I didn't feel like getting to dirty today so I tacked a bunch of smaller jobs today.
First up was getting the carpet glue off the center console. I pulled the carpet off some weeks ago but the glue stayed behind. I started off using my heat gun to soften the glue and then scraping with a plastic razor, but that just caused the glue to smear all over and made a bigger mess. What worked best was spraying the glue with Goo Gone, waiting a few minutes, then scraping with a plastic razor. The Goo Gone softeed the glue enough to let me scrape it off with a razor, but still left a thin layer the console. I the sprayed the remaining glue again, scraped again with the plastic razor and then used a towel with more Goo Gone to rub the rest off. It worked amazingly well. The Goo Gone was pretty oily (but had a pleasant citrus odor, :) ) so I cleaned the console with soap and water afterwards and dried it to see where I'd missed.
One of the air ducts on the console separated when I removed the console, so I need to glue that back on at some point.
The radio and console support brackets had a coasting of rust on them so I hit them the wire wheel to clean them up. The radio ones look like new. I forgot to take a before pictures or I'd have posted it. The middle and rear console support brackets were hard to get at with the wheel mounted on my drill but I cleaned them up as best as I could. They're riveted on and I didn't feel like drilling them out and removing them because nobody will ever see those brackets.
Speaking of my drill, it died today. It's an old Makita DP3720 that I've had for something like 25 years. My dad gave it me when I was a kid so I was kind of bummed. I think the trigger switch broke since I set it down working, and picked it up two seconds later to continue with what I was doing and it did nothing.
Before the drill checked out, I finished removing the lower stripes from the driver door and removed the black decal from the back bumper using the 3M stripe wheel.
Before taking the decal off the bumper, I had to remove the Z28 emblem. Mine was wrinkled in the middle and nobody makes reproductions. I scored a used replacement on eBay, but figured I would try to salvage mine by gently warming it to see if it would flatten out. I used the heat gun to warm up the emblem to remove it, and sure enough, as soon as I hit it with the heat, the wrinkle went away. I was able to pull the emblem off in tact and will reuse it.
Next up was to finish removing the lower driver door stripes. This led to the first interesting find of the day. It looks like the driver door was repainted at some point. The stripe wheel is pretty soft, but ended up removing some paint. This was my first clue something was wrong. As I went along, I started seeing patches of what looks like red primer, and underneath that was what I believe is the factory paint. It's easy to see with the naked eye but was hard to capture with the camera. I posted to pictures. Click here and here. The top coat appeared to be a blue with a teal tint to it and the paint underneath seemed to be a brighter blue that, to me, looked like what the factory did. I don't remember the original owner every saying the car was painted, but I'm going to see if I can find out.
Next up was to disassemble the rear bumper and deck lid. This was pretty straight forward. A few nuts on either side and a bunch of push pin connectors on top and bottom on the cover came right off. This led to my second interesting discovery of the day: the impact absorbers were riveted to the car. I was expect them to be bolted on. My dad and I had to replace the front end of an '85 Z28 my mom had years ago and I'm certain the absorbers were bolted on and not riveted. But that was also 27 years ago, so maybe I'm just remembering it wrong.
With the bumper off, I decided to remove the rear wiper system and the rear wing parts. This led to my first "big duh" of the day. I looked at the wiper arm for about 20 minutes trying to figure out how to remove it. Stumped, I pulled out the shop manual which basically said to pull it straight up. It's a friction fit with a serrated shaft. Armed with that knowledge, I pulled out my forked-pry tool and had the arm off in 10 seconds.
What the shop manual didn't say was how to remove the wiper motor. The motor shaft sticks up through the decklid and there was no room to maneuver the motor out. As I tried to bend the motor bracket to make room, the two rivets holding it to the decklid snapped, and the whole assembly came out. I guess that's what GM intended. The wiper motor bracket was a brilliant orange from rust, so I hit that with the wire wheel and cleaned it up as best I could. Click here for the before and here for the after. I'll paint this before I re-install it. Again, this is one of those parts nobody will ever see.
The last bit of rear disassembly was removing the rear wing parts. This leads to my second "big duh" of the day. The side pieces are held on by three bolts. The lower and middle ones were easy to get at from the inside, but the last one was up and underneath the hatch opening. I could feel it, but I could not for the life of me get a socket on it. I tried everything, short and long extensions, universals, etc. I could not get at that upper nut. I kept thinking there was no way the assembly line guys went through this. After 20 or so minutes of fiddling around, I realized there was a body plug on the outside, behind the tail lights. I popped that off and sure enough -- the stud and nut were right there.
I also ran into problem with decklid wing. Three of the nuts were frozen on the studs, the studs backed out of the wing itself and the holes in the wing stripped. I'll need to fix that later.
The back end is more or taken apart now and that's as far as I'm taking it for paint.
The last tasks for today were with the tranny. I pulled off the torque converter and removed the trans cross member. I also removed the rear hanger bracket. I also took a looked at the trim tag. One corner was bent and messed up, so I couldn't tell what the first number was. It looks like the whole tag is "x2 CO 13295" -- I assume the "x" is supposed to be an "8" for 1982.