Post by rustyshackleford on Nov 6, 2018 16:05:09 GMT -6
Hi Everyone! I've been lurking for the past 3 weeks on the forums learning all sorts of stuff about my new to me Aurora. After have brand new cars for the past decade I got the itch to have a car I can work on and ended up with a 1998 Aurora. I bought it from the original owner's grandkid at 156k miles and they seem to have done a great job staying up to date on service on the vehicle. I even got both original remotes and the owner's manual! The vehicle has some paint scratches and the dash pad is starting to pull up, but overall she's in pretty good condition considering she's old enough to drink now. It was sitting for a while as the original owner quit driving it and gave to the grandkid to sell.
The vehicle has never really left Florida and you can tell. This is the first vehicle I've ever worked on with basically no rust. I'm originally from Central PA and fighting the rust on whatever you were working on was 80% of the battle.
I was baptized by fire when I purchased the car. On the way home the alternator went out and it left me stranded about an hour from home. Luckily, I had a friend driving my other car back so they took me home and I had to try to locate an alternator which was no small feat. There was only 1 in all of SWFL in stock so I bought it online and went to pick it up at that Advance Auto which luckily was on the way back to the car. I had managed to coast it into a library parking lot off of Interstate 75 when the dash started to light up like a Christmas tree when the alternator quit.
So I spent the day working on her in the back parking lot of a library armed only with the tools recommended in the alternator swap thread. Thanks for the great information on this forum. I don't know what I would have done without it as there is no Haynes or Chilton manual available. I guess I'm going to have to score a FSM from eBay. I was lucky enough to break the inner mechanism of the passenger door handle while loading up my tools in the Aurora after swapping the alternator. I guess I'm back to being nickel and dimed by my car but since I bought her for 2 lease payments I guess I'll come out ahead lol.
After reading so many threads over the last 3 weeks I feel like I already know a few of you, so I figured I'd say "Hi" and share my Aurora story.
I've also got a slight vibration which I believe to be the harmonic balancer and will be creating a thread about that tonight or tomorrow. I'll add a link here for reference once created.
Link to vibration thread
The vehicle has never really left Florida and you can tell. This is the first vehicle I've ever worked on with basically no rust. I'm originally from Central PA and fighting the rust on whatever you were working on was 80% of the battle.
I was baptized by fire when I purchased the car. On the way home the alternator went out and it left me stranded about an hour from home. Luckily, I had a friend driving my other car back so they took me home and I had to try to locate an alternator which was no small feat. There was only 1 in all of SWFL in stock so I bought it online and went to pick it up at that Advance Auto which luckily was on the way back to the car. I had managed to coast it into a library parking lot off of Interstate 75 when the dash started to light up like a Christmas tree when the alternator quit.
So I spent the day working on her in the back parking lot of a library armed only with the tools recommended in the alternator swap thread. Thanks for the great information on this forum. I don't know what I would have done without it as there is no Haynes or Chilton manual available. I guess I'm going to have to score a FSM from eBay. I was lucky enough to break the inner mechanism of the passenger door handle while loading up my tools in the Aurora after swapping the alternator. I guess I'm back to being nickel and dimed by my car but since I bought her for 2 lease payments I guess I'll come out ahead lol.
After reading so many threads over the last 3 weeks I feel like I already know a few of you, so I figured I'd say "Hi" and share my Aurora story.
I've also got a slight vibration which I believe to be the harmonic balancer and will be creating a thread about that tonight or tomorrow. I'll add a link here for reference once created.
Link to vibration thread
