MAY 2023
Continuing from my last update, I chipped away some more on the rear valance.
I had a couple of ideas to fill the exhaust cutout, and found expanding foam to be the most convenient.
Taped it up to cover the pores, and prep for mold making:
Voila! Not bad at all!
Sanded the back side to have a smooth, matching contour with the rest of the piece:
The sides had pretty poor alignment to the quarter panel/overfender, even before I cut out the original pieces.
I measured how much taller I needed to make it and put reference tape 1" down from the final height.
Then used signboard as a backing, and put another reference tape 1" from the bend so I could align the two.
Extended, then rough shaping:
Fitment check:
Now that I was done replacing my heater core and no longer found coolant leaking inside, the carpet finally went back in.
JUNE
Here's where the drama begins.
So, the car sat for a couple weeks just because I had a better car to drive for a bit. Then I had plans to drive it down to San Diego one weekend, so I went to take it to the coin wash.
While I was waiting for a stall, I saw the car started overheating. Turned it off, opened the hood, and coolant was boiling out of my overflow.
Welp, there goes my plans to drive down. I was pretty annoyed because just last month I took for a 100-mile cruise on my birthday!
I assumed maybe SOMEHOW I still had air in the system from when I changed the heater core, so I bled the system. It still overheated.
Talked to some people and was convinced to check my thermostat. The current thermostat was only a few years old; I changed it back in 2019 which was roughly only 50,000 miles ago.
This time, I thoroughly bled the system, about 3 times over the span of the weekend.
30 year old gunk from the old heater core:
Test drives yielded acceptable results so I drove it to work the following Monday. It overheated 3 times that morning.
Weird thing is, it stopped overheating on the way back home, so it was
very intermittent overheating.
Ran a compression check:
Nothing crazy. Oil dipstick was clean, too.
Had the cooling system pressure tested at work and found there was a TIIIINY leak somewhere. SO most likely a head gasket issue, considering basically my whole cooling system is only 3 years old at this point.
*SIGH* Here we go
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