It’s a Process

As I announced in my 3-3-18 post, I’ve decided to bump up the priority of Mikhaila’s Corvair (named Scarlett) so that she can have it to drive sooner (within a few months) rather than later (within a few years). I should state here that, for the first time, one of my children has more cars than I do. In addition to the aforementioned Corvair convertible, Mikhaila also has her daily-driver MX-3 and the Golf GTI we’re working to put on the road. Speaking of the latter, this past weekend she and I got the new clutch installed, the transmission put back into place, and everything reinstalled and hooked back up. Yay team. We did all this in very close confines (see above layout). Once I confirm the clutch take-up is where it should be, I’ll drop it off the jackstands and drive it out of the garage. That’ll allow us to move to the next task, replacing the heater core. For that, though, I’ll drive the LeMans out of the garage and put the GTI in its place. There’s no way I can strip out the interior and dash in its current confines – it’ll take the entire garage.



During the, hopefully, short time the LeMans is outside, it’ll be under a tarp with most of the loose parts pieces piled in a corner of the garage.

Once the GTI has its heat restored, it’ll leave the garage and Scarlett will take its place. When Mikhaila’s not available, I’ll be working on finishing LeMans’ body and interior parts. Could be a busy Spring – I sure hope so.

Sprucing Up The Place

Some of my favorite videos on YouTube are quite polished with nice music, fancy editing effects, and appealing graphics. As I’ve promoted before, I’ve been posting videos of my LeMans restoration for quite a while. My productions have the music (and I’ll try to mix it up) and some basic editing, but poor graphics. I decided to step up my game with a nicer image and font for the intro and ending.

I’ve always loved the formal look of the LeMans script, so I wanted to use that. Unfortunately, I could not find any font in my PC’s library that matched exactly. Instead I decided to just use a photo of the script in place. I don’t have any good pictures of my car with the script in place, but, after some hunting on the web, I managed to find a decent photo of a dark blue 1965 LeMans. The resolution was high enough that I could zoom in on the rear of the quarter-panel and get something usable. I cropped the photo and did some playing in Photoshop. The image at the top of the blog is what I came up with.

On to other accomplishments. I got the engine running and the transmission turning the rear wheels in my Episode 14 video. The front of the car is now without bodywork and hood and fender removal process is covered in Episode 15. Episode 16 shows how I repaired the front wiring harness where a thoughtless rodent dined upon insulation and conductors. In my last blog post, I wrote about rearranging the garage, and Episode 17 gives before and after views. Finally, yesterday I uploaded Episode 18 where I’m working on applying filler to a door and working on the front fenders.



The fender work included removing all the clips, and rubber bumpers, wire brushing the inside surface of the passenger fender, bumping out a couple dings in the same fender followed by cleaning and then brushing on a coat of Rustoleum Rusty Metal Primer.





I’m whittling away at these projects, but getting all the bodywork refinished is going to take me years at this rate, hence the new tagline to my blog, “Lessons in patience …”

In the color race, Go Mango is currently in the lead.