Stay of Execution

In January the governor of Virginia issued a one year stay of execution for the OLD-smobile.

The olds had developed a nasty banging in the transmission so I had decided to take her to the junk yard if it did not pass inspection . With the fresh inspection , I decided to take it to Aamco for an estimate for transmission repairs. Of course it needed a complete overhaul @ $2200 so that was not an option, they also said it had an engine miss ? Having never owned a V6 powered car, what I had thought was the transmission banging was actually the engine missing under load. It only acted up when in overdrive and under load like when you start up a hill on the interstate. I assumed it was the transmission because it ran fine otherwise.
I decided to invest $60 in new plugs and wires. Even with unleaded gas 114,000 miles is about all you get from a set of plugs ! The real culprit was a corroded terminal on one ignition coil. Here are a few shots that tell the story, check out the gap on those plugs.

Here is the corroded terminal on the #6 coil wire. Pretty ugly !

    Check out #3 for comparison !

This completely eliminated the banging under load and it runs fantastic . The transmission still has the pump noise going on , but I plan on just driving it until it quits or won't pass inspection.