UPDATE: Shredded a belt last weekend, AGAIN!
My fault this time, apparently two washers behind each stud moved the pulley too far forward, so this time it frayed/shredded the belt on the back side instead of the front. Simple fix, just pulled one washer off each of the studs and tossed on another spare belt. Been DD'ing the car all week without and problems from that, so I finally decided to put a NEW belt on there (the spare I had was all cracked with age and kind of iffy) and all is good.
Today's fun:
1. Pulled out what remained of my headliner. Tried to be all nice and neat about getting the thing out, but that frickin' insulation/sound deadener sitting on top of the cardboard slid off and disintegrated at the slightest touch, so I wound up with a bunch of that crumbly crap all over the frickin' interior.
A lot of vacuuming later, I took a can of some leftover semi-gloss black paint and sprayed the underside of the roof, same as I did in Teh Notch. Looks decent, doesn't stick out like a sore thumb anymore. Now I can stick magnets on my ceiling and spell out naughty words to amuse myself when I'm stuck in traffic!
2. Fixed the floppy fan-speed switch. The lower plastic post that holds the switch in place was broken off (seems to be a common four-eye thing - my '86 GT 'vert had the same issue), so I just drilled a little hole in the side and ran a screw through there. Perfectly solid again.
3. Installed some old Pioneer 6"x9" speakers in the factory rear quarter panel speaker holes so that I don't have those silly boxed speakers laying in the hatch and taking up space. The Pioneers don't sound nearly as good, almost NO treble to them at all, so I took the tiny little tweeters out of the front of Stinky and stuck 'em in the dash. Since they essentially sit right on top of the air vent ducting, I was able to just take an old pair of boxers on each side and make like a little "bed" for the tweeter to sit in so it wouldn't shift or rattle around in there - I didn't want to fart around with making custom brackets to hang them in there or anything. Sounds much better now. Not awesome by any means, but better. Shuffling around old stereo parts is cheap fun.
4. Fixed the speedometer cable AGAIN this week. Apparently the aftermarket cable I put in there to replace the bouncy-bouncy stocker is about 1/2" shorter than the OEM cable. Because the speedo gear for my AOD has this really long, hollow tip to it (whereas the ones I've seen for T-5's have a very short tip), the cable kept shifting down toward the tranny end and coming out of the back of the speedometer. I'd be driving along at 65 MPH, my speed would suddenly rocket up to 85+ MPH, then slowly drop to 25 MPH, then 20 MPH, then 15 MPH, and finally nothing. Solved this by taking a finish nail with a small head, snipping off some length with a pair of pliers (nail ended up being about 1/2" long), dropped it into the speedo gear's hollow tip, and thus the speedo cable only had about 1/4" of room to go into the gear, which is where it seems to be happiest. Basically, I just made a spacer for the thing. Now the speedo needle is MUCH more steady and works fine below 70 MPH - anything above that, unfortunately, and the damned thing starts getting bouncy and weird, and anything below 30 MPH makes it bounce, but that seems to be the norm for these old four-eye Fox speedos. (Again, my '86 GT did the same exact thing, especially when it's cold out at night.)
Other than getting an alignment for the thing, I think I'm pretty well set for basic fixes. From here on out, it's all optional upgrades as I can afford them - a CD player, either fixing the A/C or dropping in a sunroof, and eventually getting the rest of the parts I need for a dual exhaust conversion.