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The DeLorean needs routine maintenance and the occasional, more significant refurbishing. Beyond that there are also a number of customizations and upgrades to improve performance, reliability and functionality.
There was a still a little vibration in my front suspension, so I decided to give one of the front lower arm support kits a try. I went with DeLorean Europe’s setup, which (possibly combined with some minor sway bar maintenance) seems to have almost completely eliminated my remaining vibration issues.
Read MoreMy driver’s side window regulator died. Replacing it requires taking apart a good chunk of the door, and replacing the regulator itself is a pain as well. But after some tinkering and dealing with a short, I have a working window motor again.
Read MoreDeLoreans don’t have the best sealing between the radiator and the fans, and some common home window and for weather seal can significantly improve cooling by filling those gaps and making sure that the fans suck air through the radiator, not from around it.
Read MoreModern cars have an IR barrier in their windows to help keep the heat out, but the DeLorean predates that. Tinting the windows can help keep your car cooler, so that’s what I did.
Read MoreAfter almost getting stranded because my starter wouldn’t spin, I replaced it with a new Eagle Premier one. This was pretty straight forward, although I did have to remove my aftermarket header to get it out.
Read MoreIn between replacing the ball joints and bearings and the parts of hte car that broke while driving it, I took care of a few other odds and ends that had been bugging me.
My seatbelt had a twist in it. I’d tried to straighten it, but then the buckle as facing the wrong way and I’d have to twist it again. I finally realized I was going about this all wrong and that the fix was quite simple.
The first step is to remove the twist from the seatbelt. There’s a bolt under the door sill that secures the body to the frame, and that also holds the seatbelt on at the floor. You just remove the bolt from the inside of the car. I used a ratcheting 17mm box wrench to get it off. You then just spin around the base of the belt and put the bolt back in. Make sure the base of the belt is pointing forwards, with the belt more toward the front of the car, before you cinch down the bolt.
Now I had the problem of the buckle facing the wrong way. This is also very easy to fix, I just didn’t think of it before for some reason. You fold the belt lengthwise, then slide the buckle over the folded part. As you do, you pull the folded part so that it unfolds in to the other side of the seatbelt. Now it’s pointing the right way.
The seatbelt is now untwisted, but the buckle is pointing the wrong way.
Using a 17mm box wrench to reinstall the lower seat belt/body bolt. Note that the seatbelt bracket is pointing forwards.
Folding the belt allows you to slide the buckle over it and effectively twist the buckle around so it is facing the right way.
The reorient buckle.
One other bonus is that I replaced the broken thing that holds the seatbelt up with a button that Adam Harriot found on Amazon. They come in kits of 5, so you’ll have enough for two cars, and include a sharp awl to poke though the seatbelt. The two-piece button has a post that pushes through the belt and snaps into the other side of the button. Much cleaner than the original bar, and it doesn’t cut into you while sitting in the seat like the stock one did. The kit only costs about $7 on Amazon.
To figure out where to put the button, fasten the seatbelt without sitting in the car. That is the minimum size of the belt, and if you put the button just behind the buckle it will guarantee that you won’t find that the belt buckle won’t move far enough down the belt, and it will still hang in a good position near your shoulder when unbuckled.
On the way home from a trip to Connecticut, my oil pressure gauge decided to stop working and point straight up. This probably meant something broke on the sender. I peeked down by the alternator at a gas station and found that the wire was just dangling free of the sender. It looked like the tab on the sender had broken off.
That’s not where the sender is supposed to point.
The tab on the sender just snapped off.
Luckily, the sender is easy to replace. I ordered a new one from a DeLorean vendor and got to work putting it on the car.
You can theoretically remove just the sender, but it’s hard to get a wrench on it with the oil filter in the. way, so I removed that too. Later I realized that I might have been able to reach a wrench through the back and peek through a gap in the exhaust system, but it was still easier to remove the filter. I tried to use a strap wrench to get the filter but resorted to a more destructive wrench style and put on a brand new filter.
The sender has a hexagonal base that you need to use a wrench on. It is built from two cylinders of sheet metal that fit into each other, and if you try to turn the end of the sender, you’ll just spin the outer casing. I had so much trouble getting a grip with the wrench that I put another wrench on the first wrench so that I could turn that to break the sender free.
Using a more destructive oil filter wrench to firmly grip and remove the filter after my strap wrench didn’t provide enough torque.
Using a wrench on another wrench at the base of the sender to actually remove it from the car.
The old and new senders side by side on the bench.
Once the sender is out, you just screw the new one in. People often wrap the threads with teflon tape first, so I did that as well, but I’m not sure how much it would leak (if at all) if I hadn’t. It can be a little tricky to get the angle right when screwing the filter on, since it’s slightly tilted.
Teflon tape added to the sender threads.
A view of the wrench around the hexagonal base of the sander, as seen from behind the engine.
A more distant view of the wrench on the sender, to give a better sense of where everything is.
After that, I put a little oil on the oil filter seal and screwed that back in, and plugged back int he sender, and my oil gauge read properly again.
A bit of oil on the new filter before installing it, to make sure it seals.
Everything installed and ready to go.
On most DeLoreans, the fuel filter is under the car, mounted to the frame, and a pain to get to. I moved mine up to the firewall in the engine bay when I did the 3.0L EFI conversion, which made it a lot easier.
The filter is installed pretty simply: a bracket secures it to the car, and you just loosen the screws and it comes out. I installed my rivnuts a tiny bit too far apart to properly hold the filter, so it’s more just mounted snuggly than really tight.
It’s easier to take the fuel lines off before removing the filter. There are hexes built into the filter so that you can hold it in place with one wrench while you twist off the fuel fitting with another. In my case, I also had adaptors from the stock filter fittings to the AN-6 fuel fittings of my EFI system. The simplest thing to do was remove the fuel lines, then remove the adaptors, transfer them to new filter, and reattach the lines.
I had let my car sit overnight before doing this. That ensured that the system as depressurized and wouldn’t spray fuel everywhere as I disconnected the lines. I didn’t account for the fact that the filter was full of fuel, though. I plugged the bottom with my thumb tipped it over a gas can so as not to make any more of a mess than I already had.
The new filter from DeLoreanGo came with a new foam strip to protect the can from the bracket (I attached it to the filter instead of the bracket), and new copper sealing washers. For some reason, I hadn’t put the washers on the old filter when I’d previously installed it, so I didn’t do it this time either. The result was fuel leaking out the bottom of the filter when I turned the key. I tried to tighten it more, but it didn’t work. And since the system was now pressurized, removing the hoses sprayed fuel everywhere.
At this point I took the filter back out of the car and actually used the copper washers. There’s a recess for one on the bottom, and I put one on the top as well. After reinstalling the adaptors and attaching the fuel lines, the system properly pressurized without leaking.
The newly installed filter next to the old filter. Notice the fuel pressure on the gauge I have reads zero, because I did this with the fuel system depressurized.
Installing a new copper washer and my existing AN-6 adaptor onto the new filter.
The fully pressurized fuel system, ready to go with no leaks.
I had a best case scenario for a suspension failure: I got safely off the road and just needed a new ball joint. No major damage, no injuries. Just an inconvenience, and a lot of help from John Dowd.
Read MoreIn a (fairly successful) attempt to fix some vibration coming from the front of my car, I decided to replace the front suspension bushings, ball joints and shocks. This involves a couple of presses, a bunch of replacement hardware, a spring compressor, and a fair bit of time, but I got it done.
Read MoreAfter replacing a grinding alternator, I went for a drive and broke my throttle cable highway. Luckily, I was able to use a tuning trick to get my EFI’ed car safely to a parking lot without being able to directly control the throttle. A quick trip to Home Depot got me a new cable and some clamps that I used to fix it in the parking lot.
Read MoreOn a trip to a Back to the Future collection, my cooling fans failed. When I got home I found a melted and burned out fused, and replaced it with two separate inline fuses to reduce the chances of this happening again.
Read MoreAfter 40 years, my seat covers were starting to look pretty bad. I replaced them with new ones from LSeat. They came out pretty good, given that this is my first time installing such a thing.
Read MoreYou know what’s fun? Spending two days removing a broken bolt because you didn’t notice a jam nut and sheered the head off, all because you were trying to track down an intermittent engine cut out that wound up being a loose connector on the opposite side of the car. <sigh>
Read MoreMy steering column bushing was shot, the rack had a torn boot for some time that had partially ruined the mechanism, and I wanted to install a vibration-dampening U-joint and single piece column. Since all three are in the same place, I might as well do them all at once.
Read MoreThe driver’s side of the front frame extension had broken and needed to be welded up. There were a few other points that need some patches too. This was a good project for my new electric welder.
Read MoreTensioning the belt on the DeLorean sucks. Replacing the tensioning bracket with an adjustable tensioning rod makes it a lot easier.
Read MoreA series of loose, misaligned or broken parts made my car a lot louder than it needed to be.
Read MoreTwo years ago I installed a double-DIN head unit, but my desire for wireless CarPlay and resolving an issue with my backup camera led me to setting up a newer, larger display, which posed some interesting mounting challenges.
Read MoreA quick fixed to a worn dipstick tube lead to a slightly more involved fix with the gasket at the bottom of the tube.
Read MoreMy driver’s door lights stopped working for some reason. After taking apart too much of the car, I found a broken wire near the diode bundle in the footwell. Took five minutes to fix, and a couple hours to track down.
Read MoreNow that my lift had power, I was able to do some overdue maintenance: change the oil, fix a leak at an oil sender, and upgrade my transmission linkage bracket.
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