Me thinks he put in the correct bulbs for da application

 

That's what worked for me.

Dealer told me they had to send the clusters out to be rebuilt when I tried going there for the bulbs.

Found them online for .29cents each. I ordered like 30 of em.

 

Today, I had some extra time so I went to the salvage yard. Picked up a bumper that was straight.

Pulled the front of the car apart, and it's not as bad as it could have been.



Had to get the saw out, the holes didn't line up with the nuts anymore.



All apart, nothing terribly crooked.



New bumper.



Everything more or less straight again.



I also grabbed an air filter box and installed it. This is when I found out that nobody locally has the air filter for this car. They say "We can order that for you and have it here in two days!!" And they wonder why Amazon is taking over. *I* can order it and have it here in two days, and pay half as much for it.

 

Looking good!

 

Looks good!

I'm sure you know, a k&n filter is well worth the money.

 

I'm still not decided on whether or not I will keep the car. If I were to hang on to it, I'd get a drop-in filter. I took a look on the local craigslist, and the only other Ions I could find were barely-functioning piles of cracked plastic for $1,000. I haven't got anywhere near $1,000 in my car, so if I sold it for that I'd be happy.

The little car did well in the snow this morning. It was also the first time driving it with the stock airbox, and I didn't notice much of a difference, it might be a bit quieter.

My next magical trick will be the clutch pedal fix that is stickied above. My pedal tends to pop off of the little ball on the rod coming out of the master cylinder, and it looks like that was addressed in the post.

 

I have an almost new pedal I could sell. I'm swapping to the cobalt set up, so no need for it.

 

How much? I may keep that in mind.

Being lazy and short on time, I took the car to a shop to see what it would cost to replace the clutch. Their estimate convinced me that I could do it myself. $1,800!! I could buy another running Ion for that! Probably two of them! The guy at the shop tried to tell me "it's a good car, it will run forever if you do this" And I had to laugh - it will run forever if I change the clutch myself, buddy.

But I was poking around, and I found something interesting. A bushing, GM p.n. #22697429, on Amazon for $10. It fits in the little socket on the back of the pedal that the ball for the master cylinder fits into. My pedal is broken, where it just pops off the ball if you don't have something blocking it, and I thought this part would fix it. It didn't fix that, but it did make the clutch work properly, and moved the engagement point to a more reasonable spot. Bad part is, I installed it, went inside, and forgot about it until I went to take my wife and daughter to a movie a bit ago - I thought the clutch had completely failed, because it didn't engage at it's normal 1/2" from the floor. But the little bushing fixed it right up. That was the last driveability problem the car had. I fixed the clunk in the suspension with some new sway bar bushings, new tires, good alignment. The car will spin the tires in second gear and will squeal them in 3rd. The last thing I need is the driver's side wheel bearing. The wheel bearing was making a growling noise, and I remembered my brother replaced one back in the day when it was his car. He said it was the driver's side he changed. So I replaced the passenger side. The passenger side bearing was a bit noisy when I pulled it off and spun it by hand, so I thought I was on the right track. But when I took it for a test run, I still had the noise - but it was quieter, and not in stereo. BOTH of them were bad. But that makes sense, when the car was wrecked, it bent the control arm, and the front wheel on the driver's side, so it makes sense that the bearing was damaged too.

At this point, I've my own wife telling me to just hang on to the car. She told me today that I basically took a car only good for scrap and made it run again, why get rid of it?

 

50 shipped for it in the states.

And yes, you can change that little socket frequently to save the pedal and the clutch master. Clutch master is good for 30-40k on aggressive driving.

I'm parting out my car. Don't know if youve looked at my build thread, but a lot of stuff is going. I have an eBay store I use more frequently. Goaliemo_ion if you'd feel safer there