Misc Progress

Task #1 was to re-water test... and unfortunately I still haven't found the area of intrusion. I scraped off the previous repair and looked extremely carefully. It seems that there are a couple locations. One is at the rubber seal itself, near the shift coupler where it turns a sharp corner. This area got sealed with the window bead sealant, and a water test indicated that the repair is holding. A second spot is at the grommets. These ones got blocked with foam (again). I'll water test tomorrow after curing. I also noticed that the bolt that holds the battery in place is leaking a bit. I placed bead sealer and will also water test tomorrow.

This has gotten me thinking. I'm going to drive the car during a rainy season without carpet intalled. This will let me see if under operating conditions there are any other leaks to fix before I install carpet.

Since I want to finish sealing before I drop the engine (not sure why), I didn't get started on the engine, but instead took out the spot welds on the replacement apron. Here's the old and the new.

They're the same size - it's only perspective that makes them look different. The replacement one is not waaay better than the old one, but it only has surface rust and bumps - the old one has some cancer that's eaten the whole way thorough and I sort of mangled it when I took it out. The workmanship on the replacement one is top notch. No mangling here.

Now, who will weld it in???

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Monday: 2.5 hours

Water testing and sealing

Tuesday was time to pick up where we left off. First was to remove, inspect and replace if necessary all the bolts holding the body to the chassis. Any bolt showing thread corrosion got replaced (about half) and the front ones got the shiny new stainless ones. They all got a healthy dose of anti-seize lube. This took surprisingly long, but I guess there are a lot of bolts and cleaning and inspecting each one takes time.

Next was time to water test - to make sure the seal is doing its job. Unfortunately, there was water intrusion in two places. Place number one is up front. What seems to be happening is that water is getting up into the crack marked in red...

... and then draining downhill (marked in blue) and leaking into the car at the two corners marked in red

Place number two at fist glance seemed to be near the back at one of the grommets:

On Friday I applied expansive foam to all the locations marked in red in the previous figures. In retrospect, I shouldn't have placed it on the inside front. With foam there, if the front seal fails water could possibly get caught in the gap and cause corrosion. Not a big deal and I decided to just leave it.

On Saturday I trimmed the foam. That stuff really expands, so it kind of got all over. Not the prettiest job ever, but at least up front it did the trick. Here's what it looks like:

Like I said, not pretty, but it survived the water test. On the back, it turns out that the grommet was not the problem. It seems that the water is getting in near the top center around where you adjust the shift coupler. It wasn't clear exactly where it was coming in, so I just sealed all possibilities symmetrically on both sides.. and the grommet as well. Will water test tomorrow.

Once this is done here's what's left to do before the body shop: (1) cut spot welds and get the new apron ready, and (2) drop the engine to be able to weld it. I am leaning towards having the body shop weld it, although I'm still toying with (3) welding it myself of finding myself a new welding buddy. Last is to (4) remove the steering column and (5) catalog all the work that needs to be done. It's possible that I may still do a little bit of cleaning out the electrical and air in the trunk area... at any rate, we're getting close. Today I studied the engine removal procedure, and tomorrow I'll give it a shot after finishing the water testing... It's gonna be a scorcher (high 90s or 100) so I may not stand doing too much work.

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Tuesday 3.5 hours, Friday 30 min, Saturday 1 hour

Unpacking

Spent about 2-3 hours taking off the fenders, gas tank, running boards, etc. Who knows why it took me so long. It was hot. I took lots of breaks. We're back to where we were before leaving SD. Goal is to have car ready for body shop before I leave for SD.

What's going on?

I have absolutely no idea what's going on. Last week I finally got around to pushing the car out of the garage. I took out all the stuff I had packed away in the car. This is the explosion:

But how did I get here??? Somewhere in my distant memory I seem to remember packing seats, glass, and sheet metal into the car, reinstalling fenders, etc., and loading it onto a truck. Oh yeah... that's what happened. We loaded the car onto a flat bed truck and rolled it into a moving truck.

It's been sitting in the garage for about 9 months now. I think I took it out once to organize the garage. Then work happened. And beer making.

Okay, it has nothing to do with the car, but it's a beautiful picture and at least I have something to show for 9 months of not working on the car. That's a golden ale on the left (my first all grain) and an imperial IPA on the right. Back to excuses: there was also a cold, rainy winter. And traveling. Now I have my garage all organized...

...and I have no idea what to do next. Intimidating. I made some notes. It involves among other things dropping the engine and welding stuff.