Colin’s Projects

Though the rivet nut tool we ordered never arrived, after some trial and error we managed to rig up something to get them in. So here it is, all bolted up and nearly ready to go!

The hood is finally on after some trouble getting the torsion bar on correctly. Here it is after a lot of sanding and the first round of polishing…

The end is in sight!

I spent almost 4 hours last night waiting in the emergency room at Kaiser with Colin. He’d gotten a speck of something in his eye on Monday while working on the car and I was finally able to convince him that it was worth a trip to the emergency room! He’d been reluctant to go (despite my constant nagging, I might add) because it didn’t hurt at all and wasn’t affecting his vision… but it turned out to be a small piece of metal, which apparently rusts very quickly in the eye and should thus be taken care of as soon as possible!

The doctor in the emergency room, who we saw after about 2 and a half hours of waiting, ended up not being able to do anything for him as the speck didn’t come away easily with a swab, so after another hour and a half of waiting we were finally referred to a specialist in the morning. We woke up bright and early at around 7am to see him and within minutes he quickly removed the speck (pictured above) with some kind of plastic toothpick. We thought all was well, but then he took a closer look at what appeared to be rust rings… and realized that it was another more deeply embedded piece of metal, requiring slightly more invasive digging to remove!!! DOH!

The good news is that the piece, though fairly deeply embedded, hasn’t actually pierced the eye and Colin’s vision is still perfect (without glasses even). Also even this more invasive type of removal procedure isn’t that uncommon. The bad news is that we need to make another trip to the emergency room on Monday morning so another specialist can do the removing, with other staff on duty in case things get a bit complicated (we sure hope not).

Anyway, Colin’s very lucky as this could have been much much worse! The lesson to learn is that you should ALWAYS wear your safety goggles when working with power tools!

Colin’s currently sanding so I figured I’d post a few photos on our (almost real-time) progress. Having procured a new tank of CO2 and a full set of new seals, we’re really planning on getting a lot done today!

Colin started by sanding the roof which thankfully just had surface rust and came out pretty nice and clean! Then it was time to remove the front and back windshields. Just a few cuts to the seals, a little push from the inside, and the back came right out. The rust looks pretty minimal so we’re hopeful that it will clean up okay.

The front windshield also came out pretty easily… to reveal some serious rust! The seals were so shot we could feel the moisture still in them, and there was even a pool of water that had accumulated on the bottom!

More pics after the sanding…