Story of my life: April 2008

Valve cover etc.

So after a few weeks of not working on my car at all, for various reasons, I've had the energy to do a little filler and paint work on my valve cover. Here, I've done a bit of fiberglass patching to mix a missing chunk of the plug wire cover, and ground out the TWIN CAM 20 and Toyota Emblem.

Same for the cam gear cover, the center was cracked, so it's ground down and fixed with some epoxy.

Here's a shot of the 16 Valve water pump backing. I've made the heater block off plate and painted the sucker purple..

Now with everything sanded down, I did a little bit of polyester filler to try and get everything decently flush

Then a silver base was sprayed out of a spray can...

Next top coated with this purple anodize paint that's from Duplicolor I think. I kinda dug the color so I went to town with it.

Same goes with the cam gear cover.

For the valve cover itself. Andy sandblasted the cover for me and I sprayed out this gray/silver paint on it. I think it actually looks pretty decent. Kinda ricer'ish but .... who cares?

and now some photos of Andy's pickup. He's finally had some motivation to work on it: The interior's been painted for the most part, well at least the interior panels that are metal.

Some shots of how the rear of the pickup's going to look. Running those stupid big dually tires he's had left over from his days of owning a dually.

Hopefully after beerfest this weekend in SFO, next week will be a week of body work before we wrap up the semester and the Cortina comes home for the summer for a new engine.

Some striping

Right side rear quarter

This week got me started on the right side 1/4 panel. I knew there was going to be a bit of damage, but I didn't realize just how bad.... started to grind out the panel..and I notice filler. Ok so to this point, there's been filler all over the car..but this one surprised me

Tried to take this photo, so the green/white is filler, then pink filler, then gray is filler, finally metal peaking thru...

the bottom rear of the panel will probably need a big patch, I'll have to grind back the old patch panel to see how bad it is...you can see the madness on the floor...

Slowly but surely, the filler/paint is coming off

this is a mid way clean up I tried to get the tool in for a reference but I honestly think there was at least a gallon of filler on just that panel.

So this is the damage done on the panel, it looked like the area just above the center of the wheel well was pushed in about 2 inches. Instead of fixing it...the last owner just sculpted bondo.

Another shot of the filler.

we used a hydraulic press to push out most of the major part of the damage. worked from the outside in, pushes here and there, with a bit of hammer work, and both sides, left and right 1/4 are now where they should be.

Another shot of the fix still needs nail gun work, but the major section is out.

No school for another week due to work stuff, so maybe I'll work on the engine during the week.

Engine and fish

So some shots of the rear of the head..

Here's the shot of the plate that goes over the back of the head

The AN weld in bungs, for the loop on the head. The heads been drilled for the 16 valve water pump set up, but the hole looked a bit small so we're welding in the bung with a 180 degree fitting to flow more water.

Here's what it'll look like when welded.

and now, it's time for our fish. Here's our ghetto filter set up, just a harbor freight water pump going into a Hydro Pond 4 Filter, trickling down to a trash can full of Lava rock to filter it.