Rear End Woes And Sealing The Crack

Sunday morning started well enough with Sara's dad arriving early to take pictures as we dropped the rear end. I started out by working on removing anything else I could get off of the rear end area before Troy called. 

I removed the rubber stops for the axle on either side. Each rubber stop was secured with two bolts.

Here are the stops after I removed them.

I unclipped the brake line hose from the frame of the car.

The brake hose I unclipped is the hose that runs down to the brake hard line running across the top of the axle.

This is the clip that was securing that brake hose. Once removed the hose easily pulled out of the bracket.

Next I cut the passenger side brake hard line.

I decided with both sides cut I could remove the hard line running across the top of the axle.

The hard line is secured with clips, two of which have bolts that needed to be removed. The others were simply bent open.

You can see here the path the hard line takes over the top of the axle. 

Here is the hard line once it was removed. You can see the hose that feeds this hard line. This is the hose I unclipped earlier.

While working on removing the brake line I happened to notice a spot of original black paint which had been preserved by the fender molding. I got to thinking that I am not limited to just black when restoring KITT's body, so I decided to see what he thought. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Hey KITT, I was thinking maybe this time around we should try for something a little brighter...bolder. They are making cars in hundreds of colors now. We could paint you as if you are a show car. 

KITT: Well I have no intention of ever becoming one.  It was Henry Ford who said any color as long as it’s black, and I agree.  Elegant, quiet, basic black.

I took a putty knife and a wire brush to the rear differential cap to clean off some of the crud. If you compare this picture to one of the earlier pictures above, you can see what a difference the wire brush made. It still has a long way to go.

It was at this point I decided that Troy was not going to show up, so I decided to work on sealing the crack in the plastic fuel filler neck shroud. 

I pushed the crack together and placed a piece of duct tape over the top to hold it.

The I flipped the shroud over and clamped it to the work bench. Since I cleaned it already yesterday, I used some lacquer thinner over the spot to be sealed and repaired. The lacquer thinner will help to open the pores and promote adhesion.

I then cut a piece of PowerMesh the size of the repair area.

I traced this square with a permanent marker.

I opened up the POR-Patch and laid down a bead of POR-Patch diagonally across the area I had traced.

Using a putty knife I spread it out evenly.

Then using my fingers (I was wearing nitrile gloves) I pressed the PowerMesh down on top of the POR-Patch, allowing it to soak through the PowerMesh. This worked the way I thought the PowerMesh was going to work with the POR-15. There was enough POR-Patch to completely saturate the PowerMesh. In fact I did not need to add any more. I removed the corner clamp seen in the picture below to allow the shroud to return to its natural curve. I left this to dry.

I decided to scrub on the two heat shields I removed Saturday. I went outside because it was so nice out to scrub on these, and the wind helped carry away the dust.

When I had scrubbed all the loose dirt off, I cleaned both heat shields with MarineClean and a scrub brush. I set them outside in the sun to dry.

Here are pictures of the heat shields after I cleaned them.

After I was finished in the garage I placed an order for another gallon of MarineClean and a quart of Prep and Ready. I used the last of our MarineClean on the above heat shields.