When inspecting the car before we bought it I noticed an occasional drop of brake fluid from in-between the master cylinder and brake booster. So when the Eldorado finally got to our place I already had a new booster and master cylinder waiting to be installed.Everything went in pretty easily and the only adjustment needed was the brake light switch.

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Upon returning home from a 50 mile roundtrip I noticed a slight smell of burnt plastic and a quick look under the hood revealed a melted plastic wire protector. It is located right below the VIR valve and above the right hand exhaust manifold. The engine was not unusally hot nor were there any other obvious problems.

I got a rebuilt carburetor from carbsonly.com and when I installed it I rounded off the fuel line nut. Once I got the new fuel line I decided to go ahead and do the whole project I had been planning on this spring anyway. Besides the carburetor I put in a new timing chain & sprockets, water pump, fuel pump, power steering pump & pressure hose, spark plugs & wires, EGR valve, factory and aftermarket coolant sensors, heater control valve, heater & coolant hoses and a few other small things. Unfortunately the rebuilt carburetor turned out to be the wrong model (California spec) so I sent it back and went ahead and rebuilt the original carburetor myself. However, the symptoms were pretty much the same afterwards but a little less pronounced.

After my unsuccessful rebuilt of the original carburetor I got a core from AZ Vintage in Arizona and had it shipped to Sparky's for a rebuilt. Finally I got around to putting the carburetor in. Good news is that the stumbling at full throttle is gone, bad news is that the rough idle issue is still there. Obviously more troubleshooting is required.

Before reinstalling the air condition system I figured I might as well check the climate control air delivery box under the dash. This box has al the different air doors and the heater core in it. When it was out it was obvious that the heater core had already been leaking slightly. The leak was small enough so it would drip out of the box but it was definitely wet in their. I replaced it with a new heater core, checked all the vacuum solenoids and put everything back together. I also replaced the malfunctioning climate control programmer at the same time.

The Automatic Level Control Compressor has not been working since we bought it but the system was still hooked up per the original layout. I didn't want to deal with finding a working ALC compressor so I left the original air tubing in place and hooked up a separate set of air tubes to a manual fill valve that I mounted in an existing bumper shock absorber bracket hole. This will work for right now but eventually I want to convert to the electrical ALC compressor found in the '78 Eldos.

Installed an XM Radio receiver and connected it via a FM direct box (plugs in-between antenna and radio) to the original radio. This way I avoided cutting any wiring, even the power take-off is via the fuse box. The receiver is held in place by a magnet that I mounted behind the dash woodtrim. This allows for the receiver to be hidden under the dash when not in use. The same goes for the aftermarket coolant temperature gauge which also mounts with a magnet.