I spent all day Saturday and Sunday working on my car. We're leaving to Yellowstone this coming Saturday in my Corolla and there was a bunch of stuff that needed to be done.
Here's a quick list of what I did before I get into the pictures:
1-Cleaned brake dust and gunk off wheels using muriatic acid.
2-Used Oxalic acid to remove rust from roof rack.
3-Made new plastic end caps for the roof rack runners.
4-Installed rear coilovers and shocks
5-New windshield installed
6-Installed new seat covers
Cleaning baked on brake dust and other gunk from aluminum wheels is an absolute bear! I used an old friend to help me out. I used a diluted solution of muriatic acid and water with a stiff bristled nylon brush to clean them off. Don't let the solution dry on the wheels! Keep them wet then wash them really good with fresh water when you're done!
I had already started cleaning before I stopped to take a picture.
The cross bars on my roof rack were very ugly with surface rust. I used another old friend, oxalic acid, to remove it all. The difference is phenomenal! The pictures speak for themselves. This was done after about three hours of soaking. I filled up a 1 1/2" PVC pipe with Oxalic acid and let it do it's job. A pipe is a lot quicker than filling a tub!
The lower bolt in this picture was also in the Oxalic acid, the upper bolt was not. They both looked the same before. Oxalic acid eats works VERY well to remove SURFACE rust from chromed items. It doesn't fix the chrome, it just removes the discoloring and makes it look nice again. The rust will eventually return to my roof racks because the holes in the chrome are still there. I imagine it will be a couple years though.
The plastic end caps were all sorts of destroyed after 35 years in the sun. I fixed on of them, made a silicone mold from it, then duplicated it so I had eight brand new caps!
I thought I had a picture of the mold but I guess not. This is what a part looks like after pulling it from the mold before cleaning it up.
Here are the cheap coilovers after I installed them. It made the rear sit a bit higher (one of my goals in installing them) and the ride is a bit stiffer in the back. I can take bumps without bottoming out now. The ride will soften a bit with driving though.
My brother had a new windshield put in his 79 sports coupe about 5 years ago. Two months later a drunk driver crashed head on into him and totaled the car. The windshield didn't brake though. We pulled the windshield and it's been in storage every since. I finally decided it's time to install it in my car so I pulled it out and it was cracked.
Luckily I have the black car I bought for parts and the windshield looked decent in it. So I decided I would pull that one and install it. After I got it out and cleaned up it looked absolutely brand new! Not a single scratch or rock chip in it. So I was happy about that. Cost me $125 to get it installed.
I pulled my windshield in advance and was greeted with rust along the lower lip as I expected. I don't really have any other pictures of the windshield other than these. I wire wheeled the rust as best I could with what I had in my garage. Ideally I would have sanded/ground the rust out then applied POR-15 to it, but that wasn't in the list of options.
The black parts car I purchased had really nice fitting seat covers. Both my front seats are in desperate need of being covered. I bought some dye on eBay in the hopes of dying them black. After 9 days soaking in the dye, it didn't affect the color in the slightest! Maybe I just purchased the wrong type of dye, but it didn't do a blessed thing!
I bought a set of hog ring pliers to install the new covers because I'm tired of the seat cover coming off as I slide my butt across the seat! The result is very tight, very nice looking seat covers! I just wish they were black.
These seat covers had a little bit of foam for some extra padding in them and they are nice to sit in. Perfect for 6 days in Yellowstone! It makes me sit a bit higher though, but that isn't much of a problem.