Blue Bastard 2.0

[stealthee]

No pics, but the buckets/rad support are welded on....

[stealthee]

I sure as hell hope I have time to knock some things out this weekend. I haven't gotten home before 7:00 one day this week. I'm going in early again tomorrow and I'll be on OT tomorrow afternoon and still have all day Friday. It should make for a good paycheck, but it isn't allowing me to make any progress. :/

[stealthee]

Very little progress this weekend. As stated I worked a ton this week. Was at work for over 60 hours, was in the truck for over 8 hours on Friday, which killed my back, which had me down on Saturday.

I intended on getting things knocked out today, but my cousin had come in from Philly and needed his car looked over because he had to stop and fill the rad along the way after he overheated. Finally found a seeping radiator to be the culprit.

Stopped to eat at that point, then rode into Home Depot to help get 1000 lbs of decorative gravel.

So yeah the only thing really accomplished was putting on some seam sealer. I brought the bumper cover, fenders and fender liners up from my house but that's about it.

I'm going to paint the underside of the buckets and do touchups before I install the bumper or fenders. I need to locate the brackets that go between the fenders and bumper cover too.

[stealthee]

So, as always life gets in the way a lot, but things have happened.

This is after the buckets were officially welded in place.



Yesterday I started drilled the fenders. Once I got the driver's side done I started a loose mockup with the bumper, fender, headlight and marker light.





Before I even got the passenger fender drilled I mocked it up with both headlights.



Once I got the passenger fender drilled I fully mocked both sides.



After that I putzed a little. I bolted up the horn/hood latch mount. I routed some other wiring and stuff.

I called it a day at that point.

I managed to get off work on time today so I stopped at the garage before I went home to putz some more. I filled the coolant system and fired the car again. I let it come to full temp and it seemed to do great. I did notice a small coolant leak around the coolant sensor. I'll have to address that another day. I noticed my digital climate control has an issue too. Its like the temp down button is stuck. Every time I raised the temp it lowered itself as soon as I let go of the button.

I did one other mock up before I went home to make dinner. I had brought one of my Villains up to see how it sat with the fenders.

I took some pics looking straight down the fender. Not 100% sure what the thing is on the ground almost center of the fender so pay it no mind.

Stock rim



Villain



And another quick shot of the Villain just reminding me of why I liked these so much



I ordered some nice hardware to mount the fenders and bumper cover. Hoping to see them by the end of the week because the car has to come out of the garage this weekend (at least for the weekend) because of a family picnic. I might actually take it for a quick ride.....

[DocWalt]

Looking good, man

[j2k4]

After all this time...

[stealthee]

Looking good, man

Thanks Kenny. She's still got a long way to go, but I'm getting there.

After all this time...

Seriously. I'm getting to the point where I am getting nervous. I already know she runs good (at least at idle with some revs), but all the little things left have my nerves about shot. Hoping everything goes to plan and I can take her on a short jaunt this weekend.

[stealthee]

So despite the lack of updates due to work and just life in general, shit has happened.

I got my hardware in and mounted up the bumper, fenders, and headlights.



I even threw the hood on for looks.





She's a dirty bitch, but whatever.

Things didn't go to plan over last weekend due to a nightmare strut change on a car we are sure sat in the ocean, but with a picnic occurring with the garage as its base the car needed to come out of the garage.



Apologies for the vertical orientation of the video.

When I took it out of the garage I had no power steering and the gas pedal seemed really stiff. I also couldn't shift so I couldn't really take it for a ride. I just went around the garage, then put it on the side of the house to get it out of the way.

I figured out the power steering. It was because the reservoir got sucked dry. After refilling and working the wheel, and refilling, and repeat I got power steering. I'm pretty sure I just need to bleed the slave again to get it working. I probably will recheck my pedal free play.

For the gas pedal I need to figure out if it is just me not being used to it, or if I need to lube the cable or the cruise mechanism.

Once I get those things figured out I'll take it out for an actual ride.

No pics but I got new tires in today for it. Can't wait to get them mounted.

I'll post more updates when things happen and when I get time.

[j2k4]

It Lives!!!

[stealthee]

I had hoped to get some things sorted last weekend so I could take the car for a ride, but it didn't quite happen. Was just super busy, but some things did happen.

I ordered tires so I figured it would be a good idea to get the wheels out of the basement and get them cleaned up.



Tires came in a few days later and I loaded everything up on Saturday so I could take them to my buddy's shop to get mounted and balanced. Once I got back to the house I wanted to check the brakes out on the Lancer anyway so I pulled the wheel and mounted one of the Villains to see how much the tire/wheel combo would stick out on it.



As you can see it wouldn't work well.

The day was shot and I had evening plans so I took the wheels up to the garage and left them for another day



Next day I made my way to the garage once I recovered to get some stuff done.

Got the wheels all mounted up.





View from the rear



I'll have a little poke once I correct the negative camber, but the poke should be all but gone once I get the rear quarters in place.

Next photo is kind of dual purpose. You can see that the tire/wheel combo is pretty square with the widebody fenders. You also see I was doing some testing with my fog lights.



I got a few more goodies in the mail today. I'll actually have center caps for the first time ever on my Villains, and I have had them for probably 13 years.

I didn't have a second set of hands to help try to get my clutch bled, but I was attempting some other diagnosis of things while I did other things. I need to TRY to focus on just making the car drivable, then move on to other little things. We'll see how that goes.