Resurrelica

It has been a while since I’ve posted, but here’s a quick update.

I got the car back to the votech, and things are rolling again.  The OEM side skirts have been fitted.  So, that’s progress.  There shouldn’t be anything after that except to mask it off (again) and move it into the paint booth.

Concerning the headlight that got broken: I managed to boil it apart (that makes 5 that I’ve done now) and repair the internal damage.   The only thing I wasn’t able to do (yet) was repair the broken bolt bracket.  There’s a small shard of plastic missing that I need in order to glue it back on.  It’s on the garage floor somewhere.  But even if I can’t find it, I may be able to manufacture a strip of metal to perform that role.  Either that, or the two remaining bolts plus the anchor stud would probably be sufficient to hold things in place.

While I was at it, I finally reassembled the other low-beam and the high-beam from their repair.  The time consuming part is getting the old glue out.  I managed to do it using a small butane torch (to warm it) and a screw driver to scrape it out.  The used a razor knife on the glass side of things and scrubbed it down with some lacquerer thinner  to remove the remaining film.  It wasn’t 100% cleaned out and off, but I think it’s sufficient.  Also, where the plastic had started to deteriorate/dry-rot around some edges, I torched it.  And I think it sort’a reconstituted the plastic a bit.  At least it seems stronger and not as brittle anymore in those places.

I used 3M’s windshield “glue” to reassemble the lenses to the fixture.  It says it’ll never harden.. which it hasn’t so far.  It’s still a little gooey even 5 days later, but I think it’ll make a strong enough seal.  Besides, it’s there to keep water out (which it’ll do well), and it still has those metal clips to hold it on.  I still need to re-glue the black rubber gaskets on the low-beams, but that shouldn’t be a difficult task–the clips tell you where they have to be positioned.

I also ordered some new projector fog lights.  The other ones were probably 12 years old and had started to become yellow in the lenses due to dirt.  I wouldn’t be about to get them apart without breaking them open anyway.

Another thing I had to do was reassemble the interior around the steering wheel.  Some students from the electrical mechanics class were assigned to try and diagnose the starting problem I mentioned above, but they were obviously quite clueless about things (diagnosing problems with the starter that obvious worked fine when you tried to start it).  But fortunately, I’d disassembled/reassembled that area a few times before.  So, I knew were all the screws and parts scattered around on the floor went.  While I was at it I started the cleanup of the interior–at least in that area.  It’s cleaning up nicely.

Here’s a couple of pictures of it back in the shop from this past Monday.  The second shows a side-skirt. It’s just a dry fit at the moment.  They were about to raise it on the lift to drill the holes for the bottom.

Back at Votech

Side Skirt Dry Fit

Filed under:
Uncategorized by ddurham