I borrowed an air compressor and impact wrench and got the damper bolt off of the block. THAT was fun... the coworker that loaned me the impact wrench is giving me an old air compressor that needs a new regulator, can't wait to get my own impact, etc. Then I took off the timing chain cover, chain was very loose. Turns out the cam sprocket was a 'silent' model with plastic teeth, many/most of which were chipped off which is where all those piece of plastic came from that I've found throughout the oiling system. Lovely. Took that stuff off, took out the cam, took off the flywheel, cleaned up the cam hardware, bagged and tagged it.
I got a die grinder a while ago and finally broke it out yesterday. I cut off a piece of the driver's quarter panel to practice with my stick welder... very fun cutting. Ground the bondo and paint off of a good section of the metal, clamped it down and got to practicing. I had checked out 'Welding for Dummies' from the library and the one item in there that was the key was the instruction of starting a stick weld by striking the metal like you're striking a match. What I found works better is... and this is probably kind of obscure... to strike it like you're doing a turkey call. I watched some hunting show years ago where a guy was all done up in camo, talking in hushed tones to the camera, etc... a super tense situation... the turkey across the field... he said he'd try to pull it in closer and then you hear this 'creeeeeek, creeeeeek!' croaking noise from him scratching some kind of stylus on a pad of some sort. Apparently that's a turkey call. Anyway, that kind of action is what worked for me, scratch at where I want to spot weld and after a few scratches and sparks, eventually an arc will form and hold to drop the spot weld. It's messy as hell, but appears to be structurally sound. I want to go buy sheet metal now!!!! I welded a nail to the metal.
Before I rebuild the engine, I need the car structurally sound to put the motor back in... which means the torsion cross-member mount and the front frame rail on the driver's side. The torsion mount will only set me back about $150 so I'm going to order it in September to get that started. I had worried about cutting out and rewelding the torsion bar mounts as per the instructions online, but when I was looking at it last night, the piece I have to replace just has the bar going through it, not mounted to it. so that's cool. It'll just be a matter of cleaning up and cutting away all of the rusted stuff so I can 'cleanly' weld the repair piece in there. Then the same process for the frame rail (but that's $300).
I've also been cleaning up the timing cover so I can paint it. I want to deburr all of the casting stuff off of it, though, so I'll get a set of stones for that. I wish I had a better tool than my regular drill to connect that stuff to.
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