Wednesday, September 8, 2010

The Car’s Almost Covered

Last evening Victoria, Mikhaila, and I used up all the tape and a bunch of paper and sheets to mask off the portions of Glinda that are NOT supposed to get new primer or paint on them. I was amazed that has taken far more time and material to mask Glinda than it did to mask Heidi. That’s the difference between painting only painting certain sections instead of the entire car. We ran out of tape before we ran out of sections needing masking, so I’ll stop by Home Depot this evening and get another roll so we can shoot the epoxy primer tonight.

I also finished cleaning and regreasing the right front wheel last night. I love finding more differences between LMs and the EMs I’m so used to. Glinda, like all other LMs, has a cable running from the left front wheel to drive the speedometer. The wheel end of the cable is driven by a square recess in the dust cover of the wheel bearing. Since the cable goes through the center of the spindle, the typical cotter pin is replaced by a nifty little stamping to retain the main nut. The other side still uses a cotter pin. As an engineer I am not a fan of side-to-side differences. I’m sure GM did it just to save a few pennies per vehicle.

This morning I made the dreaded journey to MD’s Motor Vehicle Administration to register Glinda and get her tags. I arrived fifteen minutes before the doors opened, and was already thirtieth or so in line. At 8:30 we all calmly filed into the building and stood in a new line to get our little slip of paper with our number on it - C16 for me. I then took a seat in the registration area and caught up on my e-mail courtesy of my Blackberry. I didn’t get too far since my wait was less than ten minutes. Five minutes later and one-hundred forty dollars lighter, I walked out tags in hand. Mission accomplished and I didn’t kill the entire morning.

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