turbojimmy
03-21-07, 09:25 AM
The Caddy was due for inspection this month. In NJ we have 2-year stickers so that means I’ve been driving this restored flood total, which I affectionately refer to as the White Zombie, for 24 months now. I ran it through the state inspection without a hitch yesterday and got another 2-year sticker. When I restored it, it had 46,000 miles on it. Now I’m at around 68,000. In the past 22,000 miles I can’t say that I’ve had any reliability problems that I can specifically tie to the flood damage.
Lots of people thought I was crazy to restore a flood car, particularly one that had been completely submerged. Lots of others assured me that the car would be a constant headache and would never be the same. I had more than one transmission specialist tell me to toss the trans – it would never work after having had water in it because they glue the friction material onto the clutches with a water based glue. Lots of people told me the car would start to rot in strange places. Some other said that water penetrates the cover on the wiring and follows the water around the harnesses leading to corrosion and failure.
I’ve really grown to like the car and with a new set of Pirellis that I had put on this week she feels very athletic for such a big car. I would challenge anyone to try to tell the difference between my car and any other 70k mile DTS.
Here are the things that I had replaced/repaired over the past 2 years:
- Heated seat elements. I’m not sure why, but being submerged in water ruined these. They’re just heating elements and theoretically should work once dried out, but they didn’t.
- Coil pack for the left bank. Might’ve been flood related, but plenty of these fail on cars that have not been submerged
- Right front wheel bearing/hub assembly. Same as the coil pack – plenty fail on cars that have not been under water
- Water pump cover. Poor design.
- Crankshaft position sensors. Faulty design.
- Needlessly replaced the tensioner and idler pullies. Turns out the noise I was hearing was just a worn belt. Expensive lesson.
- Left rear door window motor. Another expensive lesson – the motor was fine. The problem was with the wiring coming from the b-pillar to the door. I don’t think this was flood-related, but the ground wire that fed the door snapped in half inside the harness. It was not corroded, but was incorrectly installed in the protective sheath that runs between the pillar and the door. It got pinched every time the door was closed and finally broke.
- Spark plugs. I used auto parts store plugs when I restored the car – big mistake.
- Corsa exhaust. Because I could.
The only remnant of the flood is inoperative butt warmers in the back. I have not fixed those yet. The seat back heat still works (since it’s from a different car). Every once in awhile I’ll work on the car and find some silt accumulated in a place I couldn’t reach with the power washer. Overall the car has been very reliable and great to drive. I’m traveling to Philadelphia and Boston on business over the next 3 weeks and will be driving the Caddy – it’s better than flying.
I could never have restored this thing without the help of many of the people in this forum. I’m not sure I’ll own another Cadillac, but I will have this one for a long time.
Jim
Lots of people thought I was crazy to restore a flood car, particularly one that had been completely submerged. Lots of others assured me that the car would be a constant headache and would never be the same. I had more than one transmission specialist tell me to toss the trans – it would never work after having had water in it because they glue the friction material onto the clutches with a water based glue. Lots of people told me the car would start to rot in strange places. Some other said that water penetrates the cover on the wiring and follows the water around the harnesses leading to corrosion and failure.
I’ve really grown to like the car and with a new set of Pirellis that I had put on this week she feels very athletic for such a big car. I would challenge anyone to try to tell the difference between my car and any other 70k mile DTS.
Here are the things that I had replaced/repaired over the past 2 years:
- Heated seat elements. I’m not sure why, but being submerged in water ruined these. They’re just heating elements and theoretically should work once dried out, but they didn’t.
- Coil pack for the left bank. Might’ve been flood related, but plenty of these fail on cars that have not been submerged
- Right front wheel bearing/hub assembly. Same as the coil pack – plenty fail on cars that have not been under water
- Water pump cover. Poor design.
- Crankshaft position sensors. Faulty design.
- Needlessly replaced the tensioner and idler pullies. Turns out the noise I was hearing was just a worn belt. Expensive lesson.
- Left rear door window motor. Another expensive lesson – the motor was fine. The problem was with the wiring coming from the b-pillar to the door. I don’t think this was flood-related, but the ground wire that fed the door snapped in half inside the harness. It was not corroded, but was incorrectly installed in the protective sheath that runs between the pillar and the door. It got pinched every time the door was closed and finally broke.
- Spark plugs. I used auto parts store plugs when I restored the car – big mistake.
- Corsa exhaust. Because I could.
The only remnant of the flood is inoperative butt warmers in the back. I have not fixed those yet. The seat back heat still works (since it’s from a different car). Every once in awhile I’ll work on the car and find some silt accumulated in a place I couldn’t reach with the power washer. Overall the car has been very reliable and great to drive. I’m traveling to Philadelphia and Boston on business over the next 3 weeks and will be driving the Caddy – it’s better than flying.
I could never have restored this thing without the help of many of the people in this forum. I’m not sure I’ll own another Cadillac, but I will have this one for a long time.
Jim