May 7, 2011

Well, truth be told I've spent a lot of hours with the car, but every time until today, I would forget the darn camera at home. I finally got a chance to get some shots of some pieces I scored off of a donor car. I would have kept it longer to part it out, but city ordinance requires every vehicle parked in front of a home to have a license plate, and I was not about to get that for a donor to be parted out. Not to mention, my brothers neighborhood is very watchful for "eyesores" and the garage is full with my project, so it had to go fast.

Anyway, bought a 1990 hatch with a badly blown head gasket. It still ran and everything, but compression was very obviously effected on the two mile drive back to my brothers house with it. I was almost considering switching bodies for the S13bay project, but when I started looking close at some parts, there was some paint over-spray on a few pieces behind the driver side fender. When I took it off, it was obvious why. The fender frame was crumbled and pulled into position so as to fit a fender back into place. A couple of the headlight mounting bracket bolts were toast and some twisting in there too. I was happy to keep the shell I currently have. I ended up swapping the hatch I got earlier with the hatch from this car since the other one had a good bit of dents from what I believe to be where someone stood on it and broke the third brake light. I also scored another set of good tail lights, both headlights and mounting brackets with working motors for them, a front bumper, both fenders, and a nearly new brake master cylinder. The brake booster looked brand new too, but I didn't have the patience to take the dash items out of the way to get to it. I went ahead and snapped some shots of what I have.

You'll notice that the car is now fully primed. The past couple of weeks I had been sanding and checking all body panels for any prior damage, i.e. any body filler anywhere. I was pleased to find NONE whatsoever. I laid down a single layer of primer to protect the metal and moved on. Still waiting for a good time to get that front fender section welded in, I don't have a car hauler trailer and they are costing too much to rent here and there to scrap all these cars I've been getting, so I'm hoping somewhere down the line I can borrow one to get it over to my friends place to weld it on. On to what you really want, here are pictures of my new pieces.