That’s right! You drive eight hours further away from home into the depths of Texas to buy a bright yellow hunk of metal that also, coincidentally, has no A/C, among other problems, AND over 270,000 miles. Did I mention you have to drive it all the way back to Wichita, KS from Houston? Sounds smart, right? Emptying your savings account for a car that’s probably on its last legs? Of course not, but this was the harebrained idea that I came up with last year. It was the start of a relationship between a broke college student with little to no mechanical know-how and a cream yellow 1995 850 T-5R sedan.
At the beginning of my ownership in 4/21, the list of problems included:
- no A/C
- no radio
- no cruise control
- broken ambient temp sensor
- dodgy 12 V socket
- slight fuel cut (which became worse in coming months)
- hideously squeaky blower motor bearings
- slight dash rattles
- soft and cracked intercooler piping
- P0400 CEL (EGR flow)
- broken OBD1 system
- windshield leak in two spots
Not a bad starting point, eh? Over summer break, I fixed the A/C, radio, and cruise control, greased the blower motor bearings, reinforced the dash mounts, solved the fuel cut issue (bad hose clamp in the fuel pump, of all things), installed new plugs and wires, and swapped out the cam position sensor (which stranded the car in a bowling alley parking lot for five days while I was endlessly troubleshooting the crank-but-no-start issue). Small setbacks aside, I was pleased with all this progress I’d made with the car. It cleaned up real nice too…
Going into my sophomore year of college at Wichita State, I made the smart decision to bring this car with me to Kansas instead of my trusty daily driver. The journey from Terre Haute, IN (home) to Wichita was actually flawless, aside from the fact that I discovered that there is virtually NO 93-octane fuel in the Wichita area (it took me a month to find the nearest 93 pump). Two weeks after I arrived in Wichita, I decided to go bowl a PBA Regional event down in Houston with some teammates. This saw me encounter a battery drain and a rock hard brake pedal that stranded me for an entire day after the tournament. A new battery, six hours at Midas for a new brake booster and vacuum hose and I was good to go. The good thing is the PBA check paid for all the parts and labor, too. It couldn’t have worked out better (or worse?), I guess.
At the tail end of September, I decided to chase down an underboosting issue that began. I started by investigating the P0400 EGR flow CEL in my dorm’s underground parking garage. What a stupid idea. Stress levels almost matched the levels I endured in Houston a month prior because the car was down for a week or so with a third of the engine bay ripped apart. However, I had a few friends who helped me get around town, thankfully. I ended up getting the EGR valve cleaned and the CEL disappeared. Sadly, I was still underboosting.
Next, I took it to a fellow 850 R owner’s house (who I happened to meet completely by chance) to see if he could identify the issue, and it took him all but two minutes to realize that my intercooler piping was SO soft that it was collapsing on itself under acceleration. Hindsight really is 20/20, but as someone who knows almost zero about cars, there’s no way I would have found that issue by myself. We installed an iPd RIP kit a week later and the problem went away.
The following weekend, I fixed the OBD1 system. “Fixed” = swapping around two wires the PO hooked up wrong, so don’t give me too much credit. (Pins A5, A6, B5 and B6 still don’t work. Any and all tips appreciated.) I pulled all the codes I could, one of which was “front HO2S slow response.” I realized that the oxygen sensors could be the cause of my poor MPG, so I bought new sensors and installed them (with my friend’s help of course). He also realized that I need a new serpentine belt and tensioner BADLY, so we got all that addressed too. MPG improved slightly, but I believe a clogged catalytic converter to be the primary MPG issue (I also have a CAT efficiency OBD1 code). I also discovered that the O2 sensor wires were soldered together… wtf. That explained the slow response code (which went away).
I swapped cars over Thanksgiving break to prepare for the impending salt and snow that never actually came. The drive home was flawless. The salt and ice that ACTUALLY came in December meant that winter break was uneventful regarding car stuff, aside from an oil and filter change. I didn’t bring the T-5R back to college with me this semester, but that’s because I plan to have the car manual swapped soon, and I want to do some other quality-of-life fixes in the coming months. Also salt.
The last manual swap parts I’m needing are the driver’s side axle for the manual trans and the pedal switches and their attached vacuum lines. Let me know if you have any leads!
I plan to keep updating this thread as progress happens or when I inevitably need help. (Apologies for any crude writing as I’m not an English major lol)