Experiences Daily Driving a 91LE 40 thousand miles

[Keepin'her_going]

I figured this might make an interesting post, as I doubt it's a common occurrence for someone to put a 26 year old Bonneville through the paces. When considering these cars, words like bulletproof are thrown around, as the engine does deserve recognition. The thing is, everything else is important too, and now it's all very old. And time can be hard on many parts.

I bought this 1991 Bonneville LE to replace my 1977 Cadillac Coupe DeVille in order to save some gas. So it was kind of natural for me to make comparisons between the ancient rwd configuration and the new fwd layout. Often times this led to frustration, as many repairs were much easier on the Caddy.

I have to admit that at times I think of how different the world was back in 91 and how decent of a machine the pontiac is. When this car was built the Berlin Wall was still up, and your could smoke on airplanes. In fact the Bonneville was equipped with three ashtrays as standard equipment while modern cars don't even come with one.

I guess at this point I'd like to share some of the repairs I've had to do.

I started out with a new battery, tires, belts, and hoses, and a tune up, including a new fuel filter.
Then over time came the repairs.
Struts
Alternator
Harmonic balancer
Camshaft interupter magnet, Padgett rigged
Valve cover gaskets
Radiator
Ac compressor
Wheel bearings
Blower motor and resistor
Starter
Oil pan gasket
Oil filter adapter gasket
Transmission pan gasket and filter
Numerous vacuum hoses
Brake rotors
New fuel injector seals

Some mods I've made are
Alternator over drive pulley
Auxiliary fan in front of the condensor
L27 ignition upgrade
Tinted the windows, with professional tint and tools

Things I need to fix are the headliner, and all window motors, hood cable, and inner tie rods.

Some quirks the car has are that once a year the transmission acts like it wants to go out. Which I'm sure would have caused many to junk the car or spend quite a bit at a transmission shop.

What it does is it will come to a stop sign and then not want to move again, the motor will just rev, and eventually it would catch and go abruptly. The fluid level would be fine, and I suspect it is something to do with the valve body.

I think I made another post about it, but I wound up replacing the fluid, filter, and then the problem would happen about a year later. So I'd pull a trans line from the radiator pump out some fluid, then pour in some seafoam trans tune. And all would be well again, not bad for 8 bucKS to keep a car going

After installing the auxiliary fan the problem hasn't seemed to happen again except in one very minor instance. And if it does happen again this time I'll just throw in some seafoam again.

So after writing the repairs down it doesn't seem so bad, but the problems seem to snowball, I guess it's the results of getting an older car.

I believe the transmissions and body rust are the archilles heel of these old cars. The transmissions received so many updates that it is very difficult to have them rebuilt correctly, and it is very expensive, and not long lasting. When mine goes for good, I think that will be the end of the car.

Which makes me think that the difference between the old rwd layout and the new fwd is that the new cars are really more disposable. The old transmissions can be rebuilt even stronger for cheaper than a sub par rebuild.
And the frames can be repaired, and things like engine replacement, airconditioning repair, and even pcv valve replacement are much, much easier on the old cars. Also it seems that GM cheaper out on the window motors in the 80s, as every car from the 70s had very strong, loud. And fast motors.

On the flip side the fuel injected 3800s really are worth noting as a great engine, plenty of power, economical, and long lived.

All in all the Pontiac is a good car, and I'm hoping that with so many repairs out the way, I can enjoy the car for 40k more miles, after all it only has 133k on it.

[CMNTMXR57]

Nobody will disagree with you about it being a solid reliable car, but most will safely argue that they've been daily driving it since 1991 and have well eclipsed 40k.

So many here are in the 200k even 300k range.

[Keepin'her_going]

I thought many of the members in here daily drive newer cars

[CMNTMXR57]

Many here have both and still use the Bonneville with lots of miles on them.

[zuper8]

I love your thoughts about the disposability of modern FWD cars. I have contemplated this often, it actually fascinates me. Caused by the expense of repairs, and perpetuated by the faulty but popular concept that a car should be financially assessed as one would an investment. At the end of the day I see so many good cars destined for or already at the junkyard that could have still been serviceable for years and miles to come, if someone would just maintain them properly. Interesting read, glad a 91 is getting good care and regular use still.

[skregal]

I agree about people throwing out perfectly good cars.

A customer of mine owns a towing business and every week he
gets a vehicle where the customer just doesn't want to be bothered
with repairing it, and he will snap them up for a few hundred bucks.

Then he fixes them and sells them for thousands.

He always entertains me with his latest story about how simple
a repair was on a discarded car he just bought.

People just hate maintenance and repairs. Something ingrained
in our culture, I guess.

[CMNTMXR57]

A friend and I used to turn cars all the time. Problem is, you have to get creative with the state, as they only allow 8 vehicle sales before they require a dealers license (which you have to pay for, and then gets you on the Illinois Department of Revenue's radar).

[skregal]

In Missouri, guys skip (jump) title all the time. The seller signs the title but the
buyer never does, never registers the vehicle, and acts like the original seller
when he passes it to someone else.

I had a guy call me about a Camaro I sold for $100 with a blown head gasket.
The guy flipped it and sold it in Illinois to someone as a good car. He never
registered it, of course, so the new buyer only had my name to go back to
when the car's engine died. I felt bad explaining to him how he got taken by a title
jumper.

I think we hijacked this thread, sorry.

[CMNTMXR57]

You can do that if you can turn it quickly. That always isn't an option when you factor in the fact that both of us worked long hours at our regular gigs, and having to wait until weekends for junkyard excursions and wrenching. You usually have ~30 days before having to license something here so if you can skip it in that time it works great. It doesn't help that the town I am in is very gestapo about unlicensed vehicles and swapping plates around doesn't always help. They have plate readers on the police vehicles that automatically reads plates and then queries them with the S.O.S.. Yes, I've gotten friendly notices from the city.

[00Beast]

You can do that if you can turn it quickly. That always isn't an option when you factor in the fact that both of us worked long hours at our regular gigs, and having to wait until weekends for junkyard excursions and wrenching. You usually have ~30 days before having to license something here so if you can skip it in that time it works great. It doesn't help that the town I am in is very gestapo about unlicensed vehicles and swapping plates around doesn't always help. They have plate readers on the police vehicles that automatically reads plates and then queries them with the S.O.S.. Yes, I've gotten friendly notices from the city.

Welcome to the police state...

[CMNTMXR57]

It's for our safety though...