[wagonman76]

I could never afford a car if I had to pay others to maintain it. So I learned it all myself. 12 years ago I did not know how to change my own oil. Now I can do pretty much anything. My moms boyfriend introduced me to the junkyard back in the late 90s too. Now I go there for lots of things. Like with Michigan roads, theres no sense spending $100 apiece on new wheel bearings when theyre just going to get beat up in a couple years. So I just put on used ones for a tiny fraction of the price, since theyre easy enough to change. One thing about GM cars of this era is they used almost every part over many different lines, so parts are really easy to find.

The diesel seals made me think of when I was redoing my exhaust on the old 6k wagon. I wanted all stainless, since there are quite a few other vehicles with stainless exhaust and I got tired of dicking with it every year or two. I like working on cars, but I just hate exhaust work. I went to all the shops around here, and NOBODY would do it. I know they can bend pipe. I guess they figured I wouldnt keep coming back for exhausts. So I laid out the pipe and bought all the bends, a length of straight pipe, and a stretcher from JC Whitney. I also bought a stainless high flow cat and stainless turbo muffler elsewhere online. And about 20 clamps and some hangers. That was about 2001 and Ive not had to touch it since. So I did the same thing to the Celeb in 2004. So they did lose my future business on each car, but also lost the initial pipe work too.