cost. I don't know if there are any work-arounds for the original system. I'm holding off on spending too much money, as I'm trying to pay my credit card balance down. I just paid 400 bucks for the registration on two cars! I still have two more cars to go. When the weather clears up I can still drive the car and I can look into solving the problem.

I went through a bit of a hassle with the body computer/ weak battery situation with my Daughter's '07 Mustang. Like the late model Jaguars that I had read about on the forum, it was quite sensitive to a weak battery. I posted about this a couple of years back. The battery read at close enough to 12 volts on my ammeter, but it must have been weak in amperage. I finally took the battery to an O'Reilly's and they tested it. They found that it was bad. Next time I'll do that earlier in the diagnosis process! It would save me a lot of grief and frustration. 

Another problem that I experienced with the Mustang was the breakdown of the power seat mechanism. The nylon gears strip out, even while the electric motor still functions okay. These gears aren't available as repair parts. I had found some repair parts for Fox bodied models, and I'm hoping that repair parts for the 2005-2010 models will become available...eventually. Replacement NOS power units sell for over 600.00. It's not like you can switch out the power units for a manual type easily. These manual units were pretty rare, but I was able to locate two of them. What about models that never had a manual unit available?

One of the issues that I had with my '89 Jaguar XJS concerned problems with the electronics of the ABS system. The circuit boards were known to degrade over time, components would loosen up and need to be re-soldered. Understandable since the car was over 30 years old! Posters on the Jaguar forum related how they found themselves without brakes, with brakes locking on one side, without boost etc. Not very reassuring, and unfortunately the needed components were no longer available new, or even easily found rebuilt. How can you drive a car with brakes that you can't depend on? 

The rest of the electrical systems seemed to be okay. It was as reliable as any old Jaguar, which isn't saying much. 

Add that to the problems with finding a shop that would rebuild the suspension, and the car just didn't seem to be worth the hassle.

I seemed to be having a lot of problems with the key less operation of the Flex. I found that the fob will not function properly if I carry it in my pocket along with my key ring, coins, or cell phone. I still need my keys to open the door to the house, I originally attached them to the key ring that I'd attached to the fob. That resulted in many problems. So I finally read the owners manual which instructs the driver to keep the fob clear of metal objects and electronics such as a cell phone, that can foul the function. A low battery in the fob can make starting the car problematic also.  I prefer the old time power door lock fobs that just unlock the door, and can handle a key ring. 

I know that my Wife likes the fob, which she doesn't have to fish out of her purse to enter and start the car. She just keeps the house keys in another part of her purse. She laughs at my frustrations. Maybe I need a purse.

You have to go back almost twenty years to find cars that aren't cluttered with electronic controls. It isn't going to change in the future. In fact it's only going to get worse with things like cell phone control of your car, or a retina scan or facial recognition used to unlock your car. Some of  us old guys will find a refuge with vintage models, but most of us will just have to adapt to driving our late model daily driver cars. 

So much for the future, I'm just going to concentrate on getting my Riviera squared away. 

It looks like Reddy is wishing me luck!

Images of Reddy were found on the web.
I don't know if they are legitimate or parodies.

Uhh, maybe not!

*Danny Marona was one of those entertainers that would work the Lake Tahoe, Reno and Vegas Casino circuit. He probably worked back East also. A singer, comedian, social commentator who put on a pretty good show. He was never going to be an A list star featured on TV, but he was a part of that great group of lounge entertainers that developed a loyal following. My Wife and I were up at Tahoe and caught his act at Caesar's, liked it, and we sought out his other two performances. A couple of years later we caught him at the Red Lion in San Jose, where we picked up his cassette. I'm looking forward to listening to it again.