It never fails. Timing can't be worse. I wish it came two days early or three days late. Now I have to stare at these parts and wish I could install them on the Fiat. Tomorrow morning I start my project of replacing the hoses, plugs, idler pulley, belt, valve cover gaskets and more on my family mini van. Who knows, maybe it will only take me a day and I'll have Saturday to work on the fun car.
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Just sitting around waiting for some parts to arrive. I want to replace the timing belt, but I should put in a new tensioner bearing while I've got the belt off. I ordered the part from Vick Auto and I'm eagerly awaiting its arrival. While I was ordering, I also purchased some rubber radiator grommets so I can finally mount my newly painted radiator. Once both of those components are installed I can put the air flow meter and assembly back on the engine, install the hoses and get everything together under the hood. Still trying to figure out when I'm going to do the welding on the body. Needs to happen soon. Unfortunately this weekend will be dedicated to my family van, so progress will have to wait. I decided to replace the timing belt. It has been replaced in the past few years, but since it was sitting in one place for so long and had a large pile of nuts jammed into it (courtesy of some squirrels, chipmunks and mice) I decided it was best to replace it. In order to replace it I have to pop off the tensioner, water pump pulley and possibly the crankshaft pulley. We'll see about that. The first thing I removed was the water pump pulley. I did this over a week ago. Yesterday I found some time to media blast it, prime it and topcoat it. You won't be able to see this pulley in my engine bay, but it will help it last another 30 years. Looks nice, right? I wanted to do some welding today, but the weather is not cooperating. I'll see if I can't get further on this project to I can get all the hoses and radiator back into the engine compartment. When you clean a convertible top, you don't want to use harsh cleansers. My roof is in terrible shape and has a lot of mildew. I plan on cleaning it up as best I can and patching the few holes it has. I tried using Simple Green on one side and Bac-out on the other. I also used a magic eraser on both sides of the top. Below you can see my results of the Bac-out. Sadly, my small cut was so badly dry rotted that it crumbled with the lightest touch. I will be looking into patch kits for this section. I want to make sure the top is relatively water tight if I get caught in a shower. I'm not too concerned with looks, since the top will be down 99% of the time. In the future I plan on dropping the money for a brand new top. I look forward to that day. Today was out working on the rust on my van. While I had all my paint equipment out and various tools, I decided to throw my radiator in the mix. First I degreased the whole part and then did a light sanding with some bronze steel wool. I pulled out my Eastwood Radiator paint and laid out two light coats of gloss black on my radiator. The radiator had recently had been repaired by my father in law and also had a lot of chipping paint. I did a very light dusting over the grill. No need to cake it on and ruin the cooling effectivness. I just received word that some radiator paint and weld thru primer have been shipped. I have a busy week or two ahead of me and probably won't get much done, but hopefully I can at least paint and install the radiator.
It may be hard to tell, but I spent about ten minutes working on the left hand side of that valve cover on the top of this picture. The right hand side is still, nasty dirty and pitty. I left it just to show the contrast. But if you look back at earlier pics of my engine on this blog you'll probably see a noticeable difference. I used various size brass brushes in my Dremel to clear up dirt, grime and to shine up the surface. I'm pretty happy with the speed at which it cleaned off. I used some Brasso Polish afterwards which lifted even more grime up. I think if I slowly work over the whole engine with this technique it will be decent enough for engine viewing at a car show. I'm not looking to win any contests. I just want to have a tidy car. I finished installing the fuel pump and filter. All the fuel hoses and lines are where they belong. I need to order some radiator paint and some master series paint. As soon as I get the radiator paint I can start putting back together the cooling system. I also need to replace the timing belt. My plan is to remove the gears and pulleys from my extra engine, media blast them and paint them with an epoxy that can hold up to belt where. Once I do that I can replace the belt and pulleys. I may just clean them up and not paint them. We'll see. I cannot start on the body work or the floor pan until I get my Master Series paint. I don't have the budget for the paint so I'll be waiting. Which is a shame because I could probably get this thing started pretty quick if I could finish up all the welding and seal everything. I've also been thinking about stripes. I've always enjoyed stripes. I've seen a couple successful examples of stripes on Spiders. I may just have a friend cut out some vinyl stripes for me that I can put on temporarily and see if I like them, prior to painting. |