With my wife back in school and kids activities, it has been challenging to keep up with everything.
I am now back to blogging about the Scorpio!
I have actually worked on it a lot in the past nine months. I have been driving it fairly regularly. It gets around 20mpg in town which is way better than our Chevy Trailblazer EXT at 15mpg in town. The Scorpio has been very reliable so far. The only issue I have had is that in the dead of winter the heater was a little weak and the blower motor failed. I have since purchased a new blower motor, and plan on refurbishing the A/C when I have the system apart to replace the blower motor.
Here are two good stories about my adventures with the Scorpio:
1) Three weeks ago we had a family campout with our Cub Scout pack. The campsite was about 30 miles from our house. I hadn't driven the car that far yet, but I had no reason to believe it couldn't make the trip. We loaded up for the campout and took the chance. The drive there and back went without any issues. I do need to get new tires, I believe the passenger side front has a flat spot, probably from sitting for so long. We got back from camping on a Saturday night. My family was home and we decided to catch the drive-in that night. We took the Scorpio to that as well. No issues, drove like a champ there and back.
Fast forward to Monday morning. I go outside to leave for work and I notice that the rear bumper cover is sitting just a little crooked. I grab it to see if it is loose, and the whole thing falls off in my hands! Well, I didn't have time to figure out what happened then, so I drove the Trailblazer to work and decided to worry about it later. The next weekend I took a closer look at the issue. The bumper cover is held on to the bumper frame by two bolts, one on each end, and then there are two massive strips of velcro that go across the face of the bumper that keep the cover from moving around. The velcro was intact on the bumper itself, but the strips of velcro on the cover were shot. Also the two bolts that held the cover to the bumper were gone. This had apparently happened sometime in the past.
The previous owner's solution was to use liquid nail and just glue the cover to the bumper! Not the best idea, but I guess it worked for awhile :) Why the bumper cover didn't just fly off when I drove it all that weekend is beyond me. The solution to the bumper cover problem relied on my parts car. The bolt and attaching hardware were still on it. The rear bumper cover is also in better shape so I just swapped the entire thing to the Black Scorpio. I also invested in new velcro for the cover and now the whole assembly is good and secure. The whole repair process took about three hours to complete.
Old bumper cover
New bumper cover with two strips of velcro installed
New bumper cover installed
2) The front bumper cover: On the Scorpio the front bumper cover is a little ragged. It has been hit sometime in the past and has some cracks and is sun bleached really bad. I had the brilliant idea of swapping the cover from the parts car over to the new car. It only has two screws and two bolts holding it in. No sweat right? Wrong! Total disaster. Each and every bolt/screw in the front bumper on the parts car was rusted solid. I had to drill out, or use a drift and forcibly remove each one. Even the fog lamp retaining screws were so badly corroded, they had to be drilled out also. The entire job front to back took about 3 hours. It should have been about 20 minutes. The only consolation prize was that I decided for all of the pain and suffering, that I would at least R&R the fog lights, and get them working. They look great and function for the first time since I got the car.
I will attach some pictures later.
Have a great weekend!
Darren
