| 16JAN2004 | Boxed up the parts to take to the blaster. |
| 17JAN2004 | Blasted the parts. It took several hours, because I could only blast for about 10 minutes at a time, then had to wait about 15 minutes for the compressor to cool down. I got the rust off, though, and did a "good enough" job of removing the old paint. The new paint will stick okay and cover what little bit is left. The two most important parts (degreasing and de-rusting) are taken care of. |
| 18JAN2004 | No time to do anything today. |
| 19JAN2004 | Sprayed the parts in preperation
for mounting on the car today. I'm also going to pick up new front
brake rotors and front brake pads. My goal is to get the front end
back together, roll the car outside, and start her up before sundown. Today was supposed to be a holiday, however, I wound up spending all day working, instead. I did manage to get the brake pads from Advance Auto Parts, though. I also mounted the tension rod bracket, the tension rod, and started to mount the sway bar, all on the left side, when I realized that the sway bar was threaded through the wrong way. So, I started tlo disassemble the left side so I can thread the sway bar through the other way. I've got the tension rod backed out, and I'll need to drop the mounting bracket next so I can pull the sway bar past the oil cooler lines and back out the other side. |
| 20JAN2004 | Okay... some good news/bad
news: The good news is that the sway bar was actually installed
correctly. The bad news is that I didn't realize that until after
I had removed it and re-installed it. So, thrid time is a
charm: The sway bar is installed, the control links are installed,
and the tension rods are installed. Before lowering the car, the left side sway
bar mounting bracket needs to be tightened. The only way I
could get the control links in place was to place the floor jack under
the ball-joint and raise the control arm. While it was raised, I
could finagle the nut onto the top of the control link and get it
threaded down a couple threads. After that, it was pretty simple
to torque it down to the FSM-reccomended number of millimeters. In other news, I got an e-mail from a gentleman in Flordia, and it appears that I have scored a power antenna. I'll send a money order off to him tomorrow. |
| 21JAN2004 | I re-installed the brakes, put
the tires back on, and bounced it with a jack a few times. I
torqued up the sway bar attaching bolts, and tried to bleed the
brakes. *WAY* too much air in the system. The pedal had no
resistance on it at all -- not even from the lack of vaccum
assist. I rolled the car outside to start it up to see if the
vaccum would help. No dice, but a LOT of smoke. Oil smoke,
to be sure, but lots of it. It would appear that I got my
neighbor's attention. Sorry about that... |
| 22JAN2004 | Nothing done. Too sleepy.. |
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