More Time for Glinda

Last night I worked on Glinda for a change. I changed her engine oil and filter change, lubed her suspension, straightened her steering wheel, and tightened her driver’s door handle.

Changing the oil and filter went without a hitch, but lubing the suspension was not without its challenge. Getting the fitting of the grease gun on the upper two balljoints’ zerk fittings is tight with the tires impinging. I ended up pulling the front wheels off to ensure the proper fit. After bolting them back on, I tried popping the hubcaps back on with my hand. The passenger’s side just wouldn’t go, so I got out my rubber mallet. After much banging, I finally the lip over all three bumps on the wheel. Sadly, a slight tug caused the cap to fall right off. The metal at the lip had cracked so there was no tension to keep the cap on. I thought I had at least one GUP cap that matched that set, but I couldn’t find it on the shelves. I did, however, find a nice, shiny set off an EM that fit beautifully, so Glinda’s got some new bling.

When I replaced Glinda’s turn signal switch a few months back, I screwed up and didn’t get the steering wheel reinstalled in the right orientation. Victoria has been driving around with the wheel at 11 o’clock to keep the car going straight. I tried to take care of that last night by driving the car straight into the driveway, removing the wheel, and putting it back on the splines as straight as I could. Before pulling the steering wheel off, I disconnected the battery so the horn wouldn’t sound. I noticed the positive terminal had some corrosion built up on it, so I cleaned both terminals and connectors thoroughly and coated the positive one to keep any new corrosion at bay.

Finally, to tighten the bolts retaining the outside driver’s door handle, I had to remove the armrest, window crank, and inside door handle before carefully removing the fragile, old door panel. I then peeled back the waterproof paper and snugged down the two #10 screws before everything could go back on again. The paper wasn’t installed correctly, so I fixed that. The lower edge of the paper needs to be fed into the horizontal slot so that any moisture runs down the paper and into the bottom of the door to drain as oppose to running over the inside lower surface of the door. A previous repairer had used duct tape to adhere the bottom edge to the inside surface below the slot. Not good, but now it’s right.

Prior to starting work on Glinda –while it was till light - I rolled Ringo out into the sunshine and swept out the garage and blew sanding dust off everything in preparation for shooting primer. Given the upcoming weather, my travel schedule, and the fact I just ordered primer this morning, I won’t have painting gun in hand until next Monday. In the meantime, I’ll be prepping the doors and grills for priming so everything will be done at once.