1982 Frame Off Restoration

[SupercoolBill]

Tammie installed the new SS brackets on the front of the tub. The rivets area SS and larger than the original ones. She drilled the holes larger and riveted the brackets on as tight as she could get them. Well, I did the first one then she took over.



The plates felt tight on there and the tub was starting to make crackling noise. So I messaged Josh at D.I. to see if the center posts were supposed to snap off or needed to be cut off. He said keep pulling and they'll snap off. We couldn't do it by hand with our standard riveter so I had to bring out the big guns.
Sure enough they popped right off.


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[SupercoolBill]

The next thing I did was working on the rear brakes. I decided to change the D.I. rear caliper lines to OEM type lines.

This was no fault of the D.I. parts. I didn't realize that the D.I. set up was going to seal onto the calipers by means of using a crush washer on the outside of the caliper. We were not able to get them to fully seal due to our calipers being so porous. Our calipers were REALLY rusty.
Hindsight's 20/20. We should have just bought new loaded calipers. Or if I knew how the fittings sealed I would have ground the mating surface flat before I had them plated.
The original fittings seal with a flare way down inside the threaded holes in the caliper. I'm hoping to have better luck with this.
Copper never seize went on the new parts.


I changed the flexible line on the trailing arm to a hard line also. I am not thrilled about it not being SS but it's not like this car is ever going to be driven in bad weather.

Tammie was done what she was working on so I had her change the right side lines. She kept saying that the line that goes on the trailing arm didn't fit. Sure enough. I tried it every which way, tried re-bending it. It's just wrong. It's not even long enough to reach. Tammie was pretty upset and went on a rant about vendors sending us the wrong parts, missing parts, etc.




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[SupercoolBill]

Next I worked on the washer fluid cover. The screw holes ended up getting pretty messed up in the process of grinding the heads off the seized bolts. The cover is very expensive if you can even find a good one. So I decided to make a reinforcement plate out of aluminum.

The thin aluminum I used was a pain to try to cut with my jig saw. If I did it again I'd use thicker material...which I actually had on hand. I used a file to finish the corners and round the edges.

Next I marked the center for the holes that need to be drilled.



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[SupercoolBill]

I had bought a new washer fluid pump. The original one was in pretty rough shape.

I was kind of disappointed to see that the "new" pump didn't look new at all. I am assuming this must be a NOS part that DMCH has had sitting around for the past 40 years. As long as it works that's what matters I guess. So I installed the "new" pump.



I was under the car getting ready to install the washer bottle and found a couple things that really frustrated me. First was I reached up in the washer bottle cavity and felt all kinds of mouse debris. Secondly I found chewed wires on a harness that I had already removed from the car and fixed rodent damage. I suddenly got a sinking feeling. Did mice get in the car over the winter and cause a bunch of damage again? This time I started to rant and rave. Tammie came over and helped me clean out the mouse mess. She said "There's a mouse skeleton in there, I don't think that happened any time over the past year." She looked all through the inside of the car and found no other signs of mouse damage. Also the chewed wires looked like they were chewed a long time ago.
So I think I panicked for nothing. I guess I just never cleaned out that area yet and I missed the chewed wires.



After this I spent some time putting away tools that had been sitting out for several months then we went homes.

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[82DMC12]

Ah see , that big ass blue riveter came in handy!

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[SupercoolBill]

Ah see , that big ass blue riveter came in handy!

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Yup. Technically I think it is for a larger gage rivet but it still gripped and worked great.

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[SupercoolBill]

I worked on the car for a few hours today. Tam and I went to the shop together but she didn't really work on the car. She was too frustrated. We rent part of our commercial building to an electrical contractor. Over the years they have taken over more and more of the building without asking. When we showed up today and she saw all kinds of stuff near the car she got very upset.

Also our replacement brake line and washer pump from DMCH still isn't here and she is pretty frustrated about that.

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[SupercoolBill]

The wiring for the washer pump was in bad shape.
I found some green and black wiring to use.

I have already converted the other end to a weatherpack connector on the car harness so I did up the other end.


The washer pump terminals are marked so the special plug connector isn't really required.

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[SupercoolBill]

The dogs played hard in the shop then wanted to be held and fall asleep. Tam did this so I could keep working.

I had a bad ground wire to fix.

After way too long spent removing the pin connector I slid on a piece of heat shrink.



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[SupercoolBill]

I moved on to the front lighting harness since it was hard to get to the car to work on it.
I was going to replace the headlight connectors but they aren't in horrible shape so I decided to leave them for now. The side marker wiring needed to be replaced. So I replaced them. I cut back the wires so I put split wire loom on.




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