This job is truly breathtaking to behold.Originally Posted by Parzival
It's a nominee for the best-looking, cleanest VOD water leak repair job ever.
Location: San Francisco Bay Area, Calif.
Posts: 2,084
My VIN: 0934
Club(s): (NCDMC) (DCUK)
This job is truly breathtaking to behold.
It's a nominee for the best-looking, cleanest VOD water leak repair job ever.
March '81, 5-speed, black interior
Location: Bay Area, CA
Posts: 202
Club(s): (NCDMC) (DCUK)
Oh Rich, you're too kind. Thanks for the help on Sunday and… later this week
DeLorean DMC-12 (October 1981)
Manual transmission. Grooved hood. Grey interior. Rear antenna.
Obsessive perfectionist and 64th annual 2019 Hillsborough Concours D'Elegance class winner.
Location: Central Cali
Posts: 302
My VIN: 5087
I jacked the engine back up again to relive stress on various parts. Still no luck lining up the transmission with the pilot bearing.
Location: Fort Lauderdale
Posts: 4,740
My VIN: 02613
Club(s): (DCF)
Got the courtesy lights working with both doors. The diodes are missing from my car; it's a temporary fix but at least now I don't have to have the driver's side open to look for something in the passenger footwell. Diodes are on my shopping list.
Panel gaps on the front of the car bothered me for a long time. I added some shims (M5 stainless steel fender washers but I call them shims) to the back half of the left front fender to better align with the height of the hood: there's a slight drop from the hood on both sides, but at least now the drop is more uniform. If I could pull both fenders away from the car a couple of millimeters they would also perfectly align with the doors (now that the roof cage is bolted down the doors open and close perfectly so I'm not adjusting them), but I haven't figured that out yet. I'm not messing with the hood's height because the bumpers are just the right height to stop it from being loose, but the hood also looks like it's more aligned toward the passenger side than the driver side. If I could slip it sideways a millimeter or so it would be perfect. But I'm not fretting about it. It doesn't bind against the trim strip so it's not like it's all that tight on the passenger side.
Lubricated the hood latch and catch. It still doesn't pop up when the release is pulled, though, so I think that spring is tired and needs replacing. Added to the list.
While I had the hood open I saw the fasteners holding on the hood safety plates (or whatever they're called) and thought, "Hm, that looks like a familiar size." I had some stainless fasteners left over from another project and replaced the rusty ones there with stainless.
Then having got dirty greasy fingerprints all over the car for months, I gave it a bath. It's fun to finish a bunch of work by making the car pretty again.
3.0L, automatic, carbureted
Location: Lebanon, Tennessee
Posts: 390
My VIN: 3294
Been working on replacing my original cooling fans with a new set from DeloreanGo, and so far it's been a pain in the ass. I managed to get the old fans out without draining the radiator or disconnecting the A/C condenser.
New fans from DeloreanGO arrived yesterday. Box was beat all to hell, and the new aluminum fan shroud was dented and bent in a couple of places, but I did manage to get those straightened out. I installed my radiator in the spring of 2015 right after I got the car, so I can't really remember which vendor I got it from. I believe it was from John Hervey, but I'm not sure. Radiator has been performing flawlessly since I installed it and the old fans bolted right up to it.
Installing the new set of fans last night and I noticed the new shroud only had 4 mounting holes as opposed to the 6 on the old fans. No big deal, so I layed the old fan shroud on top of the new one and tried to line up the four holes that were already drilled in the new shroud with the old one. I could either line up the bottom two or the top two, but not all 4 at the same time. I ended up drilling 3 new holes in the top mounting flange and one on the bottom flange in the center.
Proud of my work, I crawled under the car with the front wheels up on ramps and brought the new fans with me. They don't fit. I tried every which way I could, but it either hit the petcock drain on the bottom left hand side of the radiator or the top radiator hose on the top right of the radiator. Now that I'm pissed off, I wrestle the new fans out from under the car and in the process crack one of the flimsy plastic fan cages on the back of the new fans. You'd think these things would be made out of metal... but no.
I ended up taking a hacksaw and cutting a 45 degree corner of of each flange, and sawed a 3/4 inch corner off of the lower left hand side to get the shroud past the petcock drain. Crawled back under the car and slid it right into place with no problems. I've got the bottom 3 bolts in, but still have the top row left to go.
I fully understand that no vendor can anticipate which aftermarket radiator someone has in their car, where the bolt holes might be, and I don't blame them a bit. I did however expect the fans themselves to be a little more rugged than what was delivered. It's very possible they were damaged in shipping and I just didn't see it.
Still have to get the top bolts done, the radiator support brackets back on, and the plastic air dam thing back on. I'll probably tackle the rest of that tomorrow night, and then start to work on replacing the relay socket.
Also... looking at the factory wiring harness for the cooling fans, I expected to see 2 wires in each connector to mate with the 2 wires in the fan connectors. It's not that way. There seems to be 4 wires going into the plug. I'm trying to determine which is the hot and which is the ground. Anyone have a clue?
Barry Floyd
Lebanon, Tennessee
VIN 3294 - Aug. 81
Location: Lebanon, Tennessee
Posts: 390
My VIN: 3294
Been working on replacing my original cooling fans with a new set from DeloreanGo, and so far it's been a pain in the ass. I managed to get the old fans out without draining the radiator or disconnecting the A/C condenser.
New fans from DeloreanGO arrived yesterday. Box was beat all to hell, and the new aluminum fan shroud was dented and bent in a couple of places, but I did manage to get those straightened out. I installed my radiator in the spring of 2015 right after I got the car, so I can't really remember which vendor I got it from. I believe it was from John Hervey, but I'm not sure. Radiator has been performing flawlessly since I installed it and the old fans bolted right up to it.
Installing the new set of fans last night and I noticed the new shroud only had 4 mounting holes as opposed to the 6 on the old fans. No big deal, so I layed the old fan shroud on top of the new one and tried to line up the four holes that were already drilled in the new shroud with the old one. I could either line up the bottom two or the top two, but not all 4 at the same time. I ended up drilling 3 new holes in the top mounting flange and one on the bottom flange in the center.
Proud of my work, I crawled under the car with the front wheels up on ramps and brought the new fans with me. They don't fit. I tried every which way I could, but it either hit the petcock drain on the bottom left hand side of the radiator or the top radiator hose on the top right of the radiator. Now that I'm pissed off, I wrestle the new fans out from under the car and in the process crack one of the flimsy plastic fan cages on the back of the new fans. You'd think these things would be made out of metal... but no.
I ended up taking a hacksaw and cutting a 45 degree corner of of each flange, and sawed a 3/4 inch corner off of the lower left hand side to get the shroud past the petcock drain. Crawled back under the car and slid it right into place with no problems. I've got the bottom 3 bolts in, but still have the top row left to go.
I fully understand that no vendor can anticipate which aftermarket radiator someone has in their car, where the bolt holes might be, and I don't blame them a bit. I did however expect the fans themselves to be a little more rugged than what was delivered. It's very possible they were damaged in shipping and I just didn't see it.
Still have to get the top bolts done, the radiator support brackets back on, and the plastic air dam thing back on. I'll probably tackle the rest of that tomorrow night, and then start to work on replacing the relay socket.
Also... looking at the factory wiring harness for the cooling fans, I expected to see 2 wires in each connector to mate with the 2 wires in the fan connectors. It's not that way. There seems to be 4 wires going into the plug. I'm trying to determine which is the hot and which is the ground. Anyone have a clue?
Barry Floyd
Lebanon, Tennessee
VIN 3294 - Aug. 81
Location: Novi, MI
Posts: 413
My VIN: 4665
The only definitive way would be to power up that plug and multimeter it. When I replaced my fans I only had 2 pins to deal with, but that was 2 years ago and I didn't take any photos.
Location: Fort Lauderdale
Posts: 4,740
My VIN: 02613
Club(s): (DCF)
Green with black stripe supply power to the fans. Black is ground. On my car each fan had an additional ground wire that had a capacitor and attached to the frame - the wires were yellow before the capacitor and black after the capacitor. I discarded those wires (one was broken anyway) and simply used two-wire connectors, one for each fan:
weatherpak connector 02-20-2019.jpg
The fans work fine with just the two wires.
3.0L, automatic, carbureted
Location: Pittsburgh, PA
Posts: 363
My VIN: Between VINs
Hired a locksmith.
20190313_100254.jpg
Location: Florida
Posts: 326
What is the reason for replacing the shroud?
When I replaced the radiator I did the fans at the same time, but I reused the shroud, cleaned it up and it looked fine to me.
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