Well following on from my replacing the timing and ancillary belts on the wife's 2002 Hyundai Accent last weekend, today I turned to her other Hyundai, a 1996 "Excel". I bought the little green car in 2002 and when I bought her the silver accent in 2009 I presumed that she'd let me get rid of the Excel, but no, she wanted to keep both. Great.
I bought the Excel from a female that I worked with, who was going to traded it in on a Toyota 4WD. The dealership had only offered her $2000 for the Excel as a trade-in, so I offered her $2100 and she happily accepted. She was happy, but the dealership wasn't, as they would probably have cleaned it up and sold it for $5K. She and her husband were alcoholics, and it was a volatile relationship. The Excel's windscreen was cracked from when he threw a beer bottle at her when she was driving it, and it had a couple of small dents from when he'd kicked it. It was filthy and stunk of cigarettes, it had one service (over and above the initial service the previous owner had done before he traded it in, so the dipstick was stained with the dirty oil, had 4 unroadworthy tyres and a flat spare, after doing 101,000 Km (60,000 miles) on the original tyres.
I gave it a good clean, gave it two oil changes in the first month, had another windscreen installed, and 5 new tyres. You'd think that a car that was that poorly maintained wouldn't last, but these things are amazing, in the last 22 years it's been totally reliable, and has only needed one battery, wiper blades, a timing belt, a couple more tyres (we've done another 160,000 km (100,000 miles) a set of brake pads, a few oil and filter changes and that's about it. It needs a new exhaust and the aircon re-gassed, and I'll probably get that done if we keep it much longer, along with a coat of paint. (it looks like sh1t with the clearcoat mostly gone)
Anyhoo, after not being driven for several months, I thought I'd better give it a clean and get it running in case I muffed something on the silver accent last weekend, and after washing and vacuuming it, charging the battery, pumping up the tyres and checking all the fluids, I took it for a drive. It ran well with a can of Berrimans in the 1/2 tank of ancient fuel, mixed with half a tank of fresh 98 RON fuel. One item of concern though, is that the temp gauge was doing some weird stuff. It would go up to about the 3/4 mark, then suddenly drop back to the "normal" halfway mark.
Sounded like bad thermostat to me, so this morning I pulled the (original 28 year old) thermostat and tested it in a pot of boiling water, and sure enough, it wasn't opening. I rang a couple of auto parts stores and they didn't have a new thermostat in store, so Alex at Burson's ordered me a new one, and I'll have it on Monday. While I had the thermostat out I removed the top radiator hose and back-flushed the old coolant, and refilled it with new coolant. The new thermostat and a new radiator cap on Monday, and it should be good to go for another 22 years!
Hyundai Excel coolant flush 5 October 2024 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
