Wes and I were unable to spend time on the car this past weekend. Our church had a “True Love Waits” program all weekend and Wes participated. My wife and I also participated as well. The service manual arrived Friday, which was great but not having any time to work on the car wasn’t fun. Hopefully we can spend a good amount of time this weekend to get further into the engine.
Wes and I spent Saturday working on replacing the rear driver-side glass window. Since we’ve never done this before it was an experience for sure. We first busted up as much of the broken window as possible, leaving the bead of urethane sealant still attached. It took us forever to remove it. We learned that the urethane is also attached to the new glass being that it was removed from a junk car.
The new glass is in pretty good shape, we just need a few items to install it. One being the urethane “rope” and three spacers that are already attached to the window, but were cut from the junk car. I’m going to call a few glass places around town and see if they are able to sell the urethane and spacers to me.
Wes and I went shopping the other day and purchased some minor things such as a new floor jack and additional stands. The new back window glass will hopefully be in this week. (Really tired of seeing it with the duct-tape on the remaining glass) We also went ahead and changed the oil and such and found that it is leaking water into the oil. Milky! It seems the head was not re-installed properly. Hope that is the case anyway.
We cleaned the interior more this time and washed it again. Didn’t help much on washing it. It is going to need a paint job badly. We are planning on doing that anyway to match the color of the example car. We drove it around the block and it rides fine. Will need to adjust the clutch some. I’m really hoping we can complete this “project” ourselves and not have to spend much money for someone else to do it for us.
So far so good. Wes and Cady cleaned the 240 last weekend. I ordered the replacement side window (driver-side). I was preparing to purchase an engine stand to rebuild the motor since it smokes heavily right now. When I spoke to my friend Marshall at Performance Motorsports, He suggested I purchase the shop manual for the car first and then check timing and give it a tune-up. Suggested that the timing may have not been adjusted correctly by the guys I picked up the car from. I agreed since he’s seen the car first hand and is good friends with the previous owner(s).
So tomorrow Wes and I are going to do some shopping and work a little more on the car and the van. We’ve found pics of how we want the car to turn out.
Well I sold the Bonneville! Although the reason for selling it has changed from wanting to purchase a car for my Son to needing extra cash for my wife’s nursing school. So I took a hit on it and sold it for around $3k. Not bad for the items that were wrong with it. I hated to see it go though. I’m gonna’ miss that car!
It turns out the SX is a 1990 and not a 1989. That’s fine. Not bad shape body-wise. A little interior work may need to be done. The horror story was the ordeal in picking up the car. I needed a truck so I borrowed my Dad’s. Now my Dad and I are just now getting to know each other again after many years of being apart due to a divorce when I was child. EOMLS – So I pick up his truck and head to U-Haul to rent a tow dolly. No problem, truck was already setup for everything except the ball for the bumper. So I purchased one and installed it myself. We connected the dolly, tested lights, etc. All was good.
We head to my friend Jake’s place to pick up the car. We pull into the apartment complex and I see Jake waiting for us. Pulling up to the car it was evident that it was in pretty bad shape. Two flat front tires! GREAT – how do I roll it onto the dolly? I thought, “Well at least it runs” so we can drive it onto the dolly even with flat tires. WRONG! Jake went to start it and of course it would not even turn over. Come to find out there’s no battery. An additional problem would be that the 240 has a low air dam which would make simply driving it onto the dolly impossible.
It won’t start and we can’t roll it with flat tires. The tires are in pretty rough shape, but were holding some air. So we take the two front tires off and Wes (my son) and I head off to the local gas station for air. We air up both tires and head back to the car. We mount the tires and that brought the stance up enough to roll onto the dolly. Great I think. Well before you know it, I’ve installed a “golf-ball” sized dent into my Dad’s tailgate by ramming it with the dolly. Yeah, for the first time in 40 years, I wrecked my Dad’s truck!
We finally get it placed onto the dolly, tie it down, and head home. By this time it is getting dark so we decide to go home, unload, and turn-in the dolly. We do just that. It’s now 6:30PM and we started this ordeal at 12:30PM.