nolvad Posted February 4, 2014 Report Share Posted February 4, 2014 Hello, I recently got a stick 1985 505 S wagon. I've fixed most of the issues and its running really well now but I'm wondering if there are any mods I could do to make it better and possibly more power. I have the original engine and electrical manuals and most tools. Here is what I've done so far: Re-torqued the head (the previous owner was a mechanic and he redid the head gaskets a while ago but forgot the re torque it) Drained and flushed and replaced the coolant Touched up some plastic panels Put in a new battery Replaced spark plugs Raised the idle speed (the car would stall when starting warm) Replaced the headlights and polished the plastic headlights In the process of replacing the radio and speakers the glove box hinge failed and I fixed that striped the cracking leather off the steering wheel replaced the hors Here are my current issues: The dummy lights come on randomly Clear coat is failing BAD rear bearing are failing, making a lot of noise rear break shoes are worn out Things I would like to do: MORE POWER (this car has a serious lack of it) tint the windows finish replacing the stereo and speakers rebuild the window switches, the windows go very slow I might replace the distributor rotor and cap Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bean Posted February 5, 2014 Report Share Posted February 5, 2014 Welcome to the forum Nolvad. Sounds like you've done a lot of work and made a lot of progress on this car. To answer your questions: dummy lights can be caused by bad grounds - so you need to find and clean the grounding tree's on the rad support panel on either side of the rad. I would also try to take apart and clean as many electrical connectors as you can, and reassemble with dielectric grease or a similar product. clear coat's are bad - sometimes you can have luck polishing out the paint underneath - but the only way to get nice paint will be to repaint. Rear bearings are a fair bit of work to replace. I've done the job once and it was a heck of a job. Rear brake shoes are luckily fairly easy to come by - but make sure the rear brake cylinders are in good shape as well. Power - these were never fast cars, and power is pretty limited unless you start spending money on cam and raising compression. The "cheap" way to get more power would be to do a cam regrind and shave the head to minimum specs. Free flowing exhaust and it would perk the wagon up significantly - but not sure it would be worth the work for the power gained. This all assumes the car is running 100% now - if something is still wrong - say the distributor isn't advancing properly or there is a fuel system issue then maybe it is something that can be fixed. A better way to maybe show if the car is abnormally slow would be to time a 0-60 run and compare the numbers to what they were from new. I wouldn't get my hopes too high though as the car was never a performance car, but once you learn to drive the engine's sweet spot, the cars really are fun to drive. You just have to appreciate them for what the are, and what they do best. Rabin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nolvad Posted February 5, 2014 Author Report Share Posted February 5, 2014 Thanks Bean, I'll try pulling the instrument cluster off this weekend and cleaning the connections. I'm just going to leave the clear coat for now, the car doesn't have any body panel rust so I'm not worried about that, maybe I'll deal with that once I fix the other issues (if that ever happens). I don't know when I'm going to do the rear bearings, the car doesn't fit all the way in my garage so I would have to do it in one day, but I should do them soon, they're getting loud. I think the car is running 100%, I'll try doing a 0-60 test. I got the car for $1000 from my neighbor and I've been driving it for three weeks now and its really great! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tulaweb Posted February 6, 2014 Report Share Posted February 6, 2014 Here are my current issues: The dummy lights come on randomly Clear coat is failing BAD rear bearing are failing, making a lot of noise rear break shoes are worn out Is it possible that what sounds like bearing noise is really coming from the worn out brakes? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tommtl Posted July 31, 2014 Report Share Posted July 31, 2014 Hi guys! I just got a 1984 505 Wagon. I m looking for parts for it. Do you have any advice to find them? Thanks thomas Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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