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Showing posts from March, 2021

miss wired headlights

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Interesting thing. I think the last owners swapped the high beams for the regular headlights in the wiring. Then after they realized it, they removed the cluster bulb or burned it out. The car came with HIDs uninstalled and after market headlight pigtails. Finding a picture of an original pigtail to reference since the aftermarket wires are all black was not easy. (Actually after testing the functions it seems this is backwards) There is only 1 on ebay with the original colored wires. Fortunately I think I can repin the connection. I went to the wiring diagram to check the color codes and there is actually a mistake in diagram.  I tried it both ways and only red/black on the left works. If you think about it, the bulbs are wired the same left and right.

details and a little paint

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Just with vibration and location the plastic tabs are no good at holding the alternator fuse cover in place so I slid a bungee in behind the base and drilled 2 tiny holes on the top. i added a bit of paint to the grill, just a spray bomb for now but it's nice and shiny. A bit of trash in the clear but nothing I am concerned about to wet sand out. I touched up the grill opening just to coat the raw yellow plastic with black where it was trimmed for the cobra grill. i remade one of the smaller ground effects brackets out of scrap galvanized gas tank metal. I'll paint it and then wax it heavily with wax ring.  About a year ago, for an experiment I ground down the paint and coated a ball hitch riser in wax ring, which inadvertently turned into a door stop. It's been sitting on a damp concrete floor getting kicked around for a year and hasn't rusted at all. It hasn't even picked up that coating of dirt I expected. I think that should b

finally getting somewhere

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I can finally say I am getting somewhere. I burped the cooling system 3 times and thinned the mix with distilled water to 60/30. I had used concentrate without realizing it. The fan controller was set to the max somehow and now it hangs out right about half just idling.  I did the window motors and run channels but they are still pretty weak. The driver's side seems like it will break in after some use but the passenger side has the tilt that makes it bind. I'll work on it. Might need to take the guides out and polish them or even change the helper springs. Next I'll wrap up the wiring and I need to figure out why my turn signals stopped working.

addressing the slop in the steering shaft

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After my alignment I noticed some slip in the steering. A loose bolt from the column to the shaft was to blame but not all of the slop was removed. Still had a half inch in the wheel before anything happened. I loosened the rack mount bolts to the end of the thread. Unbolted the shaft pin from the steering column. It's a tough spot to get a wrench on top to hold the bolt because it's under the brake booster. There's a ton of things in the way. I laid an open end wrench with a bit of tape over the bolt and with a 12 inch extension and wobble socket from underneath, I was able to break the blue lock tight. Then fought the bolt out of the hole with some hose clamp pliers. here is a video of the play in the joint. I drilled a second detent in the shaft pin and lock-tighted both set screws and lock nuts. I am going to go back over all of the connections, clean and lock tight them all.