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There's something satisfying about getting your car up on jackstands for a little bonding time. Brakes redone with new pads, SS lines, ATE fluid. The rotors have surface rust from sitting so long, but are in good condition. Next time I'm in there I'll probably rebuild the calipers and install new rotor but the test drive showed they are working very well. Multiple hard stops to bed the pads, straight and true, and the ABS kicked in as it should. Also flushed the clutch fluid and chased a small coolant leak - lower hose manifold had a bolt that wasn't tight. I'll keep an eye on that one.
Today will be de-stickifying the steering wheel and a general cleanup of the interior. There was clearly water intrusion while it sat outside, resulting in the typical issues. Some Borax and elbow grease for that. I'm also going to try and pull the HVAC controls and fix the bad resistors inside.
Day 2 was a good day. We had some friends over to St Pat's day, and they left after breakfast this morning. Time to get back to the Corvette. My wife and I got it out into the sunshine and got to work. Following some advice from this forum, I picked up some Goof Off from Home Depot and set to work on the sticky steering wheel. About an hour of elbow grease later, and my steering wheel was about a million times better. Next project there will be to condition the leather and bring it back.
Next task I pulled the center console and set to work on the dim HVAC controls. I read a bunch of threads on it and found that those little black resistors were totally broken on mine...one fell off with the slightest touch! After the worst soldering job in the world, of which no pictures will never exist, much to my amazement it lit right up! Pretty easy all in all. A little care taking the console out, and then a steady hand (which I clearly lack) with the soldering iron, and whaddaya know.
Meanwhile my wife was hard at work on the cleanup. As I mentioned before (and that Google pic shows), this car sat outside for many years without moving. Inevitably, water got in and sat there with the typical results. Definitely mold got it, although surprisingly it wasn't that bad. Mostly confined to the cracks and edges of things, but it still required a thorough cleaning and killing with borax, white vinegar and good old fashioned elbow grease. She has helped me with every car I've owned. Our first date was changing a clutch on a 928. Sorry guys, I win.
After all the work this weekend, it was time for a bath and a photoshoot. After the life this car has led, I know it feels great to get back in the game again. I just love looking at, that color is amazing. The paint is far from perfect and once I get everything sorted and like it should be, I'll probably do a full paint correction and polish to get it looking 100%.
I really like the ZR1 style wheels, but I'm not totally sold on them. I have the original wheels which desperately need a total refurb, and I'll get that done soon, maybe play with the look. As I get all the mechanicals and cosmetics back to where the should be, I might starting thinking about some subtle mods. But for now, I really like this clean look.
Great work on the restoration, and you're lucky to have a wife that helps out.
Thanks! This car is now my daily driver and I will use it for everything, mountain runs, autocross, date night, shopping, trips to Home Depot, and yes even the airport where it will sit for a few days awaiting my return. However that does not mean it won't be nice. I like my cars to be in outstanding condition with everything working like it's supposed to, and then I put them to work. When they get dirty or things break, they get cleaned up and fixed, and then back to work.
And yes I am incredibly lucky that my wife actually enjoys helping with the cars. I hit the jackpot there, thank my lucky stars every single day. Now that she can drive a manual, I just might get her to autocross this year.
It was a lightweight weekend, just lacking the motivation to do a lot of work. I still need to change the gearbox and rear end fluid, and I've got a leaking thermostat housing. Also the HUD is out, and I don't think the projector is working at all. Finally the horn is dead, verified it's not the contacts in the steering wheel, so the horns themselves are out. Those were just more than I wanted to get into this weekend.
So I only did a few small things. I now have two working turn signal lights, replaced the front bulbs. The weird thing is all external lights are working and I still have a fast-blink going on. Also the right signal light on the cluster is out, and I've read this is a relatively common problem but don't know the fix yet.
I tightened up the roof, so no more squeaks going on. And I disabled that annoying "easy exit" seat/steering wheel thing. Another weirdness there, it seems to be fine most of the time, but once in a while I get back in the car to find the seat crammed up to the wheel again. Really annoying.
I thought you might like to see the roads around where I live. I spent many years commuting to downtown Atlanta, fighting what is definitely the worst traffic in the country - yes I know LA and NY well, Atlanta is worse.
These days I work from home and live in the foothills of the Appalachians, and these shots are the road leading to our home. I took them on the way back from the auto parts store, and yes I was driving slowly to take these shots, no other cars around anywhere. My kind of commute.
We had friends over yesterday so nothing got done, but I managed to get in the garage today for a little quality time. Job one was get the front in the air, drain the radiator, and figure out why my thermostat housing was leaking. It was a few drops on the garage floor after every drive, and I'm sure a bit more coming out while it was under pressure, from the bottom side of the thermostat housing. I posted a question to the tech forum, and HUGE thanks to 8VETTE7. From my post, he deduced the problem right away and today I verified he was correct. The guy I bought it from replaced the water pump, apparently with an old-style reman pump. Well my car is a 2004 with the newer style thermostat, and sure enough he just reinstalled the factory one. Two parts not designed to go together = leak. I would never have figured this one out without 8VETTE7's help. Amazingly, I was able to find an old-style integrated thermostat/housing locally and replaced it this afternoon. Unfortunately I still don't have the new hoses in, so it will be a couple more days before the car is running again.
Not many pics today, but here's a shot of the pump opening. I put a caliper on it and measured a hair over 2" which confirmed the older style pump. Newer ones are smaller diameter. If you have a leak at the housing, and know that either the pump or thermostat was replaced at some point, it's possible you have a mixed install like I did. Something to look out for.
Beyond the thermostat issue, only did a couple little things and no other pics. I replaced the passenger front turn signal bulb with an amber one, so now I have the same color on both sides, which also stopped my fast-blink issue. Nice to have balance.
Then I wanted to know why my horn wasn't working. Using a tip from here, I set the DIC to horn only and hit the locks. Nothing. So it looks like the horns themselves are toast, which isn't surprising. I suspect they were flooded more than once while the car sat. I popped the panel off, removed the horns, and checked them with 12V, and sure enough they are dead. So new horns will be ordered.
And another new problem cropped up. My fuel door doesn't work every time. About one in three, it hits the actuator, and about one in three of those results in the pin getting stuck in the open position. Driving down the road with the fuel door flapping in the breeze just doesn't look good. I'm pretty sure I have two issues there, a bad connection at the switch, and a corroded spring in the actuator. So in case it got stuck I wanted to make sure the manual release worked...and I pulled it...clean off. Dammit. Now I have a new project - pull the rear panel and get to the lock pin, reattach the cable release, and pull the console again and make sure the switch connection is good. But now it's beer-thirty and I'm relaxing on the deck.
New old-style thermostat installed, new radiator hoses, fresh dexcool and not a single drop. Leak fixed, and I love it. Not a lot more done today, but tomorrow I plan to tackle the fuel door and dig into the non functional HUD.
Have a 2000 same color. Several rock chips on front that prior owner or dealer just painted over to hide. Body shop says repair will look like new and paint will match Hope so !!!!!!!!!!
My fuel door was working intermittently, sometimes not opening at all and sometimes staying open and refusing to close. The switch seemed to be working fine, so the problem was either at the door or the actuator. Just to check things, I popped the wheel well liner off to see how things looked. Aside from the odd spider, everything looked fine. I did take the pin out just to check it and it looked fine, so no issues there.
So the problem was at the actuator. Getting to it is easy enough, just pull back the carpet and it's easy to see. I had tried to use the manual release last week and it didn't budge, actually pulled the cable OUT of the receiver. I needed to reinstall it and get the pin moving again. This pic shows how the cable is installed. Basically you just pinch it in a bit past the end, then pull on the cable to seat the end in place within the receiver. It then pulls oh the yellow plastic part, which pulls the pin back. Mine was completely frozen. So I held it up vertically and sprayed some WD40 on the barrel, right at the base of that yellow "ear" you see. after a couple sprays and some working back and forth, it freed up. Then I kept spraying it in there while working the pin manually back and forth until it moved easily and freely. Now pulling on the cable takes just a slight tug and it opens, like it should. This also got it loose enough that the actuator could move it again. Job done!
03-18-2018, 11:39 AM
That picture of it at the previous owner's place was so sad. The poor thing looked like it was crying.
