Since the return of my evacuation from Hurricane Katrina which made landfall on 8/29/05 my baby has been parked pending service I've put off because I had what I call the party bus (Ford Windstar) to drive around in until I got around to getting my baby back on the road. It is time to bring her back to life. Needless to say the battery was dead and some undesireable critters (wasps and spiders) have/had moved in. I purchased a battery charger the other day, filled my battery with water, and charged it up for over 10 hours.
Now what I need to know is before I put the battery back in and try to start her up is there anything else I should do as a precaution to start-up since its not been cranked in roughly 10 months?
I feel a lil bad about having her sit there for so long, but ever since the Hurricane life has not been business as usual, plus I need new seats and the van has been way more comfortable on ma chubba butt than my 3000 is. I plan to keep this thread open and post to it as I go along, because I have amassed a stockpile of parts over a couple years now and compiled a list of maintenance to perform so I'm hoping someone will benefit from this thread and hopefully (if you've been following that other famous Hesitation thread) I will finally (after years) resolve my hesitation/sputtering problem in doing all this as well.
List of maintenance I plan to do that I can think of at the moment:
- Remove/Replace master cylinder assembly (Brake light on and this was the main reason I stopped driving her around; I'd already flushed the lines well and properly bled the system, but from another thread a friend tells me it sounds like the MC. I have the MC rebuild kit so away I go). If this doesn't do the trick I'm leaning towards the brake booster next cause I don't know what else it could be.
- Replacement of the A/C Clutch only (Hopefully I will not need to do more than that to resolve my A/C issues)
- Repair of smaller radiator cooling fan and wiring (I think this is called the A/C fan) - Note that I really believe this was/is the cause of my hesitation and sputtering as the positive and negative sheath was removed from the wiring at a "bend point" from having been bent too much or too hard over time. The positive and negative wires would arch because they had no proteciton on them and I believe that is when I'd experience problems.
- Doing a vacuum leak down test and installing new IPO silicon vac hoses
- Resetting base idle after leak down test reveals leak; which I will confirm before installing the new vac hoses
- Finish installing BigTyla's grounding kit (2 cables I couldn't figure out where they went)
- Installation of APEXI Power Intake filter (removal of resonator setup) and new air pipe
- Seafoaming of the Engine (Intake and Oil) and Tranny
- Installation of BigTyla's tranny cooler setup for my ATX
- Possible new front seats installation
Aesthetics: - Getting the yellow funk off the headlights with some plastic polish and if not that then some other plastic resurfacing kit
- Repair/resurface/repaint a nice big slit in the rear bumper with a bondo resin fix kit
- Probably see if I can learn how to polish my own rims
- Install new center caps on the rims and maybe put a cool mitsu sticker on them.
I'm more of an "all at once" type of guy and I'd like to get all this done in a day, but its just not possible and not right to do so seeing as I'd need to drive the car for about 50 to 100 miles to let the seafoam do the work before draining and refilling.