200+ Mile Shakedown

On Monday, I drove to my parents, a trip slightly more than 100 miles each way. The Toyota performed admirably. The only issue noted would be a tendency to run slightly warm after an hour or so at 70 or 75 mph. In its youth, the car would do that, as I made many a jaunt from Traverse City to Kalamazoo at such speeds. The radiator is missing some cooling fins, quite a few actually, so it isn't surprising. The temp gauge likes to wander from coldish to warmish and back during 'normal' driving, as it has always done.



The gas gauge did come to life after I jammed some wadded up packing paper in the access panel in the trunk to the fuel level thingy. I did this to test how much quieter the car was after sealing up the rust holes in the trunk. I think I will replace the wad of paper with a wag of something plastic.

Other things I did was turn down the idle speed, which seems to help a lot. It isn't happy when cold, hesitating, bucking, etc., but gets over it quickly. I also changed the trans oil Saturday night. It has 3 drain plugs, with two fill plugs. Somehow they're linked together because you put oil in one fill hole. But, the strange part was the differential oil look a bit dark, but normal. The other plugs looked like gray latex paint. Two of the drain plugs were magnetized, like deliberately. Strange. The third drain was more of a 'breather' or something because the book said to leave it loose while you filled it with oil. When drain #2 was almost done, I started removing this drain plug and more oil suddenly started barfing out of drain #2. I have no idea what that was about, but the trans hasn't seized yet so it must be getting lubrication.