Got my new Makita drill from Home Depot online this week. It's a basic corded model that hopefully will last me another 25 years like the last one.
I started today by removing the stripes from the hood. These were the last of the decals that needed to be removed. I got about half of it done before my first 3M stripe wheel was worn down to nothing. I'd ordered a new one from Amazon this week so I was able to finish the job.
After I got the hood done, I decided to power wash the engine compartment to see if I could knock a layer of grease and gunk off. My driveway is not flat, and the car was pointed nose-first into the garage, so spent a good 45 minutes moving everything around. I put the car back on the ground and rolled it around until it was pointing the other direction. I used Palmolive with my power washer and for the most part, it cleaned up about as well as I could have expected. The car was previously undercoated so there is a lot of overspray that has turned brown over the years. It's not terrible, but it's not great either. The steering and AC boxes are still installed in the car and I need to remove those if I want to completely scrub and repaint in there. I'm still undecided. It looks decent, but not perfect. Again, this won't be a show car so while I want it looking nice, I don't need it so nice that you could eat off of it.
Once I did the power wash, I rolled the car back in and used my Shop-Vac in blower mode to dry the engine bay out. Again, it looks pretty decent. There's a picture over in the photo gallery for today.
Next I removed the fenders. Not surprisingly, someone had incorrectly jacked the car on both sides using the lower fender support and bent both of them horizontally, parallel to the ground. I had to beat the plate back vertical so I could get the lower fender bolts out.
The car came from the factory with the U75 power antenna option which was not working. The mast was bent in a few places and could not be pushed down manually and. Furthermore, the previous owner had installed an Alpine head unit which, I suspect, wouldn't operate the antenna anyway. I went to disconnect the antenna motor from inside the car and found that whom ever installed the Alpine head just cut the antenna motor wires under the dash. I was a little annoyed by that at first, but in the end, I'll be replacing the mast and the antenna motor anyway, which comes witha new connector and wires, so it doesn't really matter. It just would have taken two extra minutes to just unplug the motor versus snipping the wires. I'll be buying a new motor and mast assembly.
I also wanted to remove the engine harness connector that's one the passenger side right next to the antenna motor so I could remove the remaining engine wiring, but my fear of breaking the plastic retaining tabs won out and I just left it alone. The last thing I need to do is break the tabs on a major harness connector like that.
The interesting find of the day was that the last six digits of the VIN were stamped into the forward edge of the upper fender support on the passenger side. GM definitely put it there and I didn't realize they did anything like that. Maybe a theft recovery deal? I don't know, but interesting none the less.