My dash needs more fiber

Since I had my plastic welder out tonight, I decided to take a shot on a small hole in my 280Z dash by patching it with a fiberflex rod.  You can see the hole in the picture below.  S30 dashboards are well known for cracking and I have a major crack down the middle in addition to this hole.

After melting a small bit of the material in the hole, then a little more, I had a fix that doesn't look half bad...

It's not perfect, but definitely livable.  I may attack the crack soon after seeing the results here.  In fact, if the crack turns out this good, I may not pull the dash for refinishing after all!

Maintenance Day

While MLK day is tomorrow, I don't get to celebrate with my wife and son who have the day off.  I instead celebrated maintenance day which is a little known holiday and regional... very regional.

To celebrate maintenance day I hoisted the daily drivers and performed oil changes.

One thing that always perplexed me is the frailty of the rock guards under the engines on newer model cars.  They are on and off with every oil change, but over tighten one of the bolts just a bit and they fall apart.

On the G37 (which desperately needs a wash as you can see), the rock guard had several mounting holes which had split.  I decided that I would fix these on maintenance day.

My plastic welding kit continues to earn it's keep.  Using stainless mesh and a fiberflex rod, I reinforced the holes and patched the cracks.

I used a step drill bit to quickly open the hole and ready the part for re-installation.

Happy maintenance day!

Chasing the white rabbit

I'm deviating a bit from my usual on this post.  Normally my posts explain work from beginning to end.  The amount of time it takes me to complete the work is abstracted from you, the reader (oooh, I just broke the 4th wall there, I really am off the reservation on this one).  

Now that I'm completely off course on this post, let's play follow the leader.  In my last post you've seen me go down the since I'm already there rabbit hole.  I guess I wanted to outdo myself tonight.  Here we go, try to keep up...

A few weeks ago I noticed how bad the wipers looked, so I pulled them for painting.

Since I had the wipers off and I noticed a bit of surface rust on the cowl finisher, why not pull that off and peek underneath?

Looks like I'll have to prep and paint the finisher.  I wonder what the cowl area looks like?  It is, after all, one of the common rust areas on a 280Z.

Yep, surface rust in there too.  Now, as I recalled from some research, gunk accumulates in the cowl area and clogs the cowl drains (causing moisture to build up and bad rust).

Well, I have the gunk but the rust is still just on the surface.  Whew, I dodged a bullet there.  Hmm, from that same research though, I remember that the cowl drain simply dumps into the fender area.  I already had a few rust bubbles on the door, but lets look a bit closer at the fender...

See that brown line where the fender meets the rocker?  Ruh roh.  How can I tell if that's a problem?  Well, I read that pulling the fender isn't actually that hard...

...and as far as you know it wasn't!  Blog magic makes everything easy.  Check out how much decaying organic matter was inside the fender on top next to the engine.  

Well, what about that fender?  See the pile of dirt and crud behind the wheel in the wide shot above?  That was all in the fender, right where that rust line had started.  Aside from the dead leaves, dirt, and compost that was in the fender, I also found a potato farm amidst a small self-sustaining ecosystem.  As for the fender...

You can see the impact that the nature preserve had on the fender.  Luckily this was caught in time.  There will be no need for weld-in patches here.  I will also be able to pound out a dent in the fender now and repaint the lower front valence.  Why?  Because I'm already there anyway!

After seeing this, I will most definitely be pulling the other fender as well.