It is an 85 Skylark with the good old 2.5 in it, only 98k miles currently. I bought it from a person that got it from the original owner, including ALL of the maintenance records in a box lol.
He couldn't figure out the older car stuff and decided to sell it since it had a bad stalling issue. Well, I am well aware of the lockup solenoid on the tranny needing to be replaced on these. When I bought it from him, I popped the hood. He looked to see why I was digging around in there. I unplugged the plug going to the lockup on the tranny. He asked why I did that? I said " so it doesn't stall anymore ", the look on his face was priceless.
Believe it or not, the engine doesn't leak anything, not even seeping around the gaskets, same with the tranny. I got the solenoid replaced shortly after buying it and it has been fine ever since. It doesn't even make the typical 2.5 rattling noise yet and the engine looks like new through the oil cap.
Aside from being ugly in many ways, the car is great. Just something special about driving something like that. It is so simple that it is actually fun to drive. Doesn't really cost me much to keep it on the road, so it keeps going. Everything on it works fine except for the a/c, might look into that at some point. Looking forward to having it flip 100k after all these years, almost there!