I finally got some time to work on the car.  Its still cold out but at least warm enough to work out in the car with the heater going.

Spent some time taking the wiring apart in the the engine compartment.  I think I've done as much as I can without draining fluids.

I also decided to have some fun and take the dash out.  Wow is it going to take some time to get the wiring pulled and labeled.

 

A little more

Well we came home from scouts tonight and juggled the car around the garage to make some room on the passenger side.  No more doors, no more fenders, no front bumper.

I think now is a time to do a little cleaning before we dig any further.  There are a lot of bolts (whole and broken) all over the floor.  We also need to take some time to get some parts on Craigslist to gain some room (and money) back.

Is it an addiction?

First off I think my son is more addicted than I am.  He came home from school today and went right out to the garage to try to get that bumper off.  He called me up on my drive home asking for suggestions.  He eventually got down to just two stripped plastic screws around the grill.  So when I finished my school conference call, I went out and popped them off.  That's the nice thing about dismantling a car.  You don't have to remove every bolt in a proper manner.

Tomorrow I have a feeling that he will try to remove the bumper sub-assembly.  We need to jockey the car around the garage to make enough room to remove the passenger door.  Then he can remove the other fender.

I need to find something that will remove the sticky stuff on the convertible top left over from when it was shrink-wrapped.  The top isn't perfect, but I hope to get something out of it.  It has the typical rip above the back window from where someone lowered the top without unzipping.  Other than that, it just has some small cracks along the side where it folds.

Can't stay away...

I wasn't planning on working on the car any tonight.  The only plan was to let the boy go out and do a little work on his own.  He was having trouble breaking some bolts loose so I went out to just help him a bit.  Once I stepped into the garage, I couldn't stop.

We're still fighting to get the front bumper off.  The boy is doing good at breaking bolts.  I'm glad we're scrapping the car.  We did finally get one fender off.  I think we're down to two more bolts to get the bumper off, then three more to remove the other fender.  I'm letting the PB Blaster do a little work.

Tonight I also removed both the seats and the driver's door.  I will need to jockey around the car to make enough room on the passenger side to remove that door.

I found out tonight that there is someone on my team for my last MBA class that needs to finish the team simulation as quickly as possible.  This means that I'm likely going to have to spend a couple hours per night for the next couple of weeks to do this team simulation.  Maybe I can take this time to get some of these first parts sold?

Slept in after a long evening.  Found that the boy woke up before me and was already out playing in the car. I knew he was dying to go for another ride.  So I went out to give it a jump start.  Figured out why the battery wasn't holding a charge.  It was crunched into the squished quarter panel.  I'm sure that it's cracked and at least one cell was dead.  

We gave it a jump and my wife came out for a ride.  She asked if she could drive instead and take the boy with her.  So off they went.  Up and down our road.  I'm sure the neighbors weren't enjoying it since it was running a straight exhaust.  Once we parked it, my daughter came out and said she wanted a ride.  So another jump and off they went.  I took it for a couple laps finally myself before parking it.

Spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning the garage and handing drywall.  I wanted to get the car inside today.  One way or another.  We were successful.

Well there was a half an hour left before the boy's bedtime, so we decided we'd start taking her apart.  Took off the hood first.  Then popped the front turn lamps.  From there I worked on the wiper system while the boy started on a fender.  We were starting to have some fun before my wife came out to send him off to bed.

   

It's a busy week and we have our winter camporee this weekend.  So we will likely not be able to touch it again until next week.  I know it will drive us both crazy.

Bringing home the donor car

Well it has been a long day.  I've spent the last few weeks watching Craigslist trying to find a good donor car.  I came close to some great buys, but everyone knows that takes perfect timing.

Well there was one car that I kept being drawn back to.  It was a salvaged car about 3 hours away.  It was $500 more than I was wanting to spend.  I kept watching it through the week and decided if it was still around by Friday that I'd start making offers.  Well after some haggling, I got the price dropped another $300.  I put together a plan to drive down at 6am with a friend to go pick it up.  Then I found out that with it's salvage title that it was illegal for it to be on the road and that it needed to be towed.  Ouch.  A 3 hour drive to tow something back sight-unseen.  That's a little bit of a risk at the last minute.  I found a Uhaul dealer to pick up a car hauler, but that meant spending more money.  Top this also off with the fact that I wanted to be back for my daughter's soccer game.  Things weren't falling into place and my wife recommended that I might pass on this.  I told the guy that I couldn't do it right now and he said to let him know if things change.

I searched the internet more that night and just couldn't find anything I liked.  The more I thought about it, the more I felt I should keep trying.  So I decided that I'd post something on Facebook to see if any of my friends had a trailer I could borrow.  Then I decided to just rent a trailer here and drive down after the soccer games.  It was half the price to rent up here and I could pick it up later.

Well we got out of the soccer game earlier than expected so we thought we were getting a jump on our trip. But picking up the trailer killed that.  Our 15 minute gain in time was chewed up by a 45 minute pickup.  First Uhaul doesn't list if the trailer uses 4 wire or 7 wire connections.  So I needed to stop next door to Autozone to pick up an adapter.  Then Uhaul's server was down, so he had to re-enter all the info I already did with my reservation.  We finally got on the road at 4pm.

It was nice to do a long father-son road trip.  It gave us some time to talk and some time to talk over some Boy Scout merit badges he was working on.  Being 11 years old, its hard for him to find time to slow down. He had three merit badges that just needed little things to finish.  So the trip was productive.

We made it down there about 7pm.  So much for seeing it in the daylight.  When we got there, it wasn't in as great of shape as I hoped, but it wasn't too bad.  The battery was dead, so it needed a jump.  It fired right up.  That's when we found out that someone cut the catalytic converter out.  My son loved the "straight pipe" sound and smell.  We threw some tags on it and took off down a back road to see how it drove.  Oh how I miss having a 5 speed.  My son loved us peeling out in this loud little machine.  It went through the gears without issue.  Yeah, we're starting out with a good engine, clutch, and transmission.  The rest of the car is gravy.

So we load it up, grab some supper and head back home.  We hit rain/fog off and on both ways.  We still made good time and got home safe.  We let my son "drive" the car off the trailer as we pushed.  I think he enjoyed it.

Once we got home, we found out the rip next to the back window was worse than we thought.  It's my understanding this rip is common if someone tries to put the top down without unzipping the back window.  Someone started to fix it, but did a poor job.  I'm thinking about sewing a patch to it before I try to sell the top.  I'm thinking this little bit of effort may help bring some extra money.  We shall see.

Tomorrow we will take the family for a spin up and down the road.  It's a shame it's going to be dismantled, but I'm looking forward to eventually moving to the building stage.  We'll pull it into the driveway and throw a tarp over it.  It's going to be a couple of weeks before I'm going to have the time to start dismantling.  We have a little bit of work to do in the garage before we can pull it in.  Still insulating the garage walls to get rid of the drywall I've been storing in one bay for about six years.  That will also give us room for our 46 Chevy Truck cab that's for a project we are putting on the back burner.