Today we went on our first official outing in the Corona.
Fittingly it was down to Supacheap to buy a small socket/spanner set to keep in the boot. We also detoured past the friend's place again.
The car ran beautifully, smooth, responsive - well, as responsive as a 45 year old 1.5L 2 speed auto can manage, which isn't much, and rode pretty quietly.
Upon returning home I noticed a small coolant leak due to a lack of sealant around an outlet from the water pump (it's a screw in attachment), which has been fixed.
One of the trans lines was oozing near the radiator, which I since sealed and added a new clamp.
And then the contact points closed on me so it took a good 20 minutes to locate why it wouldn't start. Reset them and we're good again!
Finally we're ready for some cruising!
Clean, running, interior in, lets go.
Did a few trips around the block, up to a friends house not far away home again, and then to get fuel and then the exhaust blew. Not surprising really given I suspect it's actually the original exhaust from the factory. Whenever I started it in the shed, a shovel full of rust and crap would blow out of the pipes.
Shortly after the exhaust let go. Looks great, sounds awful, runs a bit rough.
Today it went for it's longest trip, running a little rough, down to the exhaust joint near my work.
I knew there was still some fuel issue as when you plant the foot it hesitates and sometimes bogs down, but after some discussion with the exhaust bloke we agreed it's probably the ancient fuel in the tank. I topped it up with a jerry can some months back, but the fuel in the tank is probably 10 years old (last registered in 2006) and the fuel in the jerry can is probably at least that old if not more! I added $20 worth of fuel the other week, but obviously not enough to dilute the gunk.
Anyway, on the way home I filled it totally - to overflowing actually which unfortunately softened the paint under the filler pipe. However within about 5 minutes of driving it was suddenly running smooth!
After the carpet was installed, it really showed how awful the headlining was looking. Initially I didn't think it was too bad, but I gave it a thorough scrub and it was clearly evident that it had significant sun damage. Some of the vinyl had even cracked and come apart on the passenger A pillar. I glued in a patch of vinyl to cover the cracks and then sprayed the A pillar with dull-white vinyl spray. It suddenly looked a million times better and I knew I had to do the whole thing.
Being mid-Winter it was risky, but we were having a sunny day so I bit the bullet and careful masked the whole interior and then gave it many light coats, using two full cans in the end. There was two runs which I managed to spot early enough to clean up and recover with paint. I was pretty happy with the result, vinyl spray can really be hit and miss, but this turned out awesome. To the casual observer they wouldn't be able to notice.
The crashpad in these things are notorious for self-destructing from the Aussie summers. I don;t think I've ever seen a non-restored one in one piece. This one had a huge crack right through the middle about an inch wide where you could see the metal below. It had curled and peeled and was a write off. I have no idea how they repair them. I had started cutting off the worst bits and was going to bog it until I read online about a guy making a new one out of foam and vinyl. They are dead straight with no contours or many curves so I thought I should give it a crack. It was pretty easy actually, make a template from newspaper, cut foam to suit, test, then glue on vinyl, then fit. Although the corners that fold down into the sides of the dash don't quite look right, the rest looks very neat.
