Driving to DCS 2023
Joe Angell
Three days after spending three weeks upgrading my front suspension and rear suspension, fixing a brake caliper, and rebuilding my exhaust system, I went with four others from North East Region DeLorean to the DeLorean Convention and Show 2023.
This show is in Crystal Lake, IL, which is about 1200 miles from where I live on the east coast. Four of us from North East Region DeLorean went this year: myself, Mike, Jeff and Greg. The round trip was 2600 miles in total, with a stop at DeLorean Industries in Ohio, the gravesite of John DeLorean outside Detroit, and my family’s dairy farm in New York along the way. It was over 35 hours.
And a couple of weeks later, we all went up to Maine for a parade. There were 11 DeLoreans in total, and another 600 miles on my odometer for that trip.
So the question is, how well did my car hold up? Here’s the video I made about it.
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Wheel Bearing
Before we left, my wheel bearing failed, again. This is the second time I’ve replaced it since striking it with a hammer by mistake. It made sounded like a squeaky spring, so it took me a bit to diagnose, but only an hour to replace. Luckily I still had some spares.
A/C and Air Scoops
Three of us didn’t have working A/C, but Mike designed and 3D printed air scoops for us. These fit in the windows and pull in a lot more air than the toll booth windows alone. They kept us pretty cool on the trip. I mean, it was only in the 70s (~21-25 C), but these cars have small cabins and they warm up really fast.
Mike did make the mistake of taking one out at highway speeds. It bounced up into Jeff’s radiator screen, but luckily did no damage.
Mike’s air scoop installed in my window.
MagSafe Charger
I needed to keep my phone charged. While I do have a USB port I could plug the phone into, I’m lazy and don’t want to deal with that. Instead, I 3D printed a carrier for an Apple MagSafe charging puck that replaces the ashtray, powered by a USB-C charger behind the driver’s seat and wired into an accessory-switched fuse. The magnets keep the phone from sliding around during normal driving, although slamming on the brakes will cause it to break free.
The location works well for me because it’s out of the way, and because I don’t need to see the screen — I have a head unit with Apple CarPlay, so my maps, music and podcasts all show up there.
I’ve provided the files for printing your own here. If there’s enough interest, I may sell them too, so let me know if you want one.
My 3D-printed MagSafe puck carrier installed in place of the ashtray.
Blower Circuit Breaker
My blower motor would cut out seemingly randomly. It turns out that the 25A breaker that protects the circuit is right at the edge of what the blower can draw, and on hot days it will trip it. Once it cools down, the breaker resets and the fan works again.
The common solution is to upgrade to a 30A breaker. This is probably still within the tolerances of the original wiring, but it did fix my problem. Since I had some modified blower circuit wiring as well, I upgraded the wire gauge (which, again, had been right on the edge of what was viable) to further reduce the load on the circuit.
The only issue I had was that the new breaker had ring terminals, while the old breaker had blade connectors. I didn’t have an adaptor that would screw onto the posts, so I just replaced the stock connectors with ring terminals.
The new 30A breaker (top) and the old 25A breaker (bottom)
Rain
The new breaker worked just fine for the entire trip, which is good, because I needed to run the defroster quite a lot on the way home due to the heavy rains we hit.
Luckily, my windshield washers worked perfectly, even though my washers didn’t seem to work. I’m not sure if the fluid just leaked out or if there was a motor problem, but I haven’t looked into it yet.
There are some small leaks in my door seals, near the front of the door on both sides. It’s like a drip every few minutes in heavy rain, but that’s about it. I’m not exactly sure what’s causing it, so I haven’t quite figured out how I’m going to fix it yet.
Suspension
All the new suspension components worked quite well, but it seems that the KWs will settle quite a lot. By the time we hit our first stop, the front wheels were nearly touching the fenders. I fixed this when I got home by raising everything by about an inch. When settled it still rides low, but not so low that I might rub the fenders when turning.
Also, I probably didn’t have to cut the nuts off when removing the old shocks. I didn’t realize that the squared-off end of the KW shock stems is actually a truncated hex that an 8mm box wrench will fit on. The old shocks had a hole for an allen wrench, but it was rusted enough that none of mine fit. None of my wrenches exactly fit the squared-off end either, but there were a couple that were close enough.
Or I could have used vice grips. Which I have done in the past, and somehow forgot about this time. Oh well.
Otherwise, I had no problems with the suspension system.
Way, way too close to the fender here.
Kick-Down
My automatic transmission kick-down wasn’t working, which was annoying in that I couldn’t pass or get up to speed as easily, but not am major issue. I normally drop to second in those cases, but the didn’t seem to work either.
With the car on the lift, it was clear that the throttle cable was way out of adjustment. There should be no slack. I fixed it and now the kick-down works and it stays in lower gears longer before upshifting while accelerating.
The way out of adjustment throttle cable.
Tire Pressures
The front right tire was at 40 PSI somehow, instead of the normal 23 PSI. Not sure how I managed that. The rear left was down to 15 PSI instead of the normal 32. I think this has a slow leak.
I fixed both of these at a gas station on the way home. It actually improved the handling on the wet roads, which I didn’t expect.
Oil Change and Air Filter
Between the trips to Illinois and Maine, I’d driven over 3000 miles and was due for an oil change. I also replaced the air filter, which is technically reusable, but was in pretty bad shape at this point. I managed to order the correct replacement on the third try.
Wheel Bearing, Again
And then my wheel bearing failed, again. This time it was more of a grinding than a squeaking. I swapped in another of my spares; I have one left now. I’m not sure what’s going on here.
Sill Letters and Stainless Steel Screws
And fairly, I did a small cosmetic upgrade in the form of stainless steel sill letters. These are held onto the door sills with VHB tape and look pretty nice.
I also replaced the old metal screws in my sills with stainless steel ones. I learned at DCS that the POGs at the QACs would add screws when the clips that are supposed to hold the sills down didn’t work. They were pretty rusty now, so I swapped out all but one with stainless screws. The one I didn’t replace was because I couldn’t figure out how to actually get it out. They’re 3/4” long #6 pan head Philips screws, which I got from McMaster-Carr.
The newly-installed sill letters and stainless steel screws.
And that’s it. Both trips went well. We had some minor issues — Mike’s A/C drain was plugged, Greg’s front shock was acting a bit weird, but didn’t cause any real issues, Jeff’s coolant hose failed but he had a spare and had it fix in half an hour. In Maine the Time Machine needed a new fuel pump and a fix to its ballast resistor wiring, but we got that done fairly quickly too, once we sourced a fuel pump.
Overall, everyone went quite well.