1999 Chevrolet Refrigerator...I mean Malibu

I was told the perfect time to start a build thread was before you even have the car home. So here. This is scratch and dent appliance, take 2. Pics to come as soon I go pickup the car, which should happen tomorrow if the weather holds out.

Close but you overlooked one item, pics before you own the car need to be included in your thread initiation post.

We forgive you this time

There's no ad to steal pics from (seller is a (soon to be former) coworker who hadn't listed the car yet) and it was dark when I went to look at the car.

Is it a 2.4L (yeah) or a 3.1L (boo)?

The 3.1L will need intake manifold gaskets.

It's a 3.1 car with 108k miles on it. Manual windows, unreasonably clean grey cloth interior, fairly clean paint except for the 18 year old GM peeling clear coat. The plan is to fix the last bit of collision damage to seller hasn't fixed yet, then hopefully put it on full time appliance duty so I can take my time fixing the D350's 99 problems.

Wow, that's surprisingly low miles. Those are comfortable appliance cars and seemed to work well from what I have seen, aside from the intake gaskets and a really weak center console lid of all things.

As if there were any question, they aren't fast. Neither of the two that I've driven were able to get more than a squeak from the front tires no matter how I tried to launch it.

Weather didn't hold out, elected not to drive a car I don't know yet on slick roads. Looks like I'll be picking it up Saturday instead.

There, it's a car.

In reply to Chadeux:

The nice thing about a vehicle like that is how easy you can fly under the radar.

I put a little over 400,000 miles on mine with almost no trouble before it disintegrated from rust and a minor accident.

Here's the bit I'll need to fix. And this... But it came with service history documentation. I agree on the rust by the way. This car has some.

Every self respecting junkyard in the nation should have that bumper available.
Could be very likely to actually find it in the same color too.

I replaced similar on a Taurus once. I actually did find the correct color and the whole job only required only 4 bolts to be undone.

Ah, 4 cylinder then. Should be pretty bulletproof until the rust gets it...

In reply to JohnRW1621:

The guy I bought it from told me to come buy some time next week if either of us have time and take the bumper and exhaust off a parts car that's sitting behind the shop he works at.

In reply to GearheadE30:

Curious as to where you get the 4 cylinder idea. I admittedly know nearly nothing about these cars.

There, picture evidence of the wrong engine. Oh well. New battery though.

I was wrong! Which is good, since I can't imagine how underpowered that car would be with the 4 cylinder. I've only ever driven the 3.1 though.

I guessed 4 cylinder because the V6 cars typically had alloy wheels and a V6 badge on the trunk lid. For a year or two (I think; my memory is super fuzzy on Malibu stuff) they only sold it with the V6, and those cars typically didn't have the V6 badge. I guess it makes some sense that the base V6 would also have picked up the 4 cylinder's previous budget-oriented options as well.

A bad battery caused the gauge needles to spin all the way clockwise on my younger brothers cars. We had to take the cluster out and rotate it to swing the needles back so the would get off the stops. Can't blame a spiking battery on the car, other than that it was reliable, if unexciting to drive.

I don't think any of you actually want to know what a 3100 idling with no muffler sounds like.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/b28Qq89yunA

But just in case, there it is.

Aw, too bad it wasn't a 2.4L, 5-speed model. They did exist for a short period of time.

Good luck with everything though.

When I heard about the car originally I didn't even know what year it was. I was kind of hoping for a later 2.2 car because of some extremely simplified logic that says a Cobalt SS supercharger setup might fit.

Get rid of the remaining hubcaps and paint the wheels something. Like bronze or red or anything but black.

I don't really know what you do after that, probably drive it into the earth I guess?

I second removing the remaining hubcaps, unless you can find matching ones in the junkyard. If you go with bare steelies, I recommend silver paint. It will look cleaner than black, and almost like OEM alloys. Any other color just looks like craiglist beater junk. Unless that's what you're going for.

I have 3 of the 4, but was planning on taking them off and spraying them some color I haven't decided yet.

I was told the rear brake hoses would need to be replaced because they were leaking. I checked and didn't see evidence of leaking. After a bit of bleeding the brakes now seem to behave like I'd expect them to. I threw the new hoses I bought in the trunk in case I end up needing them later.

I also took the front hub caps off. Paint to come later, maybe.