Sunday, August 17, 2008

Mickey?

I actually ended up working on the car one more time today and the event that occurred was worth documenting.

Chris finally removed this pesky choke housing cable that I could not remove, no matter how much liquid wrench I used. But the main event was removing the cardboard transmission cover on the inside of the cover. First off, it's made out of cardboard. Albeit, sturdy cardboard lined with heat shield padding, it's cardboard...er.

After removing the cardboard, we were surprised to find a rodent's nest, possibly a mouse or mice's dwelling. Thank goodness there wasn't a rodent still living there, otherwise I probably would have ran out of the garage screaming. I still had the heebeegeebees vacuuming up the nest, as I was afraid of the possibility a dead rodent would appear. Bleck.

Hopefully through all this, my tolerance for smells, insects, rodents, and whatever may lie ahead will increase, because going into this, I am a big wimp.

Slowly...

This weekend i went about removing the components on the dash board - a relatively easy task, I figured. Realizing I should probably take the time to document and record everything now, and save myself the headache of how to put it back together without documentation, I was careful to document which wire went where and how it was all connected. This task took a while and my patience for boredom was severly tested.

I wish I could say I did more this weekend, but that's about it. Look at wire, document wire, label wire with masking tape, remove wire, rinse and repeat.


The result...(well actually, I lie cause I did take off the air vent and top dash cover too, but after all this was too lazy to upload pictures....so there should be more red in the actual final picture.)














Sunday, August 3, 2008

"Good" is in the eyes of the beholder



When I first checked out the car, things looked good. All the body panels were in pretty good condition, the engine turned and the interior of the car looked to be in good condition. Upon closer inspection of the car, however, one slight issue revealed a big problem, something I was not planning on at all.

We decided to clean out the insides of the car (there were some leaves and debris from the car being stored outside under a tarp) and noticed an inch of water sitting under the chair. Wanting to dry this out, we removed both seats and found the seat tracks completely rusted. Trying to check the extent of the damage, we removed the interior carpeting (which had been thrown on with lots of hot glue) to find bad rust throughout the floor panels and along the edges. We could see the bottom of the garage through the floor panel, not a good thing. From underneath the car, only a rust hole was visible, but now with the interior removed, it's bad. Oh, and the sitting water had made the car stink...

Even better, it looked like the original car owner had tried to quick fix this "little" rust problem by covering the floor panels with flash metal and just folded it in to place. It was bolted into place by balling up some of the same metal material and shoving it through a hole. Awesome fix. Looking at the driver side, given a few more years of usage on the car, I'm pretty sure the driver seat would have just fallen through.

Car summary:
Engine: It turns and has been known to start within the last year.
Exterior: All panels are present. The original color was red, but the car had been repainted to silver. Now that I know about the rust on the floor panels, I'm worried that the silver paint may cover up some existing rust. I wouldn't be surprised it it did.
Interior: Like a Monet. Looked good from far away, but up close will need to replace everything.

UHaul...grrr

So my plan was in place to go to UHaul and rent an AutoTransport and save at least $100. I get to the UHaul place and am told that the Toyota 4Runner cannot tow the AutoTransport, even though I had checked online and with a representative that the towing setup will work. Confused, I called up the UHaul hotline and ask them whether or not my setup will work and am told it will work. Now I have the local UHaul saying one thing and UHaul national saying another thing. Since continuing with this seemed futile and wanting to get the towing done with, I started calling all the towing company numbers I could find being rejected because drivers were not in the area or that they would not do long distance towing until later that day.

My last resort was to use a towing company that I had seen negative online reviews for. It turns out they were great. I paid what other companies had quoted me, the guys met me within 15 minutes, and at the end of the day, I had a 1968 Triumph Spitfire sitting in the driveway.

Much thanks to my boyfriend for driving me around and putting up with my foul mood after being rejected by UHaul.