June 20, 2006 -The crunch is on!!!

Okay, June has definitely not been a month where things have gone as planned.  First off, June is the busiest time of the year for the company I work for because of fiscal year end and everyone trying to close out last minute deals.  It's an intense and busy time as we close out the year and prepare for the new one.  The quota and revenue nazi's are in full force.  Our Legal and Compliance department doesn't help the situation either with their interpretations and enforcements to ensure limitation of liability.  I love my job...

Second, getting the Celica into the body shop has been problematic.  My original plan was to get the car in the shop at the beginning of this month. In this one rare instance, I was actually ready to do this.  Unfortunately the body shop has been very busy and is struggling getting another "classic car" finished up.  So last week I talked with the owner of the shop and we decided that I'd wait until July to take the car into the body shop.  This would give them an extra two weeks to finish the other classic that's in there and get it out so they can make room for mine.

So, this gave me a extra two weeks to either one, sit on my thumbs and wait, or two, take some risks and bite the bullet and go ahead and swap motors and get the new one tuned and running.  I doubt I'll have enough time to shoot the engine bay the final color so I'll opt to do a cleanup and maybe an interim spray of flat black so I can be ready by the JCCS show date.  Oh well, I'll just have to keep the hood closed.  :-)  I'll circle around again after the show to do the final shoot of color in the engine bay.  Roundabout?  You bet.  More work?  Absolutely.  Ideal situation.  Totally not.  But I think it'll be a good compromise.  Considering how oily and dirty the engine bay is(just noticed how bad it was after pulling the motor) it'll need some serious time to get it really clean and prepped for paint.  Time isn't a luxury I have right now.

So earlier this month I yanked the front off the car and went thru and dealt with the rust and treatment thing again.  This is getting really old now and I just wanna get the car into the body shop and get it painted.  Is there any end to the madness?

The whole engine bay is a mess.

Here you can see more rust.

... and more.

...and more.

... and more.

Will this ever end???

The more I look, the more work I see needs to be done.  This was suppose to be a fun project.  Now it's becoming my worst nightmare!

Btw, I cleaned up the side of my house not too long ago just so I could start creating a new pile of junk to deal with!

Here's all the junk that won't be going back into the car - old radiator, fan, A/C and heater, and miscellaneous smog parts, and that stupid hood Ken snuck into my backyard.

It's obvious I struggle with keeping things neat and orderly.  I can also proudly say that this family legacy is being passed onto the next generation.  As you can see, my kids are about as messy as I am when doing their school projects and homework.

Here's some pix of the finished frontend.

After shooting the flat black.

Oops, missed a few spots... which I later fixed.

While cleaning up my garage(again), I found this old Shoreline sticker.  This was actually the original proof sticker that was used to verify color and alignment.  This sucker has to be about 20+ years old!

Got some new(old) parts from Japan this week.  Inata-san from Restored.jp was kind enough to ship these to me.  He did an awesome packing job btw.

Oh ho ho ho...  Lookie at this!  Old school 5 panel Liftback taillights!!!

They're a little rough and will need some cleanup, repair and painting.  But definitely restorable.

This was also a nice surprise.  Inata-san also sent me the reflectors for the rear smiley bumper which are incredibly hard to find!

Thanks again Inata-san!!!  And a big THANKS to Koichiro Kanda for facilitating and translating for me!!!

Tonite Ken and Glenn stopped by to help me yank the motor out of the car - which actually went pretty quick.  Seems that taking things apart always goes quick and easy.  It's putting it all back together that's painful!!!

One thing I can't stand is a car that leaks oil...

The crossmember has a nice coat of oily dirt covering the whole thing.

It'll be interesting cleaning all this up.

Here are some pix of the old 20r motor which was removed.

Good think I kept that milk crate from back in the day.  It came in pretty handy tonite.

Below you can see a rust stain from where the head gasket was leaking.  20r's were notorious for leaky head gaskets.  Always in the same spot too.  Right under the exhaust manifold.  This motor leaked oil as well.  Man, I hate cars that leak oil...

Nice...

I definitely have my work cut out for me cleaning all this junk.

After pulling the motor, we started assembling the rest of the new motor.  Ran into another glitch while pursuing this.  The stupid ring compressor tool I have couldn't compress the rings tight enough to slip into the cylinder.  Mama always said, "you get what you pay for".  Unfortunately, I don't think this ring compressor tool was that cheap.  I guess I'll need to go shopping tomorrow.

Stupid piece of junk.

So here my pistons and rods sit.  Awaiting their installation.

Engine assembly at a stand still...

On another note, it's amazing a carburetor this small only gets 19 miles to the gallon @ 97hp.  Maybe it's the way I drive.

Off the subject.  My mother in-law gave me this cucumber plant.  She's so nice!  The container said "Japanese Cucumber" but the fruit that's growing sure doesn't look like one.  :-)  Hmmm...

I decide to redo my lawn this year.  I almost killed my front lawn because I wasn't watering it enough in the beginning.  Luckily it snapped back.  As you can see, it looks pretty good now.  No thanks to me...

My gardener has a strange mowing pattern.  :-)

When redoing my back lawn, I made sure to water it well.  I was a bit concerned at first because the sod was laid during one of hottest weeks this month.  I was quite paranoid that I'd have a repeat of my front lawn.  Luckily the grass took real well and is pretty established now.

Amazing what a little water will do.  I hate to see what my water bill will be like for this month though.

Well that's it for this round.  See you next month.  Hopefully with a new engine and paint!  Wish me luck...