Happy Independence Day!

 

PAINT!

 Got a bee in my bonnet and shot some paint yesterday.

 Two medium coats of Eastwood :Safety White" Rust Encapsulator, and I'm happy it's a very good match to the OEM paint. I still have to top coat it with Toyota paint code 040, "Super White II", but it looks WAY better than it did.

 And the left front corner of the engine bay where the battery lives is finally rust-free!

 

Lazy Day.......

 Low 90's today, cloudy and breezy, and we'll probably get an afternoon shower because it's that time of year here.

Yes, The Fisher is still on the bench, but I've narrowed it down (again....!) to a voltage that is missing. Might be a broken trace on the circuit board, might be a bad solder joint (unlikely but possible), or a solder "splash" that's shorting something out. 

Found a local place that's great for getting odd bits sandblasted at a reasonable price and almost instant turn-around, so I've got a few more things to take to them.

These are the rusty suspension mount brackets, tow hook, and the headlight buckets back from blasting. The plastic sheeting is the weather seal that attaches to the inside of the door frame, under the upholstery, and keep water out of the car. 

 Before:

After: 

Quite a difference.

And this is after two coats of Eastwood's Rust Encapsulator. It's a heavy-duty primer loaded with zinc that's very effective at preventing future rust.

 

Today will be an "Under The Car Day" as I have to get the exhaust down-pipe loose from the exhaust manifold, pull the clutch slave cylinder and flex hose, and pull the fuel hose so I can get a new one fabricated. Then I have to get inside the car to get the hardware loose from the brake booster and clutch master cylinder so I can pull them out and fix the rust behinds them from when the clutch cylinder failed and dumped brake fluid everywhere, which did a number on the painted firewall.

 Annnnnd.....In the "Bubba Strikes Again" files, I found this loose ground lead wrapped around the fuel line from the tank.

 There are two of these ground leads; This one that is supposed to go under one of the starter mounting bolts, and another one from the cylinder head to the firewall. It's bad enough that the "mechanic" didn't put it where it should go, but then he wrapped it around a handy bracket so nobody would see the wire dangling under the car.

Oh, well......

So enjoy your weekend, have a Blessed Sunday, keep those heads swiveling and stay vigilant. 

 

We Hit 'Em.......Now What Happens?

 Breaking story from Newsmax.....

ACCCCK! A Hunnert Degrees Today!

 And more to come tomorrow. Supposed to drop back into the 80's on Sunday, but we'll see.

But hey....It's a DRY heat! Humidity was only NINE per cent today! 

 

Enjoy you weekend, keep that head swivellin', and exercise your 2A rights! 

An Oldie, But A Goodie!

Nice Shot.....

 Wonder what they used? 

 

A Hellfire, maybe?

 

I Think I'll Stay Close To Home This Weekend.....

 Don't go stupid places, don't hang out with stupid people, and don't do stupid things!

Not *expecting* anything to go sideways, but we're prepared if it does.

Pray for America, and keep your head on a swivel! 

L.A. Insurrection.....Follow The Money....

 Interesting article from Not The Bee.....

Busy, Busy, Busy....With Rain!

Well, last week it was nice........

 50* and raining, with more on the way. Total rain for May was 2.97", and my Taylor rain gauge, and the digital gauge in the Davis weather station are in agreement. And we're at 1" of rain for the last week.

SLW went down to DIA to pick-up her two best friends, and only came home with one.........her other friend had missed the flight by minutes, but she was able to get another in two hours. She took the shuttle up here because she didn't want SLW or I to make another round trip. One of the two was her Maid-of-Honor at our wedding, and the other is the Pastor that married us. It's turning into an "interesting" trip for The Three Amigos! 

 If SLW's third bestie were also here.....I'd start to look for suitable shelter.......

Come to think of it....these three all together here may have been what triggered that M8.2 solar flare....hmmmmm.  Info about the resulting CME, which was aimed smack at our face, can be found here.

Sprayed the back yard with Weed-B-Gon and nuked the gravel borders with RoundUp. Was going to do more, but I had other things to do, and now we've got some thunder-boomers rolling through.

Geesh......I really have to post more often, just to keep you all 'in the loop'. 

During these cool rainy days when I can't paint or clean parts, I duck back down into The Lab, and tinker away. The Fisher is under the microscope again, as I track down a stray voltage that's flummoxing things up. I'm getting a handle on it, but after this unit is finished I doubt if I'll be taking on any more "For Hire" jobs. It's just too much distraction. I should have been finished with my TEAC A-7030 Reel-to-Reel deck, and it's still just sitting there.

And yes, the Supra is in the Hangar Deck being worked on. I've done a lot of work on it, and spent some time reorganizing SLW's side of the garage. I'm going to move the Supra about 3' to the center of the garage for easier access to the interior, and extra room for "whoever" comes out to pull the windshield. I have to remove the plastic defroster vents to get at the screws that secure the top dash pad to the firewall so I can pull the pad out. This is required to remove the failed heater core, a "Work In Progress". Annnd I've damaged the pad getting one of the defrost vents out, hence the "Pull The Windshield!" command being given. So while I'm working out the logistics on that, I'm keeping busy cleaning up all the surface rust in the left side of the engine bay. I pulled both headlight assemblies out, along with the motors and connecting links. The links just needed a good cleaning, but the headlight "buckets" need to be sandblasted along with the suspension mounts. I've been holding out on going to the sandblaster as it's been rainy the last two weeks, with very high (for here...) humidity, and I don't want to the Naked Steel to rust on the way home.

Right side headlight mounting position. The big black spot is from when I painted the bumper. Guess I didn't mask things as well as I thought.

 The left side has cleaned up a bunch, but the entire left front corner will get resprayed and "faded in".

 

This is the headlight bucket from the left side.

This headlight always seemed to raise and lower slower than the other one. Turns out the pivot was rusty, so I used a bunch of Blaster! to free it up, and now it pivots easily.

There are two "tow hooks" mounted to the front frame, and one needs attention.

This is the right side one.

I can't find any pix of the left side, but this is what it looks like with the tow hook plate removed.

 And the plate.

 

And the bolts.

 

The grey paint on the tip of the left bolt is the Toyota "Electro-Dip" primer. The middle one is degrading, and the right one has lost all it's protection. These will be replaced.

Worried about rust in the frame rails, I dug out my endoscope and used it to inspect the internal structure of the frame rails after I pulled the rubber plugs.

 The right hand side is clean as a whistle inside, while the left one showed some rust, but nothing bad, just surface rust. The frame rails will be coated inside with some of Eastwood's Internal Frame Coating. In fact, I'm going to go along under the car, and pull all the rubber plugs that are used to cap voids, and spray this stuff inside there, too. They say Rust Never Sleeps, and on these cars it never even takes a nap!

This weekend and the coming week look be be warm and dry, so I'll be cleaning and painting things in the garage, and doing a dive under the dashboard to remove the clutch master cylinder and the power brake booster so I can get cracking on the entire left side of the engine bay.

Stay safe, my friends, and keepeth thy head uponst a swivel! 

Let's See....Where Was I....?

 Had a post going, then got busy, then got clobbered with a "24 Hr Bug", etc, etc, etc.

Sooooo.....I isolated the issue with The Fisher down to the "Darlington Power Packs" that I've mentioned before here. The one in the right channel failed, probably when the Zener Diode in the on-board regulator shorted and nuked the transistors on the board. So I still have some more sleuthing to do to nail down the exact problem.

Yes, I've working on this receiver for over a year now. I'll be very happy to see it finished.

As far as my Toyotasaurus Supra goes, well....I've really been digging into it, and finding several things of interest.

To fix the rust properly, I had to pull the mounting brackets for the "Strut Rods", more accurately called a "Lateral Locating Link", because they 'stick into' the engine bay, and you can see them.

I took the whole shebang off the car first. Both strut rods and their mounts, and the antisway bar. Pulled twelve bolts, four nuts, the end links for the sway bar, and it dropped right out.

 Then I separated the parts. The nice one is from the right side of the car. The rusty one is from the left side of the car, where it lived under the battery, and took some guff!

 These will get sandblasted, and then repainted with some of Eastwood's "Extreme Chassis Black" paint. This paint is very good. It takes a while to fully cure, and of course, surface prep is important, but once it cures, It's ON There! 

I was planning on replacing the brake master cylinder, and it's a good thing I pulled it off. It was just starting to weep brake fluid out the back. It appears to be the OEM cylinder, as it's made by AISIN, which is an OEM to the Japanese auto industry. 40 years and 168,000 miles ain't bad for an OEM part!

 

As soon as I get under the dash, I'll pull the hardware for the brake booster and clutch master cylinder.

 That will allow me to get back in the corner and repair the damage from the "Great Brake Fluid Deluge of 1998".

 

 I also have a bunch of spots in the driver's footwell that need to be repainted, the result of the brake fluid leak. At least I have all the nasty carpet backing scraped out of the interior, and I went over everything exposed, and scrubbed it with my mix of Simple Green, Denatured Alcohol, and a good squirt of dish soap. It's amazing how much dirt and dust a car collects behind the interior pieces, and inside the doors.

 

And finally....I found this:

 

 That's one of the two main engine ground wires. It's a 10ga wire, and there's another one from the cylinder head to the firewall. This one is supposed to go under one of the starter mounting bolts. This means the "mechanic" who replaced the starter not only didn't put this back in place, but he coiled it around the fuel line so it wouldn't hang down and show.

 

Yep....did the job wrong, and then tried to cover it up! I've several other things like this on the car. One was improper hardware bolting something on the engine (wrong type bolt, and too short),  another one was really bad Bubba Work on some of the rubber air couplings in the intake tract, another was the really BAAAAD stereo installation, and another is the VERY sloppy alarm installation.

 

 

And I put new brakes on SLW's car. She had about 10k left on the pads, but she's going on a trip, so I thought it was prudent to go through her car and fix anything getting worn out.

Got some rain coming, but it'll be nothing like they get on the Eastern Plains here!

 

 Have a great and safe weekend, stay in CDX YEL, and enjoy life.