Black Friday. I awoke with a dead yellow NYC taxi hanging off the end of my driveway without plates, the perfect target for the HOA that oversees my neighborhood. Relaxing four-day Thanksgiving weekend for me? Hard nope.
[Ed note: We bought a 375,000 miles, $800 NYC taxi as part of our partnership with Copart. Right from the start, it became quite the adventure and I’m glad we sent it to SWG first, mostly because anyone else would disown us. Here’s part 1, which saw the cab arrive in the middle of SWG’s Thanksgiving dinner, only to then fall off the trailer ramps.– MH]
“This is the life of a very non-world-famous automotive crapbox journalist, so quit yer whinin’, remember that there’s ‘no crying in Crapbox Rescue,’ and let’s get to it, SWG!” I say to myself. Balance your Center. Focus your Chi. You’ve got this. Goosfabba.
David Tracy usually calls/reaches out to me each morning from LA, (as he does with all his writers) asking about my general well-being, hopes, dreams, and aspirations. That morning, though, he was all business: “Send some pics of the cab!” was the direction. He didn’t even ask what I had for breakfast nor how I slept! I guess the cab was at the top of the priority list for The Autopian C-Suite and I apparently really needed to put my shoulder into this effort and get to work.
Pictures and a video were quickly taken for a 360-degree view and instant reactions dictated the initial course of action: the battery was dead and it had a flat (it was full the prior night, so I’m guessing they inflated it for the trip). Otherwise, the rear door showed some rust and a bad bondo repair, the spare was missing, there were four mis-matched tires of different sizes (with mis-matched and missing lug nuts), and the interior had a BioHazard sticker in it and looked as if it sat for an extended amount of time with the window stuck down. These were my initial observations within the first five minutes of seeing it 100% sober and in the daylight.
On the plus side, the cargo area looked very clean considering the long life or service this cab has had, the rear seat area was very spacious, there was a cool intercom feature between the front and passenger sections, and the window-within-a-window is design at its coolest:
There was no way I was going to go through this 375K city car with a fine-toothed comb after the seemingly very full and storied life that it has had up until it showed up in my driveway, so I decided it was best to focus on just getting it running via attention to the most critical items with the limited time I had before Cyber Monday came around.
(After writing the above paragraph, my mind wandered into a Back To The Future-style fantasy where I was able to place a Flux Capacitor in my Stratus Coupe and go back 10 years into NYC. I’d see this cab in all its glory leaving JFK or dropping off glamorous people in front of their fancy hotel on Park Ave with Sinatra singing “New York, New York” in the background (preferably coming from the cranked stereo of an ‘83 Chrysler Imperial Sinatra Edition parked in front of that same fancy hotel). I’d offer an Autopian Salute and wish our little yellow hero well for the next decade or so until we meet again, ~10 years later in The Cape Fear, in the future, (Marty).)
These Little Town Blues, They Have All Melted Away
Get ready for one of the most wrench-tastic adventures I’ve penned to these pages yet, y’all.
First up was getting this dead battery sorted. I have both a CTEK and a Schumacher charger that are always on, since there are a ton of batteries around here that mostly sit and need to stay topped-off. My plan was to pull the battery out of the cab and stick it on a charger overnight in hopes of waking it back up. Well, the bad omens continued from the previous night (see: delivery ramp debacle) as the first wrench that I placed on the first nut on the vehicle snapped immediately. DangNabIt!!
No worries, that’s an easy fix with a pass-through bolt out of the large “Coffee Can O’ Boltz (Yo!)” that I’ve been filling in the garage for years for scenarios exactly like this.
The battery came out and went on the charger and I was about to turn my attention to the next repair task when I realized that the battery was so low that the charger wasn’t even recognizing it. Wow. At this point I’ve tried to do three things (unload, remove battery & charge battery) and each has been a flaming bitch. Off to see my friends at Advance Auto where they have some up-level chargers that they offer for free.
After dropping off the battery and saying hey to all my homies at the local Advance (it’s .5 miles from my house and I’ve been in there 3x a week for at least 7 years now: “Platinum Rewards” Status, yo!) I turned my sights to the next major issue: the flat RF (right-front) tire.
Strangely, the four lug nuts that were holding the wheel onto the car weren’t over-torqued (genuinely surprising) and the wheel came off without being stuck or rusted to the rotor/center hub. Speaking of rust though, the brake rotor told the story that the cab had been sitting for some time, as it was covered with the stuff.
Now that it was free from the cab, I pumped the tire up with my compressor to about 40 PSI and immediately heard the air pressure leaking down. A quick spray of some soapy water showed a completely blown-out inner bead and what looks to be a nasty bend in the wheel.
I popped the spare from my Stratus Coupe on the cab to keep it from kissing the ground (Mitsubishi and Nissan use the same bolt pattern) and made quick trip to see my friends at John’s Tire down the road a bit (Jason Torchinksy has been known to go there for tires in the recent past). They hooked me up with a quick, cheap, and easy bead seal, a re-mount and balance, and the wheel and old tire was about as good as it was going to get, all things considered.
I popped it back on the cab with a full set of matching, correctly-fitting lug nuts, torqued them to spec, and called it a day. There was limited daylight with this story taking place so close to the Winter Solstice, and wrenching in the dark is not my favorite. That was enough cab repair tasks for one day/Black Friday, plus, I had some leftover Thanksgiving pie on the way (courtesy of my mom) and a case of something that needed to be slowly evaluated. All wrenching and no pie makes for a very non-tasty holiday weekend.
Saturday, Next To A Park, It Definitely Wasn’t The Fourth of July
The next morning, I started things off by heading straight back to Advance to check on whether or not David would have to pony up for a new battery. And thankfully (he is a self-professed cheap bastard), he didn’t have to!
With a fully-charged battery in hand and some well-wishes toward the staff for their Saturday shift (usually their busiest day of the week), I headed back home in wicked high spirits to hopefully send a sweet first-start video to The Autopian Executive Team. Both the tire repair and the battery repair worked out and the wind was at our backs. This looked as though it could be the home stretch and an easy win for The Good Guys. I re-installed the battery, got the ‘ol camera phone fired up and ready to roll and this happened:
…because of course it did. No northern-sourced Nissan hits 375K and makes wrenching/resuscitation easy. The game has now changed to one of diagnostics regarding a no-start condition. Let’s go, son!
Can We Get This Hoss Started By Night Fall, In The Short Days Of Winter?
I frickin’ hope so, dawg. Since I could hear the fuel pump turn on in the above no-start video, I knew the key, ignition switch, Security and such were all working. After having done this for a hot minute with quite a few absolute crap cars like this one (since the mid-’90s), my past experience told me to look towards the starter first.
Note: I was wicked glad that the fuel pump could be heard clicking on and humming, since I really, really did not want to fight NYC rusty bolts to drop the tank for replacement!
With the ignition in the “On” position and a trusty flathead in hand, I strained my lower back to do the ‘ol shade tree mechanic trick of bridging the terminals on the starter solenoid. The reason that trick is passed from generation to generation with high respect is because it’s free, it’s easy and it works.
The terminals sparked, indicating that there was voltage present, yet the starter did not engage: diagnosis complete.
I dialed up The Autopian Executive Relations 1-800 number and after 20 minutes of teleprompts and surveys, I was able to speak with Jason’s Administrative Assistant, whom I informed that the cab needed a starter. “Mr. Torchinsky values your patronage, caller. What did you say your name was again? Gossling?” I had to explain for way too long that I actually work at The Autopian (I’ll admit, it’s been a hot minute since my last piece, but that one was a near-killer adventure!), but I eventually got the message to be placed upon Jason’s “desk” for when he returned to the office.
And what do you know? About an hour later I got a call from Advance stating: “Mr. Tracy, your online order was ready for pick-up!” I shot over to pick it up with only limited daylight left; I wanted to see if I could come through on my prior personal goal of getting the cab started before nightfall.
David texted me to tell me that A) that starter “ain’t cheap, dawg!” and B) not to install it before checking to ensure that the engine rotates freely and isn’t seized. Will do, buddy!
As you can see in the above video, luck was on our side there and the engine spun easily (probably due to low compression- heey-ohh!). While under the cab I did notice a few concerning items though. Firstly, the catalytic converter was missing. This was not a surprise to me, since this cab was parked at a high mileage for a reason (right now we know it needs a starter, but perhaps there are additional issues), and the platinum-filled cat converter is probably the most-valuable part on the vehicle. Guys/gals/folks in NYC that run cab fleets aren’t dumb.
Also, the oil pan had a nasty dent in it that looked quite fresh (no rust on the striations) that appeared to have occurred when The Transport Dudes fork-lifted the cab onto the transport trailer.
I also noticed that getting to the starter from the bottom would be a no-go per the lack of access.
To get the starter out, you have to remove the lower radiator hose and drain the cooling system. Seriously Nissan?! Wicked poor packaging. Well, it is what it is, so out came the drain pan and the system was relieved of its green fluid contents.
Getting the starter off started out just like my attempt to remove the battery: with the signal wire attachment bolt snapping.
One step forward, one step back. Let’s get that signal wire connector fixed.
The starter came out after the signal wire connector repair, and the pricy replacement unit was installed. It was pretty easy; just two bolts that had been soaked in PB Blaster while I was draining the coolant. The coolant was replaced (not changed; we haven’t even fired this thing up yet–it may have a knock or such). Everything was coming together just as the sun was setting and the temps were dropping.
I just realized that I could barely feel my fingers, toes and nose; since I was so focused on the repair I didn’t realize how cold it had gotten that evening. Regardless of the discomfort, it all came together just in time for this to happen:
We frickin’ got it, son! Gossin Motors Shitbox NYC Autopian Cab Driveway Rescue executed; I got it running! I sent a hugely-stoked and semi self-congratulatory (let a man celebrate his “W”) to the entire staff at The Autopian via Slack and was met with warm congratulations by all your favorite writers.
Also, to aid in the moment of celebration, the key randomly popped out of the ignition cylinder right as I went to shut off the engine after its first start!
But wait a minute, what’s that growing dark spot on my driveway underneath the cab?!
Can I please just get that one “W” here?! Guess not. I hung my head in frustration, packed up my tools and set an alarm to try again in the morning on the final day of my long weekend. I tossed and turned all night; as this project was starting to take a turn into difficult territory, like the other vehicular boondoggle in my life: my Buick Parkamino
It’s Exactly What You Think It Would Be For A 375,000 Mile Nissan
Well, there was a river of oil that resembled The Skin Of Armus that was snaking its way down my driveway after starting and running the cab for about 15-20 seconds. This is bad; Tasha Yar would not approve (deep-cut, B-Side, Star Trek reference).
There was a massive oil leak here that was emptying the crankcase of copious amounts of oil so rapidly that I was not in favor of starting the engine again until I had a better grasp upon it.
Now here again with this next round of unexpected cab diagnostics, past experience tells me to look in the area of the engine that is immediately above the spot on the ground, accounting for other items that may be in the gravitational pathway. I’ve had vastly more cars since ’96 that have leaked oil than those that have not (151 total cars at this point), so I have a semi-deep resume on these sort of diagnostics. I’ve strangely never gotten any employment offers from that line on my resume though; “I’m pretty ok at spotting oil-leak sources!” Perhaps I need a headhunter.
Well, right above the Armus oil slick on my driveway was a soaking wet front timing cover. The most-likely source of oil from this area of the engine would be 1) the crank front seal and 2) the front cover gasket. Upon checking the dipstick, the reading matched what my eyes were seeing on the pavement: this thing was hemorrhaging oil at a wicked rapid rate for only having run for under 30 seconds.
In fact, it seemed like the leak was occurring even when the engine was off. This made sense because it seemed like the oil was pushed up and into the crankcase from the dented oil pan and into the front cover/front seal area. It looked slightly more likely that it was coming from the front cover gasket seal. These things aren’t an exact science when your sleuth clues are dirty oil seepage, gravity and potential leak points that are close together. A best-guess is sometimes needed.
At this point, with a most-likely leaking front cover seal, the entire front cover would have to be removed, which is a big job for a weekend wrencher with limited daylight and cold temps (along with 16 other cars to fix). I felt that it may be beyond the capacity of my schedule for the following week with the holiday upcoming, and plus, like I said earlier, having a yellow NYC cab that is immobile without plates hanging off the end of your driveway isn’t the greatest look to an HOA. I better take a video showing what’s involved and let The Autopian Executive Team know what they’re facing.
As you can see in the above video, that job would be leagues easier if you had more than ¾” of space to work with! I’ve done a few front cover /timing jobs in the past, so I was familiar with the level of difficulty, the amount of time it would take and the number of skinned knuckles. It’s not for the faint of wrench.
After letting the entire team know the state of affairs via a bummer of a Slack post, I was thanked for my time and effort and advised that plans would be crafted to get the cab up to Jason in the next couple days. I ended my Thanksgiving weekend on a down note and started getting ready for the workweek back at the under-volcano lair.
This Cannot Stand! Or Can It?
No less than 24 hours later, the emotional discomfort of just not gettin it done (son!) was gnawing at me pretty hard. I hate losing. I hate not completing a task. I guess it’s the completionist in me, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that maybe I wasn’t 100% correct on the front cover diagnosis. Maybe there was still a chance.
I took a lunch break from my Evil Backyard Shitbox Rescue Scheming on that Monday, grabbed a floor jack and a lug wrench and popped back out to the driveway to take one last swing at that big inoperable, unplated, leaking, yellow toaster in my driveway. The wheel came right off and I took another good hard look at that leak area. Check out the below video:
The Wrenching Deities smiled upon me that afternoon, as I found the correct source of the massive oil leak! I was so wicked pumped on my discovery that I sent the above video to the team. Editor-In-Chief David Tracy immediately responded with some kind words and direction to go back to Advance for a crank seal and a jug of oil, for “The Good Of All Autopia,” or something along those lines.
I quickly grabbed the goods (remember that Advance is .5 miles from my Lair) and bolted back to the NV200 to finish the last part of this marathon with gusto, verve, zeal and panache. The first task on this now-extended lunch break was to pop off the crank bolt; out comes the impact. My naivete and hubris would show shortly. Actually, I felt like I was Icarus in that moment because right then, the wax holding my wings together began to melt from the sun:
230ft/lbs from my bottom-of-the-barrel $29.95 Harbor Freight impact was not getting that crank bolt loose! Just for comparison, most of the lugs holding the wheels on most of my cars are torqued to around 90-100ft/lbs. This may require, literally, bigger guns. Buying tools with more power is the entire premise of Tim Allen’s ABC sitcom career, so off to Harbor Freight I went for an impact with more torque.
Note: Also tried was the “break it free with the starter” method, shown in the below picture.
Check out how that went below. I sent that video to the team, who informed me that I would gain a non-insignificant amount of torque by removing the extensions (I never knew that; hat-tip to Peter Vieira). Sadly, over 1,000ft/ lbs of torque was not getting this crank bolt off.
Bound For The Floor
When someone believes in you, it’s a gift. What they’re really saying with their faith in you stems from you having impressed upon them a satisfactory set of skills, traits, ability and comportment to be able to accomplish something of value in their eyes. It certainly isn’t easy when you aren’t able to meet their expectations. Even if the reason for not being able to do so was out of your control and beyond your available resources (time being the most valuable of those).
I know I tried my best as a Backyard Shitbox Rescue Driveway Wrencher on this job, so I swallowed my pride and informed the team that I had raised The White Flag of Defeat (which rarely happens).
Luckily Matt is a kind and understanding person & David gets amped up about scheming to find a solution to problems (as all engineers do). He informed me that his next move was to find a way to get a torch on the crank bolt to get it cherry-red hot and then get an impact on it (even though this will melt the rubber off of the crank pulley). Since this is not my cab, better him doing that than me.
Jason seems to be wicked pumped to just own a NYC Cab, (he told me that he was thinking of installing video-screen visors on it) so the fact that I wasn’t able to get it across the goal line doesn’t seem to be too big of a problem for them.
Like I said above, I can honestly say that I gave it my best effort as a hobbyist wrencher. I’m not ASE Certified, although I did have some brief training in a high school auto shop class in the late ‘90s (those need to come back); enough to be dangerous, which is how I like it.
Knowing that you gave your best makes failure a lot easier to come to terms with in any arena in life. Such old boiler-plate sayings have stuck around as long as they have in the lexicon because they’re true and valuable, regardless of being thread-worn.
Looking back, my time with the Autopian Cab was a whirlwind; an exciting weekend of wrenching and problem-solving, which has always been wicked fun for me. I’m happy that I had the opportunity to learn more about this not-common vehicle and to expand my experience and skillset to help out my favorite site and car culture community, along with helping out my friends.
Matt told me to call a local tow truck to get the cab over to Capital Nissan (on the other side of town) to see what they had to say about it. Having experienced the condition of this cab firsthand, I cannot wait to see that dealer estimate!
Failure is a part of life. You can’t win ‘em all. Knowing how to deal with it in the best way possible is not always a luxury that is available. But, failure is an often misunderstood gift that usually ends up strengthening and hardening you against future struggles and challenges.
[Ed Note: I don’t consider any of this a failure. SWG fixed a starter and a wheel and diagnosed the main issue with the van. This, as I would later find, would save me lots of time as I attempted to resurrect one of the hardest-driven vehicles on earth — a Nissan with 375,000 NYC taxi cab miles. -DT].
When you know you’re bound for the floor, which will inevitably happen from time to time, just remember to go down swinging.
88mph into the future.
More Stephen Walter Gossin below.
All photos: Stephen Walter Gossin
- How I Saved A Once-$90,000 Mercedes SL I Bought For $1,900
- Why The Dirt-Cheap Broken Jaguar X-Type For Sale In Every Town Might Actually Be Worth Buying And Fixing
- What I Learned Restoring A $600 Dodge Ram With A Burned Up Transmission And Ruined Interior
- How I Bought A Broken Version Of My Dream Car For $300, Then Nursed It Back To Glory And Let It Free
- Proof That A $700 Car Saved From The Junkyard Can Make Someone As Happy As A New Lambo Can
- I Took On A Bad GM Design In A Hail Mary Attempt To Fix My Friend’s Suburban, But It Was Too Little Too Late
- How Rescuing A 22-Year-Old Jeep Almost Killed Me Multiple Times
- Here’s What Happens When A Broken $800 New York City Taxi Shows Up At Your Door In The Middle Of Thanksgiving Dinner: Partner Post
Always stoked to see more SWG here!
Crank pulleys are always a pain…. then sometimes even worse when wrestling with a puller to actually remove the pulley after the fact. Havin some cold ones during wrenching always makes it better – nice work!
Even though Tasha got eaten by the Skin of Armus, her coolness quotient brought her back for some awesome time-traveling adventures. I look forward to the next SWG episode–always super entertaining!
Wait, “eaten”? I thought she was zapped by Armus’ version of The Force?
Regardless, huge points for knowing the reference and thanks for both reading and for the Comment, Phillip!
SWG, I think this was definitely a win, despite your completionist nature. I would love to take auto shop and will have to see if there’s anything like that here. Girls weren’t allowed to take shop class when I was in junior high and high school, which would have been far more practical than home ec.
Being a raging car old beater car lover and living in an HOA is “turn it up to 11” masochism. Respect!
Gotta love an SWG adventure!
A SWG article and more Star Trek references??
My cup is full.
I think we need a new membership tier that includes a Cash Cab type experiece
He doesn’t call me from LA every morning. I should be thankful for small mercies I guess.
Dang, SWG. That interior looks gross. The intercom pic – blegh. Nasty. Kudos to you for tackling it.
This taxi seems like a bit of a basketcase, but The Powers That Be did one thing right by making sure it ended up with you first. Great job resurrecting the little roach.
Never seen Fram branded oil before. Being in that interior in the harsh light of day after jumping in the night before must’ve felt like that awkward moment when the lights come on at the strip club at the end of the night.
I think Advance’s house brand is now Fram oil.
TBH, brand means nothing. Does it meet the spec on your car when new? I honestly suggest running “Diesel” Shell Rotella on older (pre ’90s) cars, it more closely matches the older oil specs. I always run full synthetics on modern cars.
Dad ran only Shell Rotella on our old ’85 Colony Park. It blew a head gasket around 1998. I did the rebuild and the cylinders still had factory crosshatching.
I run Rotella T6 in most of my motorcycles as well as my diesel truck – Japanese bikes all call for 10w40 and Rotella is 5w40, dirt cheap (and MA2 rated).
I was an automotive machinist for several years and Rotella is what we used in every rebuilt motor we threw on the dyno.
Whoa, when you open the door, it beeps like a 90s Honda
In Morse code? (Learned that from Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers, I miss listening to Car Talk on Saturdays.)
No harm in calling no-joy when your resourses are expended. Did the same on my MDX, when my biggest air impact didn’t loosen the crank pulley/balancer I went to a small shop I trust. I don’t regret the $600 spent for the timing belt/water pump. I provided OEM quality parts and 3 gallons of spec coolant. They did my differential too with provided OEM oil.
Too many push beyond their limits and get in trouble. One thing for a project, another for something you need to daily.
Last timing belt I did was my ’94 SHO in 2001, almost 25 years ago. That was a 3 day labor of love, at a different point in my life. I did the complete valve lash adjustment too and installed full SHO Shop underdrive pulleys and rev limit delete. I drained the manual trans oil, replaced with a performance spec as well.
Great write up SWG. You didn’t fail, you deferred it to someone else
No shame in knowing your limits (be it time, space…)
I won’t say I am sad that I wasn’t tagged in to assist on this one, but I am hoping to find my phone lighting up one day with a summons to work on that 2CV! We need to get that thing to Cars and Coffee at least.
HMV Freeways have optional transparent flip-open vents in their front side windows. They’re really nice to have as the rest of the overall design isn’t great for interior airflow. The original owner of mine paid for one side but not, regrettably, the other:
https://live.staticflickr.com/5133/5512867456_cfc3733b03_c.jpg
Here it is in the open position. Every little bit of air helps:
https://live.staticflickr.com/5061/5660075814_76eb0d28bc_c.jpg
What’s the phone for?
It’s a Johnson Messenger 130A CB radio so I can keep my ears on the flip-flop or whatever it is the kids are saying these days.
https://live.staticflickr.com/4149/5434276480_4181e360d7_w.jpg
NEver seen a CB like that before.
It was never a popular design but the Midland 13-884 and the Realistic CB-Fone are a couple of other examples of the style.
Crank pulleys can be a PITA. I was taking one off of a Toyota 5VZFE (3.4 V6) and my Milwaukee impact broke an IMPACT SOCKET! Scared the crap out of me. Got a thicker one and eventually with enough ugga duggas, it worked it’s way off.
Hey, if you’re goin down, swing with panache!
-I learned the hard way about how much torque extensions steal a couple decades back. Don’t feel bad: we don’t know what we don’t know.
You reminded me how much of a roller coaster shitbox wrenching is: back to work with a wry smile in the knowledge that anything I find today will be paid for by someone else 😉
Wrenching in the cold sucks, doesn’t matter if it’s a 300,000+ mile Nissan or a 60-year-old John Deere. Kudos to you for giving it all you had. Been there, done that, as they say…
The problem is that the “C-Suite” didn’t know whether you send it to an exorcist before or after SWG.