I practice what I preach. I am going to do a complete maintenance and look-over of my 1995 Buick Grand Road Master Station Wagon. It is actually my dads car, but is on permanent loan until he officially signs it over to me. He lives in Maryland and I live in Florida.

Before I start my verbiage, lets become acquainted with this particular Buick. It is the last of the super large station wagons to be made…and it is a giant long car, to say the least. Decked out with leather interior and every option known to mankind. We call it the ‘Bluesmobile’.

Why? did you see the movie “The Blues Brothers”? Like the car Dan Ackroyd had when he picked uo John Belushi from prison, it has…cop car engine, cop car suspension, cop car wheels and tires. I like it too.

It has a General Motors 5.7 liter cop car engine. Simply put, it has Vortec fuel injection, a spicier camshaft, more compression than stock and the hi performance heads, just like the cop cars. It will outrun a new ‘GTO’ and give a new ‘Hemi’ owner an inferiority complex. It also gets 20 MPG on the highway at 80 MPH..

A true American classic, however it is not at all exempt from maintenance services and breakdown problems. About five or six years ago when I still owned my transmission shop, and my parents were here on vacation the transmission failed. He had a very comprehensive extended warranty policy, it payed me in full to do a full updated transmission rebuild on the 4L60-E transmission in the car. Of course I had to prove there was no nepotism involved since we have the same last name!!

Other wise, the Chevy/Buick engine is running great. It is one of the 100,000 mile spark plug change models. It has the original spark plugs in it at 68,000 miles. As I mentioned in my post on 100,000 mile tuneups changing the spark plugs is an involved job for a specialist. Which I will do at 100,000 miles.

For the 25 years I owned my own business, one might say I was spoiled. I had 8 lifts available to me almost anytime I wanted to use a lift. Inevitably, I had my 1988 GMC on a lift just checking and making sure, or my 1970 Porsche 911 on a lift to look at it’s raw beauty in engineering. So now, since selling my shop three and a half years ago I don’t have lifts and scanners and oodles of tools at my convenience. I do have 3 giant Snap On tool boxes loaded with sets ans sets of wrenches and sockets and a Snap on truck full of specialty and general tools.

I don’t have a car lift now, so I use a 2.5 ton floor jack (see the article on Safety) that can be purchased at any parts place or Lowes, Home Depot or the like for about 100 bucks. That beats about 400 dollars for essentially the same thing Snap On makes. A heavy duty set of jack stands for holding my patient (car) in the air safely. I don’t take safety issues lightly. I did not take them lightly at my shop either. In 25 years no body was ever seriously injured.

Once it is safely jacked up this is what I’m going to do to the bottom side of the car.

1. Change the rear differential fluid

2. change the transmission fluid and filter with a new pan gasket.

3. change the engine oil and filter.

4. Lubricate the front end, driveshaft u-joints (if eguipped with zirk fittings).

5. Spray the chassis, inner fenders, parking brake cables and body bushings with WD-40 or the like.

6. Look for leaks of any kind.

7. Take a look at the brakes when I rotate the tires.

This is what I can think of at this moment that will get serviced while the car is on jack stands. I want to get more detailed in the next post. It will be right here on the Gotengines.com blog. See you soon..