Monday, January 4, 2010

Heidi's Back in Brianna’s Possession

My Christmas holiday was filled with many wonderful experiences. At the top of the list was spending time with family. Second was spending time with Corvairs.

While Heidi’s punchlist was shortened before the break, there were still a few tasks requiring completion before she’d be ready for Brianna to drive her back to Blacksburg. So, after turning her around in the garage to expose her passenger side to the heaters, I set about finishing the bodywork. After grinding down the weld on the final patch, I applied rust converter followed by a skim coat of Bondo and left things to cure overnight. The next day I sanded the Bondo smooth, cleaned all the surfaces thoroughly, taped off the area, and laid down four heavy coats of primer. Following another overnight curing, I pulled off the masking, wet-sanded the primer, wiped down the area, reapplied masking and shot three finish coats of Rustoleum. My intent in all this is to protect the metal through the winter and give the car a new paint job in the spring.

The punchlist also contained some non-bodywork tasks, so over the past week, I also replaced the right side transverse spring link, rotated the tires front to back, topped off the windshield fluid, and taped the joint where the top of the windshield and the convertible top meet. The latter was done to attempt to prevent water and snow ingress. Brianna found that snow blowing around the inside of the car is somewhat annoying. I can understand that and hopefully the fix performs acceptably.

My prayer is that we’ve addressed all Heidi’s issues and that she will provide reliable transportation for Brianna and Nich.

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