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

[charliekwin]

Out of nowhere, there's been a nasty grinding noise whenever I start the car.  Sounds like the pinion gear on the starter isn't retracting.  The starter's pretty new: the old one died at the shop when the mechanic (a local Datsun guy with a good rep) was giving the car a once-over after I purchased it, so I had him replace it then.  I pulled it off tonight to inspect it and promptly had the pinion gear/clutch assembly fall right out onto the ground and saw this:

The three screws that are supposed to hold that housing in place were nowhere to be found and the housing is a bit torn up as well.  I'm assuming the housing got caught on the pinion gear and shoved into the flywheel ring gear.  Should be an easy fix once I can get some screws, but I'm none too thrilled with the mechanic's work right now.

Brake lights aren't working either.  The fun never stops!

[Patcon]

Is the starter a "reman"? That may not be on the mechanic if the starter didn't have the screws to begin with...

[Mark Maras]

55 minutes ago, Patcon said:

Is the starter a "reman"? That may not be on the mechanic if the starter didn't have the screws to begin with...

 Wouldn't the "local Datsun guy with a good rep" have noticed that and done SOMETHING about it at the time? Seems like it would have been obvious.

[charliekwin]

It's a remanned unit, but I would hope it would've been noticed and addressed.  Mistakes happen, and maybe I just have bad luck with shops, but darn if that kind of stuff doesn't seem to happen more often than I'd like.  At least it's an easy fix.  Bless those 1970's engine compartments that let you see all the way to the ground.

[Patcon]

If I pulled a starter out of a box, I don't know that I would have looked it over or shone a light down past the drive gear to look for missing screws. I would have worked on the premise that all the screws were in it. I suspect they are hard to see around that gear when properly assembled.

[Mark Maras]

 I don't think those missing screws were hidden. It's possible they fell out because they were never tightened properly.

[charliekwin]

I'll never know what happened to them, but I'm 99% sure they weren't there when the starter went on the car.  It's all been degreased, tidied up, regreased, and put back together now (with screws this time!), so that's over and done with.

And since I took the day off work, it seemed like as good a time as any to finally take the car out.  First time it's gone farther than just around town.  Has some rough spots, but it's kind of fun to drive! 

[charliekwin]

Slow progress this weekend.  As soon as I started working on the quarter window trim bits, I get a call from my wife: "my car won't start."  So a good chunk of Saturday afternoon was spent waiting for a tow, then removing the starter from a Ford Escape, and Sunday morning spent putting it back in.  Ford engineers, BTW, really found a difficult place to mount those things.  I don't know what I did to deserve all these starter problems 

So, window trim.  First step was eliminating the speaker holes, since I'm not going to put speakers there and it won't look good with the vinyl.  Some masking tape on the back side and a bit of body filler.  To give it a little extra support, I tried something new on the back: put a light coat of ABS cement down, then a piece of fiberglass mat.  Wetted that out with more ABS cement.  Worked great.

On to wrapping, which was beastly.  I've done a similar inset like this before, so I knew it was gonna be tough.  The hard part is having enough material in the middle to get into the recesses and not have it bunch up on the flat surfaces.

 I tried valiantly, but couldn't get it to sit right, and eventually cut a seam in one of the corners.  Everything got repositioned a bit; the excess material is on the bottom left.

By this point, it was not going well -- the vinyl wasn't laying well, had a lot of wrinkles, and was lifting in the corners -- and I could feel myself getting frustrated with it and was getting ready to throw in the towel.

So, gym break.

Back at it after a couple hours, and things started going a little better. As expected, the corners lifted, so I shot some superglue in there which should keep it in place (that trick's worked for me before, so here's hoping).  The seamed corner isn't great and there are a couple wrinkles here and there, but the end result is acceptable.  And the other one...I'll wait for tomorrow.

[Zed Head]

1 hour ago, charliekwin said:

 Ford engineers, BTW, really found a difficult place to mount those things. 

Toyota put the starter for their V8 Tundra engines under the intake manifold.  And gave them poor copper contacts in the solenoid.  A friend of mine has starting dread every day now, but doesn't want to spend the money to have it fixed and isn't a car guy.  I offered to help him fix it but he's just going to live with it until he gets stuck somewhere.  

[charliekwin]

Sweet baby Jesus, when you said "under" you weren't kidding!

I mean...how...why...who...?  I'm kinda pissed off about that and I don't even own one!

The Escape starter is a comparative piece of cake, even including the stuff I had to cut off to get the replacement one to fit (thanks to you too, TYC).

[Captain Obvious]

charliekwin, I think it looks just fine. Seam doesn't bother me. If I bought you a plane ticket and had supplies on hand, you could fly to PA to do mine? Beer? All the spray adhesive you can sniff? What is your pleasure? Knock you around a little with a pair of flat tops?

And that Tundra... I'm pissed with ya and I don't own one either!

 

[charliekwin]

Honestly Cap, at 1:30 this afternoon I was beginning to curse myself for not buying a few cans of SEM paint and was *this close* to coming online and telling everyone that the vinyl was a stupid idea that no one else should try. That may still be true -- there's a lot left to do! -- but in this case at least, persistence paid off.  A whole case full of fancy gin might not be enough to get me to do it again, though.

Once dash time comes around, I'll do a more thorough job of documenting the whole process in case others want to try it themselves.  I'd shoot a video of one of the smaller pieces, but even those are taking about 2 hours!.

Funny you mention a vacuum table, because that's exactly what I was originally planning on doing.  Someone else had the same thought a couple years ago: