Winter projects

A little touchup here and there is yet to be done around the engine bay. The rear bumper is back on, front area underneath the front bumper has been cleaned up (a couple more things to do under here, still), and we're getting there.

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I powder coated the hose clamps in chrome so they'd match the ones on my blower discharge tube. A few of the bolts & washers are chromed, but I spent some time today polishing out everything else. Also in the pic is a billet Lokar dipstick, which of course needed a helping hand in the shine department.

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Ha ha, maybe so. The one I have does nail it, though.

The intake and C/C plates are back on. I spent a lot of time cleaning stuff tonight so I didn't get as far as I'd hoped, but I also took another few things off for a good cleaning tomorrow before I hook it all back up. I had some more of that braided split-loom which I wrapped the TFI harness in, so I used it to replace the crappy ol' traditional wire loom on the injector harnesses. Looks much nicer.

As far as other progress goes, these pics are just quick snapshots from my phone in a paint bay with overhead lighting so the quality doesn't show too well. I took 'em while I was putting the intake back on. I'll take real pictures once it's all done and cleaned up nice.

- Front & rear bumper are on. Rear bumper has been mounted better (it was loose around the driver's quarter panel and ended up cracking. They fixed that and have it tightened up well).

- Door jambs & inside of doors around the door panels have been painted. While they were in there they swapped out a wobbly door pin on the driver's side

- All black trim around the top, doors, and windshield is primed and ready to be painted in a semi-gloss black so I don't have to deal w/the faded plastic anymore.

- Lastly, the wet sanding/buffing of the entire car is almost complete. They just have a couple areas to finish up. As it stands, it looks phenemonal! I didn't inspect it much as I was busy wrenching, but I did notice the clearcoat blems I was used to are no longer present. It looks very deep and I bet many will think I had it completely repainted.


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Depends on the day, but lately it's been good. Sometimes it sucks.

More stuff going back on:

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Painted inner doors/door jambs
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I took these in the middle of tonight's session before the brakelines went back on.
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Good shot showing a lot of the work: braided wire loom on injector/TFI harnesses, hidden main harness & vac hoses, powder coated intake, booster/MC, new paint, CC plates hardware. Only thing that sucks is the chrome heater core tubes are 99% hidden :doh:
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The candy red stuff has been painted. The color looks much better than the picture shows. It brightens up in natural light. Here's the wiper motor w/the newly chromed motor housing. I'm ditching the old slip cover that was on it. I think this looks nicer but overall it's barely any different.

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Ahhhh the car came home today and I bled the brakes. Pedal feels nice, MC and lines are not leaking. I did run into a leak last week though. The MC has ports on each side, and whichever are unused get plugged. For some reason, I had one port leak on the plugged side, so I had to take it off and wrap the plug threads in pipe tape. That fixed it.

Anyway, the car is here, brakes are all done, and I spent some time cleaning the springs, struts, A-arms, calipers, etc. while doing the bleeding.

Not sure if I want to finish putting the engine or interior back together next...
 
Haven't really paid attention lately but I'd guess around 2000 each year the past couple years. I bring it out on nice days for a quick ride, and I go to shows/meets/cruises which are usually 30-40 minutes away on average. Sometimes I'll go 1.5-3 hours each way though, and I seem to have a great knack for getting caught in the rain too. That really doesn't help keep the lower areas clean and I'm sure the parts I cleaned today will be all dirty again in no time.

I used to drive it to work once in a while before I started working at home, but now I never have to go anywhere for work so that 'saves' a lot of mileage. Most the time I'm just too busy to bring it out anyway, so my joy riding nowadays is mostly to/from shows and stuff. I do a bunch of them each year so I never really get the itch to feel like I have to hop in.
 
Is it just me, or isn't there a bunch of checking in the paint that looks like a tree?:rolleyes:

Everything looks really good. The wiper motor looks really nice. What did you do to it to prep it? Is a gutted, piece you had chromed, and then reassembled, or did you buy the thing that way and paint the center?
 
Ya like that tree? It's my new custom paint scheme!

That wiper motor cylinder has to be taken off of the assembly, then put back together after being chromed. Most anything would have to be done that way, at least any chrome plating shop I've ever worked with wouldn't bother trying to do things that were not disassembled.
 
Thanks Kabuki!

looking real good, almost time to start thinking about driving it

Thanks. I'm just hoping there are no bugs to work out once it's all back together! I get so busy polishing and powder coating that I run out of time to get my own car done. I don't exactly want to be out there late at night slingin' wrenches either.