Wecome back to Backyard Boost!
On this episode we're going to see some progress happening on the boosty-van.
I started out with the liftgate. Those 20 year old paper speakers were pretty bad when they were new, but since I'm this far into it I might as well do some upgrades:
30 watts RMS? Yeah, that's plenty for this project. Notice how I made life slightly simpler by soldering the OEM wire connectors on them:
One of the things that never really worked right on the Boosty-Van was the rear wiper motor. Since I had things apart I decided to find out why:
Long story short, the actuator arm for the wiper motor (as well as the shaft it turns) got chopped by rust. That in turn (or no turns!) siezed the actuator and eventually stripped the big plastic gear thingy. It's beyond reasonble repair, so this one will end up in the scrap heap. I also had to free up the liftgate latch, another rust issue that was actually repairable. Once the new wiper motor comes in I'll button up the hatch.
On to the next problem: the non-functional power sliding door. Symptoms here included slow motor, inability to latch un-aided, and progressed to the outside handle sticking open and preventing the latches from closing. This is a sign of multiple system failures, so everything gets pulled and gutted:
Turns out the cable is a standard coated wire rope, .125" OD. The coating is failing and cracking in multiple areas, causing binding in the bowden tubes. Instead of dropping $450 on a new sliding door motor assembly, I've ordered $20 worth of cable and end stops - more details to follow. The next issue is that the cable drums were wearing out on the shaft, which are all plastic. For now some silicone grease is all that's needed there. Finally, the power wires for the motor are undersized, so a considerable voltage drop occurs in the wiring harness that goes down, back to the D-pillar, up into the headliner, back forward to the B-pillar, down the pillar, forward to the bottom of the A-pillar, across the dash beam to the fuse box... So I'll be running new 10 gauge wiring to the motor that will be half the distance to it's power distribution point.
Oh, and let's not forget about the clutch for it, the copper traces were all gummed up with corrosion and dried out grease:
And just when you thought that was all, nope! The handle actuator (which has a funny name like lock actuator) was siezed - holding the handle stuck open. My first attempt was to drill open the plastic and shoot some new grease in there. It helped, but too much wear in the plastic meant it was still sticking. So I ordered a new one - it opens with a finger touch and latches with the softest Biden touch now!
But not before I broked it some more:
Then fixed it some more:
Then, because I can't wait for progress to continue, I started moving forward with noise reduction. 25% coverage on sound deadening material plus digging into my bag of tricks to find all of the rattles and silence them for good:
In the next few weeks I'm planning to update the audio and video systems, nothing expensive, just basic modern stuff like bluetooth and bluray. Of course, you can imagine what a can of worms that's turning into with the way the existing audio and video package (It's got VHS Bro!) was implemented by GM.
Oh, and in case you couldn't tell, 2020 projects are officially kicked off!
It looks like the 3800 fits in the van better than the 3400 ever did. There's enough room and with things relocated I can reach back and access the rear spark plugs without taking anything apart. We'll see if that's still true when the wiper transmission is put back. But we're barely at the half-way point with the project. I noticed this weekend that the driver side inner tie rod is bent. I have to look into it, it looks like it was caused by the sway bar/end link combined with suspension geometry. It might have been because there's enough weight on the knuckle to pull it down when the strut mount is removed from the body and it was rolling around while I was working on everything. Either way it's just another thing to replace.
