I hear you! There is nothing quite like a father-son project, and I'm really proud of his skills, but it his stickability and attention to detail that thrills me most ... he grinds away at a project, however challenging, until it gets done.

This is going to be a bit of a long distance project (Tim and Corvette are in CA, and I live in MI - I'm here in Oceanside visiting at the moment!). I'm guessing that I'll build up the air miles until she's ready to go home with me to Michigan!

 

Save yourself the hassles and buy a new ACC carpet kit. Think I paid like 450.00 for mine and it had every piece of carpet except for the speaker covers. Not to hard to install it all either, you'll be glad you did! Actually your dad will

 

Great Idea! Tim's dad

 

get the massback and don't waste your time with that foil heat stuff. ACC carpet kits don't fit well with it or at least they didn't in my 90. The carpet seems to be molded to fit factory thick sound deadening material the best. the most trimming necessary is the door sills but a razor bladed takes car of it very fast, they basically make the sill carpet way to big and you razor around the edges of the plastic sills is all. Even trimming the massback floor carpeting is very fast with a razor blade and nice clean cuts are easy without the carpet frayiing.

her is acc carpet very very nice quality but my camera phone sucks is all







here you can see just how badly faded mine were

 

Are you sure the park brake is stuck ? Did you push the button ? After you pull it, it drops back down. I think......

 

Good point. Most people who haven't owned one of these cars don't know how the e-brake works. To release the brake: press the button in, pull the brake lever all the way up while keeping button pushed in, push lever back down while keeping button pressed in, release button.

 

Hey the snake probably did you a favor by eating the mice before they ate your wiring harness.

 

Yup, as you will see from one of my earlier posts, we did recall the handbrake release process. Although it does work (sets/releases), the handbrake mechanism is way too loose ... it will need some work!

 

Great story! I hope this all goes well for you guys. Man I really want a garage right now, this is fun kind of stuff to keep a guy outta trouble.



IDK...When you get this thing up to standard...you just might find yourself trying to talk your dad into a '94 Mustang.

 

Dude, seriously... we had an ecosystem going on in there!

Its a 1990 and that'll never happen! Just finished a long drive to downtown San Diego in the Mustang, that thing is just setup right. Only took 9 years of tweaking it.

Thats almost 10% of the value of the car! I'll have em lookin brand new soon just wait

 

*Subscribes!*

This thread is AWESOME! After your new discovery in the cab... I would call this "Project Snake skin"

Good luck! This is awesome!

 

Much cooler than my resto project named C-Fouria

 

Well...

Got the keeper back in place, everything went so well. Started her up. Sounded great. Even had a little video of it.

Decided to check the oil. I have chocolate milk.... $&#@!!!!!!!!!!

Oil was so clean upon every inspection before this. Even when we briefly ran it in tractor status. Wow

Head gasket.

Stay tuned.

 

That scares me, check the coolant. It may have been weak and froze and cracked the block last winter... I sure hope not...

 

thought it was a california car. Highly doubt it could have got cold enough to crack anything ... probably just the warped head and blown head gasket issue.

 

Great father/son project.

 

Update***

So here are a few shots of the repair on the Valve spring keeper.

Here we are running compressed air into the combustion chamber to hold the valve in place. This is important later




Keeper in place


So I was sure a head gasket was gone but it didn't make much sense based on how much we had already ran the car.

I had to go to a wake this afternoon so my Dad worked on things alone. He was perplexed by the whole coolant in the oil deal and had an AHA moment. He changed the oil and filter and ran the car, everything was fine. What happened was while the compressed air pumped into the combustion chamber water was being dumped in there and it emulsified the oil.

So after that amazing outcome we took her for a spin. Things went well on the first few trips around the block. So we took her up to the gas station to get some more fuel and stretch her legs.

We learned a few things on this trip.

1. Don't take the freeway on a maiden voyage, even if its one exit.
2. Old *** tires are just that. Felt like we had square tires
3. This car needs a clutch, slipped when we really punched it on the fwy
4. The little things will get you, factory hose clamp failed... a coolant hose pops off the water pump and we pull into a gas station down the street from my house in "back to the future" fashion with a sweet cloud of smoke surrounding us.
5. Break down at gas stations that sell beer, gives you something to do while waiting for the car to cool down.
6. Share a beer with the friendly bum hanging out with you.

Good times had by all.

Before we hit the fwy and learned those lessons


Waiting for her to cool off.



More tomorrow.

 

At least you drove it. After sitting for two years, she may be a little cranky when you wake her up. The surface rust on the clutch probably gave you a false sense of what the clutch was all about until you knocked it off by driving it.

....eh, little by little. Sounds like you're still having fun. Good luck with ironing out the little stuff.

BTW, condensation from sitting will give mayonnaise in the oil as well.

 

its a half mile drive but we stretched her legs a little more, no leaks or issues. I want to cruise around a little before attacking the clutch just to see if anything else needs attention while its under the knife.

Popped the targa top off tonight!

 

Your doing a great job sorting out all of the cars issues. That last pis looks great and makes it all worth it. Pretty soon it you'll have right back to where it should be, reliable enough to be a daily driver.