Well, it’s been roughly another 3 weeks or so since my last update.
Sorry for the radio silence of late, but I really haven’t had much to report on the car. These last few weeks have been immensely frustrating to be honest, lots of false starts, roadblocks, multiple parts stores runs and just general frustration which translated into apathy for getting anything truly accomplished.
I’ve never really stopped working on the car since my last update, but the progress has definitely slowed considerably.
Upgrading the valve covers to the fancy schmancy new ones started to lead me down the rabbit hole. The orientation of the plug wires over top of the old covers looked like crap on the new ones, plus now the wires were unsupported and laying on the exhaust manifolds in places.
Unacceptable.
I’ll spare y’all the stories of immense frustration and multiple speed shop store runs to get everything required, but the process went something like this:
1) Existing cover gaskets wouldn’t work well with new covers. Buy recommended expensive Moroso gaskets and change.
2) Look through spare parts stash for nice plug wire separators, and find nothing suitable. Buy new separators.
3) Realize spare chrome K&N breather filter matches absolutely nothing, buy new powder coated black filter.
4) Start routing plug wires behind the valve covers instead of over top, realize almost all the wires are now too short to do so. Also realize the separators would be better off supported, buy brand new set of custom fit wires and separator brackets for the valve covers.
And on and on it went. Anyways, after the end of all the drama and BS, it looks pretty much like it did before, only a little cleaner and better organized:
New breather tucked away under the heater hoses:
Part of the reasoning behind doing this (other than avoiding burning the crap outta the wires and arcing them out on the manifolds) is that sometime this year I would like to change the manifolds out for the set of headers I have waiting. Chances are I’d have to tweak the wire routing for that anyways, so this way I’m being proactive and trying to plan ahead for that.
In other brief news, I picked up some 3M black Super Weatherstrip adhesive, my bodyshop supplier was able to find me some here in town.
Also, as some of you may remember, I had lightly modified the door handles and dropped them off with a machinist buddy of mine. Well, that turned out to be a waste of time. He’s had them for 3 months or so, and hasn’t touched them once in that time. So after arranging to get them back from him, I attempted to do what I asked him to do myself by hand.
BIG mistake, epic fail.
Soooo, after bitching up one handle beyond repair, it was off to the JY and grabbed a really nice set of OE GM handles off a pretty clean Cutlass Supreme:
Another contact of mine now has these handles, I’m giving this one more attempt before I say f*ck it and just bolt the pricks on in stock form.
While all this nonsense has been going on, in the meantime the whole time I’ve been trying to continue picking away at the AstroRoof insert. I had multiple spots inside the weatherstrip gutter that had low spots and grinder marks from the perimeter plug welds.
Since I don’t want to risk water being able to get in under the weatherstrip and sit in these low spots, they needed to be filled.
Unfortunately, sanding filler in this narrow little area is akin to a voluntary root canal without anesthesia, or possibly self mutilation. Suffice to say, it ain’t pleasant. I think I’d rather go play in traffic TBH.
Anyways, after much procrastination and gnashing of teeth, this week I finally powered through it and got the thing ready for some primer.
First of course was to get my home chemistry course set up...
...then mask and cover everything over, set up and clean the panel:
After the first coat of epoxy (in white, just because):
And then after the required hour induction, 4 coats of high build:
Rear edge after it was dry...
...and the front:
And that pretty much brings us up to date. It’s early Sunday morning here now, I may try and get the insert block sanded out today, but I have to be a bit careful.
The other thing that’s been happening lately is after over a decade since it was originally done, I’ve finally gotten to working on completing my tattoo. I’ve had everything above the shirt sleeve level done for years, but 2 weeks ago I had the outlines done on my lower arm. Last night I had the drop shadowing done, and the first tiny bit of colour.
My arm is on fire (pun fully intended).
😅
That’s all for now gents, thanks for your attention.
D.
