Wax on, wax off

In spite of the lack of posts over the past couple of weeks, a lot has been going on with the project. Unfortunately, much of the work has been ironing out the hundreds of kinks that keep popping up. To name a few:

• Turn signals not working
• Horn not working
• (New) exhaust manifold leaking
• Oil drips on the floor
• Door latches and locks malfunctioning
• Wheels so far out of alignment that they can't be aligned

Of these, the alignment was one that I have worried about for a long time. As I've noted, the frame and whole underside of the car was beat up really bad, combined with our not-so-scientific approach to replacing frame pieces.

The "repaired" mounting bracket

The week after Daniel's prom, we took the car to the alignment shop. I should've made note of the red flag when the manager told me that, even though it was an old school alignment, he was sure they could do it. This is the regular shop where I take all of my trucks to have tires install, so I felt a little loyalty to him and decided to let them have a shot at it. Eight hours later they called to tell me it wasn't possible, because the driver's side lower control arm was so far out of position that they couldn't align it. The mechanic tried talking me into some adjustable control arms, but I declined. Back into our shop went the car, and up on blocks. We disassembled the whole front driver's side, and I cut the mounting brackets off from the frame. With our cut-off wheel, I took a quarter inch of metal off of each piece and welded them back on. It was sloppy, to be sure, but I think it should hold.
Back to the alignment shop, where, after another full day, they told me that while the driver's side was now perfect, the tech couldn't get the upper arm on the passenger side to loosen so he could shim it out. They said the whole
spring and control arm assembly would need to come off to get the shims in.
Politely, I told them thanks, bummed a pack of shims from them, and took the car home. I figured that they were trying to loosen the arm with the weight of the car loading it, and I was right. After jacking it up again and removing the wheel, It was a simple matter to loosen the control arm nuts and shim it out.
Based on their measurements, the driver's side needed to be shifted out from the bottom a quarter inch, and the passenger side needed the same amount shifted on the top. I feel like we're as close as we can be, so we're going to do the toe-in ourselves and take a pass on the tire shop.

Still gotta get that horn working

Electrically, I knew our luck wouldn't hold out and it didn't. All of the major things seem to work, such as starting, headlights, brakes and wipers, but we have some niggling minor things that are going to take time to troubleshoot.
Most notably are the turn signals. When we powered up the car, we noticed that the front parking lights come on when the brake pedal is applied. The turn signals also failed to operate, flashing rapidly together whenever the lever is pushed. Suspecting a bad turn signal mechanism, I replaced it with a new one that also included the wiring harness. The old harness was pretty chewed up under the dash, so I though this simple fix would eliminate any shorts. Wrong!
I then turned my attention to the turn signal relay, deciding that for a couple of buck we should at

Puttin on a little shine

least rule it out. Again, no luck, and that's where we've stopped. I need to be in the right frame of mind to start tracing indivdual wires looking for shorts. Definitely a job for next weekend!
The door latches have also snookered us. I've now had both doors completely trimmed out, and then completely disassembled at least twice on each side. Things keep getting jammed or fail, which necessitates yet another disassembly. This latest is the crappy clip that holds the driver's lock in place has come loose, so gain, next weekend I'll be taking that door panel off again.
In the meantime, Daniel and I try to do at least one or two things on the car each day. I'm adamant that he will not get it to a "functional" state and stop working. That's my own bad habit, so we're going to power forward. Today we finally got some time to start wet sanding our paint job. We tackled the trunk lid, and after about 45 minutes it wasn't looking half bad. The down side is that when it's nice and shiny, I can see all of the little divots and blems that I thought I had resolved after weeks of bondo and sanding. Frustrating! However, I continue to remind myself that it's a daily driver, and all done on a budget. Besides, it looks pretty damned good scooting down the road!