"Chairman Kaga" (mike-mckinnon)
10/14/2013 at 10:28 • Filed to: None
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"Chairman Kaga" (mike-mckinnon)
10/14/2013 at 10:28 • Filed to: None | 3
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This weekend I found myself with a few free hours to dedicate to the car. Here's what I did:
Fully installed the new seats and carefully hid the old ones from my wife in the attic until I can sell or scrap them ("Are those different seats?" "Ummm... Different headrests [which is technically true].")
Repainted license plate mount (big fiberglass piece), drilled and sealed new mounting holes, affixed hardware, tested it all out. Still need to buff and polish the fiberglass.
Fully installed rear door cards and rear seats.
Adjusted rear windows.
Installed under-dash tray that conceals AC components and the ECU cover (minor, niggling issues).
Ran it for a while and decided I need to drain the gas, replace the fuel filter and probably run through some Techron with fresh gas. In addition to an oil change and radiator flush. Brakes and clutch are still firm and smooth, so that fluid seems OK. Huzzah! Nasty sounding rumble from the driveshaft, which is probably the center bearing. Hmm. Real pain to fix because the shaft has to come out, which means the center brace also has to come out OR the engine has to be unbolted and jacked up. Yay.
Then. THEN! Just as I'm finishing up yesterday, I noticed the hood was just a smidge too far forward and was smacking the air intake vent covers in front of the windshield, causing it to not close perfectly. So I loosened the four hood mounting bolts and slid it forward every so gingerly about 1/8", tightened the bolts just enough to hold it in place, and closed the hood.
CRUNCH.
The front lip of the hood (it's a swing forward design) snagged underneath the edge of the opening. Chipped, splintered paint. Awesome. So then I popped it again to reset it to the original position, and OH JESUS NO! it was jammed. The hood was so far forward that it was under the front edge and would not open. I tugged and yanked, trying to get the barely tightened bolts to allow the hood to slide back. No dice.
I crawled underneath and looked to see if it would be possible with every extension I owned to reach the bolts. No dice .
The hood was opened JUST enough that I could wriggle a hand through and blindly use a gear wrench to loosen the bolt. I could feel something digging into the back of my hand every time I turned the wrench. A couple of millimeters per turn.
After 15 minutes I was finally able to loosen the offending bolt enough to slide the hood back forward to the original mark. My hand was bleeding profusely and hurt like a mother. About 1/4" of paint was gone from most of the lip of the hood and the edge surrounding it, compounded by a bit of creasing. I went into the yard, into the pouring rain, and kicked my neighbor's kid's ball over the roof of the house.
ANYWAY, I found a decent tutorial on YouTube from an Aussie paint guy that walks me through the repair. It's not too intimidating. On the sunny side, there's a paint shop around the corner from my office that can mix a rattle can of Alfa-matching silver paint, so I can probably also fix the damage from where the kids ripped off my rear badge, and maybe the ding from the time the stroller fell off the wall hook. So I guess it's not ALL bad.
I was too sick about the damage to take any incriminating photos. Sorry. At least the primer kinda sorta matches the actual color of the car.
Thanks for letting me vent.
Bruno Martini
> Chairman Kaga
10/14/2013 at 12:42 |
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I feel your pain. This weekend two with my fathers astro. The poor thing has never been maintained. Went through a fuel pump replacement on it. (no easy task in that thing GM engineers should burn in hell) as you have to drop the entire tank and remove the whole thing to do so. Blasted out about 12 years of crud that had acumulated and replaced the pump. The new pump has a different connector so had to solder with a torch near a gastank with 3-4 gallons of gasoline in it. a new connector and shrinktube the whole deal. Finally put it back in. Guess what? Still runs lean and missfires, went to the local autozone to rent a fuel pressure tester. No dice there either. After 4 hours of mysery she still runs lean, and the ecu wont allow revs above 1100rpm to save the engine. I figure at this point I need to replace the freaking spider or the regulator or both....... Shit working on cars is a pain in the ass.
The bright side is that I got to remove a bunch of rust on the nexk of the filler and sealed the whole mess up with high temp paint I had left over from when I sanded and painted an old set of calipers.
BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires
> Chairman Kaga
10/14/2013 at 16:22 |
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Sympathies.
I heard somewhere that it's a good idea to put a little 2-stroke oil into your tank when you're running the old Alfa 6s on modern fuels, but for the life of me I can't find the forum thread that said it again.
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Chairman Kaga
> BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires
10/14/2013 at 16:55 |
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I did confirm with the paint shop guru that the $6 off-the-shelf Krylon metallic silver is a close enough match that with some moderately skillful sanding, garden variety filler primer, light feathering, and some good clear (which I purchased), 99% of the people in the world will never be able to tell. So $40 later, I'm in business.
never heard that about the oil, although I wouldn't be surprised. I know with my old Beetle, using lead additive smoothed out the engine somewhat. I just wonder if I shouldn't pull the tank, clean it, and reseal it. It's been sitting at nearly empty for almost 2 years. I guess I could hack open the fuel filter and see if there's any rust? It was practically new when the car went down for refit. 'Twould be a shame.