Rebuilding some things and tearing others apart

The week of July 21st was a good week in Restorationville. It wasn't nearly as good of a week in Blogland - which is why it's almost two weeks later that I find myself on the keyboard. It's OK, I have a good excuse: I had a job interview at Oregon State and I had to prepare a talk on teaching at the lower division - a topic to which I've given much thought, but none of it organized. It took me way too long. Oh, that and a good day of paintball.

Sooo, what did I do? Fortunately, I've taken notes, so I don't have to depend on my lousy memory. I redid the pedal assembly - and it all went well this time. Because last time I discovered some problems with seam sealer bond, I went over the car lightly with a wire brush and verified the bond on the paint and seam sealer - it was all good. I gave it a new coat of paint to cover up the light scratch marks.

Next was to continue removing the rear apron. Last time I had tackled about a quarter of the spot welds. This time, I tackled the rest. But something wasn't right. I couldn't see how the damn thing would come off. I had followed the instructions from TheSamba and it just didn't seem to be coming out right (it would turn out later that it wasn't right because I didn't follow the directions right). Anyway, now that I had drilled holes in the wrong part of my car, I figured it best to stop and reassess before I did something stupid and frustration-inspired.

I moved on to the fan housing to drill out rusted bolts holding the flap system in the fan housing. This was one of two major remaining tasks needed to prep the tins for powder coating.

So that was Monday. Wednesday, I arrived on site with a rented impact wrench - the pulley would come off if it was the last thing I did! And even with a power tool, it wasn't on the first, second, or third try, but eventually, the bolt loosened. The pulley was too tight to wiggle off, so I had to spring for a pulley puller. But eventually, I got it off and got off the final piece of engine tin? Was it worth it? In a sense no - so much work for just a piece of tin, but really, to do the job right and for the learning experience, it was certainly worth it.

This whole thing caused me so much grief that I celebrated with a victory photo:

Now with all the tins out, I prepped them, took off any connectors, sorted them, and put them in the truck to take to the powder coater.

Next was to finish removing the apron. Here's where I realized that I was drilling out the wrong spot welds. I swung by Vee Parts to get the replacement piece so I'd have something to guide me. Now that I was able to visualize it, I took out the correct spot welds and the apron came out - nice and easy. In this picture you can see the correct spot welds to remove (the ones on the left) and the incorrect ones (the ones on the right where the parts are still semi connected).

Not to stop here, I continued working on the body - brushing and cleaning all surfaces that mate to the chassis or that are inaccessible once the two are connected. I got partly done - one more day ought to finish it.

It was a long day... which makes the following even more surprising. In an unexpected move, Restorationville and Forethoughtistan drastically improved diplomatic relations when I decided to use the rented impact wrench to loosen the bolts on the rear wheels so I could avoid scenes like last time with the front wheels. Genius!

Thursday I was working on my talk, but found time to make it down to the powder coater and drop off the parts.

All told: Monday - 5 hrs, Wednesday 7.5 hrs, Thursday 1 hr.