On the road...FINALLY!! I had off work all of last week, some normal off days and some vacation time. I put in between 8 and 10 hours a day working on the car. It was going to Foxtoberfest this year..period! A week ago this past Sunday still saw no interior. Several days of steady work and waiting out drizzling rain two days in a row but I got it all back together. Here's some pics. I've previously posted the "before" pics so here are the "after" pics:
Last Thursday it went for a front end alignment and Friday it was on the road to Charlotte. I've never driven the thing more than a block or 2 since buying it. The first road test was 3hours on the interstate each way. If you're gonna be a bear, be a Grizzly! Here's the "finished" pics before the road trip:
The trip up went smoothly and the car ran and handled great. I had the low coolant sensor decide it didn't want to work occasionally (even though it was full), a Check Engine Light that would pop on after 20 or 30 minutes of driving (but no hard codes, I think it's an EGR valve problem), and cruise wanted to work when it wanted to. Other than that it had no other problems on it's maiden trip.
I showed the car Saturday with the top down (to hide that ugly top). As rain moved in I started to put up the top and windows. First real casualty, the left quarter window motor gave up the ghost. When we got back to the hotel I had to do some shade tree engineering to try to keep the expected rain showers out of my fresh interior. A piece of cardboard and some duct tape did the trick and kept it relatively dry. Yes I have a pic of it, no I don't want to post it! As Dwayne Johnson said in "Skyscraper", if ya can't fix it with duct tape, ya ain't using enough duct tape! As if a windy and slightly chilly 3 hour road trip wasn't enough, the heater core decided it wanted to leave the party. The temps were good the whole trip but it got real foggy, real fast if you used the vent with the temp turned up!
I still have more work to do in addition to the new repairs to make. Although I worked on the right side window aligments for almost 3 hours, they still need work. What a pain in the a$$! It still needs the new top. The one on it is a 5 footer, I did get it to clean up quit a bit but it's still gotta go.
As soon as I get the shop straightened out it'll be on to the hatchback!!