Day Thirteen

Happy Halloween!! Today was a good day! Everything went so smoothly! We got the dash installed, the steering column put back, replaced the two rear speakers and put in the new carpet! I can hardly stop smiling!

She looks like an entirely different car! I am going to have to make a note of the mileage though. She actually has about 116,000 miles but the new cluster's odometer says 147,000. I will have to write that down somewhere, or else I will just never know how many miles she actually has. Like I care anyway =) I think she is happier now too because it used to be when I let her sit for even a couple of days, the motor would fight and not run very well at first.... Through this entire process, the motor has purred like a kitten every time! You go girl!

Better view of the new carpet. So Beautiful!!

Day Twelve

The transfer. The object closest to you in the picture is my old dash. The one that you see Dad working on is my new one. This is the transfer process. We are transferring because the new dash that we initially used turned out to have a big owwie on the top of it. Neither of us noticed it until we got the whole thing (harness and all) installed in the car. I was a little disappointed, but I was just going to have it fixed by a local upholstery person, but since we had to take the entire thing out again, we decided to switch back to my old dash and just paint it black.

That's a lot of wires!! It is so neat though, that since we have been messing with these wires so much, I know so much more about my car and understand it so well. Not perfectly of course, but pretty well =)

We have a bumper and taillights!! She is starting to look more like a car again! This is getting exciting!!!

Update on the harness

Well, it turns out that the harness is NOT usable. Even after getting an instrument cluster that matched that particular harness, things just wouldn't work right. As I said before, the car starts and the big things work, but just not everything. With the new instrument cluster, only the temperature gauge and the oil pressure gauge were functioning. The speedometer, tachometer, gas gauge and amp gauge were just pegged out. Bad news for us because now we have to take that harness all the way back out. I purchased a wiring harness specifically for my type of car (1998, 3.8 V6) today and it should work out very nicely. I also bought a new instrument cluster since we fried mine =) Even with the set backs, this has been such a fun adventure and I am totally looking forward to the final product! I will post more pictures when I can. I will be going back out on Wednesday to do some more work. Hopefully painting more pieces.

Day Ten and Eleven

Just one picture for two days, weird I know. The reason for this is because I don't think anyone would be interested in pictures of a bunch of wires. =)

We got the new dash and wiring harness installed on day ten. Day eleven was a bit of a setback though. Come to find out, the wiring harness that I bought is out of a 2000 Camaro, not a 1998 so we had a little problem. Evidently, the 98 Camaro had a little bit different instrument cluster then a 2000, so when we started the car, it got fried. This is all due to my ignorance and not actually asking what year the car was that the harness came out of. I assumed it was a 98 as well (since everything else matched) and didn't even bother to ask. I don't know if it would have mattered anyway since I was pretty adamant about having power windows which would not have been possible with my own wiring harness. Fortunately, most every thing else works fine. Besides a few small things that will have to be worked out. The car runs, heater and a/c work, transmission etc, therefore, this harness will be usable. Good thing too because neither Dad or I want to take the dash back out and exchange harnesses again! Next step....new instrument cluster!

Day Nine

Second time's a charm! Dad (while I was at work) sanded all the way back down to the primer and started over.

By the time I got out to the house, it was time to try again. I was so nervous!! Dad had cleaned out all of the air lines to be SURE that we wouldn't have a water problem this time, and we didn't! We are back to black, minus the dimples.

The lighting wasn't quite as good this time (it was dark outside) so the pictures didn't turn out quite as good, but you still get the idea. It looks great!

Day Eight - Part 2

A day of excitement loaded with disappointment =(

It is finally time for the body to get painted! First comes the black sealer to make sure the new paint sticks nicely and to cover up all of that red and green on the inside! Looks great so far!

I know, wow right? The paint looks like a mirror, but looks can be SOOOO deceiving!

Just to see the whole thing black was so amazing! Even with the bad news that was about to come, I still couldn't wipe the smile off of my face!

Here comes the bad news. I don't know if you can tell from this photo, (unless you can enlarge it and zoom in) but there was water in the air lines. There are dimples or water spots all over this beautiful new paint!! If you are able to zoom, it will look like hundreds of little white spots all over the paint. It was so sad to discover this, but all you can do is just be positive and hope that tomorrow will be a better day.

Day Eight - Part 1

Paint Removal! Unfortunately it has come down to this. The paint on the bumpers and rear fascia have just too many layers of paint on them. This was a lot of work but it will certainly pay off in the end. By doing this we are taking away any possibility of the old paint breaking loose beneath, and that is worth every hour this took! =)

This is the rear bumper. Come to find out, it is not the original. It was black. The paint remover can only remove one (in this case two because the paint was so bad) at a time. That leaves us with the original black paint that we will be able to sand down to a paintable finish.

Back bumper again.

This is the front bumper. Shows the paint remover at work. Very interesting! Looks like some sort of science experiment and it burns the crap out of you if you get it on your skin! I also discovered that it isn't very good on contact lenses either =) No worries, there were no injuries. A little over spray got around my sun glasses and blew into my eye. Needless to say, I couldn't really see out of that contact for the rest of the day. The drive home wasn't fun either!

The front bumper after paint remover. That red paint on the grill area just DOESN'T want to come off! Dad must of done a really good job painting that part when we put the ground kit on. =)

Day Seven

Progress!! The hood and two sections of the ground kit got painted today!

The hood looks like a mirror! The cloudy spots that you see are just reflections of all of the sanding dust in the air. The hood does not have any cloudy spots on it =)

The ground effects.

The car itself pretty much looks the same. We removed the window washer fluid reservoir, the air intake, windshield wipers and the cowl. All of those things had to be removed so we could paint all of that wonderful green that you see on the front =)

Day Six

We got a little bit of primer sprayed and sanded today. This primer's purpose is to fill sanding scratches. There are a lot of these since we had to use large grit sand paper to "shuck" the bad paint off.

There were so many layers of paint and the final layer (red) was painted so badly that it just wasn't sticking anymore.

The hood got some primer too.

Day Five

Notice anything missing?

We didn't do much today. Actually, I didn't do ANYTHING, but Dad removed the dash. We determined that it had to come out too since we are changing the entire wiring harness. We also discovered that it is the wrong color. All this time, I thought that my dash and center console were black. Boy was I wrong! The new interior that we got is black, my dash and console are GREY! The dash would have needed to be changed, wire harness or not, for this reason. It would have looked very tacky to leave the grey dash and have everything else be black.

Now it really looks like a sled =)

New Interior!

I know it looks kind of scary right now....but this is her new interior. I went and picked it all up today. Unfortunately it rained all day so everything is soaked. Gonna take lot of cleaning and a lot of lysol to get this stuff presentable =)

My new wiring harness is part of this mess. I bought it so I could put in power windows and mirrors. Looks like that dash is going to have to come out after all =)

Another view of the harness and the rest of the mess =)

The seats. Once I get them cleaned up, they are going to be just beautiful! They have been sitting in a wrecked Camaro out at the salvage yard for a couple of months now, so they don't look the greatest, but it's nothing that a little leather treatment can't handle =)

Day Four

I don't have any photos of the car today since it pretty much looks the same. Today's agenda was SAND SAND SAND, so I posted a picture of what sanding for 8 hours will do to your fingers. I didn't realize that I had sanded through my skin until about the 7th hour. To answer the burning question...Why wasn't I wearing gloves??? Details, that's why. It's hard to get into all of those little spots when you are wearing gloves. Because of the state the car is in, detail is extremely important. I was willing to trade the skin on my fingers for detail. No I am not crazy....just determined =)

The Re-vamp Project - Day Three

Tear-down and Sand

She is now pretty much a shell of a car. There wouldn't be anything left her if not for the motor, drive-train and dash.

Now that she is bare, the real sanding has begun. This is going to be key to this project because as I mentioned before, the previous paint job was done so carelessly.

This picture is a little dark because I had to take it without the flash. The flash was picking up all of the little paint particles in the air and reflecting them back at me =)

As you can see here =) No there is nothing wrong with the camera, just lots of paint dust in the air. Dad and I both neglected to wear masks this evening and I went to bed with a terrible headache! I have learned my lesson! You bet your butt I will be wearing one on Sunday!

My little sled! We have removed all of the interior for two reasons. One, the car in green underneath. Two, I am getting all new black interior! Including black leather seats! It is going to be so beautiful when we are done!

The Re-vamp Project - Day Two

Tear-down continues....

She looks about the same from the front except that she is just a bit taller and has no tires =) This makes her so much easier to work since you don't have to be practically sitting on the ground!

Got that bumper off and boy is she dirty under there! Thank goodness no one I know lives on dirt roads anymore! Also as you can see....all of the interior has now been removed short of the dash. That may even have to come out too, we will see.

Got started on the sanding portion of the job. This car is going to be a tough one in that department since there are so many layers of paint and so much red overspray.

This side looks pretty normal besides the fact that there are no tires and the ground kit is no more.

This is her bad side =) To do list for tomorrow? Remove hatch, doors, and sand sand sand!!

The Re-vamp Project - Day One

The tear-down process begins.

We started with taking off the easiest stuff, the bumper, fenders, headlights and hood. Of course, everything is green under the hood too. More work for us, YAY!

We were only able to get the taillights and the rear fascia tonight since the underside of the bumper is pretty much impossible to get to without the car being on stands.

We were also unable to get the entire ground kit for this same reason. The screws are not accessible with the back tires on.

The bad door panel was the first to come off. Good riddance to bad rubbish!!!

All of her parts and pieces.......

The story continues....

Approx. one year later......back in the shop we go! This time to install a new ground effects kit since there was only half of the current one left from the accident. Yes, I drove around for a little over a year with half of a ground kit =) I have seen people do worse =) Anyway...this was a fun project. I was hoping that at this time Dad and I would be painting her black, but "no time" says Dad, so I settle for the ground kit.

The reason for all of the deconstruction is because at this point, some of the red paint had already begun to deteriorate. We painted all of the really bad parts and left everything else for another day.

She sure did look gorgeous! Unfortunately we painted her with one-stage urethane thinking that we would be painting her black with-in the next year or two. One-stage paint is cheap...and not very good quality. Believe me, it didn't last. I suppose you can see that for yourself in the "meet my camaro" post. =)

The white taillights are also no more. The lenses started to yellow and separate from the actual light, so they had to go. I like the factory style taillight so much better anyway =)

Just looks so pretty!

This is the result. Her confidence was just soaring! (Mine too!) =) Little did we both know, this project would look like child's play compared to the project we will undergo later!

How the Story Began.....

Welcome to your new home! Kind of. More like...welcome to Dad's home =) This is where the story begins. I bought her in May 2003 to replace my beloved 1991 Camaro that was just getting too old and becoming money pit. I know it looks that she is a money pit too, but I assure you that it is quite the contrary. I paid $3500 for her and the repairs cost about $3500, so all in all, it was a very good deal!

Looks pretty good from this side, but don't be deceived!

She had been T-boned on the passenger side, requiring us to replace the passenger door and the entire passenger quarter panel. The accident also caused residual damage to the drive shaft and rear differential. I call it residual because this damage was unknown until it got to the point that those two components had to be replaced.

As you can see, she was originally green as I said before. The interior was also modified with a lot of white paint. It looked terrible! That has thankfully since been remedied =)

I can't show all of the pictures of the rebuild process because that is not what this story is about, but you get the general idea =)

Unfortunately none of the final pictures turned out all that great but I assure you that she looked wonderful!