By the end of the summer of 01' the Caprice's motor had a new water pump, belts, hoses, radiator, fan clutch, and a clean carburetor. The front brakes were replaced. I also replaced the drivers side inner door handle, trunk lid, drivers side inner fender, I rebuilt and replaced the drivers side upper/lower door hinges, and sanded the hood down and primerd it. Lots of good hands on learning experience for me. At this point the only part of the car that looked good was the well kept interior and under the hood.
On the Road Again.
Sophomore year was a hard hitter for me, a full schedule and all honors classes brought progress to a screeching halt...well, almost. In October my dad told me we were getting my Chevy on the road, so I replaced all of the tail light bulbs (3 were burned out) it was also going to need an exhaust system, the old one was falling off and it still had the original two stage catalytic converter that was blocking up. It went to Midway Muffler in Bear Delaware, this guy has the best reputation in the tri-state area for exhaust work. He put on a hi-flow cat. that went to a Monte Carlo SS Y pipe that went to two Dynomax turbo mufflers. He did an excellent job. But you get what you pay for, it cost $525! Luckily my parents volunteered to take care of that bill. The exhaust really helped wake the car up, now my dad could pull out of our driveway onto the street, punch it, and it would spin the back tire through first gear and a little into second. Hence the name the Ghetto Jet.
Audio
The crappy factory radio didn't really work that well, the bass and the power would cut out randomly. Fortunately, for me, the old man who had owned the car thought his speakers were the problem and had all four of them replaced a few years before I bought it. Now it was time for a CD player, but I though I would put it in myself, how hard could it be? I spent about 3 hours trying to remove the factory radio, that was also connected to the A/C and Heater controls that were above it. I could not figure out how to properly separate the controls from the radio. My dad came home from work and told me it couldn't be that hard to do. So he spent 2 hours trying to separate the two. We both agreed that the $70 installation charge would be worth not having to spend anymore time outside in the freezing cold December weather. The car went to Tweeter Audio and had a Alpine CD player installed, normal vehicle installation time is 1 hour, it took them 2 1/2 hours to get mine in, the guy who put it in said it was one of the hardest ones he's ever had to do. It was almost Christmas so this expense fell under Christmas present. Sweet.
Ok well at this point it's sounds great on the outside, sounds great on the inside, runs great, but it still looks and rides terrible.
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