After a week of the garage being empty, the car is back! They had it for a week down at Fortes Parts Connection, dealing with the oil leak. Late yesterday I got a call from Mike that the car was back together and everything seemed okay on it, so I headed down after dinner to drive the car home before the rain this weekend.

Other than a bit of a Fastlane snafu that is likely going to result in me getting a $75 fine for failing to pay a toll on I90, the drive back was uneventful. The drive back got the car up to 200 miles, and was my first drive at night with it. The HIDs were actually well aligned, surprisingly enough, and worked great. My highbeams, however, didn’t. I realize now I probably forgot to connect the switch harness behind the dash when I assembled it. I’m debating if I leave the high beams not working for now, and fix it next time I need the dash off, or if I pull the dash off.

I don’t have much else to add about the current state of things. I looked under the car last night and saw no sign of fresh oil spray or any leaks. There was still some grimy oil on the frame. Mike had said he cleaned off all the sprayed on oil, so that either mean there is still a leak or he missed that part of the frame. I think I’m going to have to jack the car up today to get a real sense of it, assuming I don’t find any fresh drips this morning.

So what was done? I didn’t get a full breakdown, but I believe it was four things. The oil pan gasket appears to be the source of the leak into the bellhousing. Mike replaced the gasket and resealed it. In doing that he discovered his brake cleaner was peeling paint on the oil pan, too, which apparently was part of why it took so long to address — he had to repaint the pan. Apparently the passenger side valve cover was also leaking — something I had missed when I was looking at it. I imagine it couldn’t have been a lot, but the valve cover gasket was replaced. The driver’s side wasn’t leaking, but the gasket was also replaced to match. He also replaced my oil filler cap with one that used a PCV valve.

With 200 miles on the car, its definitely time to jack it up and check everything again. I need to raise the rear of the car another inch, and need to probably raise the front a half inch. Neither should badly impact my alignment, but it will need to be re-aligned. I’m going to bring it to a shop to get really accurately aligned.

I also decided I am going to redo the face panel on the center console before I wire it up — I need it to be about a quarter inch wider, and there’s a slight skew to the switch panel that I want to fix. I also am going to find a nice looking metal clip like a clipboard would have to attach to it. I realized last night that there’s really nowhere to put a toll ticket if I get one on the highway, so I want a clip I can secure it with. (Not that it mattered last night since I somehow spaced out and blew through the ez-pass lane, anyway …)

I’ll get some photos when I get the car jacked up and start looking at things in more detail.