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Ask not for whom the bell tolls......

O

OBIO

Retired SOH Admin
It tolls for our worn out piece of junk 1996 Chevy Corsica. It officially kicked the bucket tonight. Broke beyond our means to fix it, and broke beyond the point of being worth the money it would take to fix it. Deb spent the day at her mom's house for her weekly Hen Party. She called and asked me to come and get her at 9:00 pm. So, I drove over to bring her home....and I felt an odd grinding feel through the steering wheel...couldn't hear anything, but I could feel something just wasn't right. Got Deb and her "goodies" loaded into the car, fired it up, backed out of the drive way, put the Corsica in drive and went to go...and there came such a knocking and thumping when I gave the car some gas. Let up and the thumping quit. Gave it more gas and the thumping was so bad that the entire car vibrated with it. It took about 500 feet to get up to 20 mph as I could not give the car more than just a touch of throttle. Drove home at 20 mph...and dreaded every stop sign on the way home. Taking off was a balancing act of giving the car enough gas to get going and not giving it too much gas to keep what ever part(s) of the drive train broke from totally flying off the car. As we got to our road, I had to make a left turn and go up a slight hill. I was only able to muster a blazing 5 miles per hour up the hill and the car was thumping and bumping the entire way. I know that the passenger side CV joint/axle has been acting up...perhaps it finally went Kapoot.

Deb and I have agreed that the car is just good enough to call a scrap man tomorrow and have him come and get it. Perhaps we will get a couple hundred dollars for the car as scrap...which will go toward the purchase of a "new" car many months from now. Called the insurance company and had them cancel the liability insurance on the car...no point paying $27 a month for insurance on a car that will be in a junk yard in a day or two.

What a way to start a weekend! Have a birthday party to go to tomorrow and a meeting about a possible job to go to on Saturday afternoon. Looks like we will be putting Deb's wheelchair back into service as our sole means of transportation for a while. Do they sale snow tires for wheelchairs? Going to be a real drag trying to roll ourselves up our drive way once the snow hits in a few months or so.

OBIO
 
I had something similar happen to one car.
Seems like it was the catalytic converter had collapsed and was blocking the exhaust.
Maybe it was just the muffler.
It was actually an easy fix and the car ran better afterwards.
Just a thought... :wavey:
 
if its just the cv joint or the axle i wouldn't give up on it so quick...
 
First off, would like to say going by the title I though maybe you were referring to the Metallica song. On a different note. I know how you feel about the whole car thing. I just got a truck a few weeks ago that dropped oil pressure to 0 within like 3 days after acquiring it (was free, so not to big of a deal).. Got quotes for up to $1700 to replace it.. I say if it is just a CV joint I would fix it, but that is me. They are around $70 from Advance Auto Parts (at least for my truck they are), and one side could be changed in around a day. Just have to take the brake caliper bracket off, and the steering knuckle.. then bash the old CV out and put the new one in. If it runs/drives I would just put the money in it to fix it. Cause buying a different vehicle sucks no matter how cheap you get it. At least you know this car, and it's quirks. If you do decide to scrap it though should be worth at least a few hundred dollars.
 
Oh, it's not JUST the CV joint....the motor and tranny mounts are shot, all four struts are shot, the ball joints and tie rod ends are worn and very loose, the exhaust system has more holes than pipe, the rear brakes only work half the time (even after being rebuilt late last fall/early winter), the head gasket is leaking internally and I have to top off the radiator once every couple weeks, and the left rear turn signal bulb is blown. If an insurance adjuster were to calculate the "damage" versus the worth of the car....the blown light bulb is enough to have the car written off as a "total".

There are so many things wrong with the car, things that render the car unsafe and unreliable, that it is not a good idea to sink a couple hundred dollars worth of parts into it to keep it running. Sure, I could replace the C/V joint...just to have the head gasket blow the next day. Or have one of the tires fall completely off the car when the ball joints snap....which could prove fatal if it happens at any rate of speed.

The time has come that the Corsica be taken off the road and scrapped. It simply is not worth keeping on life support.

OBIO
 
I hate to hear it. I had a '85 Bronco II that I drove around for years and I sure hated it when it got to be more expensive to keep than it was worth.

Don't let the looks fool you. It was ready to die at anytime.
 
Its horrible when we lose a loved 'thing'....

arrgh


Sorry to hear of your loss OBIO.


Last night, I was ready to buy a new Router. We were without cable for what seemed like nearly 3 hours. It was over 2 hours. What a night mare. I kept resetting it, then setting the password, then locked out again. Over and over.... I was going to go get another one for $70.00 or however much they are now.

Then I was able to download (at one point) some info on setting up the securities from a website forum, got it fixed, and it worked.....

Saved me getting a new Router and we were back online as though nothing had happened.


I remember some wierd fixes for people that had 56 Chevies. Some had vapor locks, so they would fix clothes pens (for hanging clothes on clothes lines to dry), and put them all along the fuel hose line going into the carb. Fixed it somehow. So many neat little fixes one can do. So many forums on how to get things going again.


Bill
 
shame this didnt happen a few months ago..i had a 2000 chevy silverado with 14,095 original miles on it that i sold to carmax for 4500.00.....id have sold it to you cheap had i known you needed one...
 
Hey All,

Since your a Chevy man - and considering it's a corsica - I suggest you consider looking around for an early 70s Chevy Vega to replace it. :bump:

But seriously though if I were in your shoes I'd be looking for a car that I could do my own mechanicing on. They are out there although I'm not sure what the best options might be. You want something with readily available parts that isn't complex. I learned this lesson early in life - I had a 66 Mustang and I watched my stepfather rebuild the tranny during one episode of star trek. So I decided I'd do the brakes and took all four wheels totally apart not leaving one assembled so I could see how it went back together - stoopid me. I did eventually figure it out though. I learned to fix a lot of things on that car. Point is you can do the work and save money if the car is simple enough. I always keep this solidly in mind as one never knows where economic fortunes might take one in the future.

-Ed-
 
Lionheart said:
Its horrible when we lose a loved 'thing'....
Click to expand...

Oh, make no mistake....this car was not loved at all. From the day I bought it, I have hated the car. Too small, too underpowered, the radio only picked up the two local radio stations. The Corsica was just the first car that I could find that we could afford after Deb came home from rehab following her brain surgery. We needed a car to get her back and forth to therapy and doctor appointments. The car I LOVED was the 1999 Pontiac Grand Am GT that I had to do a voluntary repo on when our lives were turned upside down by the discovery of the brain tumor. 58 thousand miles on the odometer, the engine was a brand new 2004 GM crate 4.3 V-6 that I had put only 8 thousand miles on. The car was spotless inside and out....and it would do 140mph+ in stock form.

OBIO
 
The tow truck from the junk yard just pulled the Corsica away. Got $200 for the car. Which isn't bad. Let's see, we paid $1200 for the car 20 months ago. Got $200 for it. Bringing the overall cost of the car to $1000. Divide that over 20 months...$50 a month. Yeah, we got our money's worth out of the Corsica.

OBIO
 
I would have given it(or sold it) to some high school and let the kids rebuild it in autoshop or beat the hell out of it for a buck a pop w/ a baseball bat...

Sorry to hear you're having such hassles......cars are like that and who the hell can drop 20 or 30 grand to buy a new car? not me...
 
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