There was still a little vibration in my front suspension, so I decided to give one of the front lower arm support kits a try. I went with DeLorean Europe’s setup, which (possibly combined with some minor sway bar maintenance) seems to have almost completely eliminated my remaining vibration issues.
My driver’s side window regulator died. Replacing it requires taking apart a good chunk of the door, and replacing the regulator itself is a pain as well. But after some tinkering and dealing with a short, I have a working window motor again.
DeLoreans don’t have the best sealing between the radiator and the fans, and some common home window and door weather seal can significantly improve cooling by filling those gaps and making sure that the fans suck air through the radiator, not from around it.
Modern cars have an IR barrier in their windows to help keep the heat out, but the DeLorean predates that. Tinting the windows can help keep your car cooler, so that’s what I did.
After almost getting stranded because my starter wouldn’t spin, I replaced it with a new Eagle Premier one. This was pretty straight forward, although I did have to remove my aftermarket header to get it out.
In between replacing the ball joints and bearings and the parts of the car that broke while driving it, I took care of a few other odds and ends that had been bugging me. Seat Belt Orientation My seatbelt had a twist in it. I’d tried to straighten it, but then the buckle was facing the wrong way and I’d have to twist it again.
I had a best case scenario for a suspension failure: I got safely off the road and just needed a new ball joint. No major damage, no injuries. Just an inconvenience, and a lot of help from John Dowd.
In a (fairly successful) attempt to fix some vibration coming from the front of my car, I decided to replace the front suspension bushings, ball joints and shocks. This involves a couple of presses, a bunch of replacement hardware, a spring compressor, and a fair bit of time, but I got it done.
After replacing a grinding alternator, I went for a drive and broke my throttle cable on the highway. Luckily, I was able to use a tuning trick to get my EFI’ed car safely to a parking lot without being able to directly control the throttle. A quick trip to Home Depot got me a new cable and some clamps that I used to fix it in the parking lot.
On a trip to a Back to the Future collection, my cooling fans failed. When I got home I found a melted and burned out fuse, and replaced it with two separate inline fuses to reduce the chances of this happening again.
After 40 years, my seat covers were starting to look pretty bad. I replaced them with new ones from LSeat. They came out pretty good, given that this is my first time installing such a thing.
You know what’s fun? Spending two days removing a broken bolt because you didn’t notice a jam nut and sheared the head off, all because you were trying to track down an intermittent engine cut out that wound up being a loose connector on the opposite side of the car. <sigh>
My steering column bushing was shot, the rack had a torn boot for some time that had partially ruined the mechanism, and I wanted to install a vibration-dampening U-joint and single piece column. Since all three are in the same place, I might as well do them all at once.
The driver’s side of the front frame extension had broken and needed to be welded up. There were a few other points that need some patches too. This was a good project for my new electric welder.
Tensioning the belt on the DeLorean sucks. Replacing the tensioning bracket with an adjustable tensioning rod makes it a lot easier.
A series of loose, misaligned or broken parts made my car a lot louder than it needed to be.
Two years ago I installed a double-DIN head unit, but my desire for wireless CarPlay and resolving an issue with my backup camera led me to setting up a newer, larger display, which posed some interesting mounting challenges.
A quick fix to a worn dipstick tube led to a slightly more involved fix with the gasket at the bottom of the tube.
My driver’s door lights stopped working for some reason. After taking apart too much of the car, I found a broken wire near the diode bundle in the footwell. Took five minutes to fix, and a couple hours to track down.
Now that my lift had power, I was able to do some overdue maintenance: change the oil, fix a leak at an oil sender, and upgrade my transmission linkage bracket.