The Garage Is Empty

I'm sure I'm jinxing myself with this post's title, but it's true. I didn’t have a very productive weekend car-wise, but that’s okay. Friday evening, I installed and wired up the speaker system I’d bought for Victoria’s birthday. I ended up mounting the two midranges and two tweeters onto a thin piece of plywood and just setting the assembly on Glinda’s package tray. The cables ran under the passenger door sill. I zip-tied the jack for her mp3 player to the underside of the dash, pulled 12 volts from the auxiliary radio terminal at the fuse block, and connected up the ground wire to successfully complete the installation. No more boom box for their school commute.

Saturday, I completed the JB Weld patch job on Glinda’s rear engine cover. With the hole closed, I reinstalled the harmonic balancer, raised the engine into place, and torqued the two rear engine mount nuts. While working on the engine, I’d noticed the right-side thermostat (the bellows that controls the opening of the lower shroud door) had failed, so I pulled lower shroud off, replaced the bad part with a GUP off the shelf, and put everything back together. After pressing the engine seal rubber into place around the perimeter, I lowered the car off the jackstands. Victoria drove her a few times over the weekend as well as back and forth to school today, and all went well. TYL!