Not Decopification, but it's annoying

[KITT222]

I haven't done much to the Caprice since the last update, but I've done a little exploring and found some annoyances. One of which I may or may not have fixed.

Let's start at the top. Caprice lives outside and the Vibe gets the garage. I try and park plenty far back on the drive so I have room to get the Vibe in and out, and so it's out of the way of everyone. Apparently that means landscaping has carte blanche when it comes to blowing grass clippings and edging...

It's worse in person. Not very happy with that. And I couldn't take it to a car wash because I found water in my passenger side footwell. Not the first time, and not a big deal since the floors are rubber (one mark against that G8 carpet that my sister could go fetch for me).

There shouldn't be water there, and it's pretty clearly flowing to the floor from here. I was pointed in the direction of the door panel, so off that came to find this.

Bingo. The vapor barrier holds water, which isn't unheard of and is why that drain hole is there, but mine is letting water through. Thanks to how the Caprice's door inner is, when I poured water down the outside of the glass, it would fall onto the vapor barrier and run right down to this spot where there's an odd spot of missing sealant. There's no corrosion so it's well protected (especially if it's lived in the PNW most of its life) but it's quite annoying. I could solve this with a gutter to direct water away from the center of the glass, but since I like doing headlight retrofits, I just so happened to have some butyl sealant on hand...

That didn't actually work, so I added more butyl to the whole portion behind the hole, set it with the heat gun, smooshed it by rolling over it with the screwdriver I had, and hopefully that will finally work. It's a lot of butyl to go through. And let's just say I'm glad I can get to the speakers without going through the vapor barrier, because this stuff seems less reusable than what's in the Vibe.

Anyway after that I opened the hood and checked the harmonic balancer. The topic came up a few times in the Bookface groups, and signs like to smash me on the head several times before I get the point. So I fired the car up annnnnddd... It's pretty bad. I didn't take a picture other than this one to measure diameter, but yeah, it's not great.

That's going to be expensive, mostly because I need to buy a new impact to fit the space between the pulley and radiator (something I wanted to buy anyway, but this gives me an excuse). I was stressing about holding the crank in place while undoing or doing the weird torque-to-yield thing the GM bolts require, but thankfully ARP has a bolt where I can just send it with their lube to 235 lb-ft. I didn't want to remove a starter, pack a cylinder with rope, or just hope that a hammer on a wrench could be a quasi-impact. In theory I could get it done at a shop for less, but where's the anxiety joy in that? Impact it off, borrow a puller, install new one, tighten down, and give it some ugga-duggas (not literally, but almost).

If any Oppos have replaced an LS harmonic balancer before, I'd love your advice...

Anyway, after that I did this

To do this

To make my tapshift work... And it still doesn't, so something somewhere ain't right.

sigh

But I did figure out what that weird pad that I'd mentioned before was.

Big ol magnet, innit?

A friend thinks it was a gun mount. Which... would be silly.

Well shit.

I'm not thinking it was the officers' though, but if that's what it is I may remove it. I should actually try and find a clean panel to replace it...

Anyway, that's been my afternoon. Could be better, but nothing I can't fix.

[jminer]

@kitt222 You're giving me flashbacks to the interior disassembly of my new ranger!

Looks like progress though.

[car_liker]

@kitt222 does the balancer have threaded holes for a yoke-style puller? If so I usually just slip a pry bar between two puller bolts and find something in the engine bay to brace the end of the pry bar while you crank the bolt loose/tight

[KITT222]

@car_liker I don't think so, but it does have three big spokes

[KITT222]

@jminer I'm pretty sure I know why the tapshift isn't working, so that's easy. The door leak could be fixed, and if not it's possible to fix. All the muck could be a talk to the apartment manager, and the harmonic balancer is just work that needs to get done. Nothing is a big deal, even though it can be frustrating.