She's baaaacckk........and I'm a happy Dude tonight!

Drove to San Antonio this morning and picked up my '96 Roadmaster today!    It's funny, I bought it the first time in San Antonio years back.  Now here we go and do it again!    My friends Rich and Robbi took outstanding care of it...it felt like I'd just been in it yesterday, and not over two years ago!

Sadly we had a mix of sun and downpours the past few days, including today, and I got the car pretty dirty driving around.   We picked it up and took it to a family reunion in Stockdale Texas, southeast of San Antonio, and then came back through New Braunfels.   I could not get Joseph and Tuck out of the 3rd row, and all the kids were happy to have it back.   Quite a way to reunite with my baby, with a big drive, and it did fantastic on the trip, despite the downpours, and it's now home safe in my garage here in Austin.  

Pics from today.  Most are not great, but you get the idea.   Now to totally clean and detail it!!!

Here we are in San Antonio picking it up.   You think I'm happy...???     




Heading from San Antonio to Stockdale.   Car still drives fantastic!  So smooth!



Joseph and Tuck in the Way-Way Back  


Had to stop at Buc-Eee's on the way home.  


She's home again!


Now time to clean her up to spotless again!

-Mike

Wow - Congrats on getting your dream ride back!

So,.... you happy?

Great to see you have it back, I have been looking through all your old posts as I am in the process of making my own GS wagon, cant wait to see more!

Great to see she is finally back where she belongs!!

So this means you're coming to Wagonfest right?   

After all of us hearing lament about this car for so long, DAMN WELL BETTER BE!

(So who won the poll we had on this  one?)

Dave

Congrats Mike! Now hold onto her this time   

Awesome news Mike,you deserve to have that wagon back in your family!Did I see 117000 miles
correctly?

Well, we all know what Mike's doing today.  

Olds Weighty Eight wrote:

Well, we all know what Mike's doing today.  

And tomorrow....

CONGRATS!!

Cadet57 wrote:

Olds Weighty Eight wrote:

Well, we all know what Mike's doing today.  

And tomorrow....

Does it involve the use of lubricants?

Congrats,enjoy your long lost love.

Well I posted and then I left everyone hanging. Ha! The holiday weekend was NUTS, and I still have not gotten the wagon detailed out like I’d like yet. It’s stormed the past few days, and is still doing it today and supposed to tomorrow, and now I’m back at work, so am setting aside a day this weekend to REALLY do a top-to-bottom wax and detail on it.

I did go all over the car, noting things it will need and to-do projects.

- Steering wheel: The leather on the top is deteriorating now, and the non-leather parts are wearing through to the black, especially on the left side of the wheel. I’m going to try to find a wheel with better leather in the salvage yards, and will also be ordering some new SEM dye/paint. Would also really like to do the steering wheel radio control mod.
- Turn Signal Stalk: All the white lettering is pretty well worn off. Will order a new stalk soon.
- I NEED a new front center arm rest/storage box lid. This is the 95-96 one-piece design.
- Interior: Need to totally clean and treat the leather seats, they’re getting dry, and will do a full interior detail at the same time. Inside is still very pretty! Only very slight wear on the driver’s seat leather, the steering wheel, center arm rest, and to the carpet where your left foot rubs when you drive.
- Both front door panels are still PERFECT, no cracks. My lecture about not slamming the doors when I sold the car seems to have worked, but some of the clips that hold the rear door panels on are broken..so those rattle when you close the door. I may try to CAREFULLY remove those panels and replace the clips soon.
- The armrest light on the driver’s front door panel is still INOP. I did the bulb ages ago, and that was not it. Need to chase the wire I guess.
- I need to re-paint all the black paint on the roof-rack, behind the Vista roof. It’s faded out and it’s time.
- There is still a dent in the metal trim on the left-front corner of the front bumper. Anyone know if the bumper has to come off to remove that trim piece, or can I get it off with the bumper attached?
- I eventually want to have both the front and rear bumpers repainted. The front has bug stains in it that will not come off on the lower part, and the rear has scratches that were there when I first bought the car. They hide well when waxed, thankfully!
- I need to totally detail under the hood again. Happily the car was never outside so it still had ZERO rust under there, or under the car, but it’s dusty and will need to be spit-shined before the next cruise-night!
- The car will need another set of tires again soon. They still have tread, but not great.
- The car still runs fantastic, but I’ve never done the plugs, wires, or cap and rotor on the Opti. I think I’ll pay my mechanic friend Truong to do those soon. I do not want to mess with the Opti!

That’s about it. I did notice a couple of odd things….on Saturday when I picked it up we went through a lot of off-and-on rainshowers, and the rear wiper would not work. That ALWAYS worked when I last owned the car. Well last night playing in the garage I hit the button…and it worked! Ha! Weird. Also the front up-down tilt feature on the driver’s seat did not work Saturday, but it also had come back to life last night. Maybe Christine is fixing herself since she knows she’s back home again???

The plan this coming weekend is to totally detail the car top-to-bottom, and then to re-arrange my garage…I forgot how HUGE the car is, and I want to move shelves and motorcycles around so I can walk all the way around the Roady in the garage again. Right now it’s kinda tight in there with both cars and both motorcycles. We’ll sort it out.

Oh and my other adventure this weekend was on Sunday. We borrowed my Uncle’s tandem-axle trailer to tow my Dad’s ’82 Z28 to the shop for its new 350 motor, and on the highway one of the trailer tires EXPLODED! Scared the hell out of me! The trailer started jumping up and down and fishtailing at 70mph! MAN! Happily we were able to get off the highway and into a Target parking lot, but only then did we discover the Denali jack would not lift both the trailer and the Camaro, and in addition I had the wrong size wrench for the lugs! So I had to un-hook the trailer from the Denali and left my Dad there, and drove all the way home for my floor jack and a 4-way. What a day! Ha!

Oh and the Roady is officially retired to weekend cruise-in and occasional trips for fun to Dallas or the gulf (MAYBE a wagonfest!).   It was my daily-driver when I first owned it. No more...these cars, especially nice ones, are really getting hard to find, and I'm not going to wear this one out or subject it to flying Prius-doors in the parking lot. No daily-driving for it, no towing, no work, no rain, and no sun-baking in the work parking lot.   She is going to be parked in the garage and polished and only used for fun times and weekends!  

Oh and as for mileage, it had 102K when I installed the Z28 gauge cluster, and I had the cluster set to zero.   It now has 17K miles on it, so the car has just under 120K miles on it.    I DO plan to drive the car, I love driving it, but hopefully can keep the additional miles from racking up too fast!

I'm not letting her go again.   I plan to keep the Roady forever.

-Mike

I can see that grin on your face from VA Mike,congrats on finally getting your roady back.

Yes Mike, it's best if you take the bumper cover off (just a few bolts, 2 10mm on each fender front..a couple more that hold the front plastic inner fender extension....some 7mm for the plastic airdam stuff and a bunch of bumper clips)

Once the bumper cover is off you will see the speed nuts that hold that metal trim on.

 Chris

So Clean and congrats.

brokecello wrote:

Yes Mike, it's best if you take the bumper cover off (just a few bolts, 2 10mm on each fender front..a couple more that hold the front plastic inner fender extension....some 7mm for the plastic airdam stuff and a bunch of bumper clips)

Once the bumper cover is off you will see the speed nuts that hold that metal trim on.

 Chris

Thanks Chris. Will head to the salvage yard soon and learn the tricks there if I can find a car with good trim. I'm sure I can up in Dallas.

Road Trip!

So after a rainy weekend and rain yesterday I finally gave up.    I got home from work last night and walked by my still-rainy-roadtrip-dirty wagon in the garage...had dinner, and was about to shower for the evening, but the wagon sitting dirty in the garage was just killing me...so instead of a shower I put on a workshirt and went into the garage and turned on the stereo.

The kids laughed at me, but I pulled the wagon into the driveway, and in the rain, totally washed it.   Actually I did more than wash it, I worked on it solid from 7pm-12:30am.    Pulled out the stepladder and slid the roof-rack-rail back and hand-washed it from top-to-bottom.   Then scrubbed the wheels and tires, and used Brillo pads on the exhaust tips (they glow again), and layed in the water and scrubbed the lower-front-bumper, which is now really white again.    

Then I backed the car into the garage and dried it off, put tire shine on the tires, and touched up some paint chips on the front of the hood, THEN pulled out the bug and tar removed and in soaking-wet clothes layed on the ground and cleaned the entire lower body, and then waxed the lower body below the wood.

Next I replaced the center plasti-chrome trim on the front bumper where it was peeling a bit above the license plate area (still had some in my stash from the last time I did this years ago), and next pulled out the polishing compound and scrubbed the rear bumper and tail lights, which were both a bit dull and faded, followed by wax, now they glow too.

After that I took all the floor mats out and fired up the shop vac, and totally vaccumed the interior, then wiped the seats, door panels, dash, and plastics down with a damp towel, and cleaned all the windows....and then cleaned all the inner and outer door jams...  ..What can I say...they were dusty!  Ha!   I noticed a few of the door-pull straps on the door panels were loose, so tightened them up, and then put the clean floor mats back in.

I litterally threw in the towel at 12:30am and made myself stop.  I still need to wax the upper body above the wood, and I want to treat the leather and then do a big clean and detail under the hood to make it cruise-night-showoff-ready, but MAN it looked pretty in the garage this morning!!

....no pics until it's fully waxed..ha!

Having fun down here!

-Mike

Where are the pics?

.. and far away, in upstate New York, during that same period of time, I had enough ambition to get a booger out of my nose.