Car-ma, De-rice

What, the FX have cooties and it needs de-ricing? I suppose you could say that. As I left for work this morning, took a quick look and noticed the rear side markers are gone. They’ve been shaved and bondoed over. Cr*p, I hope they don’t notice when I safety. The tail lights have some side wraparound, but its not reflective. I come home early in hopes of getting enough done tonight that I can safety it tomorrow. So I start on the front turn signals.

 What the heck is going on here? I start taking the light assemblies apart. Ah, I see, it’s been hacked and rewired so the side marker is hooked up to the blinker, and what used to be the side marker wires are connected to an add-on wiring connector to what I assume must have been fog lamps or something. Which I’m sure blew fuses and threatened to melt the wiring. Sigh. I go to undo the nut on the bracket for the light assembly. Nuts! One side comes loose, the other is stuck! Kroil it and but bracket is thin sheet metal so it bends even more than it was already. So I stand there contemplating what to do. I poke around some more to see what else is wrong. The passenger headlight is cockeyed. I unbolt the headlight assemblies. Passenger side has a ball & socket joint that is cracked and popped loose. Pop the joint back together, hopefully it’ll hold. Look around some more. Geeze, what the heck is it with horns? Do people not like horns? C’mon, you can save more weight by skipping lunch for one day! Thankfully, unlike the previous FX, they left the wiring connector instead of chopping it off. I look for more problems. Damn it, what’s this? I’m pretty sure that’s where the reverse light switch is supposed to be. The heck is that connector? It’s not the right one, and the thermostat housing is sitting right on top of it. This might be a pain. Fortunately, this is the house of transaxles and I run into the garage and pull the correct reverse switch off a 4AC transmission. I’ll save installing it for later, look around some more for more problems so I’ll know what I’m going to have to do. It took me a while, but I seriously let some cursing loose when I finally noticed it. See anything wrong here? I was examining the liscence plate holes because the bolts wouldn’t thread into it. Looking if running a tap through it would fix it, then it hit me. There’s no lights. They’ve been “shaved”. If you look carefully, you can see some stubble, if you will. F! Safety isn’t going to miss that. Damn damn damn!  Now what am I going to do? Ah, I have the spare FX, I’ll swap the entire rear hatch. I’m getting really discouraged at this point and think maybe I’ll forget about the FX tonight and work on getting the AE86 ready for safety since all it needs is to get the horn working.

But the weather tonight is holding out and I don’t savor the idea of working out in the sun on the FX, so I go back to it. Now to address the turn signal issue again. It might be easier to just swap entire bumper assembly from the spare FX also. In any case I set about removing the new bumper. Funny how these freakin seemingly small issues snowball into a lot of work. Thankfully being stored out in Vegas, although giving a liberal coating of tan mochiko dust everywhere, there isn’t too much corrosion on the fastners. And it seems whoever put it back together had sissy hands. The big bolts holding the bumper on are barely tight and come right off. The entire bumper assembly comes off pretty easily. I decide to try take it apart to see how it fared in it’s suicide attempt against the Coke machine. The condition of the lower lip is better on this one, so depending on condition of the base stucture will see what to do. Wouldn’t you know it, all but one nut comes loose. Curses. But it’s enough that I can pry the plastic away and inspect the metal base structure. It looks completely intact and undamaged. Looks like it’s altercation with vending machines was pretty minor. So I decide I’ll try and fix the light bracket and reuse this bumper. A little prying and pounding gets it straight enough, and the blinker assemblies come off easily off the donor FX.

The wiring this time is hacked. Sheet, couldn’t they have had the decency to at least hack farther away from the connector?! There’s plenty of wire there! So I cut the connectors out of donor FX instead of attempting to work the stubble of wire here. I left my butane soldering iron at work, so I leave this for tomorrow.

Finally the rear hatch. Again, it’s not quite so simple. Luckily the donor FX is already partially apart, so I can see how it’s put together. I’m going to have to take a bunch of the interior apart. There’s enough flex in panels that I thankfully don’t have to remove all of it. If there wasn’t, because of how the panels are overlaid, I would have had to remove the back seats, the door sill, side panels, cargo area panels, in other words almost all the interior. So I got stuff all loosened up, but stopped. It’s going to be better to have help, this hatch feels pretty darn heavy! It’s going to have to wait till tomorrow.

So I’ve gotten about as far as I can go. I spot another de-rice insult. Maybe not as bad as the neon light, but still I find it offensive. Luckily it will be a easy cure.