No rest for the wicked as work continues turning this pig into much more appealing bacon... Here's where we sit after the first week.
Replacing the drivers side door was pretty high on my list - it was a big job that just needed to be done, so I figured why not do it next. While I've never removed a door before, I do have a Bachelor in Engineering so come on, how hard can it be? Turns out not hard at all. It was pretty straight forward to remove, just unplug/unclip all of the cables, run them back through the rubber grommet, unbolt all of the accessories (central locking, windows, power motors etc) and then unbolt the door itself.
That said, I still had to remove the front fender to get to half of the bolts, but once that was done it was indeed pretty smooth sailing. I have heard that re-aligning the new door can be quite tricky in terms of getting the latches to line up, so I also took the precaution of spray painting over the old hinges which would give me an outline to help line up the new door properly.
Couldn't resist the opportunity to sit in a car without a door though... I've never been in a situation where such a thing is possible! I must admit, it felt very strange looking out and seeing... well, everything really. I can imagine that the advantages for motor racing would be many, primarily being able to see the apex of a corner directly instead of trusting that it will be there. I then thought that the costs would outweigh the benefits, as any hard left-hander could potentially through you out of the car... Then I started off down the Mad Max route, picturing many many things... A boy can dream, and dream I did :)
Part of this job included swapping over the lock from the old door to the new one so that I could still use my key to get into the car - a pretty important step I'm sure you'd agree. It was only after I removed the handle from the old door did I realise just how messed up the old door was.
New door fitted!!! I will admit, it doesn't look very new at all thanks to it being a test panel, but it lined up beautifully with the handle and locks working as they should. It also allowed me to picture the whole car in that colour, and I've gotta say, I'm really excited to see how she comes together over the coming weeks/months :) :) :)
From there it was simply a case of re-installing the wires and accessories. I got quite lucky in that the replacement door already came with the internal door handle, as well as all of the mechanisms, rods and latches that are required to allow a door to do what a door is supposed to do, which made my job incredibly easy. Dealing with a bunch of steel rods in a cramped space with a hand as big as mine is not exactly pleasant... so to be able to bypass that completely was a very pleasant surprise.
From here I moved onto the passengers side to address a faulty power window motor that died about a month ago. When I was originally started planning everything, I was only chasing a drivers side door but ended up getting both a drivers and a passengers because the seller wouldn't let one go by itself - it was both or none. While the drivers door only really came as a shell, the passengers came with everything - mirror, motors, glass, regulators etc. I was originally looking at selling it as a complete door but in hindsight I'm really glad that never came off! This meant I had a whole new power window mechanism to transplant into the existing door.
Ideally you use the motor to put the glass in such a position so you can access the bolts that secure the glass to the motor so you can remove it - given that I had a dead motor, I unfortunately did NOT have that luxury (sad panda) and instead had to undo 4 bolts with a 10mm spanner a quarter turn at a time... all the while jamming my hand into the most uncomfortable position I could fathom just to reach the damn things.
Needless to say I tested the new mechanism before I installed it... Great Success!!!
Gotta love older cars... They have so many flat surfaces that just turn into useful storage areas :) although apparently not by me... Katie was cleaning her car at the time, so sure, go for it =P
The next item on my agenda to address was the abysmal interior. The idea here was that if I could at least get it clean early on in the piece, it would allow whatever death and pestilence that had worked its way in over the years to properly air out. This becomes even more relevant given that I'm buying all new carpets for when I piece her back together, so I'd really appreciate it if I could start fresh and turn the interior into a place I'd rather be, instead of have to be.
I started off with getting all of the seats and interior plastics out in the hope that the carpet would just lift out, but no, Nissan in their infinite wisdom decided to make sure that the carpet never moved, even in the most extreme of circumstances. They ran it completely under the dash - to the point that it ran both over and through some brackets, and required others to be completely removed to pull the carpet back. (Sigh) guess what that means...
... dash completely out so I could remove the freaking thing. Oh goody.
Seeing the carpet in its entirety under some proper light made me realise just how poor a condition it's in. Those stains you see are permanent, with dirt ingrained in almost every other surface. This photo really doesn't do it justice.
The underside showed a much more dire situation - half of that padding was still sodden from rain we had back in January, with a fair section also full of mold.
Pulling it out showed me an interior that couldn't have been less hygienic if you tried.
This picture affirms the notion behind this whole endeavor - it's no wonder why the interior smelt so bad!!! Possibly the most disgusting bit was actually having to get back in there, and your feet just slid thanks to the grease, grime, sodden moisture and general crap that had accumulated over the years. Once you got out, you left yellow foot prints on the garage floor... Woot. Certainly made me think back to the amount of time I spent on that carpet back when I had all of those electrical faults... *shudders*
I couldn't ignore the fact though that I had a completely stripped interior (sunroof included) ready to start cleaning, so it was a necessary evil.
It's amazing what you find when you have a completely bare interior that hasn't been cleaned in probably ever. Take this house key for instance...
...or a random hole that has been cut into the C-Pillar for no reason that comes to mind. Amongst the gunk there was also a ridiculous number of balls from some unfortunate ball bearing that lost its guts, 3 loose random screws (all in the one place strangely enough), some broken glass and a 10c coin. Not even enough to get a soft serve from Maccas for my troubles :(
So here we have all of the interior out of the car and stacked 'neatly' just to get it out of the garage. A literal 'Pile of Shit' if you will.
And so the cleaning began. First with a scraper to remove the padding left over from the carpet, then with detergent and water and a sponge to remove what I could of the surface slime (scourer if necessary). Toweled dry, then attacked with a degreaser/multi-purpose spray to try and clean what was left. You can see the difference between the left side (half-cleaned) and the right side (not cleaned at all) above - what a difference, and this was only after using detergent.
This was after cleaning just one half of the car...
But you cannot argue with those results :) It certainly smells much fresher, looks much fresher... and gives me the opportunity to start afresh. I won't be re-installing any of the interior unless I have to to move her, simply because I want to give it every chance to wave goodbye to whatever foul ju-ju has been going on since 1993.
At some point I'll also be tracking down some dry ice to remove all of that sound deadening. Quite simple really, you basically snap freeze it with the dry ice, bash it with a mallet and it shatters - simple :) The goal here is that all of that sound deadening adds a fair whack of weight to the car - weight that I can happily do without.
So that's what has gone on in the last week... slow progress but sure progress. Stay tuned for another update at the end of this long weekend to see what else I've managed to tick off the list!
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