Took her out for a small drive tonight to get a feel for any problems I will have to address.

If anybody can take a look at what I've written and perhaps know or suggest what areas need attention, I'd greatly appreciate any input you may give.


Suspension-

Approx. 1" play in steering wheel while driving.
Drivers rear axle area screeches when making a hard right(this concerns me very much)
Hard braking makes the car shudder(suspect warped rotors, they are old)
Clunking noise front pass. side when rolling over a bump in road
Brake rotor/pad noise constantly (newer pads/old rotors) makes a "shushushushushushu" noise that is loudest when the car has sat for a couple days. It quiets down a bit after a short drive, but still there.
Lotsa floaty body roll. Suspect worn struts/shocks


Engine-

Rough Idle/miss. Idles a bit high and smoother at initial cold startup, but then lowers down a bit and begins to immediately get rough.
When it gets warmed up, it smoothes out a bit, but it's still got a slight miss/chug in there.. if I rev it up a bit, the miss/chug is still present. You can feel it jolt the car a bit. Think ICV is working OK since the RPM's stay steady when put in drive or AC is put on.

There's also a loud engine clicking noise. Sounds mechanical, valves perhaps?
I do think I may hear one or more injectors also clicking fairly loudly.

When driving, it most definitely has torque/power/snap. I can stomp the gas at 30mph and it'll immediately snap to life, shove me into the seat and take off quite well. Not bad for an engine that may actually have 268K miles on it.
The autobox seems to shift smoothly and keep up with the powerband of the engine. So I'm assuming it's been rebuilt/replaced sometime in it's life.


It's definately a completely different feeling car than my E36 with M3 front suspension and other mods. But I think it's suppose to feel alot tighter than this. She seems to be fairly quiet/smooth when just cruising. Goes fairly straight down the road and when stomped on the brakes has little if no deflection in the steering.

I'm hoping some of you old timer owners can help me in the right direction with addressing these issues.. some are fairly obvious, but other issues would perhaps get addressed quicker if I go straight to the problems instead of doing the hit/miss route
.
I'd like to get her back to as close as possible to original tiptop shape mechanically before moving on to the interior/exterior resto and such.
Dont think I want to go all out mod/performance crazy with this car. I've got the E36 in that directon already. I'd like this to be the cruiser/classymobile.

I've also noticed someone has put a single cat on that is dual/merged on the input side with a single output/single pipe to an AM muffler.. this is suppose to be dual pipe all the way to the muffler, right?

Thanks in advance to anyone who has suggestions/answers.

yes its supposed to be dual all the way. thats all i know tho :)

Depends on the cat. My car has single into cat, dual to exhaust.

as for the brakes, replace all of the pieces. If the rotors are old at least replace them. Thats if you have new pads already. Braking shimmy can also be caused by worn suspension bushings.

Shocks and struts should just be replaced with upgraded components like bilstein and eibach. That will get rid of the floaty ride.

-Jeff

Took her out for a small drive tonight to get a feel for any problems I will have to address.

If anybody can take a look at what I've written and perhaps know or suggest what areas need attention, I'd greatly appreciate any input you may give.


Suspension-

Approx. 1" play in steering wheel while driving.
Drivers rear axle area screeches when making a hard right(this concerns me very much)
Hard braking makes the car shudder(suspect warped rotors, they are old)
Clunking noise front pass. side when rolling over a bump in road
Brake rotor/pad noise constantly (newer pads/old rotors) makes a "shushushushushushu" noise that is loudest when the car has sat for a couple days. It quiets down a bit after a short drive, but still there.
Lotsa floaty body roll. Suspect worn struts/shocks


Engine-

Rough Idle/miss. Idles a bit high and smoother at initial cold startup, but then lowers down a bit and begins to immediately get rough.
When it gets warmed up, it smoothes out a bit, but it's still got a slight miss/chug in there.. if I rev it up a bit, the miss/chug is still present. You can feel it jolt the car a bit. Think ICV is working OK since the RPM's stay steady when put in drive or AC is put on.

There's also a loud engine clicking noise. Sounds mechanical, valves perhaps?
I do think I may hear one or more injectors also clicking fairly loudly.

When driving, it most definitely has torque/power/snap. I can stomp the gas at 30mph and it'll immediately snap to life, shove me into the seat and take off quite well. Not bad for an engine that may actually have 268K miles on it.
The autobox seems to shift smoothly and keep up with the powerband of the engine. So I'm assuming it's been rebuilt/replaced sometime in it's life.


It's definately a completely different feeling car than my E36 with M3 front suspension and other mods. But I think it's suppose to feel alot tighter than this. She seems to be fairly quiet/smooth when just cruising. Goes fairly straight down the road and when stomped on the brakes has little if no deflection in the steering.

I'm hoping some of you old timer owners can help me in the right direction with addressing these issues.. some are fairly obvious, but other issues would perhaps get addressed quicker if I go straight to the problems instead of doing the hit/miss route
.
I'd like to get her back to as close as possible to original tiptop shape mechanically before moving on to the interior/exterior resto and such.
Dont think I want to go all out mod/performance crazy with this car. I've got the E36 in that directon already. I'd like this to be the cruiser/classymobile.

I've also noticed someone has put a single cat on that is dual/merged on the input side with a single output/single pipe to an AM muffler.. this is suppose to be dual pipe all the way to the muffler, right?

Thanks in advance to anyone who has suggestions/answers. I would check the drag link and steering linkage and also the thrust arm bushings both upper and lower. This should address the shudder if the rotors are not warped.