grant mills

In '96 I installed a "door w/s kit" from Nostalgic for my '84. You can try Dan Booth to see if he still has some.

mfg, Can I assume that my 84 has the same opening as the 83? My Bluapunkt has died and I am wanting to replace the cassette deck unit with something more modern.

The alternative to the spacers is: remove the (wider) flange/rubber from the base of the old shock and use it to replace in the flange in the new shock. I had already tossed the old shocks when I learned this.

Any front shock that you buy today will have an issue. That base flange is 3 inches side-to-side, while the mounting holes are 3.5 in. apart on centre. I jury rigged extensions for each side using flat stock of the correct width that enclosed the outer edges of the flanges and had a slot in the middle to extend the flange. I also made a spacer from the flat stock to cover both the original flange and the extension to keep everything in place....There is a description of all this in my posting in the 84-91 forum under the name "front coil springs"

mfg, could you give the part number of the specific radio you got? There appear to be numerous models of 630 receivers. My Blaupunkt has died and I am looking for alternatives to repairing, including an upgrade in capability. Also did it easily integrate with the power antennae?

I had moved to the 225/70 on the rear end to get my speedometer back to accurate. The tires on it when I bought it were so small that the speed read 10% higher than I was actually going. It took a 10 mile measured distance (provided by the highways dept.) to show me why I never got any speeding tickets. I liked the more aggressive look/width of the B.F. Goodrich tires, but had to put a smaller circumference on the front to keep from rubbing the inner fender well on sharp/fast corners. The newer suspension may have corrected that problem, but I really want to be able to need only one size of spare. I still need to fix the steering control valve to get the handling I remember from days of old.

It only took me about 5 minutes to put both flex hoses back on. But as I did it, I got to wondering why someone doesn't just make a short conversion piece that fits over the oval and then expands to a circle to accept the flex hose. I think a simple 3D printer could easily make one, given the dimensions of each end

My flex hose is off, as yesterday I replaced the fuel filter in the carb housing. (hoping to correct a very recent failure where the engine dies as I come to a stop). I well know about the problems with the flex hose and have considered getting replacements but fear the "fun" of installing them. As to the brake....there are no brands stamped on the housing. There are 2 sets of numbers, one for the master cyl. and the other for the fluid reservoir. The number on the master cyl is: 7K3 082A 10 02 (with the spacing as shown). The reservoir is: 306 FA 1379A. I may be wrong about the FA..it may be PA, but I could not get all the crude off the side of the housing

photo of my original brake master cylinder from an 84 Avanti. The label on the booster is to indicate DOT 5 only.

to MFG: Now that the installs fro front springs and shocks are completed, I feel that the front end is just a bit higher than I am used to....of course this can be explained by the fact that the rear leaf spring have all the curve of a carpenters level. But I had also moved to 195/75-15 all round from the 225/70-r15 rear and 225/60-r15 front that had been on the car for 25 years

I am looking for a source for a complete rebuild kit for my control valve. It is (hopefully) the last thing needed to restore the steering to its previous perfect. I was simply going to have the valve seals replaced, and then the garage showed me the looseness where the ball stem connects to the pitman arm. And yes, the engine was running at the time they were testing it. I have seen a few articles in the forum showing the rebuild steps (including the fun with pitman arm removal), but none of them seemed to indicate where the rebuild kit could be acquired. I know that I can remove the assembly and send it out to Dave Thibault or Dan Booth for repair, but that would mean I have to get under the car and remove it myself. I would prefer to give the kit to a shop I deal with and let them do the removal and rebuild....(it feels like I already spent the summer under the car working on the steering/suspension). SO again, does anyone know of a vendor that sell rebuild kits that will work for the Avanti control valve? There are no new ones to be had and even RockAuto cancelled my order for their rebuilt LARES 64 after realizing that they had none. thanks in advance, grant

Mike, I have just finished getting the sway bar attached, completing the front end work. I have attached a picture of the lower connection for the front shocks. As I was adding a spacer to help clamp the extension, I needed longer carriage bolts as the original ones looked to be too short. My mistake there was using carriage bolts from a local hardware store. They turned out to be grade 2 and when I tried to torque then down, two snapped. I corrected that by getting 4 grade 5 bolts from a blot supply house. They easily took 15 ft.lbs. of torque, I just hope it is enough. ( I would have attached a picture but Microsofts latest upgrade broke the picture download for my flip phone) As to the sway bars...There is a technique that took me 3 days to discover and an half an hour (or more accounting for coffee breaks) to apply. (Note: dish soap makes an ideal lubricant for slipping bushings along bar. ) After slipping two bushings onto the bar and pushing along to their interior location.....put the two end bushings in their brackets and loosely connect the bracket to hold them in place. Next, having lubricated the interior hole of the bushings and the ends of the sway bar, push one end of the sway bar into its bushing as far as it will go. It should stick out the other end of that bushing. Then take the other end of the sway bar and push it into its bushing. There should be enough clearance for that to enter that other side. NOTE: when the sway bar is complete, the two ends do NOT extend out the end of the bushings and seem to leave about 1/2" of the end bushing open at either end. Now put some support under the centre of the sway bar until it is held a few inches below its position. Put the brackets on the interior bushings and get them into the back slots (If you put only one side in the slot and then loosely connect it, you will be unable to get the other bracket into its slot) With both in their slots, raise the bar an inch or two to hold the brackets in place (to keep the sway bar from pulling them out. At that point you can work the brackets one a time to insert the bolts to hold them in place. I used a small bottle jack and a short piece of 2x4 to lift the lower end of the bracket until the bolt holes aligned....A metal drift pin helped align the holes and a ball peen hammer was used to knock either the sway bar or bushing/bracket for final alignment from side to side. I've tightened down the bolts hard by hand (with lock washers), but have no idea of the suggested torque for these.....If anyone knows what they should be, let me know

Mike, If you have a 7/8" sway bar, the bushings from Dan Booth (Nostalgic) would be a perfect fit if you are using the original brackets, and would need NO opening up. They are meant for the 7/8" sway bar. Where did you get the bushings such that they are too small (assuming about 3/4" hole diameter)? Remember that the correct bushings may seem tight, but liberal use of dishwasher soap on both the interior hole and the sway bar should make things much easier. I have not yet installed the bar, but I have the interior bushings in place and it is just a matter of making some supports to hold one end of the bar as I first work on the other end (cross my fingers) If you are stuck with too small bushings, I used a dremel w/ steel cutting rod at the end of the shank. It was small and started to make cavities along the interior. I would then switch to the largest grinding stone that would fit in the hole (or to the largest sandpaper drum) again with the dremel. This larger stone/sandpaper would smooth out the hole. I needed the high speed to be able to cut out the rubber quickly. The steel cutting rod does fast removal and the larger grinders do proper, slower, finishing work. An electric hand drill just does not have the RPMs that are needed to cut the rubber.

Well, after many months I have almost finished the front suspension. It has been a litany of incorrect parts and learning new(old) things about the car. First, I was lucky to have a cousin in Vancouver with a business that had a warehouse in Washington state (and a US bank credit card) O'Reilly will not ship to Canada, nor will they accept credit cards based on non-US banks (That means my American Express from a canadian branch is not accepted) Once received, the local shop did a good job of replacing bushings on A-arms, king pins and bell crank. Now, a few words of caution. If you have a 1" front sway bar, I have only found 2 sources for replacing the bushings. One is Dave Thibeault who, if I understood correctly from our conversation, make a bracket that fits the old Avanti support but accepts the new style of bushings which are too small for the old bracket. Essentially a smaller bracket. The other is Dan Booth (at Nostalgic) who sells bushings that fit the old bracket, but had been modified by Avanti after they stopped installing 1" sway bars and moved to 7/8" bars. Since Avanti had a large lot of the 1" hole bushings, they glued an insert into the hole to bring its size down. I went with Dan's bushings and ground out the insert to bring the hole back to 1" (dremel w/ steel grinder works slow but effective) It easily slide onto the sway bar (using plenty of liquid dish soap to smooth the bar). I am now waiting on a refund for the "wrong external sized" bushings I mailed back to "Avanti International Inc." over a month ago Second word of caution: Any aftermarket front shock is NOT going to fit. DO NOT believe RockAuto when they advertise their replacement shocks for any pre-86 Avanti. Those shocks ALL have a 3" long base plate (end to end) while the centers of the two stove bolts that hold them to the lower A-arm are 3.5" apart (the Lark chassis). They cannot be secured. I had order KYB shocks and dealing with their support desk, I was told they have NO shocks with a wider plate on the bottom. "Gabriel" automatically acknowledged that I asked them about this issue and would get right back to me....but crickets. In the end, RockAuto acknowledged the problem, indicating that many other Avanti owners had complained about the same thing and offered me a refund (and paid return shipping) even though I was months over their return date policy. Given problems with returning parts across the border, I decided to build brackets for the lower supports. Using 3/16" flat steel, I cut eight 2" pieces from a 1" wide piece. I then gouged out a U shape from one side, approximately 1/4" deep in four of them. It is about 1" wide and tightly surrounds the flange of the shock. I next drilled out a 3/8" hole beyond the cutout and ground away the metal to join the two. The other 4 simply had a 3/8" hole drilled at one end. Now I will (and hopefully it will work having just finished the grinding an hour ago and still wanting to do a little more precision filling) attach the extensions to the 3/16" thick shock supports. and use the other single hole plate to act as a clamp, covering both the new extension and the base of the shock. It may be that there are suppliers that have front shocks with the wider support base, but I have been at this all summer and have gotten tired of the parts misunderstandings I had with some suppliers. I strongly recommend Dan Booth at Nostalgic and am thank full to Dave Thibeault for suggesting him as an alternative to his product. I had easily ordered from Nostalgic years back but had mistakenly thought they had retired.

After reviewing all the postings on this site, I have ordered a set of coil springs from O'Reilly...SP08055...which are a match to MOOG CC655....which have been touted as a very close replacement for the original front springs. Given the problems with cross border shopping, I am hoping to get them in about a week. My question is: do they require any spacers? The photos of side to side comparisons I have seen make them seem just slightly shorter than the original...or does it not matter and I just get a bit more rake.

I will look for a replacement canister...but the leak turned out to be a little harder to access than I first thought. After removing the lower rad hose, I found I also had to remove the electric fan support (with fans) so that meant removing the upper rad hose so there was room to remove the fans. The tranny coolant leak was at the connection of the 45 degree adaptor to the rad. A little teflon tap and a tightening up cleared up that location and teflon tape on the hose connector to that adaptor ensured that there will be no more leaks. When putting the electric fans back in place, the battery got in the way so that also had to be removed before I could get the fans and their support frame back in place......How i wish I had small hands so I did not need to clear out a few square feet of area in order to work on things. It was 10 minutes of slow work on the connectors and 2 days of removing and replacing parts to get access.

I have had an ongoing leak at the connections of the transmission cooler lines to the radiator. No more than a few drops a month but it is annoying so I am going to replace the seals (or connectors..what ever is needed) at the rad connections. The connections are hard to access because of the vacuum canister, so I intend to disconnect the canister for ease of access. I am not comfortable with the idea of removing and bypassing the canister, and I have read numerous postings in other forums where they indicate that the canister should be recharged as it is prone to failing after about 70K miles (my car has 72K) Those forums also seem to indicate that replacement foam/parts for the canister are no longer available. So I would like some critics of the transmission cooler line work and comments on the vacuum canister.

No emissions testing done up here in Canada. In attempting to replace my fuel pump, I have to make room to be able to work in the confined area. At the moment I am (trying to) remove the air pump having taken the alternator out. Are there any major issues in simply not reinstalling it? I would expect to replace the current (original) cat. convertor with one that has better exhaust flow and no air hose input. What else might I be looking at as an area of importance? grant

removed spark plugs to check a few cylinders...all were dry, so on to replace the fuel pump...which raises the question I am asking in a new post

Here is a scan of the relevant page from the shop manual. (assuming I am not breaking any copyright laws)

I only use Shell premium gas that, by all accounts, had no ethanol added. But I do use a fuel stabilizer for winter storage. Jim, thanks for the tip on checking the cylinders.

While working on the rear sway bar bushings (now completed satisfactorily) the car was tilted forward where the rear was suspended about 18 inches higher than normal for a few weeks as I had to get the new bushings replaced with a larger set. On the last few days of this i noticed a pool of liquid under the front that seemed to be gas/oil. When I dropped the rear end back down, I decided to do an oil change as I could not seem to get a reading on the dip stick. when I removed the oi drain plug, I got a strong steady stream of over 10 litres of liquid, overflowing my oil pan and again covering about 10 sq.ft. of floor....So I have gas in my oil pan and I need to know the cause to fix it. Cause 1: (unlikely but I'll put it out there) the gas flowed through the fuel line into the carb and from there down into the engine. Cause 2: (most probable but it is year and half old fuel pump) The gas flowed through a failure in the bellows of the mechanical fuel pump and entered the oil that way. Given the "fun" I had replacing the last fuel pump I would prefer to get some ideas on diagnostics to determine it that is indeed the fault. Any ideas out there? grant

I had the same leak problem on my tank. After many removal and reinstall sessions, I cut off the bolts and covered the holes in the firewall. I then used a number of pads of velcro to attach the tank back in its position. while this held the tank in place, I still battles the leaks. My latest (and still working) fix was to cover the entire lower outside with a JB-weld epoxy that would stick to the plastic (plastic welding did not work, but the blame should be placed on the welder..me) I also could not justify the $100+ for a new tank.

Further on the "reassembly" process. The locally made u-bolts, while identical to the ones I removed, would not fit into the holes of the lower support bracket. The springs blocked them from going straight down and I could not get enough of angle to bypass the springs because the torque bar support flange blocked them from the leaning enough. I finally drilled out the bracket support holes to 1/2" (from 7/16") and this gave enough clearance for the passenger side to slip in...on the drivers side I had to additionally stretch the hole with the 1/2" bit until that side would drop in.....I was not going to force the threaded ends of the u-bolts to go through where I might have distorted the threads. Next: When I put the torque bars back in place, the bolt hole on the axle flange would no longer line up...the bar was 1/16" too short. After much cursing and fear about what it would take to get the bolt holes aligned, it dawned on me that the front end of the bar was attached to the frame at a lower point than the axle attachment. I put a jack under the front position (at the front of the leaf springs) and jacked up at that point. This moved the bar up at the front, pushing it farther back into the back axle flange (which did not move its position from the jacking) and aligned the holes. My larger replacement bushings for the sway bar are the post office waiting for me to pick them up in a few hours.

My '84 has a rear drums. My car is a tricked out (with every option), built as a draw prize for a major Canadian Charity ( I bought it used from 3rd owner), so if rear discs were a factory option, they would have been on it. So your rear discs are probably an after market add on.