Friday, August 17, 2012

More Stripping And A Bunch Of Scrubbing

I removed the driver side tire. It was a little tricky without any weight in the engine bay, but I managed with the help of a couple of wheel chocks. 


With the wheel removed I was able to use a wire brush to knock off some of the loose dirt and grime. Here are some before and after pictures.


Notice my finger in the top left corner of this picture. ;)





My next project was to remove the bumper to gain easier access to the front part of the frame.


Bumper is off. There were four bolts on each side of the bumper. You can see the mounting plates in the picture below.


With the bumper out of the way, the only other obstacle from cleaning up the side frame was this v-shaped fender bracket. Two bolts secured it to the fender and one to the frame. I removed the bolt on the frame first. Big mistake! With that bolt removed the fender had absolutely no support and when I tried to remove the two bolts on the fender side, I just about twisted the fender off. I reattached this bolt snugly to the frame and then removed the two outer bolts first.


Picture of bracket removed.


With the bumper out of the way, the hood release shelf plate was really in the way. Since I am going to have this painted with the exterior, I decided to remove it and its bracket to get it out of the way.


After removing these pieces I decided we should paint this whole front area, just not the top ledge of the engine bay.


This is a shot looking up from the bottom of the K-member angle support bracket that was so greasy when we were trying to paint before. I decided it would be easier to remove this, clean it up and paint it as a separate piece.


This is a shot looking down from the top of the K-member angle support bracket area with the bracket now removed. 


I removed the passenger side bracket as well. The passenger side bracket is a little narrower, so they are not mirror pieces. Next on my list was to remove the engine mounts. After doing a little research I determined they can be removed without dropping the A-arms, but it required a little ingenuity.


A little ingenuity and some Hello KITTy duct tape = engine mount removal tool. It took half an hour, but I was able to remove the engine mounts without removing the A-arms.



This is a reference shot of the three fuel lines:
  • The feed line which is 3/8"
  • The return line which is 5/16"
  • The vapor line which is 1/4"


I did a little bit more scrubbing with the wire brush on the K-member. Sara and I are going to hit this hard on Sunday.



Remember that v-shaped bracket I removed from the fender? Before removing it the fender was very solid and sturdy. Now it is as flimsy as an aluminum baking sheet (as Sara put it). Sara suggested I put a sign up as a reminder not to lean against the fender. The last thing I want to do is replace this entire piece.


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