#project-x

Starting with August 12, I decided to tackle the mysterious hatch latch mechanism that has plagued me since I bought the car. The system was never able to close and keep the rear window latched. So I took it apart!

Here you can see the rather simple mechanism. The handle turns a plate which tugs on some wires, rotating the armature and pulling on some spring-loaded fingers that latch the window. The "L"-shaped arms were covered in a nasty, sticky yellow gunk. I proceded to clean and re-grease all the moving parts with white lithium grease.

Clean! Greasy! I then reassembled the guts into the car at 1:30 am on the 13th. The system works now, but the window latches a little too nicely. The fingers now don't let go, so I will have to pursue that later.

Today, I worked on making a new license plate light and mounting bracket. I used 26 gauge galvanized steel I picked up from Lowe's. Really easy to cut through with a cutoff wheel or dremel. The wire holes aren't the nicest cuts, but nobody should be looking at them. I still want to trim the edges past the lights down.

Here it is on the car. This is an old plate we had lying around I used for mocking this up. It's not original, but I think it looks good! I need to ground the negative wire, but it just needs a bolt.

Paint time!

I got all my parts from the electrolysis bath out on the pad, wire brushed them down with my drill and a set of wire brushes, as well as my hand wire brush for the tight spots. We had some POR-15 Marine Clean degreaser concentrate left over from previous projects, and I mixed up a solution to help clean off the rust dust. I sprayed them down with the garden hose, let them dry off in the basement and got ready to paint.

This time, I have a pint can of POR-15 rust protective coating in gloss black (I thought about silver but I already had the 6-can sampler of gloss black and this stuff is expensive) and I got to painting. I am being careful to not get too much into the bushing sleeves, but I figure it's not too critical. I am trying hard to keep the paint out of the ball joint conical holes.

Yesterday and today I torqued bolts to the what the book calls for. I got the tie rods on and greased. My dad and I bled the front brakes, and then I put the wheels back on!

Tomorrow I will get the rear brakes bled and then pop the driveshaft back in and hook up the parking brake.

Today I drilled, tapped, and fitted grease fittings in the left side suspension parts.

Also the poly dust boots for my tie rod ends and ball joints came in. Tomorrow, I will start re-assembling the suspension onto the car.

Took all my parts out today, spent two hours using my drill wire brush to get as much surface rust off. Because these components are So Shaped, I couldn't get every spot, having to use my hand brush to get the nooks and crannies. The lower arm tapers to where it mounts on the car, so even the hand brush couldn't get all the way in there.

I used my Marine Clean de-greaser again and hosed the parts down. They sat in the hot sun for about half an hour to dry off before I took them down into the basement for painting.

Just like last time, I strung the parts up and painted them with the gloss black POR-15 rust prevention coating. This stuff is supposed to dry better with more ambient humidity, but even in our dry, de-humidified basement, the first coat dried pretty thoroughly in just under two hours.

All in all, here is the left side components fully painted and dried enough to touch. I'll still let them set up for tomorrow's drilling/tapping job.

Hopefully, I get my tie rod ends and polyurethane dust boots tomorrow, and I can begin the task of reassembling my front end. I'll have to learn how to do a basic alignment job.