The end is near for the used tires: two that we bought last year, before we realized that the car was a keeper, were thrown away after over a year and 8,000 miles. Now we have two new kumho PA31 on the back of the car. We'll see how they feel through the remainder of winter so we can decide whether to try different tires when we replace the other two. If I don't like these I will probably buy kumho KU27.

The car is tramlining a little now, but that might be a fault of the still old and unevenly worn tires on the front axle. I thought about those control arm bushings, but I think I need to buy shocks before worrying about that.

 

Good luck with the HVAC (thank God ours is working fine) and tires, we had Michelin Hydroedge on the old S90 for a long time. They did last longer than the 80k mile suggested life, but they were very hard so the ride suffered a bit. We now have Michelin Primacy and they are OK, better ride but they have an odd "squirm" kind of feel at times. When those are gone, I'll probably shift to the wheels that came with the newer car that had a nearly new set of Cooper tires. The Cooper tires seemed OK as we brought the car home, but I think they are a bit more toward the stiff / sporty ride side than my wife generally likes.

I did get the OBD monitors to finally pass and I did have to be careful about the starting temperature for the drive cycle. I think the main idea is to have the car just warm enough that it does not trigger the air pump operation.

 

We had a warm day so I did a little work on the brick.

First I replaced the battery. Before it came into our hands there was a stereo amplifier installed in the trunk. This apparently caused battery drains because it was going flat all the time and he'd have to use a battery charger to start the car. We haven't had any trouble with the battery going flat since this stuff was removed and the factory stereo and changer reinstalled, but we knew the battery was weak. Finally it got scary starting it in the cold so off to walmart we went and got their H6 battery.

The new battery resulted in several improvements:
Charging voltage is now 14V instead of 13V.
The fuel gauge stopped acting wonky.
The window auto-down doesn't stop anymore.
Interior lamps aren't dimming so much anymore when we do things like operate the power locks.
The final one may be somatoform but has some technical foundation: we feel like the fuel economy improved slightly.

The battery I removed was made by East Penn and had a sticker suggesting it was delivered to the retailer in May 2006. The walmart battery is made by Johnson Controls. I think they're both great battery manufacturers.

Today I replaced the fuel filter. I intend to cut it open for inspection. The hardest part about this was sorting out how to depressurize the fuel system. It turns out that the shrader valves on the fuel rail has the same male thread as the ones on wheels. I figured they looked the same and grabbed a cap from the box of 100 caps I bought at "the irish store" for $4 (they aren't on the shelf - you have to ask for them - otherwise you pay the same amount for 4 caps!) When it threaded on without trouble I knew I'd be able to interface with them.

I have the smaller fuel injection pressure gauge from HFT ($20-30 range.) Luckily one of the hoses on this matches the shrader valves. This hose has a shrader on the other end, so I connected the gauge hose to it, but not the gauge, and used this as a drain. Not much fuel came out when I attached it to the valve near the fuel filter. Better safe than sorry.

Per the service manual the fuel filter fittings slide off with the help of a 17mm open end wrench. T25 on a ratchet opened the clamp and then it was mostly waiting for the filter to drain before I removed it. The filter on the car was OEM and may be from year 2005, but I'm not sure how to decipher the marks on it or if they even refer to the manufacturing date. At any rate it was installed before 160k miles/2008 because I know the last guy didn't do it. We are at 193k now.

Replaced with the Mahle filter which is identical to the OE... very cheap at the rock. Happy to have no leaks and to have a 70,000 mile maintenance item done.

We also have had NO cases of the HVAC going zombie since I reflowed/added solder to the joints on the vacuum solenoid complex!

 

I've taken the fuel filter apart. It's well made and has lots of media, and my first impression is that it could have run for many more years. Have a look for yourself.

http://imgur.com/a/T0ROM

 

It's springtime and my scrap metal pile is getting too big. One of the items is the center muffler and attached pipes which I replaced a few months ago. The muffler worked fine but due to the rear muffler hanging some of the tubing was bent and crushed, creating an exhaust restriction. I cut it open to remove the non-metal substances for disposal.

The muffler case was beginning to rust where it was crimped together. It's all made from ferrous steel, and probably aluminized as it lasted for over 15 years.

The muffler itself creates no restriction in the exhaust, being a perforated tube straight through, which is surrounded by glass-fibre hair that fills the muffler case.

Most of the tubing is double-walled, except for the tubing that runs through the muffler, and also except for a few inches leading up to the spherical joint where the catalyst is connected.

We'd have been able to keep using it if it weren't for the jerk previous owner who let the rear muffler hangers break and drove it for so long flopping around. The tubing bent and crushed under these forces, not only causing the tubing to be crushed but it was also contacting the rear suspension carrier.

I've reinforced the replacement muffler hangers with steel wire so that the muffler will still be supported if they break again. However, whoever 'fixed' it decided to weld pieces of the bottom muffler clamp to the muffler itself, and those welds are crappy and beginning to rust. I took the steel wire from about ten meters of wire tied between the two hooks on the body that was holding the rear muffler up when we got the car.

Followers of this thread may recall that I purchased a new top and bottom muffler clamp from a dealer to replace the missing parts. It's holding up fine.