Smart

Eldorado vs. Smart Car



Smart cars are 8.8' long and 5.1' wide.

So, the Eldorado is over twice as long as a Smart Car, and a foot and a half wider.

Ice Cream

Kyra & I took the Caddy for a spin this afternoon. Kyra didn't want to go but I bribed her with the promise of ice cream. We saw some friends, went to the playground, and stopped for the promised ice cream. Kyra had chocolate and mint chocolate chip. I had cheesecake and chocolate.

The car rides quite a bit nicer with the new suspension components and I don't have to worry about dragging the bottom going over speed humps anymore. The annoying squeak from the back seems to have been fixed as well.

Front Shocks

I put the front shocks in after I got home from work this evening. I got done just as it was getting too dark to see.

For such a big car, it is really tight working on the shocks - hardly enough room to turn a wrench.

I'm looking forward to taking the car for a spin tomorrow. The weather is supposed to be nice - sunny and not too warm. Hopefully, nothing will fall off the car!

Rear Springs & Shocks

This weekend I worked on getting new springs & shocks into the Caddy. I was hoping to get all 4 shock absorbers in, but I ran out of time. I did get the rear springs and shocks in, though.

The bolts were all pretty rusty, but weren't too difficult to get off. The really hard thing was getting the bolts that hold the top of the shocks in place. They are fastened to nuts that are hard to reach and impossible to see. You are supposed to bend a wrench to get into that tight space to hold the nuts. I did that, but it was almost impossible to get it around the nuts. I lost my grip on the wrench and it slipped away, down into a crevasse between the brace that holds the top of the suspension and the rear of the passenger compartment. Never to be seen again, apparently.

Anyway, I found a workaround and finally got those bolts out.

I did the passenger side first, which took a loooong time. The driver side went a lot quicker. You have to use a jack to position the axle just right to be able to unattach and re-attach the shocks and the control arms.

Here is a photo of the car after the installation. As you can see, I've got a little too much air in the shocks, but its not a bad look, I think.



Next weekend, I'll get the front shocks in place. They are supposed to be a lot easier than the rear shocks.

Update

Not much too report - just been driving the Caddy on the weekends in mixed city/highway driving. The car likes cruising at about 70 and doesn't mind getting pushed up to 90 for passing.

I have got to get the rear suspension fixed - I need new shocks all around, and new springs in the back. Complicating matters a bit, the automatic level control system was disconnected sometime in the past. That system raised & lowered the back of the car according to load, so that if a bunch of people were piled in the back seat, or there was a lot of stuff in the trunk, the car would still ride level.

Also, springs for later Eldorados are easily available, but for 71-73 they are harder to find. Apparently, increasingly stringent bumper safety standards between 1971 & 1976 caused the front and back of the cars to become heavier and the suspensions were reworked a bit.

Anyway, I think I've got some sources for springs and shocks - I just need to make some calls to see if they are going to be compatible with the load-leveling being deactivated. It doesn't look too hard to do, but all the bolts are pretty rusted so it could take a while to get them off.

I was hoping to replace the control arm bushings, but it looks like specialized tools are needed - perhaps the whole control arms have to be replaced. That gets into some real money, so I'm hoping adding the springs and shocks will get the ride where I want it to be (and will stop scraping off chunks of the exhaust system when I go over a speed bump).

I did get the radio out of the glove compartment - its now velcroed under the dash. And I got speaker boxes for the front speakers, so it sounds pretty okay now. I still need to hook up an auxilliary power supply so the radio will remember its settings - was going to take the one from the clock, but since that requires removal of the whole dashboard, I might just use the wire from the cigarette lighter.

That's it for now.

Road Trip

Marcia has some of her work in the Perspectives Pottery Show in Watkinsville, just south of Athens. We drove to the opening on Friday in the Eldorado - the longest trip we have taken in the car so far.

I had installed the new top cable in the morning and the top works again, although the side with the new cable now goes down faster than the side with the old cable. Not sure if I need to replace the other cable or just need to adjust some stuff.

The car drove well and we only had one minor problem. I noticed that the exhaust pipe had worked itself loose - it had rusted out around one of the supporting brackets. I taped it together for the ride back and it held well until we drove up our rather steep driveway where it got scraped off. So, I'll need to get that fixed. Also, I need new shocks...

Anyway, we spent some time in downtown Athens and had a nice dinner there at a place called Farm 255.

Here is a photo of the Eldorado in Athens:

Top Manual

I got a used copy of the 1971 Folding Top 'B' & 'E' Convertible Styles supplement for the 1971 Fisher Body Service Manual.

Shortly after I bought the Eldorado, I read on message boards that it was very important to get the body service manual, one of the primary reasons being that it has a section on the folding top mechanism. (It also has a lot of info on the windshield wiper system, electrical system and seat mechanism, among other things).

Unfortunately, its section on convertible tops only applies to the 'A' bodies, which used an older hydraulic system to raise and lower the top. It has nothing in common with the motorized system on the Eldorado, which is an 'E' body.

I found this supplement at www.factoryautomanuals.com, and it was less than $10 with shipping. I just took a quick glance at it today and it looks like it contains lot of very helpful info about how to adjust and test the mechanism. This is going to be an invaluable resource for me and I'm really glad to get it. Here is a sample page: