I’ve Dirtied my Pretty New Floor

I’d let the cold, cold evenings stop fleet work for long enough. It was time to start rolling ‘vairs onto my new garage floor and then work on them. Saturday morning, after a few attempts, I was able to get Glinda running and maneuvered into the garage. Rebuilding a starter with a new Bendix drive and bushings went much easier this second time around. Also easier was the R&R of a starter in a LM. There is far more room for maneuvering than in an EM.

With Glinda’s engine now spinning with every test-turn of the key, I put her at the curb and drove Ringo onto the still-pristine floor tiles. My task with him was to prevent battery rundown if Ariel leaves the heater blower on with the engine off. I needed to move the heater blower circuit to one that’s energized only when the ignition is switched to ON. I did some research in the manual and found two fuses designated for the heater, one 10 amp circuit for HEAT. BLOW and one 20 amp for HEATER. The former was the one the blower was currently hooked to, while latter was the switched circuit. So, I simply moved the terminal from one contact to the other and voila, problem solved.

After finishing with Ringo, I called the guy who’d responded to Lucy’s Craigslist ad. He’d changed his mind, and wasn’t interested anymore. I was now at a crossroads with Lucy. Fix her floor to make her more sell-able or leave her as-is and devote my time to TwoTone. After a few moments thought, I made up my mind and drove Lucy into the garage and began work on the floor patching. Out came the grinder with a wire wheel attached and I attacked the loose rust on both the inside and outside surfaces of her floors. With the chunks, flakes, and dust vacuumed up, I laid down some big pieces of cardboard to protect my new floor and proceeded to POR-15 the upward facing sections of floors. The passenger front floor well had a few rust-through holes, so I overlaid the entire footwell with fiberglass and gave it all a healthy coat of POR-15.

The next day, I tackled the underside and got it completed except for a section under the backseat. That’ll be one of tonight’s activities.

While I covered the area of the floor where I was painting, the flying dust and rust bits, combined with the melted snow, has made the rest of the floor very dirty. It will be interesting to see how difficult it is to get back some semblance of niceness once Lucy is out of the garage.

In support of Lucy’s next task – welding in the patches – I bought a welding blanket from Harbor Freight on my lunch hour today. That’ll protect the plastic floor tiles from sparks that would probably put burn marks in the meltable material. Finally, the last bit of news is I’ve begun the process of buying the white Silverado as the Suburban’s replacement. I’ll be travelling down to central Virginia to pick it up this weekend. Needless to say, I’m exceedingly excited about this acquisition.