Aren Cambre's Blog

Picking up from where I left off, I diagnosed that my ‘97 Chevrolet Monte Carlo’s compressor does not engage, and I suspected an electrical problem.

Yes, it was an electrical problem. But an easy one.

I had one trick to figure out. I need to test voltage at the compressor. Only problem is the power connection to the compressor clutch is frighteningly close to the electric radiator fan, and this fan comes on when I turn the A/C on.

I found the wiring diagram in my Haynes manual:

It shows that the signal for the compressor passes through a relay, shown at right. Terminals 2 and 5 are always hot, powered by the same fuse. When terminal 1 is grounded, that closes the switch inside the relay, allowing terminal 3 to power something. In this case, when the powertrain control module grounds terminal 1, terminal 3 activates a diode on the compressor that engages the clutch. Here’s the terminals on the relay:

I pulled off the relay and found that the relay’s terminals 2 and 5 are hot even when the ignition is on the ON position, the engine is not running, and the A/C is off. That combination is important because I have power available to the compressor but I don’t risk danger from a running engine or a moving radiator fan.

I used a paper clip to short terminals 3 and 5, emulating what the relay would do if activated by the powertrain control module:

Then I pulled off the compressor clutch wire. It was really nasty, so I cleaned it up with carburetor cleaner:

I tested for signal:

Eureka, the light came on! So I have compressor signal.

I also cleaned up the fitting on the compressor:

Plugging it back in, the compressor clutch clapped into place! But I also found that there is something flaky with the connection. If I move it wrong, the compressor disengages. I ended up finagling it into a position that works, but I’ll have to investigate that further later.

Now that I can turn on the compressor, I can properly charge the system. All told, I added about 20 oz of R-134a to the system. After doing that, I got these pressures at about 2000 or so RPM at 82 degrees ambient temperature:

That’s 205 PSI high and 26 PSI low. I think those were OK readings. I later found the static pressure to be 83 PSI, which corresponded to a 78 degree ambient temperature. I’m not sure how to interpret that since the actual temperatuer was about 4 degrees warmer.

But what bothered me more is when I came back to the car about 5 hours later, the static pressure dropped to 76 PSI. In retrospect, in those 5 hours, the National Weather Service recorded a 10 degree temperature drop at Love Field Airport, and the engine bay cooled down significantly. Those alone could fully explain the problem.

Still, doing my due diligence, turned off all the lights and got out my UV lamp and checked for leaks. For a reference point, I checked the UV overspill on the low side port where I injected it:

The dye puts off a clear yellow color.

I checked all around the compressor and fittings and lines and couldn’t find any evidence of dye:

Seeing no leaks, I added a few more ounces of R-134a to the system and called it a day. I’ll check the system once again tomorrow to verify that it has plenty of refrigerant and button the system back up.

My plan for now is to just run it until I notice cooling problems. At that point, I’ll verify pressures again and check for leaks.

I do have one theory for why this all happened, although I think it is wishful thinking. My low pressure service port had no cap. It is theoretically possible that debris got in there and caused a slow leak.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll find out if that is the case.

My ‘97 Chevrolet Monte Carlo’s A/C is dead, and I am going to fix it.

Last fall, towards the end of A/C season, the compressor got really noisy. I could really hear it at low speeds.

Come spring, the compressor won’t engage at all. This probably means a refrigerant leak, faulty compressor, or electrical problem.

You might say that a loud compressor automatically means it’s new compressor time. Not necessarily, says an A/C tech who specializes in GM vehicles: variable displacement V5 compressors can be noisy with too little refrigerant.

My first test is to check the refrigerant pressures. First step is to assemble the gauges:

I tried to hook up the gauges, but I could only manage to get the high pressure side on. Here’s its reading:

That’s not good at all. It’s indicating about 8 PSI, meaning I definitely have a refrigerant leak. I don’t recall exact normal idle pressures, but I am pretty sure it’s over 70 PSI.

I removed the air cleaner box to get good access to the low side fitting. This is looking straight down:

Since I already knew I have a leak, I sprayed in some dye. This dye will help me find the leak later: the dye will appear near the leak point. If it doesn’t obviously show up in daylight, I will be able to detect the leak using a fluorescent “black light.” Here’s the dye can:

You can see how bright the stuff is on the low side fitting:

I got both sides of the gauges hooked up:

I introduced enough R-134a to get the gauges to read about 63 PSI:

I turned the car on and still got no compressor action.

Dang, that’s not good.

At this point, it appears to be an electrical failure. I’ve already gone through all the relays and fuses I am aware of: the fuses in the dash fusebox, and the relays on the front passenger side of the engine compartment. I swapped the relays and fuses out with identical neighboring ones and got nowhere.

I am going to consult with some people before I go on to the next step. However, it looks like I may be in for some “real fun” soon.

Right now, we are returning from a trip to Houston. That’s right, we are returning at this moment. The internets and Googles on the cell phone iz awesome, and I’m not driving. :-)

Yesterday afternoon, I found a deflated front tire on our Maxima. It was fine the night before. This is a problem because I had to get it fixed on New Year’s Day and, if unrepairable, I have to get a hard-to-find tire size. (Check any major tire chain for tires for a 2002 Nissan Maxima SE–most have to special order the tires!)

Wal Mart was the only nearby, open-on-New-Year’s-Day tire place. I made a trip to the tire department and got it fixed. Mounted the tire, and it lost 3 PSI over the next hour. Great, back to Wal Mart. On the second trip, we found a nail in the tire’s shoulder, which is between the sidewall and the main treads. The Wal Mart techs couldn’t fix it per company policy. Discount Tire and others say you aren’t supposed to repair nails outside the main tread area. This makes some sense; radial tires aren’t rigid like the old biased tires. They continuously flex up and down with each wheel revolution. A patch in this part of the tire could easily work itself loose.

Can’t fix it, and I am not going to drive back with this tire. The nail could work itself loose in transit. If it does, all I have is that temporary spare, leaving me little option but to depend on the generosity of Bubba in a “middle of nowhere” town, and it’s unlikely Bubba would be able to get me another 225/50R17 tire in short order.

Wal Mart didn’t have my size tire in stock. They would have to special order, and that would take 3-4 days. So after calling several places, many of which weren’t even open, I lucked out with a Sears only 9 miles from the Wal Mart that had a suitable tire in stock. $157 and 1.5 hours later and we are on the road.

By the time we finally left Houston, we could have been home for 30 minutes.

We ended up with a decent Falken tire. It has more tread than the other front tire, so the front alignment is slightly off.

A fellow Nova owner’s brother took pictures of my Nova yesterday. It’s at the Little Valley Auto Ranch in Belton, TX. Seeing this Nova 1 year later is weird. It’s almost as morbid as digging up a coffin.

It’s so weird to see this car’s condition and remember all I did with it.

Front right fender. Rear fender tip was replaced. My dad bashed in the front part of this fender on a basketball pole.

Front right fender. It’s not very usable because of the damage.

Front left fender again:

The rusting hulk. Whose file cabinet drawer is that? Aah, the accumulator of the A/C system sticking off the evaporator housing on the firewall. Eww, who put a whitewall tire on the rear?

Driver’s side door. The only usable door.

That’s the A/C condenser on top of the radiator core support.

You can see the power steering gear rebuilt by Lee Manufacturing.

The bench seat I had recovered in 1998. You can see the right side of the instrument panel console. Now that thing is all cut up. I couldn’t even bring myself to cut a larger hole in it for a different radio back in ’99, yet here it is broken to pieces. It was not in great shape after the wreck, though.

Aaack, the left knob got broken off the A/C selector.

This was disturbing: mold and mildew on the seats. (I originally typed “my” seats, forgetting that this isn’t “my’ car anymore.) The rear seat and front headrests look the worst, but they are original to the car.

The 4 core brass radiator that solved my engine cooling problems back in ’98.

Aaaaah, the important bumper stickers are still there.

Sheesh, rust is taking over.

Nice exhaust, cheap!

These are the brakes that malfunctioned.

Lately the loss of my Nova has been getting to me. Not as in emotional breakdowns, but in the sense that a big part of me is gone, and I want it back.

What do I want back? Do I want that exact Nova? If not, what do I want? Do I have an unreasonable desire? Let’s look at these questions individually.

Oh, if you want to see what prompted me to write this, scroll to the bottom of this essay.

Do I want that exact Nova?

One person I know firmly believes that I want my exact same Nova back. I think he says this because of all the family history in this car. (See the bottom of my crash story.)

Sure, it was fun to show that car to people who knew me many years ago. One time I went to a town where I used to live over 20 years ago. A few people recognized the car before they recognized me. That is neat. Also, I would never have gotten into old cars as a hobby, especially Novas, had this Nova not been a family hand-me-down when I turned 17.

However, this isn’t why I enjoyed that Nova so much.

Until that Nova became “mine,” it was a piece of junk, the “other” car, the car I never wanted to be in. The paint was never right, it burned and leaked a ton of oil, the A/C never worked that well, etc.

Thanks to a fortunate situation, I had full access to body shop and engine shop during the summers while I was attending SMU, and I was able to get a good deal of free expert labor in the body restoration. I also had access to a Volvo shop in Dallas for my last year of college and almost three years afterwards. With all those resources, and help from many friends and family members, I was able to transform that car into a totally different beast. A worn out, oil burning rust bucket turned into a pretty nice classic car. It wasn’t the same old family car anymore.

When I was driving the Nova, I rarely thought about its family connections.  What I thought about, and enjoyed, were the things I had done to the car. I enjoyed being able to drive the result of my “craftsmanship” (if you can call it craftsmanship!), and a car that was built mostly to my specifications. Few people in this world can say that.

I was proud that I restored the Nova differently than how almost everyone else does similar generation Novas. Most people rip out the air conditioning. Most people shoehorn as much horsepower as possible into their engines even if that makes the car barely idle and the mechanicals wear out quickly. Most people race at drag strips. Most people toss stock wheels and bench seats. Most people paint their car popular colors.

There’s nothing per se with these people do with their Novas, but it’s not what I wanted. I kept the A/C running well, and I even made it run better than it ever had when I was growing up. I put in more horsepower, but I was careful to keep the car tame enough to be a practical daily driver. Heck, I took it on several long vacations. I almost never raced it, I kept the stock wheels, I refurbished my bench seat, and I repainted it back to the original dorky “aqua blue poly.” I set the car up to handle much better than stock. I know because I recently drove three bone stock, low mileage Novas (1, 2, no link for 3). Nothing was wrong with them, but I was amazed at how poorly they drove compared to my Nova.

Do I “need” that exact Nova? Do I have some irrational attachment that couldn’t be replaced with a similar car? No, and no. I do not need that exact car. I enjoyed it because of what I had made it, not because I have to have that exact car. It is gone, and I can accept that. But what do I want? That leads me to the next question.

What do I want?

When I wrecked the Nova, I saw this as an opportunity to get into another kind of old car. But the more I looked at other cars, the less enthused I got. Other cars just don’t “float my boat” like a Nova.

I also toyed with the idea of getting a newer car. The problem is that the ones that do “float my boat,” such as the newer Pontiac GTO, are too expensive. Sure, I would love to get a 2004 GTO with a 6 speed manual. Because the 2004 models have 50 less horsepower than the 2005s, they have depreciated a lot: you can get ones with only 5,000 miles for about $10K under what the owner paid for them a year ago. They are a pretty good deal. Plus, they can get over 25 MPG on the highway. However, I cannot justify ripping the cost of one of those cars out of my savings.

So that leads me back to Novas. They excite me, and they are far more affordable than even a 2004 GTO as long as I stay with the ’74 model year or newer. (I don’t like the seat belts in ‘73s, and ‘72s and earlier are generally too expensive.)

As earlier stated, I had my Nova set up almost exactly as I wanted it. I know that I can enjoy another Nova that is set up similarly. But a problem with most Novas is, as mentioned above, few are restored well because they weren’t intended to be driven frequently. Sure, they may have a rebuilt engine with fancy chromed parts, but woefully little was done to restore the suspension, brakes, interior, A/C, or other key parts that make the car tolerable on anything but occasional weekend cruising. So it would take a good deal of work to bring most of them up to snuff.

That leads to another problem: I have more commitments than I did 10 years ago. While I can take on an occasional major project, and while I can handle day-to-day maintenance, I don’t have the time or free cash to blow on another restoration project. Plus, I probably need to sell my Monte Carlo if I was to get another Nova. So this means that, to make me satisfied and to be workable, I would need a really sharp, good condition Nova, something that may be considered to be too nice to be a daily driver.

Here are my exact specifications:

• Reasonably priced.
• ’74–’79 Chevrolet Nova or GM corporate twin (but NOT the awful-looking Pontiac Ventura/Phoenix or Buick Apollo/Skylarks from ’75-’79).
• V8 engine, preferably a 350, and preferably set up as close to the GM 350 HO crate engine as possible.
• Stock wheels, at least 14”x7” or larger, with quality tires.
• All mechanicals recently replaced with new parts or rebuilt.
• Rebuilt suspension and steering, or superb condition original.
• Working A/C, or intact A/C system that won’t need major parts scavenging to make work. (I am licensed to do A/C work, and I have access to the right tools to correctly set up an automotive A/C system. It’s surprisingly easy.)
• Body rot or rust holes are a serious negative. Car bodies rust from the inside, so if you’re seeing pinholes, the metal behind the pinholes is completely gone. I will probably pass up any car with body rot.
• A reasonable quality paint job in a reasonably attractive color (puke green is a serious negative). If repainted, must see evidence that body rot was handled properly.
• Clean, functional, reasonably attractive interior.
• Disc front brakes (’74 had front drums standard; front disc was optional; front disc was standard in ’75 and up).
• I can do 2 door or 4 door. 4 doors are much less expensive than 2 doors, but few people keep or restore 4 door Novas, so good 4 doors are hard to come by.

I can tolerate some deviances from these specs (except for “reasonably priced”), but the more deviance, the less likely I can take on the car. For example, I had to pass up on a really nice 65,000 mile ’74 Nova at a reasonable price in February because almost everything was the original 31 year old stuff.

To date, I have only found one car that is a near perfect match for all these specifications. I’m gently trying to convince the guy that if he will come down to a fair asking price, then it will be sold immediately. His price is why his car has been on the market for 14 months and counting.

Do I Have An Unreasonable Desire?

(Warning: in the following section I write very judgmental statements about SUVs. If you have a truck or SUV, and you’re not totally secure about your decision to own it, you may want to skip this section.)

This question has been weighing on me.

I don’t like SUVs, and I disagree with the logic used to justify owning them. SUVs provide little true utility to the average owner, and whatever utility they do provide is either rarely used or could be provided far more efficiently with a car or minivan.

How many miles are put on SUVs doing anything more than carrying 1 person to and from work? Few. How many SUVs are capable of doing the “utility” portion of “SUV”, like going off road or hauling heavy loads? Very few. Even those that can do the “utility” stuff, how many miles are put on them for “utility” purposes? Almost none. (Look at SUVs in used car lots. They are too clean to do much utility stuff.) How many SUVs provide a practical advantage over equivalent minivans or sedans? Almost none. How many SUVs have extra gas guzzling heft and girth for no purpose other than to appear bigger than they really are? Almost every last one.

With the lack of practical reasons to purchase an SUV, it’s hard to say that very many private SUV owners really need an SUV. It’s almost as if many SUV owners own an SUV just because they want to look a certain way or are just following “herd mentality.”  Why else would someone choose a vehicle that is more costly to operate, much more costly to purchase (SUVs have very high profit margins—less bang for your buck, if you will), has vastly inferior handling and are less safe (SUV passengers are still more likely to die in crashes in large part because of how incompetently SUVs handle), and provides a far less comfortable ride (the absolute worst-handling vehicle I have ever driven is a Ford Explorer Eddie Bauer Edition, and the most jarring ride I have experienced is a Honda CRV)?

To me, SUVs seem like the epitome of pointless spending in the name of having a particular appearance. Don’t believe me? Go count how many urban SUVs sport decorative cattle guards and other nonfunctional, useless crap. I believe that for the vast majority of owners, SUVs’ scant added utility doesn’t even hold a shadow their high costs and large disadvantages.

So that leads me to questioning why I want a Nova. I already have a decent car. It’s comfortable, it gets relatively good gas mileage, and it is fine for taking me to and from work. Do I want a Nova just for appearances? Am I rushing to a bad decision, using the same bad logic that justifies the purchase of an SUV?

I think—I hope—the answer is a solid NO. Sure, appearance is part of the benefit. I can’t deny that. But it is only a small part, and I hope that people who know me would agree that I am not too concerned about what others think of what I do. For me, owning and operating a Nova is a major lifestyle decision, it is a learning experience, it is a source of enjoyment, it is keeping a part of history alive, it is something other than simply “purchasing an appearance.” Also, true, while a Nova will consume more gas than my current car, I have calculated that the cost of increased gas consumption is almost evenly outweighed by the depreciation I currently experience on the Monte Carlo, even at $2.80 per gallon. A Nova won’t depreciate, especially when it annually gets less than a third of the average miles that normal people put on their cars. So I guess I have a satisfactory answer to this question. I am not doing it for the SUV fake out factor.

Where Do I Go From Here?

Putting my thoughts into writing leads me to think it’s OK for me to want a reasonably priced Nova.

What Prompted Me To Write This?

Since I wrecked my Nova, I have been watching Collector Car Trader Online, a division of AutoTrader, for Novas. I have seen an ad for this Belton, TX ’74 Nova over the past few weeks:

Also, I earlier mentioned that I found out where my Nova is. It’s at the Little Valley Auto Ranch junkyard in Belton, TX.

Coincidentally, my old Nova and that red Nova are at the same facility. I talked with the junkyard’s owner, and he said that some of my Nova’s parts are in this red car. My Nova’s crate engine is in storage for one of his future projects. The owner told me a few more things about this red Nova, and I am not sure it is the right car for me. It has some body rot, the interior is supposedly pretty ragged, and he was not able to vouch for the quality of its restoration. Plus if you look carefully, you’ll see that the front left fender is bashed in a little, so it needs immediate work. I have a feeling that parts of my driver’s side door may be on this car.

I don’t think I want this car, but finding out all this info stirred up these thoughts.

I found my Nova earlier today. It’s at a junkyard in Belton, TX. Belton is on I-35 just south of Temple. I am working with a few sources to try to get some pictures.

I am looking for an excellent condition four door ‘73-’79 Chevrolet Nova or clone (Buick Apollo, Buick Skylark, Pontiac Ventura, Pontiac Phoenix, or Oldsmobile Omega). Email me at aren@cambre.biz if you know of one for sale.

These are the top mistakes I wish I hadn’t made while restoring and driving my Nova:

1. Wasting gobs of money. A few years ago I blew through cubic dollars trying to get rid of an apparent drive train vibration. In the end I got a rebuilt transmission, new engine, different bottom pulley, new water pump, different distributor, different alternator, and a few other miscellaneous parts. All of those parts only lightened my wallet. It turns out it almost all the vibrations were coming from my tires, which leads me to:
2. Crappy tires. My BF Goodrich Radial T/A tires were complete crap. I will never buy them again. They had poor wet weather traction, were noisy, and poorly balanced. The replacement Michelin Pilot XGT H4s made the car handle far better, like night and day.
3. Mismatched idler arm/pitman arm. For years my left turns “felt” different than my right turns, and directional stability wasn’t what it should be. It turns out that my Pitman arm and idler arms were off by ½”, thanks to Performance Suspension Components where I got all my suspension parts from.
4. The cheap poly bushings in my rear leaf springs. My front poly bushings, from PSC, never squeaked much, but my rear leaf spring bushings made noise with every suspension travel. I got the black poly bushings from Espo Springs N Things with my springs, and I think they were not graphite impregnated.
5. Lower assist on the power steering gear. When I had Lee Manufacturing rebuild my P/S gear, I had him lower the assist, thinking that it would give me a better road feel. All it did was make the steering wheel harder to turn while giving no more road feel. The stock P/S assist was higher than modern cars, but it still gave a good amount of road feel.
6. Analysis without physical diagnosis. I often tried to analyze things without physically tearing stuff apart and looking at it. On occasion I made a correct guess, but too often I ended up wasting time or money.
7. Not checking the easy stuff first. If I did the easy stuff first, I would have swapped out wheels with someone else in 1999 and cured my drivetrain vibrations a long time ago.
8. HEI. I don’t regret electronic ignition, but I do regret the HEI. It doesn’t fit right in a ’74 Nova, and I had to bash in the firewall to get it in. Next time I will do a remote coil type unit that can still fit in the stock location.
9. Only had rear speakers. I had a great radio and 2-way Pioneer 6×9 speakers in the rear package shelf. It was “OK,” but I had to crank up the volume too much to hear stuff in the front seat. I would have rather had a front speaker.
10. The worst one: Not paying more attention to the brakes. I totaled my Nova because my brakes malfunctioned as I avoided a wandering SUV. I guess that my rear brakes locked up as I jumped on them. There’s no telling what caused this: sticky cylinders, too much line pressure, bad proportioning valve? Who knows? I should have paid better attention to this vital system.

Things I don’t regret:

1. Running A/C. A/C makes the car tolerable all year round in Dallas .
2. Keeping the 2.73 rear gears. Those 2.73s may hurt low end torque, but they make the car reasonable at highway speeds. If I had an overdrive transmission I wouldn’t mind doing 3.73s, but that’s the only way I would consider that.
3. 4 core brass radiator. Much less expensive than aluminum, and it never overheated, even with a 330 HP 350.
4. Exhaust Manifolds. OK, so they reduced high end horsepower, but they actually fit, they don’t block spark plugs, and they don’t overheat the engine compartment.
5. Stock hood. Cowl hoods are rice, and I still have yet to see any evidence that they do anything for you besides cause additional aerodynamic drag.
6. Stock wheels. Aftermarket wheels are rice.
7. Front bench seat. It is more practical. The only problem is the driver’s side cushions sagged from overuse, so my back would get sore on long trips.
8. Replacing vinyl matting with carpet. The carpeting made the inside much nicer, although if I do it again I will go with cut pile instead of loop carpeting.
9. Cheap oil. I still have yet to see any quantitative data showing that expensive oils do anything for you. All fingers point to at least getting API certified oil (even Wal Mart brand oil is API certified) and changing the oil semi-regularly. I yanked the intake at least twice, and I never noticed any sludge or anything else supposedly attributable to cheap oil.
10. Daily driving a Nova. Yup, I drove my Nova to and from work every day. It was literally my daily driver. I enjoyed keeping a piece of history alive, and I enjoyed not driving the kind of car everyone else has.

We went ahead and purchased it.

It’s in the garage:

I was infuriated at the dealer at one point. The sales manager pulled out two keys but only one key fob. I felt like that was a last minute surprise. This is a “Certified Pre-Owned” car, and he could only produce one fob? Give me a break.

The nice thing is we got this car for about 10% under what comparable “certified” Maximas are going for.