Garage Stereo

Two weeks ago I was driving back from Lowes when I saw a sign for a garage sale, it was in a division just off of ours that is much older. Usually that will mean people have lived there longer and had more time to collect stuff. The house had stuff all over the lawn and the driveway along with a slightly pissed off woman who's husband was not around to "help sell his junk". This enabled me to get three oak kitchen lower cabinets for $20.00 which I plan to use in the laundry room to make an area to fold clothes. A Hon 5 drawer vertical file cabinet for $20.00 and a Kenwood reciever, two Aiwa speakers, a subwoofer and a magnification light for another $20.00.

The garage stereo sounds great now.

I also purchased a ceiling fan for the living room. I had been looking at different ones online but was concerned that the standard 54" fan would not look good in a room that big.  Lowes had a 60" Hunter on sale and I was so impressed with how it was built and its looks I went back and bought another for our bedroom.

This weekend I spend working on the Corvette again. The passenger door has never fit properly and I had never taken the time to look at it. By loosening the hinges I was able to rotate the bottom of the door inward and taking the door panel off let me adjust the striker. Now instead of it sticking out 3/16" along the aft edge from the center down, its nice and flush with the rear quarter. It also fixed a clearance problem the car always has had with the passenger front fender.

I also decided to clay-bar the car, the paint on it had become very rough to the touch and after hitting it with a clay-bar I understood why. The pictures below are the clay-bar before use and after going over a one square foot area. Sorry for how blurry they are it was difficult to take them with my left hand.

Now the paint on the car feels like cold glass, its amazing what this clay-bar does and how easy it is. Speaking of glass I did the back window and the windshield with the same results. The clay-bar works great on glass and gets it amazingly clean. We also used it on one of the house windows and it removed all the water spots as easy as if I had wiped them with a paper towel.

Radiator Support

This weekend I had to replace the radiator support in the Corvette. GM lists this part as a "skid plate" but makes it to self destruct upon contact with anything. It does not appear to be a bad design but more so that it is manufactured poorly. The design of it would appear that it is to protect the bottom nose of the car from parking barriers etc. it also serves as the lower radiator support.

I took the Corvette into the dealership two weeks ago to have some things looked at, one being a popping sound from the rear suspension. The dealership found the lower radiator support broken, told me it was abused and would not be covered by warranty and that they would not be able to find the popping sound until it was fixed, which they would do for the sum of $380.00. I bought one from a GM dealer online for $130.00 and replaced it in a few hours.

My frustration with the whole thing is how poorly the support is welded. It obviously has some damage from rubbing against a parking barrier, but it would not have failed had the welds been adequate. Looking at them its apparent that there was no penetration on the welds and they have excessive porosity.

This is a picture of the end of the support upside down and the "fang" that sticks down below the nose of the car. I took it to show the amount of "abuse" the "skid plate" had sustained.

These are pictures of the poor welds that failed on the part.

Since there is no other damage than the welds pulling apart I plan to have it re-welded and use it as a backup for when the new one I installed does the same thing.

Project Garage: Week 8

 This weekend I got a lot of stuff done but not much of what I had planned to do.

I finished installing the pegboard and lights in the cabinets. The one to the left is all house items, the one in the center is mostly yard equipment and the one on the right is all automotive. I still have a lot of items to load into it,

 

I needed to finish the pinstripe in the double bay and behind the work benches. While I had them pulled out from the wall I decided to mount some T8 lights on them and change all the outlets around them from twist locks to standard plugs. This took the better part of the day because the benches had small boxes and were all wired with 10 gauge wire.

I still haven't made a decision on pneumatic lines and will probably wait a bit longer, I think I will work on the lighting next. My last garage has 8ea 4ft 4 bulb fixtures. I think for this one I am going to use the 4ft end to end fixtures. Right now it has 2ea 4ft 2 bulb builder fixtures and is very dimly lit.