VIN 559 - Captain's Log

[Doogie]

It's still not titled in my name officially, since the bastards at the Ohio DMV require an "out of state" inspection on any car titled in another state... which requires the car to be able to drive to the location, regardless of age. !

When I got 3589 from Paducah, KY last year, it had sat for 25 years, so obviously didn't run. When I got it home, I left it on the trailer so the next day I could take it to the Ohio BMV (In Cincinnati) to have it inspected. Very nice lady came out, looked at the VIN, and went back inside and processed everything. Got my title a few days later iirc.

Doogie

[Shep]

Pictures should be working good now!

Actually, it does not have to run to have Ohio inspect it...

When I got 3589 from Paducah, KY last year, it had sat for 25 years, so obviously didn't run. When I got it home, I left it on the trailer so the next day I could take it to the Ohio BMV (In Cincinnati) to have it inspected. Very nice lady came out, looked at the VIN, and went back inside and processed everything. Got my title a few days later iirc.

Doogie

The problem is that the rules for that inspection vary by county, and the lady I talked to for Cuyahoga County (where I live) said it couldn't sit on a trailer, and had to run. Even if this wasn't true, the only access I have to anything that can tow my D is AAA and Hagerty, neither of which would be too pleased with towing it to a title bureau and back home. Josh is waiting on another owner to arrange a drop-off before he comes over to pick mine up on the way back anyways, so it won't be long now. I'll try to talk to him about keeping any original parts, if not for me then for other 500 series owners who want to rebuild it or what have you.

By the way, that teaser I posted a few posts ago will have to wait a bit -- the pictures I have came out quite bad, so I need to take them again.

[Shep]

The wait for that teaser is up, I just took a picture tonight of the finished result:
IMG_7412.jpg
Third taillight has been installed, and it looks great! The whole setup cost less than $10 believe it or not. $9.17 to be exact, and that's including $2 admission to the junkyard where I got the taillight. The best part is that if the taillight goes bad for one reason or another, I can just unplug it, get another one for $9.17, and swap it in without having to rewire anything. I'm currently writing a tutorial on how to do it yourself. It's simple as hell really, and it shocks me how complicated everyone makes it. On a side note, I really need to take a look at the wiring for the brake lights and the parking lights... it's just the brake lights that are on, but the parking lights are the only thing that lit up. It worked fine on Pawn Stars, so this must be recent. Might need new boards, but now I have a third taillight to make up for it, so I might leave it. At least it's consistent across sides.

And for us BTTF fans, if you zoom in on the attachment, you can make out the "OUTATIME" license plate I put in there. I had it hanging on my wall, and my DeLorean didn't have a license plate, so I figured I'd spice it up a bit and put it in. And those of you that don't like the whole BTTF thing, know this: if it weren't for me seeing it on TV, I'd have no idea what the hell a DeLorean is, and probably would have zero interest in cars at all, so be glad us young'uns have something to get us interested in the hobby. I'm hoping to have a flux capacitor in there before its first showing by the way, but no guarantees.

[Shep]

Update: today I received a package from DMCH! When I unpacked it, everything had arrived, safe and sound:
20120612_Delivery.jpg
Clockwise from top-left: rear-only headliner (dark gray), floor mats (black), stainless steel coolant bottle, door strut (passenger door), and 5 binders that I will be using to sort the mountain of documentation I have with VIN 559. The old strut and the old headliner I will be throwing away (except the headliner clip, which DMCH wants back for refurbishment), but the original coolant bottle I will be keeping. I'd like to keep it in the house somewhere, but we have both one dog and multiple cats, and antifreeze/coolant is a highly dangerous liquid to pets -- to them it tastes sweet, but it's highly poisonous. So I will need to find a place in the garage where no animal can get near it. I would've installed the strut tonight, but it says to use grease, yet neglects to say what kind of grease And the rest of the stuff will wait until sometime after DCS 2012 once DPI Josh is done with everything.

[DMC5180]

Only one strut? Typically you would replace the door struts in pairs. It's your choice not too though. A little dab of wheel bearing or (moly) grease will do the job, but you probably have enough residue left on the ball studs that it will be just fine without adding anymore. You can also use a Q-tip and try to transfer some of the grease from the old Strut ends if you don't have any other handy.

Is the New Headliner board fiberglass or fiberboard. The brown color makes it look like a wood product.

[Shep]

Only one strut? Typically you would replace the door struts in pairs. It's your choice not too though.

Typically yes, but the problem is that the driver's door strut was already replaced recently (before purchase), while the passenger door strut is pretty much shot. The driver's door opens with amazing force after opening it just a few inches, while the passenger door is "neutrally buoyant" about halfway. After inspecting the struts, I noticed they're the same brand, but one has yellow printing and one has blue printing. Since the driver's door strut is still very much good to go, I only need to replace the passenger side.

A little dab of wheel bearing or (moly) grease will do the job, but you probably have enough residue left on the ball studs that it will be just fine without adding anymore. You can also use a Q-tip and try to transfer some of the grease from the old Strut ends if you don't have any other handy.

Thanks for the info! I'll definitely keep that in mind when replacing the strut.

Is the New Headliner board fiberglass or fiberboard. The brown color makes it look like a wood product.

It's actually fiberglass, and I can tell because I see the individual fibers curving every which way. I'm pretty sure it's that color either because it's naturally that color already, or so the color matches perfectly if you mix-n-match old wooden-backed headliners with new fiberglass-backed headliners. I thought it was wood when I first got it too, so I inspected it closer and realized it was fiberglass, exactly as advertised.

[Shep]

Well now that's odd. I went to replace the strut, and noticed the old one has no clips in it. The holes where it should go are empty, and there's no loose metal around the base of the ball socket. Apparently Dick never put the clips in when he installed it, and it never came out because he barely drove it (much less with passengers). So it really surprised me when I couldn't get it off no matter what I tried. I held the door open 100% up, and even had help doing so, but no amount of hammering with a rubber mallet even got it loose. I whacked the strut hard enough that it actually echoed throughout my neighborhood (I live in an area where loud noises do that), and made me worried I'd break it. I tried hammering both ends, but I can't get close enough to the ball joint itself to get it loose.

I'm tempted to unscrew one of the ball joints and working with it that way, but I'd like to make the process quick and easy. What am I missing here?

(I do have wheel bearing grease by the way, so I'll be using that. Thanks again for the tip!)

[Shep]

I did a bit of work today on the door and the headliner. I never thought this statement would come out of my mouth (or more accurately, my hands), but I sledgehammered my DeLorean. No, not destructively, just to get the strut off! I tried a rubber mallet, which is what you normally use, but that didn't work. I sprayed PB Blaster on it a couple days ago and again yesterday. I didn't have a rubber mallet handy this time, so I used a regular hammer, and that didn't work. Looking around the garage, I decided to give the sledgehammer a try, and it worked! It's one of those foot-long ones that's basically a normal hammer with a bigger head (which happened to be stainless too ). Gave it a few good whacks, and it came right off. I put the new strut on and gave some light taps with the sledgehammer to get it on there nice and solid. I couldn't get the clips on though. Might try later.

And just for a visual comparison, I took pictures both before the replacement (last weekend) and after the replacement (today). Please excuse the horrible mess in my garage, we're planning on adding in a third bay and have nowhere to put that stuff until we do. Note that the door is about six inches (15 cm for you metric guys) higher in the picture than it would stay today. My hammering probably broke a seal somewhere and released some pressure over the past week.

Before:


After:


What a difference! Yes, I'm aware the struts look vastly different across sides. The strut on the left is all black, but the strut on the right has a silver rod, ball sockets, and sticker on it. I'm debating getting another one and trying the same thing just to make it even, but the driver's strut is so powerful now, it just seems like a waste to chuck it. On a side note, I did try to compress the passenger side strut once I took it off, and was still unable to. No wonder door struts only last a few years -- it takes such an amazing amount of force to open the doors due to inherent design, even the slightest loss in pressure can equate to a few lost inches in open door height. Fascinating!

I also did a bit of work on the headliner today. The rear headliner was the original headliner, which is easily identified due to the fact that the wooden backing is basically black (i.e. heavily rotted), and the foam residing between the fabric and the wood was turning into dust and breaking into a million pieces. It's unrecoverable, and I have no reason to keep an unusable headliner considering it blocks half the rear window. The problem is, the front headliner overlaps the rear one, so I can't just pull the rear one out as it needs to be pulled forward to get it off the clip. However, due to limited visibility (much more limited than usual), it had to go. I had other things to do this weekend, so I made a compromise and cut the fabric that was sagging down, leaving the rest of the headliner up there. I know, now it's not original to the 500 series, but keep in mind that the entire rest of the headliner has already been replaced before, and no replaced parts were kept. This is just the last one to go, and I welcome the consistency. I apologize for making some of you cringe reading that, but I will be keeping ALL the fabric from the headliner, including the parts I cut out.

Quite frankly, I'd much rather have the headliner out of the way so I can see a cop's light bar if I get pulled over for forgetting to swap out my OUTATIME license plate for my real one. That'd be a interesting conversation.

[Shep]

Last night was both scary and exciting at the same time. Scary because I got a speeding ticket on my way home from work. I felt like shit after I got it (anxiety and all), and had to work from home today. Then I realized something: that speeding ticket is God's way of telling me that me driving my DeLorean will be a cop rare-earth magnet, so I better get in the habit of much more, erm, let's say "legal" driving behavior. Half the cops that know what a DeLorean is will be thinking "ooh, Back To The Future car! Better stop him before he reaches 88 MPH!" and the other half will be thinking "a crack bust oughta guarantee a promotion!" Just Monday my Kenwood radio in my daily driver had a short somewhere, and is now flashing "protect", my car's way of telling me that I really should finish installing that amp project I started several months ago. I swear, whenever non-humans want me to know something, they never hint at it, instead they always shove it in my face and yell obscenities at me. Some days...

But about an hour and a half later, DPI Josh arrived to pick 559 up! And hot damn he's young! I never thought the president of the best DeLorean repair shop in the Northwest US would be in his mid-twenties. (Sorry DMCMW, you call yourselves "midwest", so you don't count ) I'm 22 myself, and it amazes me just how much he knows about DeLoreans. He was able to tell me that 559 is "unmolested" and very original, which is VERY good to know for a VIN this early. He also said some of the problems I had pointed out could be repaired rather than replaced (control arms, for example). Almost makes me feel bad for cutting the headliner, except the rest was replaced in the 90's and this one's the last to go.

We tried firing her up, and as I did, I watched the tach move into negative numbers. Josh immediately opened the engine cover and tried fiddling around until the battery lost too much charge to start it. At that point, we pushed it up the driveway and onto the back of his trailer:

(click for full size)

This morning I got an email from him telling me 559 arrived safe and sound! Not only that, but he also attached a picture of VIN 559 safe indoors at DPI. I've never had anyone do that. Talk about the extra mile! Here's the picture:

(click for full size)

What a guy! As I told him, it's nice to see VIN 559 finally socializing with its brethren. It's been quite a while, that's for sure. But that knocks so many things off my todo list.

I can't wait to drive it!

[Delorean Industries]

Coming up on 27 quickly...... Better to start as the next generation of Delorean service at a young age as I did. I feel as though I got the hard part out of the way years ago. Getting into this business is anything but easy.


Normally I would never attempt to start a car with a questionable fuel system. Since it had already been tried prior the damage was done at this point. I pulled the remains of the pump boot this morning. Pictures attached.....