Sunday, December 27, 2009

Taking care of some small things

Since I've got some time to kill, I decided to work on some other things on the car. The first is to finish installing the relays in the power window mechanism to hopefully speed up the windows. I started, but then realized I did not have all the parts I needed. Fine, on to the next thing.



I noticed a while back that while the driver's door is perfectly aligned, the passenger's door is really sagging. It sags to the point where it doesn't close very well. The first thing I checked was the door pivot pins, as they are known to wear quickly. The pins look fine, and unfortunately there is no other adjustment on the door hinge. The only way to lift the back end of the door is to shim out the lower hinge.



As with all areas of this car, access is tight. The only way I could get at the hex hinge bolts was with a u-joint on my hex socket. Since there's not a lot of room for leverage, I enlisted my air impact hammer. I was able to get them all loose, but destroyed one in the process. I was a little worried since the head started to strip before the bolt loosened, but it eventually gave way. I put two washers under the lower hinge and now the door is lined up and closes like it should. I just need to go out and get a new hex head tapered metric bolt to replace the one I destroyed.

I also did a few other things to close off the front end. A while back, I had to open the brake system to remove the front caliper to get at an old plastic trash bag wrapped around the front hub. I finally got around to bleeding the system again and finally put the front wheels back on. I also installed the headlight louvers. Hey, it's starting to look like a real car again!