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This is an update on skeeter… my old update thread is http://fordfestiva.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=272 (Most of thoz pix are broken links now, but their still on my website) and this thread is basically a continuation of that. This just covers what I’m doin this summer
you can also check out my website, I’ll post this there as well. So lets see… I got out of school 3 weeks ago, end of my first year of college and the finish of my HS career.. yey for me :p first thing I did was make a list of stuff I wanted to do to my car, starting with routine maintenance that I had been putting off while I was buzy w/ school.
Rad Flush/ Refill
So I started by flushing the radiator/block and putting in new coolant… first time I’d ever done it. That took some time b/c I wasn’t sure how to flush the block (still not sure I did it the best way). The coolant runs from the bottom of the radiator up thru the block and back down into the radiator, and so you can’t just drain the block out the bottom b/c of the water pump. What I did in the end was start the engine w/ the top radiator hose disconnected, put the garden hose in the radiator filler cap, and when the engine would get hot enough just let it pump what was in the block out. I did this till the stuff coming out was fairly clear then drained the radiator and filled it up with 100% coolant (figuring the block had almost pure water in it, and the radiator holds a lil less than half of the total amount)… so that was good to get done, seems fine now.
While I was doing that I replace the upper Rad hose b/c it had a large gash in it (wasn’t rlly leaking but wasn’t worth the risk).
Trany fluid
Next I changed the trany fluid. First time I’ve ever done that as well… nothing to talk about there. Drove around a lil to warm it up, drained the old fluid (yuck!! Looked like used engine oil) and put new fluid in.
Front Crank Seal, timing belt, drive belt
Next up came some fun stuff… the whole time I’ve owned this car I had oil spots on the hood and wasn’t sure where it came from. Never gave it much thot, the car didn’t leak enough oil to even notice it over 3-4k miles between oil changes. However a lil while ago I read on the forum somewhere that the symptoms I had were symptoms of a bad front crank seal. I also knew my drive belt was going bad, so I did some research on the parts to find out cost and how much work it would be… I decided it was going to take some time
I bought the parts and was basically waiting for a good time to do it, when I would have a whole day. Friday a week ago I woke up to the phone ringing, and it was my flight instructor canceling my flight lesson for the day: my dad had nothing planned now. My dad was off to work, and I would have preferred if he woulda been around but I was like this is a good chance, lets do it. So the fun began. Everything went very smoothly until I got to removing the crankshaft sprocket bolt. There isn’t enough room to get any of our ratchets in there, so I was using a cresant wrench (not the most ideal tool for the situation) so I tried dropping the engine. I lowered it, and all of a sudden it stopped going down, it was supported on the cross member and I still couldn’t get a ratchet on it! Grr. Tried for a while, jacked it back up and re-installed the motor mount bolt. It was about lunch time by then, so I stopped for a while. Looked thru the manual again, and decided to try ripping the starter out to get at the flywheel… took out the battery, removed the clutch cable, and got the starter out. Got a crowbar in there but couldn’t get it to hold itself in place tight enough. I needed stinkin help! (and I wasn’t going to let my mom, who had just come home, go jamming crowbars in my flywheel ) finally I basically gave up, occupied myself with cleaning up the mess that was all around and wondering around the yard till my dad came home around 5 (I had so much stuff all over me I couldn’t go in the house). When he got home, he jammed the flywheel and I tried to get the bolt to turn. No luck. Get a big ol pipe: finally! It broke loose and after a quarter turn could spin it w/ my fingers. Talk about a pain in the butt… from there I pulled the rest out, took out the old seal, installed new seal, set timing marks, new timing bet on, new drive belt, re-install everything (including starter/ everything else I had ripped apart trying to do it by myself) and finished up around 2am. I needed my car the next morning so I had to finish it! But it was done, and I had a lotta fun.. should go much faster next time tho.Heres a bit of advice that my dad suggested after we loosed that bolt up, so if you didn’t read all of above at least read this (and if you don’t think it would work let me kno): he said “put it in gear, and have some1 stomp the brakes while you turn it.” I was like “duh, that makes so much sense…”. Oh well. next time I may try that.
Ok here are a few pix from that procedure (no pix from the first two). Unfortunately I didn’t take many pics in the middle of this project…
Airbox removed, I also removed the horn later for easier access. Note the sludge on the inside of the lower pass side fender:
Oil on the hood: the tell tale sign that your seal is bad. I had just cleaned this off a few months before, it was much worse a while back:
Sludgy alternator. I’m surprised it still works well enough, guess a thick layer of oil doesn’t affect it much. I still tried to wipe what I could off:
Here it is in the midst of the operation:
Around 1:30-2am, wiped out and glad to be done I got a lil crazy w/ the camera b4 I took a quick shower and headed to bed…
I love my car, but it was deff time for a shower and bed lol :
In the morning I got up, looked things over made sure looked OK, hopped in the car and it started right up and has been running great since
I really love these cars… even *I* can’t mess them up when I’m putting them back together at 1am!Body Work
Well, when I was purchasing some of the other stuff I needed I picked up some bondo. I’d never used the stuff before. Now I wish I would have
ever since I’ve gotten the car its had a number of dents, the worst being the rear left quarter panel. I wish I would have taken a ‘before’ pic, but it was bad… and always leaked. I decided enough with that, hammered it as best I could (for the third time ) and then sanded it down and started bondoing it. 4 layers of bondo later it looked like this:
Add some primer:
I’m very pleased for my first time ever using bondo! The stuff was fairly easy to work with, and I think it did a good job, and it looks better now (better than crinkled rusty metal at least).
So that’s all I’ve done so far this summer w/ skeeter.
Next up: Aspire brake swap (If I can ever get some1 who will do the 16hr round trip drive to OH w/ me… grr I’m impatient), replace FL fender, fix the rest of rust/ ding spots with bondo now that I’m a lil more familiar with it, and then hopfuelly a “$50” paint job! Going to change it to a lil different shade of blue, with black around the bottom… some ppl say they don’t think it’ll look good, others think it’ll look good. Heres a pic of what I’m thinking of, lemekno what ya’ll think. Also still contemplating possibly trying my hand at side skirts… don’t know if it’d be worth it tho.
Sorry for the ubber long post…. I’d b surprised if ny1 actually reads all of this. LoL. I’ll keep updating w/ pix in this thread as the summer rolls on…
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