After all that's happened this year and all the feeling sorry for myself, I finally took JPs advice and got back to work on what I can do with the car.
I should warn you that none of this is in the least bit exciting, but at least I'm doing something with the car again.
You may recall that I had the car at Jeremi's last summer for some serious work on the underside. What you may not remember from that thread is that on my trip back home from Michigan, some moron backed into me at a Denny's and ruined my rear bumper. So I bought a used bumper from a local guy. I also picked up a clean California reinforcement on ebay, since the original was badly rusted on the bottom (Jeremi deemed it unworthy of POR-15 lol). I had a local body shop paint both. They gave me a good deal if I could wait a few months, so I told him I didn't need it until spring. Anyway they were finally ready back in April and I just now got around to installing them...
Where she's been since November of last year. This is a friend's garage I've been renting, about 30 minutes from home:
The old bumper already removed. What's not easy to see here is some minor bucking of the plastic and an indentation from a too aggressive sanding from a previous botched repair job that I had no part in.
This actually started last Saturday, with Mike (Beerdog) coming along to help with it. We were short on time because we were going out for Trixe's birthday dinner so all we had time for was removing the cover and partially removing the reinforcement. Mike definitely saved me a ton of time by knowing the locations of all the fasteners. Thanks Mike!
Little did I know that when I returned Sunday to finish it up that the reinforcement would prove to be a major pain to remove. It turns out that the POR-15 job Jeremi and I did last year really gobbed up the two bolts that insert from the rear (thankfully we'd never reinstalled the four additional nuts onto the studs on the underside). The first one I tried to remove soon seized up and the captured nut started spinning. I didn't get that far on the other one before I decided to just cut the bolts with a hack saw (the new reinforcement came with like-new nuts and bolts, so why not). Dumb move because now I had two sawn off bolts to deal with now. If I'd been smart, I would have driven the bolts back in and cut off the ends with all the gunk on it, then they would have backed right out.
Long story short, I had to drill them out, which I returned to do today. Luckily I managed to get both of them drilled out and removed without screwing up the threads in the nuts! One of the rare times I didn't completely mess something up!
Anyway on with the pics...
Old bumper reinforcement off the car. Yeah it was nasty:
Freshly painted rust-free reinforcement from the land of swimmin' pools and movie stars:
Installed:
New bumper cover being installed. The debris in the the trunk is what was removed from the car to repair the flood damage last year (see below):
All done and first sunlight to hit the car in eight months!
The reason it hasn't been driven. Yes the interior is still a wreck from last year's flood. The electrics have been fixed but the carpet is looking pretty ratty so it's all balled up in the rear seat.
...which brings me to the next project:
That's aftermarket carpet. It still needs to "relax" as it was stuffed really tight in the box. I'm not too impressed with the quality. Some of the sharper corners are bunched up instead of being sewn like I think the original is. Also it's not molded properly for the foot rest on the left side of the drivers foot well. I might be able to get an upholsterer to sew it in, not sure if it's going to be worth it. The good news is that the color is a perfect match.
I should warn you that none of this is in the least bit exciting, but at least I'm doing something with the car again.
You may recall that I had the car at Jeremi's last summer for some serious work on the underside. What you may not remember from that thread is that on my trip back home from Michigan, some moron backed into me at a Denny's and ruined my rear bumper. So I bought a used bumper from a local guy. I also picked up a clean California reinforcement on ebay, since the original was badly rusted on the bottom (Jeremi deemed it unworthy of POR-15 lol). I had a local body shop paint both. They gave me a good deal if I could wait a few months, so I told him I didn't need it until spring. Anyway they were finally ready back in April and I just now got around to installing them...
Where she's been since November of last year. This is a friend's garage I've been renting, about 30 minutes from home:
The old bumper already removed. What's not easy to see here is some minor bucking of the plastic and an indentation from a too aggressive sanding from a previous botched repair job that I had no part in.
This actually started last Saturday, with Mike (Beerdog) coming along to help with it. We were short on time because we were going out for Trixe's birthday dinner so all we had time for was removing the cover and partially removing the reinforcement. Mike definitely saved me a ton of time by knowing the locations of all the fasteners. Thanks Mike!
Little did I know that when I returned Sunday to finish it up that the reinforcement would prove to be a major pain to remove. It turns out that the POR-15 job Jeremi and I did last year really gobbed up the two bolts that insert from the rear (thankfully we'd never reinstalled the four additional nuts onto the studs on the underside). The first one I tried to remove soon seized up and the captured nut started spinning. I didn't get that far on the other one before I decided to just cut the bolts with a hack saw (the new reinforcement came with like-new nuts and bolts, so why not). Dumb move because now I had two sawn off bolts to deal with now. If I'd been smart, I would have driven the bolts back in and cut off the ends with all the gunk on it, then they would have backed right out.
Long story short, I had to drill them out, which I returned to do today. Luckily I managed to get both of them drilled out and removed without screwing up the threads in the nuts! One of the rare times I didn't completely mess something up!
Anyway on with the pics...
Old bumper reinforcement off the car. Yeah it was nasty:
Freshly painted rust-free reinforcement from the land of swimmin' pools and movie stars:
Installed:
New bumper cover being installed. The debris in the the trunk is what was removed from the car to repair the flood damage last year (see below):
All done and first sunlight to hit the car in eight months!
The reason it hasn't been driven. Yes the interior is still a wreck from last year's flood. The electrics have been fixed but the carpet is looking pretty ratty so it's all balled up in the rear seat.
...which brings me to the next project:
That's aftermarket carpet. It still needs to "relax" as it was stuffed really tight in the box. I'm not too impressed with the quality. Some of the sharper corners are bunched up instead of being sewn like I think the original is. Also it's not molded properly for the foot rest on the left side of the drivers foot well. I might be able to get an upholsterer to sew it in, not sure if it's going to be worth it. The good news is that the color is a perfect match.
Last edited: