Project Boondoggle (or, so I went and bought a Z!)

[charliekwin]

I grabbed the eBay hose, and figure I'm paying extra for some peace of mind.

Might be able to make a few bucks back by selling the old one, if I ever find the time to try and sell all the stuff I have laying around the house!

[charliekwin]

Filler hose problems aside, in the past two weeks I used an impact wrench, a hammer and some cursing to get all the sensors out of both thermostat housings, and after a bit of refreshing they still look to be in good shape.  Removed a whole bunch of water scale from the 280zx housing and everything's back on the motor.  Nissan switched the locations of the two larger sensors, though, so there's a routing issue I'll have to deal with when I re-flush the system again.  Also, no more garish blue hoses!

I can't seem to stop taking on new little projects before finishing the old ones.

Took out the tail lights to clean the rear deck.  Hmm....dirty.  And a bit rusty (I understand how lucky I am that this is -- so far -- the second worst bit of rust I've found on the car).  And then the paint flaked a little bit....and I never liked the body color on those panels anyway....and then a couple hours later....and then a lot of hours later, because some of that paint did not want to come off.  So now it looks like this and I'm trying to decide whether I want to go all the way and paint the panels or just leave them as is.  They do match the state of the rest of the exterior right now

And the Shin Buster Supreme is finally gone.  Not walking into those things ever again.

[charliekwin]

Pretty slow going over the last few weeks. My youngest is now 14 months and past the age where it's easy to schedule around her, and she's mobile, so if I can't work within line of sight, I don't get anything done!

Anyway, the decision to take on those tail light panels ended up being a bigger deal than I thought.  The left side was easy, the right...not so much.  Apparently after the car had its rear end accident, someone had to re-assemble the tail light surround.  They also did a decent job painting it.  Decent enough that the paint which flaked off easily from the left side had to be blasted off from the right.  I also had to dig out some old body filler to fix some of the contours, but all told, it came out pretty well.  Following along from another thread I found here, I primed, painted with Duplicolor wheel paint and sprayed some matte clear.  It's not quite as dark as I would have liked, but I can live with the results for now.

No one bothered to fix the sheet metal after that accident, so I bought a hammer and dolly set from Harbor Freight and gave it a go.  Picked up a spot weld cutter while I was at it and removed that ugly sight shield, too.  Thankfully, it was rust-free under there.

What else...the tail light gaskets were totally shot.  I bought a sheet of neoprene rubber from eBay thinking it would be a lot squishier than it was.  It wasn't.  I spent a little too long trying to make that stuff work before punting and using the closed-cell foam I had left over from the floors instead.  A few of the bezel screw holes broke after almost 40 years of exposure, so I had to rebuild those with ABS cement.  Everything else got a much-needed cleaning.  Then I remembered I put the license plate light holder in the corner and forgot about it, so it got the same treatment as the panels.

Everything went back together, and I was ready for a Sunday drive, until I found that I have no brake lights, so that's next up.

 

 

Edited April 4, 2016 by charliekwin

[Captain Obvious]

That's some nice stuff there.

My PO painted all that black trim in the rear of my car with a gloss black. It just doesn't look right. It's low priority for me, but one of these days I'd really like to do something about it.

[Hardway]

Great work Charlie!  I love how you refer to the front bumper as the Shin Buster Supreme.  Made my Monday!

[charliekwin]

Those bumper supports are the perfect height and shape to inflict an impressive amount of pain.  Only thing worse than running into them was doing it 3 more times!

Cap, I look forward to the day when I can do (or pay for) proper paint and bodywork.  Those tail light panels are now the best-looking thing on the car 

[sweatybetty]

On 3/2/2016 at 7:19 PM, charliekwin said:

Mystery solved. Occam strikes again. I pulled the filler house tonight and found a hole. It's in one of the seams, which is why I missed it before and almost overlooked it again this evening.

The hose, of course, is NLA, so it might be a while before I can find a replacement. Until then, I can leave the tank a few gallons short when filling, which is rather crude but gets the job done. Obviously this isn't something to patch over as a permanent solution, but a temporary is better than nothing. Red Seal RTV -- and I've taken so much of that stuff off! -- is the first option that comes to mind. Anyone have better suggestions?

EDIT: serendipitously, a filler hose that I'm mostly sure is the same part was just listed on eBay.  $50 for some hose isn't cheap, but it's (presumably) less than the cost of catching on fire and exploding.

i wonder if a regular rubber tire patch would work?

 

[charliekwin]

It might.  I didn't find much definitive about making a fuel-safe patch and since the hose was there on eBay, I ended up buying it.  Having been through the leak problem twice now, it's worth the peace of mind knowing I won't have to do it again.

[charliekwin]

My brake lights are back!  The PO had hacked up the hazard switch and jumped two of the wires to make the turn signals work, which I thought might've been the problem.  The one I picked one up on eBay got the hazards working again but still no brake lights, so I started again at the pedal and worked my way through everything...

My son likes to "work" on the car with me, which is cute and I love that he wants to do that.  Usually he'll just grab a wrench or a screwdriver and finds something he can poke at, but lately he's been finding things that interest him and he'll just bury his head into it for 10 or 15 minutes.  The other day it was the kick panels, and I didn't think anything of it.  I pulled the fuse cover and saw the little booger's handiwork:

A couple weeks ago, he forgot that he stored a bunch of tools in the glove compartment, which resulted in a 45 minute hunt for my tape measure.  If he weren't 4 1/2 years old, I'd swear the kid was gaslighting me!  

[Captain Obvious]

Haha! Nice.

You really want to pull all the fuses out of that fuseblock anyway and clean up all the electrical contacting surfaces. I'd replace the fuses with new ones as well even if the old ones still conduct. Most of my filaments were saggy. I've been told that in a couple years it will be more than my filaments, but for now, we'll go with that.

[siteunseen]

2 hours ago, Captain Obvious said:

I've been told that in a couple years it will be more than my filaments, but for now, we'll go with that.

I painted the interior of my Grandparents house about 15 years ago.  After being married 60 years they'd quit closing doors.  One morning I regrettably saw my Grandad's sagging close to his knees, looked like two baseballs inside some pantyhose. 

[Patcon]

TMI !!!

My eyes! my eyes!!!