My first and previous Cadillac, '87 Coupe deVille. White with landau top and astroroof. You have no idea how much I miss that astroroof, that was one freakin' cool option. I loved it, used it all the time, it worked perfectly despite its age, and every once in awhile I look at it and wonder if I could cut a hole in the top of my current Sedan and transplant it to that car.
I bought it with 135k on the odo for $1500. It ran good yet so I figured it would be free of the problems that plagued the 4.1's. And at first all went well with it. I started some mods/upgrades/repairs, many of which have since been transplanted to or recreated on my current '89 Sedan deVille. One thing I haven't moved over though is the exhaust. When I got it the exhaust was literally falling off of it, so I bought and installed a whole new Dynomax exhaust system on the car, man did that sound wicked. Nice and quiet at idle, a pleasant burble while cruising, but step on it and it just, f*cking, roared. If it wasn't for the fact that there's nothing wrong with the exhaust on my current car (and that I have an even better system planned out for when it does need to be replaced), that would be on the current car.
Shortly after buying the car though, the tranny went out of it. I had just bought the car (to replace a car that I was getting rid of due to the tranny failing) so I decided screw it, I forked out the money to have it fully rebuilt, new torque converter, the whole nine yards. 2 months later, before I even made it back into the tranny shop for the 3 month warranty inspection, the motor threw a rod (or spun a bearing, not sure, but either way it's a very loud and obvious knocking sound). I couldn't justify putting any money into that motor, and the only option I would have considered would be dropping in a 4.5 liter V8 w/ TBI since they did use that exact motor in '88 so I know that would go in there. I never really found a good deal on a low mileage motor though, plus they only used that exact motor for 2 years so it's a little hard to find, and ended up finding the '89 Sedan that I drive now for a steal. And although I like the '89-'93 body style better, I still like coupes better than sedans and I really miss that astroroof.
Oh well, it's now the second parts car that I have available to me, and in it sits a fully rebuilt and essentially brand spanking new transmission should I ever need to replace the tranny in the current car, since the two transmissions are basically exactly identical. They didn't switch to the electronic version until '90, so I can just drop the '87 tranny into the '89 if needed.
It's also given up a few donor parts here and there, and one time when I was still driving it I discovered the oddest little thing. We all know that Cadillac's with the digital dash from this era are limited to displaying no higher than 85mph. Beyond that, it just blinks 85mph. One day while I was underneath the dash running wires for the stereo (that was the most insane system I've ever built, I've pulled it all out, but have yet to relocate it into the new car), I happened to come across a small white electrical connector that was unplugged, just sort of dangling by some other wires. I thought that was odd, since nothing seemed to be non-working or working incorrectly in the car, and at first I ignored it, but curiosity got the better of me and I started poking around the various clusters of wires looking for its mate. After a couple minutes I did find its compliment taped up under the dash behind some other wire, I pulled it down, connected them... and nothing seemed to have changed that I could detect. Weeks later I finally figured it out, while driving down the highway to where I worked I was running late and traffic was light so I was, ahem, traveling slightly faster than the posted limit. I happened to glance down and saw the speedo indicating 87mph. I thought that was odd, it should be blinking 85mph. I didn't have time to mess around then, but when I left work later in the evening, I got to where I had a long open stretch, no law in sight, and I gave it the beans. That speedo keep climbing all the way past 120mph until I ran out of room to run it that fast. To date, I still haven't attempted to find that connector in my '89 Sedan, but I suspect it's there since they have the exact same cluster, (a car with ABS may be different, since those clusters are slightly different). I can only assume that this connector was a factory thing that did in fact disable the 85mph lockout, but was probably only utilized on cars destined for European export. Anyways, it may be a useful tidbit of information for someone out there wanting to remove the dumb-tarded 85mph limit on the display, not that we ever really need it. ;-)
