Holy crap. Yes the sprint lives! Dylan and Brad and I all spent the last week or so making our 1986 Chevy Sprint operational again. Two years ago, just before Rachel and I purchased our 2005 Subaru Legacy Wagon, we were in a bit of a transportation conundrum. You see, Rachel had just accidentally wrecked our Honda, but we weren’t fretting yet. The Sprint had just been given to us by my parents and although it had its quirks, the Sprint was still moving us around town. Of course, as luck would have it, as I drove the Sprint back from work (I suppose I must have been driving to work then) the silly car just up and quit. I was going around 20mph and suddenly the car just wouldn’t turn over anymore, the Sprint was dead in the water. Soon after that we purchased the Subaru, and after adding towing to our policy on Sprint, it got a happy ride on a tow-truck back to our alley home where it sat. And sat…..and sat.
I had been planning to get it fixed. This car, although pretty darn old, still gets damn near remarkable gas mileage, the fuel efficiency of its robust 1.0L three cylinder engine is great even by today’s standards. Also, my family has a few emotional attachments to this car. My parents purchased the Sprint when it was brand new to replace their failing Chevy Vega (another stellar vehicle). They were hard-up for a working reliable vehicle that was cheap to operate, so they bought one of the cheapest cars on the market. I’m not sure how much they actually paid, but bottom-of-the-line Sprints started at just over 6k brand new on the lot in 1986.
Over the years the Sprint accumulated miles and memories, and as we all grew it eventually was retired from active parent driving duty, and handed down to the children of the family to commute to swim, soccer, and cross country practice, as well as to school and social events. I still remember riding with my Dad to Saturday morning AYSO soccer games out at Western View Middle School when I was 11 or 12 years old. The little rollerskate was the core of many pranks, arguements and fun memories for all of our high school lives. One day, when I had just turned 15, my sister Lynsee let me drive the Sprint for the first time. The car has a manual transmission and so not only was it my first time driving a car without a parent around, it was also my first time driving a stick shift. Fun times were had until I accidentally nailed the curb with the car, thankfully no permanant damage was inflicted. I remember many heated arguements with my parents and siblings over who could use the car at night, and who was going to pay for gas. I remember coasting the car home on fumes to avoid putting more gas in the car. I’m pretty sure I could make that car run on pure spite for my sisters’ ability to always leave me with an empty tank.
As the car sat dead in the alley, my family and friends began ribbing me over the accumulation of dead cars. My emotional attachment was strong, but my financial and mechanical ability was lacking. A few attempts were initially made to diagnose the problems with the car, we tried push starting it, we checked for spark, we tried to see if it would turn over, but none of those lead us to any success. The next year we bought a house, the car was somewhat of a sticking point for Rachel who didn’t want to bring a bunch of dead cars with us to our new house….I agreed with her in principle, but not in practice. I couldn’t let it go. So late one summer night the Llamas helped Rachel and I push the car from our old house, to our new house, and there under the street light, Sprinty sat for another winter dead on the street.
With the acquisition of The Fruck last fall, the vehicles were starting to pile up, and things were looking pretty grim for Sprinty, I was prepared to part with it, if only to clear out the space in front of the house. Dead car curb ornaments start looking like Springfield pretty quick, especially on our narrow street. My exasperation at our neighbors dead cars did hit a little close to home as our non-operational car had a permanent spot under the streetlight. Rachel gently persuaded me to let go of it, and thoughts about donating the vehicle were entering into the equation.
About a week ago, after cutting the lawn in the park-strip near where it was parked, I looked at the car and thought; “I’ll just give it one shot to see if I can get it running again. I’ll push it into the garage and start taking it apart until I have figured out what is wrong, or until Rachel’s infinite patience runs out, and then we’ll donate it”. So into the garage it went, by this time there were no brakes, the car was infested with spiders, and the battery was dead (along wih the original problems). A happy stranger helped us push it up the driveway and into the garage.
Dylan came over later that afternoon and pretty quickly we had the air cleaner off, the oil drained, the coolant and radiator out. A little sleuthing and troubleshooting lead us to the problem, the valves weren’t opening and closing, even as we manually cranked over the motor with a ratchet. THE TIMING! The Sprint has an interference motor, but only marginally so, and as we inspected the timing belt, sure enough, a good chunk of teeth were just gone.
A few parts were ordered, I had to admit my skepticism about the extent of the problems with the car remained high throughout the process. Thankfully the timing belt went in in just under 2 hours of labor. Once we had that replaced and the cylinder firing order re-discovered the motor turned over as though it only been off for a few minutes rather than a few years. This is an engine that had been sitting in the weather for 2 years, with limited motor oil in the crankcase, running gasoline that had been in the tank for two years, and it ran. Holy crap! Sprint lives!
A few other things needed some help, the battery needed to be charged, the spark plugs were changed (plug 3 has some pretty scary cross-threading going on but everything seemed alright), the rear brake shoes and cylinders were in horrible shape so they needed some love. Brad and Dylan spent a few nights helping with the repairs (in reality doing most of the work while I distracted our talkative and somewhat oblivious neighbors. Thanks guys!). After the brakes were done, the car worked wonderfully. On Thursday we pushed-started the Sprint (in reverse….can you believe that works?) and drove it down to the gas station on the corner of 6th and Blair to dilute the half tank of bad gas. The attendant gave us “the eye” since the car had expired tags, wouldn’t start, and we all looked a bit sketchy after working on the brakes. A little joyriding proved that the car was once again operational. On Saturday Rachel and I went to the mall and I managed to get the car re-registered with the DMV with new registration stickers.
So today, I convinced Rachel to ride with me in the Sprint up to our family Easter gathering in Corvallis. I spent the morning cleaning up the car, detailing the inside, inflating the tires with a bicycle pump, checking the battery charge level, replacing the windshield wipers, and replacing the spark plugs. I gave the car one last drive around Eugene to be sure it was road-worthy and up to Corvallis we went. The car handled itself just fine on the way up, no problems, the engine is running stronger than ever. The car used to suffer from a lot of valve flap, but all of that has tightened up and vanished with the new belt. I am amazed at the condition of that vehicle, it is in pretty stellar shape for a car of that age, especially one that has endured as much abuse as that vehicle has. I think fixing it has been sort of like paying my pennance for all the maintenance that I never performed when I was driving it as a teenager.
We arrived triumphantly in Corvallis this afternoon. Everyone was very surprised to see the Sprint running again, especially having covered such a long distance so soon after being repaired. Both of my sisters took the little car around the block just for old-times sake. My dad got all choked up that it had once again made it back to the house. All and all the car worked great. We did have a few technical difficulties, the bad gas still makes it stall after running at high revs for a long time. The battery is all charged so that wasn’t really too much of a problem. On the way home tonight, we discovered that the hi-beams kill all of the lights in the car, rather than illuminating the road ahead!!! That was a surprise to say the least. The left turn blinker is also having a little fit of its own. I think an hour of poking at it will probably yield results. All and all, after only 200 dollars in parts, the car is working again. It really is amazing.
Driving that little tiny car brings back so many fun memories, I don’t know how I could ever get rid of it. Driving it back to Corvallis tonight was like seeing an old friend again! It makes me very happy to have Sprinty back. Welcome back friend!
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We can make our soil more alkaline in the fall, thankfully.
Themocracy