road trip, big one. what do i check?

Eatpants · Post by **Eatpants** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 3:54 am

so my band is going to be touring in the fall, its a 3200 mile trip down the west coast and up through nevada back to idaho. we are going to be taking my 1986 tercel wagon (now at about 185,000, probably 186-187 when we start the tour)

any problems i should be expecting to run into? have someone check for suspension wear? engine seems sound, its original, carburetor has been rebuilt a month ago. it doesnt pass carbon monoxide emissions at 2500 rpm still but, i figure im vegan and i do enough for the environment. -- The engine does a little bit of dieseling ( i think this is the term, someone explain) when i put the pedal to the floor but thats pretty much it....cv joints have been knocking for about 2 thousand miles, those are getting replaced next paycheck. brand new battery, alternator, bat cables are 3 years old.

need new PCV valve too, any tips on installation?

pretty much just asking, will we live? will we not wind up with a busted car on the side of the road and miss half our shows? help me out (again) =D

takza · Post by **takza** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 7:23 am

Sounds like you'll be carrying some weight.....

I'd check the brakes and suspension for any serious problems...do a tuneup....carry a spare alt belt, oil, brake fluid, coolant, and an assort of tools....jack and so forth. Change the eng oil and check the trans/diff oil levels.

ghettomobile · Post by **ghettomobile** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 2:31 pm

In all honesty, I wouldn't take the tercel if you are worried about getting stranded. They are just too old to rely on when you are out on a trip. I bought mine to use as a vehicle to go camping and go on ski trips, and although it had 220,000 miles on it, I figured it would be O.K. to take places, because I have seen similar cars with more than that on them and remain reliable, but it didnt seem to apply to mine. Mine has almost left me stranded on many occasions, mostly around town. This one time when it started to stall when i was driving it about 10 miles from my house was when I figured i didn't want to take it on trips. This is just my opinion based on my personal experiences with the tercel. If i were going to go on a 3200 mile trip, I would get something fuel injected, and with less than 150,000 miles on it, and it would have to be toyota, of course

.

Eatpants · Post by **Eatpants** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 6:23 pm

whats the easiest way to change the alternator belt? i bought a new one but it looked kind of difficult so i threw it in the smuggler panel...... the heavy load is my main concern, but i think the 3 of us plus gear equals about 600 pounds, give or take 50....

i'd really like to take the tercel but now that i think about it, our tacoma can hold all our shit easily, plus it has 136k as opposed to my 185k ...we've had the tercel since the same month i was born, and it has left us/me stranded only twice, once two years ago when the alternator finally kicked the bucket.. unfortunately someone left the oil cap off and we had a nasty spill (on the brand new alternator as well) so it crapped out again 6 months ago.

where can i get suspension/brakes examined/replaced for cheap?

ghettomobile · Post by **ghettomobile** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 7:20 pm

The only reason I say this is because it is risky to take something that is old on a long road trip, due to the fact that so many things can go wrong. A good example of this is my 1984 honda XL200R motorcycle. It only had 1060 miles on it when I bought it, but all of the plastic is old and brittle, and the vibration of the motor kills the plastic, and all this is because of it being 22 years old. If your tercel hasn't had any serious problems though, then take it on a long trip, but dont be surprised if something mechanical goes terribly wrong and leaves you stranded somewhere. Is the oil cap falling off a common problem? Mine had a newer oil cap when i bought it, and when looking around the engine bay, I found the old oil cap stuck in one of the motor mounts. I overheard one of my friends at school that had a 1987 tercel 4wd telling his girlfriend about how the oil cap had fallen off while he was driving it, so oil would go all over the hood, and he would have to put more oil into it every time he would drive it. I told him that instead of buying video games, that he should go buy another oil cap immediately because without the oil cap, there is no oil pressure, and without oil pressure, bad stuff happens to the engine. A common misconception is that the oil pressure light means change oil or add oil when it comes on, but it really means that there is no oil pressure, and you should stop running the engine.

Gasoline Fumes · Post by **Gasoline Fumes** » Thu Jul 07, 2005 12:12 am

Eatpants wrote: The engine does a little bit of dieseling ( i think this is the term, someone explain) when i put the pedal to the floor but thats pretty much it....

Dieseling is when the engine runs for a few seconds or more after you shut it off. Do you mean pinging?If so, I'd recommend backing off the ignition timing a bit.

Gasoline Fumes · Post by **Gasoline Fumes** » Thu Jul 07, 2005 12:17 am

ghettomobile wrote: without the oil cap, there is no oil pressure

Not true.

ghettomobile · Post by **ghettomobile** » Thu Jul 07, 2005 2:44 am

Really? I know that some things must have the oil cap on, such as motorcycles, but how does it still have oil pressure when the oil cap is off? The reason I wonder this is because when my tacomas 3.4 litre V6 blew the head gasket, the oil pressure light began to come on, and then about 5 miles later, it made a sort of "clink" sound, the motor died, and then it had no compression, and of course made no effort to run (it wouldn't even sputter or back fire, all it would do is crank with no sound of compression, and the starter motor sounded like it had no load on it( instead of chirping like it usually does, it made a bit of a wirring sound)). I would like to know how an engine has oil pressure with the oil cap off.

Gasoline Fumes · Post by **Gasoline Fumes** » Thu Jul 07, 2005 9:57 pm

I'm not too familiar with motorcycle engines, but on a car the valve cover is not pressurized by the oil pump. Most car engines can have oil pressure around 60 PSI, there's no way that kind of pressure would stay in the valve cover. The pressure ends at the camshaft, once the oil lubricates the cam, it just runs back to the pan with no pressure through the oil returns in the head and block.

I don't know how your head gasket is related to oil caps. Sounds like your head gasket was so bad you lost all of your oil and compression. :huh:

tercel4wdrules · Post by **tercel4wdrules** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 10:00 am

ghettomobile wrote: all it would do is crank with no sound of compression, and the starter motor sounded like it had no load on it( instead of chirping like it usually does, it made a bit of a wirring sound)).

I know how that sounds, that happened with the old 3A-C engine my '83 had. It started cranking funny (sort of uneven as there were one or two cylinders that still had compression while the others didn't) and faster.

Eatpants: I went on a trip from California to Bentonville, AR in a old '85 Sentra that had a bad rebuild and we *fortunately* made it over there but after three months the car was rubbish. My dad sold the car and that was the end of that. It was real slow up the mountains here and in the mountainous parts of Arizona, but it was pretty good on the snow and ice since it was FWD. I'd say you'd probably make it but you are traveling farther.

clbolt · Post by **clbolt** » Sat Jul 09, 2005 2:49 pm

ghettomobile wrote: I would like to know how an engine has oil pressure with the oil cap off.

Easy. The oil is contained within the oil pan (at the bottom of the engine), and circulated by the oil pump. While you will lose some oil if the cap is missing (I lost about a third of a quart recently when I drove my Tercel 150 miles after leaving the cap off), you will still have pressure till you run too low on oil. The oil is pumped from the oil pan through the lower end to pressurize the main and rod bearings, as well as being pumped through the passage to the head to lubricate the cam and rockers.

BTW, if the Tercel had an oil baffle under the oil cap, very little oil if any oil would be lost in the event of a cap loss. The oil that manages to make it out of the engine is being thrown from the rockers, and they wouldn't be able to do that if there was no oil pressure.

clbolt · Post by **clbolt** » Sat Jul 09, 2005 2:59 pm

Eatpants wrote:
need new PCV valve too, any tips on installation?

pretty much just asking, will we live? will we not wind up with a busted car on the side of the road and miss half our shows? help me out (again) =D

First things first. What you're describing is pinging, not dieseling. It also sounds like you may be doing some driving through the mountains on your trip. In a case like that, severe pinging could cause you to break a piston, and that would definitely leave you stranded. Since a lot of Tercel pinging is caused by carbon deposits, I'd advise decarboning the engine with Sea-Foam or similar. I just did mine yesterday with Petro-Chemical top engine cleaner, but I couldn't tell you where to find it. Once you have the carbon cleaned (as well as you can), then adjust the timing and test drive it under load to see how severe the ping is. With the load you'll have on your car, any problem will be magnified. Running premium gas will help as well.

I'd also advise checking the oil level in the rear end of your wagon, and changing the engine oil and transmission (manual or automatic) oil or fluid. Has the timing belt been replaced within the last 60k miles? If not, replace it. While a broken timing belt won't destroy your engine, it'll leave you walking.

Replacing the PCV valve is easy, it just plugs into the top of the valve cover. Be careful not to break the rubber hose that connects to it, it's likely brittle from age and heat.

There are no guarantees that you'll arrive intact when driving an old high mileage car on a trip that long, but you can stack the odds in your favor. I drove my 86 2WD 1000 miles 2 days ago with myself and my son in the car. It rolled over 268k miles along the way.