The Door Closes, and Other Successes

Beautiful weather provided an opportunity for Tom and Ariel to spend lots of time working on me. Many items on the To Do list got crossed off and everyone in the family except for Ariel’s oldest sister got in on the fun.

On Saturday Mikhaila (Ariel’s youngest sister) painted the primed floor patches black while Ariel cut fiberglass patches for Tom to POR-15 into place patching the last of the holes in my floor. Then they traded Mikhaila for Victoria and the three of them installed my rear window. All three now have black spots on their hands from the NAPA Window-Weld that was used to seal the window and gasket to the car. Tom removed the stainless trim covering my rocker panels (see following picture) and cleaned out the drain areas of my front fenders. He applied POR-15 to the rust that had been hiding under the strips. Ariel installed the new weatherstrip on my passenger door. The big test was to see if the door would close with the new, thicker weatherstrip. It did, but barely. By Sunday morning the weatherstrip had relaxed enough that it closed nicely.

Yesterday Tom was finally able to adjust the driver’s door so that it would fully close with the new weatherstrip. He then dug through his collection of spare parts and found two more rubber plugs to put in the last two open holes in my floor. Also from a box of parts he found a good thermostat and replaced the failed one on the passenger side. The thermostat controls the opening of the damper door – when it’s closed the engine heats up faster (a good thing). He also pulled out the old heater hose from the passenger side, and he and Loriann (Ariel’s mom), using an electrician’s fishwire (see picture), pulled a new one into place through the passage in the rocker panel.