Clean Up
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Preface
Before the delivery of my Nova, I had to make preparations to my garage in order to have enough room for everything. One of the improvements was done in April when I rewired the electricity in the garage and the breaker box in the house to allow for 220 volts in order to run my air compressor. After a few phone calls between my dad and other electrical experts, I installed it the correct way.
The next improvement was to repair the leak in my air compressor. This was done in the beginning of May with the expertise of my uncle. I thought it would have been an easy weld to patch a tiny hole, but I was wrong. Long story short, he cut the motor mount bracket and welded a steel plate to cover the entire leaky area.
Repairing my leaky—and apparently partly moldy—roof, was done on my birthday weekend, with the skills, knowledge, and help from my dad. We were both a little sore the next day and I learned a new trade. The most recent improvement which was completed on Saturday before the delivery, was a 9 foot work bench. This, I constructed with the verbal help from my uncle, and a borrowed saw from my other uncle to make a few cuts. Currently, the bench is completely covered with car parts. Perhaps a shelf between the bench and the floor would be a good improvement for extra storage space.
All of the above mentioned people deserve a big thank you for helping me thus far. Someone else I would like to thank is my great uncle who left most of his tool collection to me after he passed away. Without it all, I wouldn't be able to get started with this project.
Post
Today, I went to Harbor Freight to purchase over $100 worth of supplies and tools, including a few wire brushes, mechanic's gloves, safety goggles, and a new air hose and reel. I started my work by vacuuming out the interior and cleaning certain areas of the windows, as shown in one of the above pictures. I also started cleaning up the engine compartment using the wire brushes I had purchased. The first two above pictures are closeups of the engine compartment before I started cleaning.
My brother-in-law spent a lot of time cleaning the engine compartment with the a little help from the wire brush, the air compressor, and the Goof Off that I purchased earlier. Nowhere on the bottle does it say anything about rust removal, but it seemed to have done the trick. I spent some time disassembling a few parts, looking up the parts in a catalog, putting the nuts and bolts into Ziploc bags, and labeling them accordingly.
I removed both inner fender wells and set them on the floor of the garage. I later found out that when my dog got scared when my air compressor kicked on, he bolted out of the garage and he *censored for graphic content* cut his leg on one of the fenders. That incident resulted in a trip to the veterinarian emergency room at 11 at night. He is doing OK now. The five stitches come out in ten to fifteen days.
We also managed to remove the driver's front fender to have better access to the engine compartment. The work that has been done is shown in the photos below.
