Sunday, September 12, 2010

VIN 1470 finally arrives!

The car is finally here, after taking much longer than anticipated to get picked up. I did an initial assessment on the car, and the guy who was selling this car WAY undersold it. The seller said the interior was terrible, it is definitely not terrible. The seat skins will need to be replaced due to the fact that they are cracking, but I've seen much worse in other cars in use! The carpets look like new, with the exception of the carpet in the compartment behind the drivers side seat where a mouse made a nice nest. The binnacle is compeltely intact, and there is only one small crack in the dash near the glove box. The headliners are drooping and will need replacing, but other that than, the interior is in amazing shape!

The exterior is going to need a little TLC, but overall its not as bad as the seller made that out to be either. The drivers side rear quarter is a total loss and will need to be replaced. Other than that there are a couple of small dings along the wheel well on the passengers side rear quarter and some damage on the drivers side front quarter panel towards the top near ther fascia. All with the exception of the drivers side rear quarter panel, everything else should be easily repairable -- I'll send the car down to DMC Midwest for that work. I already have a line on a nice used rear quarter panel, so I should have that squared away and installed soon.

Mechanically this car looks near mint, when I popped the engine cover I was pleasantly surprised, everything was complete and looked almost like new. Due to the fact that the car has been sitting since 1984 I figured the fuel system would need work, and it will. However I was shocked to find a box of brand new parts from DMC Houston in the passengers side seat that contained almost everything I will need: A fuel pump, a fuel pump boot, fuel pump support bracket, new fuel lines, all the necessary hose clamps and a new accumulator! The only thing that seems to be missing that I will have to order is the metal fuel return line and a fuel tank sending unit. I seriously may only need to order less than $200 in additional parts to get the car started!

It looks like someone started to do the work on the fuel system because the old pump was already pulled out and the tank was cleaned. It will need to be cleaned up a bit more due some additional junk, including a dead mouse, getting in there since the project was abandon. It also looks like the fuel distributor is new and was replaced and that the plugs and wires may have also been replaced!

I'll be curious to see the condition of the hydraulics, but so far this car is turning out to be the bargain of the century, and I should easly come in under the $25K rule.

So on Monday I'll be ordering a strut kit for the doors, trunk, etc, the metal fuel return line, and and the fuel tank sending unit to get started. My other project will be on hold for a little bit because I'd really like to get the car running quickly if possible so I can at least move it around a bit more easily.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Hear that? Its the sound of crickets.

Yes, the dog days of summer are here and my blog has been quiet for some time. I've been tied up with a project I'm woking on for a new business venture and it has essentially taken over my life so I haven't had a whole lot of time to do work on the car. This project should let up a bit by the end of September. It has also just been too hot to work out in the garage. I live by Lake Michigan which usually has a nice cooling effect during the summer but the heat this year has been unprecendented, temperatures in the high 80's and 90's with humidy hovering around 90% is not comfortable. Last year I ran the air conditioning 3 days, this year is has been running straight for over two months. I feel like I was just complaining that it was too cold to work on the car.

Needless to say, I am still working on cleaning up the valley of death. I have a new fuel distrubutor and CPR on the way. I knew my fuel distributor was in need of work, and I wasn't sure about the CPR and I came across a set on the DMCTalk forums so I decided to just get both to make sure I am set to go.

The front grill for VIN 1470 was missing and I also managed to pick up a used one in nice condition. Once the car arrives I will be able to put it on. Yes, I'm still waiting for it to arrive. The company I normally used seems to be out of business so I had to look for another company to move the car, which is tricky in the auto transport industry, which isn't known for it stellar reputation. I hope it arrives in one piece!

Friday, June 11, 2010

Delorean Car Show 2010

I will not be going to the car show this year, again. The driving factor was having a two year old in the back seat for 18 hours -- it just sounded like a recipe for disaster. So it looks like I will have to wait for the next one, perhaps I will actually have a running car to bring by then! To those who are going, enjoy! It looks like it is going to be a great show and the raffle car this year is gorgeous! Who ever wins that one is going to be damn lucky.

As I mentioned in my last post, I am in the middle of the VOD, and headed out on vacation for a week, so I will probably post more when I get back. I need to finish cleaning up the VOD, and then its time to start re-assembling things. One final order of some fuel system parts when I get back and I should be ready to try and start this thing for the first time!

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Project list is getting longer......

OK, I know, I've always been told to finish what you started before jumping into something else, but I can't resist a good deal so I ended up picking up VIN 1470 this past week. For those of you who read the DMCTalk forums religiously you probably already know this, but for the rest that don't -- project #2 is now on the way. I am working on getting shipping quotes for it at the moment, so it probably won't arrive for a few weeks.

In the mean time I've been tearing apart the motor on 5063 because the water pump leak is leaking. I have the whole top of the engine off, and managed to only break one bolt. I started cleaning the "Valley of Death" as many refer to it, and am hoping to find some time to remove the water pump tomorrow. While I am doing this I am also replacing all of the coolant hoses on the car... every last section. I only want to bleed this system out once! I'll be posting some pictures of the VOD for all to enjoy, as it seems to be a favorite with folks. Mine was full of random bits of junk, some large nuts a squirrel stashed away, dirt, leaves, etc.

In other news I am considering coming down for the Delorean Car Show in Lexington next week. Originally we had planned to take the week off and spend the whole time at our lake cabin, but I'd really like to make the show considering I've missed every other one. Something always seems to come up that keeps me from being able to attend. We're not fully commited yet, but will be making the decision soon.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

License Plate Bezel

In an earlier blog post I mentioned that number of the black pieces on the car were very faded from roasting in the sun for so many years. I had ordered a can of SEM Trim Black paint in hopes of restoring these pieces. The recommendation to use this paint was a very good one and it matches the original Delorean black finish very nicely.

Here is a before and after image of the license plate surround so that you can see the results for yourself:



That is quite a difference, and considering this part is not available through DMC anymore this is about the best it is going to get. I did several very light coats of paint to get a nice finish, no sanding necessary. I have more pieces to do, but I know others were going to be curious to see the results.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Its all in the details

Here is an image of my headlight bezels before and after cleanup. Due to the fact that the car was painted twice in its past, first red, and then black later on there was quite a bit of over-spray on the bezels and I really wanted to get them cleaned up so there is no evidince that this car was ever painted.





This was one of the easier jobs I've had with paint removal because everything was just over-spray the paint came off rather easily. The first thing I did was to simply clean up the bezels with soap and water. Next I applied a chemical paint stripper with a brush and let that sit on the bezels for a few minutes to give it time to do its job, and then simply wiped it clean with some paper towels. Some more difficult areas required a second application of the stripper and a bit of rubbing with the paper towel to fully remove the paint. Be sure to wear rubber gloves when ever you are working with chemical paint strippers because it can really burn if it gets on your skin and it is a health hazard. Keepng your skin fully covered and wearing safety glasses also isn't a bad idea, and as always be sure to use this stuff in a well ventilated area.

The difference is quite remarkable, they look virtually new again and there is no evidence of the paint. The paint stripper that I am using is nothing special, I just picked it up at the local hardware store. There isn't a whole lot of damage paint stripper can do to metal, but it can melt certain plastics within seconds so to be on the safe side be sure not to get it on your fascias, door seals, etc.

Monday, May 17, 2010

More Electrics, and misc.

It has been a while since my last post, my wife and I have been working feverishly to get our old home that is for sale spruced up, so that (hopefully) it will finally sell. The house is 100 years old so it is constantly in need of maintenance.

I have been working on the car in my spare moments. I finished checking out the front wiring harness and everything there is good. I was initially concerned because the only thing working was a single high beam, and one front marker light. As it turns out I just needed to replace the headlights, and some bulbs. I thought for sure there was a problem with the wiring because what are the chances that almost nothing works? And historically with this car its always been wiring related, so I am beginning to look for monsters where there are none.

I closed up the front end where I had pulled everything apart to work on the harness, which was a good feeling because finally, something is being re-assembled rather than disassembled. I've also started stripping the paint from the front fascia, and also the drivers side front quarter panel. I've been able to remove the paint from the front fascia with just a razor blade and a little elbow grease. It seems the years the car spent baking out in the sun baked most of the paint on the fascia loose.

On the stainless I have not been so lucky. Who ever originally painted the car did a really good job and used a self etching primer, and that stuff is a real beast to get off. I'm using multiple applications of a chemical stripper, and the progress is very slow. The drivers side front quarter is about 40% complete. I have a long way to go in this area!

Friday, April 23, 2010

Tail Light Circuit Boards

In my previous blog post I mentioned the fact that my passengers side tail light was not working, as it turns out the tail light circuit boards were the problem. There are rivets in the boards that connect each light bulb to the ground and for what ever reason, over time, these rivets lose contact. So there are two options, spend $130 on a new set of boards, or fix the existing boards for $2.50, I chose the latter option. On the right is a picture of the boards before I cleaned them up. There was a good bit of corrosion on them, and it took a couple of hours of cleaning to get them to the point where I was ready to actually fix them. To clean them up, I first using a very high purity (90+%) rubbing alchohol. Why 90+ purity? Because the lower purity stuff is full of water and it takes forever to dry out, which could cause a short if you hook things back up too quickly, where as the high purity alcohol dries almost instantly.

After the initial clean with alcohol, I used some steel wool to remove the corrosion and really clean the boards up. You could also use a very fine grit sand paper as well. If you do clean them with the steel wool, make sure you don't leave any bits of steel wool inside of the light bulb wells or it could cause a short when you hook things back up! Then I again cleaned the boards with alcohol to remove any corrosion residue. Once I was done, they looked pretty good again!

To fix the boards, there are two options. One is to drive some small screws through the rivets so they make better contact with the boards, and the other is to putting a bit of solder around the rivet, insuring the solder also connects with the ground on the board. I felt like soldering was less invasive, and considering I have also had quite a bit of practice with soldering recently I decided to solder the boards. I soldered all of the connections on the boards, even the good board, just to make sure that I don't run into any more bad connections as I test the brake lights and turn signals; so far I have only tested the tail / running lights. The image on the right shows one of the cleaned up and soldered boards.

I hooked the boards back up the the the car and violia, I have completely working tail lights now! This project took almost two hours, but again, I save myself a bunch of money by just fixing the boards myself. It is a pretty easy fix, and I am always amazed how many people just lay out the cash and toss the old boards out with out even thinking twice about it.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Lights!

I now have rear lights. The rear harness for the lights was really chewed up by some animals that once made this car home. All of the ground wires were severed, both side marker lights were completely severed, and some other wires were also chewed in half. I soldered each connection and then covered each repair with heat shrink tubing to provide some extra strength to the repairs. I am very happy with the result, and with a new harness from DMC costing $279.71, and these repairs costing about $15.00 and some of my time, it was definitely the right way to go. I did my best to some what match the color of the wires I was splicing, but the hardware store only had red, black and white wire. Fortunately most of the wire I was replacing was red or black.

Here is an image showing the repair to the right hand rear marker light, you can see the color matched wiring along with the heat shrink tubing bridging the splice. I need to open up the right hand side tail light, because it is not lighting up, but it may be something as simple as a burned out bulb. After checking the right hand tail light with my digital multimeter I am sure that it is getting power, so I am sure it is not a problem with the wiring.

I plan on ordering a rebuilt fuel distributor and warm up regulator this week, so once those come in I should be able pretty close to attemping to start the car for the first time. In the mean time I plan to keep working on the wiring, because only a single door light on my passengers side is currently working. It is most likely just some burned out bulbs and corroded connections, but I need to take a look and find out. I also need to re-assemble the fuel tank, which now that I have all of the parts should be relatively straight forward.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Its been a week since my last post, so I figured it was time to provide an update. I have been working on the car, but the midwest spring weather has been working against me, and the yard has started to require spring maintenance which sucked up the weekend before this last one. Then this past weekend we had relatives in town, so we were entertaining the whole weekend.

I did manage to work on a few things. One of the main things I have been working on is refurbishing the fuel tank closing plate. This required a lot of sanding, applying primer, painting, sanding a bit, then painting some more. It is starting to look pretty good, but I still have some work to do on it. I will take a picture once it is done so that you can see how nice it looks. It is looking almost like new!

I've also been working on removing the rear fascia, so it can be prepped and painted. I've decided to have the front fascia painted on the car because it is a real pain to get on and off and there is no real reason to take it off consdering the amount of effort. On the other hand the rear fascia comes off relatively easy, and it will definitely be easier to paint off the car, so its coming off. I have all of the bolts and screws removed for the rear fascia, I just need to pull it off now.

In other news the rest of my parts came in so that I can re-assemble the fuel tank now; I finally have everything I need. I also pulled off the fuel distributor to see if I could "un-stick" the plunger -- this was a no go, it is really stuck! I will have to add a rebuilt fuel distributor to my next parts order. While I am at it I might just order a warm up regulator (CPR), because it is likely going to cause trouble too. I am going to get the injectors cleaned when I return the fuel distributor for the rebuild. The last part of the fuel system is the accumulator, and I'm going to wait and see if I really need to replace it or not, otherwise the entire fuel system on this car is going to be basically brand new.

Monday, April 5, 2010

Power at the Pump and more...

I am waiting for a few parts to show up before I re-assemble the fuel tank. While I was doing the final clean out of the fuel tank the breather wire broke off on me and I did not want to assemble anything until that shows up. So today I continued my work on the electrical system of the car. It doesn't require any parts except what can be found at the local harware store: some size 14 wire, solder, and some heat shrink tubing.

I started by putting the main harness back together. In my previous post I mentioned that I had found the reason that my fuel pump was not getting power, and it was because an animal had chewed through the white/purple wire that provides the hot (+) feed to the fuel pump. Ofcourse to to fix the main harness required pulling out the drivers side seat so that I had enough room to work. It needed to come out anyway, due to the fact that it needs to be recovered. In the picture on the left you can see the reconnected white/purple wire pulled out on the right of the other wires. I like to use the heat shrink tubing because it adds a lot more strength to the splice, should someone else need to yank the main harness back throught he firewall in the future, this wire will easily hold.

After I completed the splice, I re-wrapped the harness in black electrical tape, so unless someone really looked closely it would be very difficult to see where this repair occured. I also re-wrapped the other spots on the harness where I had unwrapped the main wiring harness to test where I did, and did not have power. After pulling the main harness pack forward into the winshield wiper resevoir box I reconnected the main harness to the front harness and a quick test with my digital multimeter at the fuel pump plug showed 12 volts! It was a lot of work to resolve a small issue, but I want to do this right so fixing this wiring was critical so I could return the fuel pump wiring to stock.

When I went to re-assemble the windshield washer resevior I also noticed that the resevior tank was cracked! Then I figured while I was at it I should make sure my windshild washer pump worked, so I hot wired the waher pump to the battery, and found out that was not working either! Two new things to add to my parts order. These are the sorts of little gotchas that drive up the cost of restoring one of these cars. Every time I dig into something new I find something that needs replacing or is not right.

I also started to repair the rear harness for the tail lights and side marker lights because they were also chewed up. I re-connected the drivers side marker light and was disgusted to see that is was not working after my repair. A quick inspection of the fuse box and I realized that fuse #8 was blown, and I don't have any extra 10 amp fuses to replace it with, so I will have to run to the harware store tomorrow and pick up some more fuses. So instead, I began to investigate why the fuse might have blown in the first place, and found even more wiring that is hidden underneath the area between the tail lights that is badly chewed up and will need repar as well. I am going to get a lot of practice soldering!

At that, I called it a night. I will work on splicing the tail light harness back together tomorrow, and hope to finish that up.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Its Electric!

Today was a day of troubleshooting the one of the most common problems a Delorean owner runs into: no power at the fuel pump.

The first thing I did was use my test light at the fuel pump plug coming off the front harness to see if I was getting power and found nothing. I then went to check the most common culprit, the RPM relay. I ran a wire from my test light back to the negative terminal on the battery and then placed the pointer on the test light into the back of the RPM Relay plug where pin 87 of the RPM Relay fits into. After doing this I put the key into the on/second position and the test light went on for a second and then turned off, so the RPM relay was good. The second the test light turned on is when the RPM relay energizes to run the fuel pump for a moment to pressurize the system before starting the car.

The next thing to check is the inertia switch. I ran a line from the positive terminal of the battery to the test light and then pushed the point from the test light into the ground socket at the fuel pump plug and the light came on. I went back and pushed the plunger on the inertia switch up, no light, so the inertia switch is working as expected and the ground at the fuel pump plug is good.

So now what? To be honest I wasn't sure, so I called Dave at DMC Midwest to find out what else it might be, because there isn't much else inbetween the plug at the fuel pump and the RPM relay. Dave suggested checking the plug connecting the main harness to the front harness located up by the winshield washer resevoir. I opened up the windshield water resevoir box and checked the plug and found no power there. This plug is the only splice inbetween the RPM relay and the fuel pump plug so that left me with one possibility. There must be a problem some where in the main harness, probably a broken wire, and broken wires in the harness are notoriously difficult to find.

The first thing I did was remove the center console because the main harness runs underneath. I then jumpered the RPM Relay (put a wire from pin 30 to pin 87) so there should always be power going to the fuel pump. I unbundled the harness next to the drivers side seat and found the white/purple wire, and found power, so I was OK that far. I then unbundled the harness just before it goes through the firewall in the drivers side foot well and checked the white/purple wire there, and again found power.

Here is the problem: I now know that the problem lies in about 2.5 feet of harness that runs through the drivers side pontoon of the car and is inaccessible with out some real work. Perfect! The solution? I tied a string around the plugs on the end of the main harness up by the windshield washer resevoir so that I have a way to pull the main harness forward later on, because I am going to need to pull the harness into the car through the hole in the firewall in the drivers side foot well to inspect it. This is the point where this is becoming a real pain in the butt!

I did finally find my problem, one of the previous (rodent) occupants of the car decided to nibble on the harness and severed the white/purple wire. The picture on the right shows the damage to the harness. Amazingly, this was also the only wire damaged. Rodents just love to attack the fuel system! I am going to have to solder a new piece of wire in place to reconnect things, tape it back up, and then pull it back through the pontoon and re-connect everything. It will be as good as new when I am done, but this was no small task tracking this one down. When I started on this quest I was hoping it was going to be a simple matter of replacing the RPM relay or inertia switch, but it turned out to be something much more sinister. It also explains why the previous mechanic had run wires from the fuel pump into the engine bay and spliced into a wire there to get power. I yanked the "hack job" wires out now that the fuel pump will be able to run off the harness as it should.

Once I fix this up, the car will have power at the fuel pump again, for the first time in many, many years. I am going into the office tomorrow due to another meeting I need to attend, so I probably will not get the wire fixed until Friday or Saturday. My next step will be to replace the fuel tank, hook up the fuel pump, and purge the lines of any old gas that might still be in there. I also still need to do some work on the fuel tank closing plate to clean up the area where the master cylinder leaked and damaged the epoxy. I'm taking this one day at a time, and today some good progress was made!

Monday, March 29, 2010

Clean Up, Clean Up, Everybody Clean Up!

So my daughter sings this song, "Clean up, clean up, everybody clean up, everybody do their share" when its time to clean up her toys. That song sums up my day. After finishing up dinner I proceeded to wash the dishes, after that I continued cleaning, washing, and scrubbing for the rest of the night, or at least until the temperature dipped to 35F and I decided it was time to get out of the cold.

When you have a car that is almost 30 years old, that has been sitting for years, it collects a lot of dirt and grime. I cleaned and scrubbed the area of the frame where the fuel tank sits, a job that I thought would take a few minutes turned into an hour long project, but it looks great now! Unfortunately it was too dark to take a decent picture of this area by the time I got done. There is a tad of surface rust along the edge of the support plate that I want to sand down and re-paint as well. This is a common spot to see a little bit of rust, but it is all superficial and will be easy to repair.

After I finished up that job, I cleaned up the exterior of the fuel tank, and started cleaning the the fuel tank closing plate, but didn't quite get that finished. I also realized that I have many more hours of cleaning to go. Not an exciting day of work, but still very necessary work.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

More Working, less Blogging

My second load of parts arrived on Saturday, and it included new lift struts so I installed those on the doors and the trunk. I didn't do the louvre struts because I need to remove them, do a minor repair on a small crack, and re-paint them, but that project isn't real high on the priority list at the moment.

The cold weater has continued to limit my time in the garage, but I did get a few more things done. I finished pulling the fuel tank out the car. This is not a job that I had done before so I was struggling to get it out, so I emailed Dave at DMC Midwest inquiring about what the trick was to get the tank out. Dave told me to remove the hanger at the back of the car holding the coolant lines in place. That made a huge difference! I had it out in a couple of minutes once I could move those coolant lines around a bit more. The picture to the left shows the tank out. You can see some of the leaves and debris that needed to get cleaned out. I used my shop-vac to suck most of the junk out and ended up filling almost an entire garbage bag full of leaves and junk. You can also see a bit of the frame in this image -- very nice! No rust what so ever, just a bit of dirt, so I will just scrub this area down before replacing the tank and it will look like new. With the amount of time this car spent outside in the elements I am amazed at how well everything underneath looks.

I had already removed the alternator because it was completely seized up, and the new alternator came in the latest load of parts, so I also remounted that which will allow me to do some more work on the electrical system of the car. In one of my previous posts I showed a picture of the wires powering the fuel pump. I followed those wires today to figure out what the previous mechanic had done. One of the wires went down to one of the fuel tank closing plate bolts as a ground and the other ran all the way back into the engine compartment and was hacked into the harness there. I'm sure it probably worked, and my guess is that he did this because he did not know what to do to troubleshoot the reason the fuel pump was not getting power in the first place.

With the fuel tank out of the car I could easily crawl under the car and stick my head up into the space where the tank used to be and do an inspection of the front wiring harness. I had feared that it had been crewed to bits by an animal, but it I found no problems with it what so ever.I will need to test to see if there is power at the plug for the pump next, maybe I'll get lucky and the problem was a bumped inertia switch, if not, I'll have to investigate further.

Friday, March 26, 2010

More Inspection

I have not had a lot of time to work on the car the past couple of days. I did get a bit of work in on Wednesday, but that was because I swapped my regular day in the office with Thursday -- so nothing got done Thursday, and today it is really cold again. I can't wait until the weather is a bit more reliable.

I did take some time to look around the car a bit more and found two more things I am going to need to contend with. The first is the the air metering plate does not move -- at all. When the air metering plate moves down, it pushes a plunger up inside of the fuel distributor enabling more gas to get to the injectors. I am guessing that the reason my air metering plate isn't moving is because the plunger is stuck. The fuel distributor is one of the most expensive components on the car, so I am hoping I can fix it. Yes, I know, according to the manual it is not a serviceable part! This isn't entirely true. If it is not too bad, I should be able to remove the fuel distributor and pull the plunger out and clean it up in some acetone, and then use a Q-tip dipped in acetone to clean up the inside of the sleeve where the plunger moves inside of the fuel distributor. Unless of course it is completely rusted in place, which is also possible with what I've seen inside the fuel tank. There was a lot of water in the tank, and if someone tried to turn the car over before the fuel pump failed they could have filled the entire fuel system with water.

The other oddity I found was an extra fuel supply line -- not hooked up to the fuel distributor. Ofcourse there is another fuel supply line that is hooked up to the fuel distributor. I did not follow both of these lines under the car, but it is going to be something else to investigate. If anyone has any guesses on why this might be, I'd love to hear them.

The previous owner of the car told me that the reason they parked the car was due to issues with the fuel system. He said that he had a mechanic working on the fuel system, and shortly after that when he was driving the car it just seemed like it was loosing power. If you check out the picture on the right you can see why. This injector has nearly fallen out! There is another on the other side that is almost as bad. He is lucky he stopped driving because with one more mile, and one more bump this could have popped right out and caused an engine fire. All that is holding the injector in now is a bit of rust, but I was able to break it free by tapping it a little but and turning it with a wrench. So why did this happen? The previous mechanic didn't put ANY of the injector clips back on. I will need to add a set of injector clips to my next parts order. This injector is also pretty damaged by the rust, so I might also need to replace some injectors but fortunately I have a spare set of those.

I have also been trying to figure out how long its going to take to get the car back on the road. My goal is to get the car running first and then move on to the cosmetic issues. When I have time I or need a break from the mechanics I'll do a little consmetic work so that at least I am doing something. I had hoped to have this project wrapped up by the time the snow starts flying again but as I continually find more things I need to do I'm not sure if that is a realistic goal anymore. On average I only have 6 - 8 hours during the week to work on the car, and weekends when something else isn't going on. Did I mention I have a 2 year old daughter? I guess only time will tell at this point.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Adjusting Doors

I decided to take a break from the fuel tank today and do a little bit of work on one of the items that has been a real thorn in my side -- getting into the car. Both of the doors on the car have the same problem, the inside door realease latch works just fine but the outside one does not work at all, so I have been keeping one of the doors ajar at all times. If that door accidently gets closed I have to reach my hand through the partially open window and use the inside door release. The problem is that the window is not open very far and it is painful to get my arm in there and reach the latch.... this has been happening once a week, and its time to fix this. I am not sure why the exterior door release handles stopped working, about all I can guess is that the metal cord inside the outer black sleeve stretches over time and with use. Does the door release cable look like a brake cable on a bike to anyone else?

To get this working again I had to pull off the top door panel. The easiest way to get the panel off is to open the window and use a large flat head screw driver to pull up on the panel near each of the "fir trees" and then work your way toward the edges. Be sure to pull straight up or you will snap off the fir trees, and possibly cause damage to the door panel as well. You can see the fir trees under the lip of the panel on the picture on the left. If your window won't open then work your way from the outside edges toward the middle. Be very gentle because you do not want to have the backing on the panel break. The fir trees might also be brittle, and break but those are only .75 cents to replace versus $200 and something for a new panel if you ruin the backing.

On the right you can see the door release cable (It has the black sleeve on it). All I did was back the cable off from the lever (it is gold colored in the picture, and I think its called the Bellcrank in the tech diagrams). Be sure to use another small wrench around the sleeve of the cable while you are backing off the nut so that you are not twisting the cable. By doing this the cable now moves the lever a greater distance so it can unlatch the door. As you can see from this picture there is not a lot more room for adjustment on this door, there are very few threads left on the left hand side. I haven't adjusted the drivers side yet, and that side has even fewer threads left for an adjustment so I may be ordering a new cable there. My drivers side exterior door handle was already snapped off and while testing this stuff on the passengers side door, that door handle snapped off too. It is a good thing I ordered a pair of handles anticipating that was going to happen.

My lock mechanisms are also flaky, some times they work when the flip the door lock, some times they do not. I pulled off the bottom door panel, which has a few screws along the top that hold it to the door, along with some additional fir trees along the bottom of the panel. There are two 10mm bolts that are a bit more difficult to get at right behind the door grab handle. You will need to remove these with a ratchet and an extension. When I pulled off the lower panel on my car I found a dead mouse in there, so I've passed the milestone of actually finding a dead critter in the car. I tinkered with the lock mechanisms some and it seems to be getting hung up towards the back of the door. Now I need to figure out what do do about that...

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Removing the Fuel Tank Closing Plate

Today I started the process of dropping the fuel tank by removing the fuel tank closing plate. This is not a difficult task, but does require some rolling around underneath the car; this is definitely a project that would be easier if I had a lift. I started by removing the smaller bolts at the front of the plate. If your bolts are like mine, they are rusty and prone to breaking off, so use gentle increasing pressure while trying to remove them. I was lucky and only one of mine broke off.

I then proceeded to remove the larger bolts along the edge of the closing panel, working my way from front to back. Once I removed the last two bolts on the back of the plate, I just gave the plate a gentle pull toward the back of the car and it fell, along with the mess you see in the picture. After cleaing up this mess with my shop-vac, I jiggled around the tank around a bit more and ended up cleaning up another mess just as large; and there is alot more crud that will come out once I get the tank pulled. I am sure something was living in the front of the car for some time because there is just too much "stuff" in here, including a ton of nuts that have been eaten. If I had to guess, I would say a squirrel was living in here for several years

The good news is that the fuel tank closing plate is in good condition. On one of my previous Delorean projects there was actually a large rust hole in the plate due to a leaking master cylinder. The master cylinder in this car did have a minor leak at one point, so some of the epoxy is wrinkled up on the top of the plate. My plan is to remove the epoxy on the closing panel, paint it with POR-15, and then cover that with a coat of Rustolium Smoke Grey to get the color match. This should insure that the closing plate stays in good condition, even if the master cylinder does leak again. Another project to add to the list! Just like every restoration... two steps forward, one step back.

Cleaning the Fuel Tank

Yesterday I found a bit more time to work on the car. I wasn't so miserably cold out so I made my way back into the garage and finished wiping out the tank as best I could with just a rag and water. The goal here was to get as much out of the tank as I could before I switched to cleaning it out with the acetone. Due to the fact that I decided to just go with the new baffle setup from John Hervey I just yanked the old baffle out. Take a look at this thing! If you think this looks bad, there was literally a 1/8 inch of sludge along the entire bottom of the tank. I even found a few leaves in the tank! When the previous mechanic replaced the feul pump the last time he clearly was not very careful about what fell into the tank.


Once I had done the best job I could do with the rag and water I dumped about a half gallon of acetone into the tank and then walked away for a couple of hours and let the acetone do its work. After a couple hours I came back and used the rag to wipe the inside of the tank with the acetone still in the tank. By this time I was able to remove pretty much everything that was stuck to the inside of the tank with relative ease. However getting your arm into the tank and getting the area toward the back is definitely a trick. I then let the car sit with the acetone in the tank for a couple more hours before removing the acetone, and finishing the wipe out the the tank. Once the acetone was out I proceeded to wipe out the tank with a rag and water again just to make sure I got everything.


As a side note, when working with acetone be very carful not to get it on anything else unless you want it damaged. You will notice that I put a rag around the tank to soak up any splashes, just in case my pour wasn't quite accurate (it wasn't). Also be sure to wear latex gloves at all times, protective eye wear, and only use it in a well ventilated area. I did this in my garage with the large door open so there was plenty of fresh air, but be sure to do your best not to inhale the fumes. There is nothing about acetone that is good for a human.

This was the final result, not bad, but not perfect (I also still need to do a bit more clean-up around the mouth the tank). It is a huge improvement from where I started. There is just a little bit of rust residue in some areas -- mainly in the area toward the back of the tank that is really hard to reach, and being a bit of a perfectionist I want to get that out. If your wondering how I could see into the back of the tank, I actually stuck a small digital camera in the tank to take pictures of areas I could not see . My plan to to re-do this whole process once I get the tank pulled out of the car so that I can clean up all of the debris that is up in this area around the tank.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

A Shopping Day

It was still pretty cold again today so I used the opportunity to do some shopping. My first trip was to Sears to pick up a new torque wrench, and a few more of the ratching wrenches that are priceless when you are working under the dash in tight spaces. I bought a set of their ratcheting wrenches a few years ago for about $70, which seems like a good value until you realize the set it missing a couple of wrench sizes -- specifically 9mm and 11mm, and both will be needed. When you take into consideration that the wrenches individually are $20 each, the cost for a complete collection is a bit steeper, but still worth the money.

I then went over to Menards, a local home improvement warehouse store, and picked up the acetone to finish cleaning out the fuel tank, and a cartridge for my shop-vac because I had a cheap-o filter in there that spit out any fine particles. I have the new cartridge in the shop-vac and am ready to go once the weather gets a bit warmer..... maybe tomorrow.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Snow Day

Well, so much for the first day of spring. Yesterday it was 55F, and today I woke up to snow. This is an image of my poor Jetta TDI stranded out in the snow. Needless to say I do not have a heated garage and it is not a lot of fun working when your hands are freezing, plus it makes it really difficult to work. I had hoped to finish cleaning up the fuel tank today, but now I am waiting for some decent weather to roll in.

I took advantage of being trapped in the house by finishing off my initial list of parts to order. I ended up placing my initial order with John Hervey over at Delorean Auto Parts, because I used his updated tank set up in a previous car and really liked it. It is cleaner than the stock setup and it also removes the possibility of having the fuel pick-up hose collapse from heat. This isn't going to be a concours car, so reliability comes first, over original parts. I also ordered a bunch of other stuff I'll be needing including John's D110 alternator. Again, I felt this was a superior part due to the fact that is offers quite a bit more amps of power over the stock Motorola alternator that was in the car. The stock alternator in the Delorean is simply under-powered, so the D110 will work nicely.

I also ordered a water pump kit while I was at it, because the one on the car is a leaker. I also ordered a bunch of other random things I needed and that John is good at supplying at a nice discount to other vendors such as lift struts, hood edge trim, belts and hoses. I also ordered the stainless steel lined clutch slave cylinder because theoretically it should last the lifetime of the car, and is not subject to the failure issues of the stock slave cylinder. Plus, because I am going to need to pull off the intake to to replace the water pump, it is a lot easier to change the slave cylinder while the intake is off.

I'll be placing an order with Dave Swingle over at Deloream Midwest on Monday for some other parts I need including the fuel tank sending unit, the fuel pump harness which has been chopped by the previous mechanic, and new door handles because one is already broken and that means the other isn't far behind. I'll be buying a lot more from DMCMW over the next few months.

Other items on my list I didn't buy just yet (because I have a monthly budget I am near breaking) are the clutch master cylinder, any brake components, or interior parts. At this point I have enough parts on the way to keep me busy for a while; maybe a long while if the weather doesn't improve.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Fuel Pump Wiring

As you might have noticed in images from some of my previous posts the only plug visible was the two prong plug for the fuel pump, and this was worrisome for me. I was not sure that the plug from the front wiring harness for the fuel tank sending unit was still there, or if Short-cut Joe had simply cut it off because it seemed un-necessary. Fortunately I did find it after a bit of digging; it had fallen fairly far back under the lip under the spare tire area.

What I realized while digging for the plug is that there is a ton of leaves in this area as well. How the leaves got in there, I can only guess. Unfortunately they are going to be impossible to remove with out dropping the fuel tank. Having them there could be a problem in the future when the car starts getting driven in normal conditions; the leaves could retain moisture and cause the frame to rust. Frame rust = bad, and I do not want any frame rust to develop, so this is going to need to be addressed; something else to add to my list of things to do.

Neither of the plugs from the front harness for the fuel pump or the fuel sending unit were in use, and the yellow and red wires you see in the image in the center bottom were what was actually being used to power the pump. The real question is why? I have to wonder if there is a problem with the front wiring harness, otherwise why bypass a perfectly good plug? On possibility is that the connections on the fuel pump in the car were different from the standard ones. The connections on the wires that were powering the pump were the type that slide over a tab, rather than a ring that gets attached via a screw. Is it possible the mecahnic did something noble and saved the plug in case the fuel pump needed to be replaced again in the future, and just added the new wires to bypass the front harness and hook up this fuel pump with out mangling the front harness? That would be the best case scenerio. However I think this is unlikely, because why go through all the effort to run new wires undeneath the car when you could hook up right here?

The worst case scenerio is that there is something wrong with the front harness and it isn't getting power, so rather than trying to find the problem with the harness the mechanic just bypassed the harness and jerry-rigged this setup. It seems quite feasible that the rodents that made this car home for many years could have chewed up the front harness. This image is taken from the passengers side wheel well and shows a shot of the wires the mechanic ran to power the fuel pump. You can see the red wire is bolted underneath one of bolts for the fuel tank closing plate - presumably this is the ground. The other wire (now black) can barely be seen here, it is routed back under the frame. Where the black wire ends, I have no idea, perhaps I will find out when I drop the fuel tank.

Another possibility is that there is nothing wrong with the front wiring harness at all, and some how the intertia switch got bumped. Is it possible the mechanic simply did not know anything about inertia switches, and could not figure out why the fuel pump was not getting power, so he added these wires and bypassed the whole setup?

Does anyone want to start a betting pool on which of these options it ends up being?

I hooked the battery back up today so I could do some testing to detemine if I was getting power on the hacked wires, as well as the wires coming off the front harness for the fuel pump. Unfortunately the charge on the battery was really low. I had the battery disconnected over the winter, but it must not have been enough. I now have it hooked up to a trickle charger, hopefully that will do the trick, if not I'll be returning it tomorrow for a new one. If all goes well I should be able to test where I am getting power tomorrow.

Either way, I want to do away with these additional lines for the fuel pump and return the wiring to normal.

Emptying the Fuel Tank

So this is what I started with: a bucket, a pair of rubber gloves and a can to bail out the tank. What was coming out the the tank was 99% water and perhaps 1% gas. As I mentioned previously, the mechanic who worked on this car whom I will forever refer to as "Short-cut Joe", failed to place the cover over the fuel pump boot leaving it wide open and allowing the tank to fill with several gallons of water over the years. This seems like it should be a fairly straight forward job, but this tank was quite literally full, so it took almost two hours of hanging over the side of the car emptying the fuel tank the old fashioned way.

What I quickly realized is that it takes a lot of these small cans (and five buckets) to empty out a gas tank, and this turns out to be back breaking work because you are hanging over the side of the car in a rather awkward position . I tried crawling in the trunk at one point to see if that was more comfortable but that was completely unworkable; it may have worked if I was a monkey and had longer arms. This might have gone faster if I had a siphon, but ultimately I don't know that a siphon would have worked because there was so much crud in the tank it might have just plugged up the siphon. Notice the piece of wood in the background holding up the trunk lid? I also need to get new lift struts for the entire car.

Take a look at these floaties! This was pretty typical of each can I pulled out, and the closer I got to the bottom of the tank the worse it got. The last bucket that I pulled out contained a fairly thick slurry of brown gunk; the sort of stuff that will clog up a fuel filter in record time. Once it became ineffective to use the can to get the last of the liquid out of the tank I just used an old shop towel to soak up what was left.

This is what the inside of the tank looked like once I had most of the liquid out of the tank. There are pieces of an old clamp in there, and lots of bits of rust which are the remains of the old steel fuel return line and also the remains of the fuel pump boot support bracket. Both of these items literally disintegrated in the tank. As you can see, the bottom of the tank is littered with bits of rust. This is going to take some real work to get cleaned up. Acetone is really good for cleaning up fuel "gunk" but I'm not so sure how good it is as disolving this type of mess. Has anyone tried acetone on this before? There is not a lot of fuel "gunk" in here, there are lots of bits of rust that have sort of welded themselves to the bottom of the tank.

This image shows what is left of the fuel pump support bracket. I am going need to add that to my list for the next parts order. I should have realized that I was not going to find the support bracket in tact, inside of the tank when I pulled the fuel pump boot and saw the ring of rust around the mouth the opening. It is going to take some work to remove the remains of the support bracket, they are almost welded into place with rust. I tried gently prying it away with a flat head screw driver but it just came off in small bits, and I was concerned about damaging the tank using the screw driver and applying too much pressure. I have more work to do here.

I finally dug my hand into the tank and just started pulling random "stuff" out. This was my first of several handfuls of junk that came out of the tank. You can see a bit of the old steel fuel retun line, part of a clamp, and some other random bits. Seriously, how does this much junk get into the tank of a car? If you have a Delorean and have never cleaned the tank, you really need to do this! Even if your car is running well, you never know what is lurking in your tank waiting to cause problems down the road. If you have an original fuel pump boot, those are known to degrade into a black goop that can also cause some serious problems. Clean out your tank, and check out everything in there!

The good news is that the fuel tank baffle and the retainers are still in good shape and I should be able to re-use them.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Back in Black

For those that don't know me, I am a programmer by day, building "web applications" for my company. I am in a fairly fortunate situation where I get to work from home four days a week, with the exception of Wednesdays when I go into the office to take care the the business that requires my presence.

Today is Wednesday, and that also means a long day. Part of the reason I work remotely is that I work in excess of an hour from where I live, so between 8.5 hours in the office and a 2.5 hour round trip commute, it doesn't leave a whole lot of time to squeeze in work on the car, especially when you have a precocious 2.5 year old daugter who demands time with her daddy. By the time I have dinner with my family and she goes to bed, its just too cold yet to work out in the garage... ahhh spring in the midwest!

Needless to say, that doesn't mean I am completely off duty. I am always looking forward to another part of the project.

Due to the fact that this Delorean has been roasting in the sun, all of the fiberlass componenets (the license plate surround, the rear quarter louvres) are now completely devoid of color and are completely washed out, in fact you can actually see the fiberglass now. As long as the pieces are in good condition, I have it on good word that SEM Trim Black Paint is the way to go for making these pieces look new; so today I ordered a can that should be here in about a week. I will take a picture of the before and after, and post the comparison in a later update.

I hope to get the fuel tank/cell emptied out tomorrow so I can see what kind of treasures are inside. Maybe a support ring? I am just hoping I don't find one of the rodents that used this car as a home for years drowned in there.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Fuel pump or Civil War relic?

For any car that has been sitting this long, the first thing I like to do is take a look inside the fuel tank, because over time gas tends to turn into a nasty tar-like substance that can wreak havok on the fuel system. What you are looking at here is the remains of what may have once been a fuel pump, although it looks more like something salvaged from a civil war wreck off the ocean floor. All I can say is WOW. The fuel pick up hose was very degraded and in poor condition; it was already torn and I was able to rip it completely and easily with my bare hands.

The previous mechanic appears to have struck again because the wiring here is also hacked, and I'm not even sure what he did here. The wires from the plug have been cut and some wires are running up from underneath to power the pump? What the $%&?! More hacked wiring madness.

Here is a wider view of the destruction -- you can see more of the hacked wiring here. It also looks like the tank is full of gas, but it is actually very little gas and mostly water. The boot cover was there but the mechanic must not have seen fit to actually place it over the top of the fuel pump boot. I suppose that also partly explains why the fuel pump looks as bad as it does.

I am going to need to empty out the fuel tank and take a look at the the baffle and the rest of the fuel tank contents. I didn't have any rubber gloves handy and I did not want to stick my hands in there with out them. I am also going to need to run to the hardware store to pick up some acetone to clean out the tank. In addition I am going to need to place an order for a pretty much everything from the rigid fuel lines into the tank. About the only thing salvageable here is one of the banjo fittings and the dome nut. The support ring is missing in action, hopefully its in the tank.

Assessment of the "Project"


Once the car was delivered I did an initial assessment. What I found is more hacked wiring on the car, presumably by the previous mechanic, more wiring that had been chewed up by critters (explains why almost no lights on exterior of the car are working). Those very same critters also chewed through the belts. The good news is that I picked up a new engine wiring harness off eBay over the winter so rather than trying to put the wiring back together I am just going to replace it. In addition I discovered that the alternator was completely frozen up, and that the water pump is leaking. I had expected the replacement of the water pump considering how long the car has been sitting -- although I can't say I relish the job. I also expect that I am going to have to replace the clutch master cylinder, and slave cylinders for the very same reason.

The good news is that the with a new Optima red top battery I just picked up the engine turned over easily. I only turned it over for a second because I know the fuel system is fouled and is going to need some work. So my worst nightmare of a frozen engine did not come to fruition.

The Car - A 1981 Delorean DMC-12



So on June 29, 2009 I bought this 1981 Delorean off eBay. I realize it looks bad (and the reality is that this picture makes it look better than it really is), but before you start commenting that I am in over my head, I have owned and restored several Deloreans before so, for the most part, I know exactly what I am getting myself into. This is probably going to be the most extenstive restoration I've done, and at the end the hope is that this car will not be recognizable from this picture.

A little bit of background on this car is that the previous owner had a mechanic who was a complete yank working on the car. The end result being that the car continued to have problems and the owner parked it in his driveway for about 15 years to roast in the Alabama sun. In the mean time critters got into the engine bay and chewed up some random wires. In addition the mechanic did some "modifications" to the wiring of the car that is going to need to be returned to normal. Its fairly obvious they were having fuel system problems because the fuel system is also not right. That pretty much sums it up.


The interior is cooked from sitting in the sun so almost everything needs to be replaced. The dash is cracked in several places, the seat covers are junk, the console is going to need to be recovered, the passenger knee pad is junk, the glove box cover is cracked, the shift boot is all dried out, the headliners and junk, and the list goes on. Fixing the interior might be the easy part because I also plan to strip the car back to stainless and re-grain it, which is going to be a very time consuming job.

The idea is to make this car look pretty much like it did when it was new. Its going to be quite a bit of work to get there, no question about it, but if I weren't a person to take challenges I would have never bought this car in the first place.

My goal with this blog is going to be to follow the progress of the restoration process, which concidently is already in progress, so I have some catching up to do. Hopefully is will be educational for others who are doing a Delorean restoration or are considering it.