How To Perform A Basic Tune-Up

This car belongs to Art Director Edwin Alpanian. It was purchased new by his parents and handed down to him when they stopped commuting in it. Since then, it has sat in Edwin's driveway-in the wonderful San Fernando Valley-collecting bird poo.

This car belongs to Art Director Edwin Alpanian. It was purchased new by his parents and h

Hey! You want cheap-o fun and burnouts? Buy a mid-'80s G-body. So what if they don't have chrome bumpers and the lust of the old dudes at the '50s revival show-these are American cars that came with V-8s, 10-bolts, and overdrive transmissions. What more could you want? Well, you should say you want a little more power 'cause let's face it, mid-'80s cars weren't exactly the best-performing things, even when they were new. But that is fixable.

Our staff-owned '85 Monte Carlo SS is the ultimate hot rod stocker. It has a factory 3.73:1 rear gear, a floor-shifted automatic, buckets seats, and tons of extra SS-badged widgets. With the good, there are also problems. It shakes at idle, and when you stab the throttle, nothing happens in the smoky burnout department. We even tried a brake stand and some full-throttle donuts . . . nothing.

To find out where all the horsepower is hiding, we are going to start at the beginning with a basic tune-up. We are going to show you the tools you need and try to cover what usually goes wrong under the hood of these cars. In future issues, we are going to uncap the stock exhaust for a little more flow, tune up the rearend so it will get sideways, and fix all the goofball parts that cause factory slowness.

We are also going to clear the sticky goo out of the interior and give the whole thing a refresh with new carpet and seat covers. We want it to be a quick street cruiser that looks factory, so we will be replacing the warped plastic body parts, resquirting the factory black, and reinstalling the original SS sticker kit that someone painted over.

To be accurate, we are going to keep track of all the trinkets we throw at this car, along with the prices. If we find a cool part at the swap meet, we'll tell you about it. If we are forced to buy new, we'll whine about it. Either way, you'll get to follow along as we go from crap to cool. Tell us if you likey at CarCraft@CarCraft.com.