Tuesday, September 5, 2017

Shocking! - The El Camino needs some attention


Seems the Formula has gotten all the attention but I have 2 project cars and the other one wanted some attention.

How did I know?  

Well, I was a bit dense.  Any car guy with a project will tell you that it's sometimes a game of denial.  We simply can't accept that something we already fixed may need attention again.

So it goes with my shocks.  I had changed them but it had been so long that I didn't realize just how many miles they've soaked up holding up the front end of 4000 pound car.

So it was with the El Camino.  Now I should know better having changed the transmission 3 times, carburetor at least 5 times not to mention a myriad of other things.


But the shocks, I thought they had plenty of time left.  

Well, truth be told the shocks were one of the first things I ever replaced on the El Camino which puts the timeframe somewhere around 1992.   Before the engine change, before the new paint job and of course before 80,000 miles had passed under the third set of tires.

Yeah, it was time.  More accurately, it was overdue.

The signs were there just not obvious to my rose colored perspective.

The front end sat too low, so low in fact that I could no longer get a jack under the front of the car.  

Hard stops became a bit scary with the car diving to one side or the other.

Then the handling... Any imperfection in the road caused varied degrees of drama.

Yes, time to do something.  So I did and the video below shows the adventure.  Take a look.



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