The Last Part

The car has always been missing one of the spring clips that the spare tire cover clips into.

   

Tom Shaughnessy bought a burned series 2 wreck and I asked him if he would salvage one of these springs for me.  He agreed and a few days later a package arrived with both springs from that car.  They were a little worse for wear as you can see the rusty one on the right while I had I bead blasted the one on the left.  As always, there is nothing free from Tom.  Usually it means a favor later, but as you can see, these came postage due.

So after bead blasting and some paint, I put the last (that I know of) missing part on the car.

It's ironic that I'm doing this at the same time I'm taking most everything off the car in preparation for painting.

Well, that wasn't the last part to go on the car.  I was looking through my box of parts to be installed at the right opportunity (things like a NOS water pipe) and found the stainless steel plate that protects the carpet next to the accelerator pedal.  I remember now that when I was replacing the interior carpet, that plate was screwed through the carpet into the sheet metal and one screw wouldn't come out.  So I got out the Sawzall to cut through it.  However, it's dark down there and I didn't grab a light.  So I ended up cutting a slot in the plate.  I had a welder friend fix it up.

This meant that I had to file, sand and polish the front to eliminate the welding marks.  Polishing stainless steel is not my most favorite thing to do, so part way through I set it aside and it went into the parts box to be installed later.  Well, later is finally now.  I finished up the polishing.

I queried Buddy Obara (9667) to see how this plate is attached on his car (multiple Platinum awards).  They're oval Philips head screws with a cup washer.

One thing I didn't want to do was screw back through the sheet metal.  So I used Tinnerman nuts to hold the plate just to the carpet section.  Then I cut off the excess screw length and snapped the carpet back in place.

   

Of course, things weren't quite so simple.  First, I didn't have the right screws nor Tinnerman nuts, so a trip to the hardware store was necessary.  Then, one of the snaps on the floor board was missing so I had to replace it.  Two of the hidden snaps came apart when I removed the carpet piece that I was working on.  In addition, one of its snaps was missing on the transmission housing and when I put it in, the snap was in the wrong place in the carpet and had to be moved.  So two hours doing little things properly in order to accomplish what I thought would be an hour job.