I finally got around to working on a minor repair I’ve been wanting to attempt for awhile.
As The Banana is over 20 years old, the COMAND screen had started to look a little faded. This is due to the anti-glare coating on the screen aging, and it takes on a cloudy, blue tint.
It is possible to remove the coating and then add a replacement anti-glare screen, and I figured I’d give it a shot.
Continue readingAfter running another large charge through the ol’ credit card, I got the car back on Monday.
As I suspected, the alternator needed to be replaced, but the surprise issue was that the noise I was hearing was from the supercharger pulley and not the alternator itself.
While they had the car I also had them look at the air conditioning, which wasn’t blowing very cold. Turns out that it only held 0.56 pounds of refrigerant versus the recommended 2+ pounds. There is obviously a slow leak somewhere so they injected some dye as well so we’ll have to wait and see if that shows where it is located.
Continue readingJust when I got the car back from the last repair, another issue popped up.
(sigh)
It’s getting a little frustrating. Yeah, I know that the Banana is 20 years old but I maintain the hell out of it and it still keeps letting me down. Much like those bad relationships from high school: let’s hope that once we get past this problem things will get better. (grin)
Continue readingMy mild OCD means that whenever there is something a little wrong with my car it bothers me. Recently I noticed that the rocker panel door seal under the driver’s side door was missing.
I figured it would be an easy repair, but that was before I found out that the seal itself (part 230-690-01-98) was discontinued. (sigh)
The one for the passenger side is still available. I assume that is because the driver’s door is used more frequently and thus there is a higher chance for the seal to go missing.
Continue readingI have some mild OCD, and when it comes to cars this expresses itself in that I need to keep my vehicles in a particular state of repair. If they aren’t clean, etc., this causes anxiety.
This means I tend to do things no sane automobile owner would do, like replacing a perfectly functioning switch with a new one.
Cars as old as the Banana have a tendency to develop “sticky” switches. Apparently this has something to do with the non-slip coating used on them degrading with time. When I got my first SL55, the Shark, I went to work trying to clean that stickiness off of the controls.
Continue readingIt took an extra week, but I did get the Banana back on Friday.
As mentioned in my previous post, I went to pick up the car last week and couldn’t get in it due to the driver’s side door not opening. I had been having problems with the door, but the shop couldn’t recreate it until I showed up.
I left the car another week and they replaced the door latch mechanism. So far it has been working fine.
Continue readingI was very excited to get the car back on Friday. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen.
They were able to determine that my transmission woes were due to a bad shifter, which meant the transmission had no idea which gear was selected. Replacing the part (which runs ~$1600) cleared the codes and supposedly fixed the issue.
Why “supposedly”? Because I couldn’t get into the car to drive it. (sigh)
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