Today I wanted to do some more investigating of the TV cable and also wanted to try to get the rocker molding closer to installation. I couldn't find anyone with a sandblaster that I could use so I reluctantly geared up to use my small one. It's hard to imagine why anyone wouldn't want to dress up like this in late July.
The rocker moldings extend from in front of the rear wheel, under each door and along the bottom of the front fender to behind the front wheel. Round clips hold the molding in all areas except on the front fenders. These areas have rectangular metal pieces that screw into the fender. They were rusted pretty bad, though not rusted through. I couldn't mount them back on the fender in this condition so that meant I had to sandblast and repaint them.
Next, I examined the TV cable again. I read and reread all the instructions and tutorials I could find on this cable. I had noticed that mine had not "clicked" into place when the final full throttle adjustment was made but I had assumed that it perhaps didn't need the extra adjustment. Today I tried to manually pull the ratchet-adjustment on the TV cable assembly and found that my cable had no ratcheting abilities. It is somewhat difficult to explain how this relates to the operation of the proper adjustment of the cable, but in short there is a TV cable housing with a button. The button is pushed which allows the sheath to be pushed back into the housing. Then, when the cable is pulled during the full throttle adjustment the sheath extends so that full extension of the cable can be achieved. The pictures below show the sheath pushed in and in the second picture shows how it should be able to ratchet-out to allow extra travel if needed.
When the sheath extends there should be a clicking noise as it ratchets out. My sheath cannot be pulled out at all, unless I push the button and pull it out, which is not how the device is intended to work. I called the company and tried to describe my situation. The guy seemed somewhat hesitant to believe me, stating they have never had this problem before. They also tried to charge me shipping to swap out the cable. I explained that if they see that my cable is faulty I don't expect to have to pay for shipping so they agreed to reimburse me for the shipping when they see that mine is, in fact, faulty.
After this I finally was able to wax The Clam for the first time. After a thorough wash I used my new DA buffer. I have detailed cars since I was 15 years old. It's what I used to do when I started working at dad's dealership during the summers between school. I have always hand waxed all my own cars. For me, this was a tedious process. I tend to really, really bear down and wax a panel with several passes when I wax a car, so the hand waxing process was very time consuming and it also would take a physical toll. I always assumed the day would come when I would not have enough time and the physical toll wouldn't be worth the result. I found that with today's new DA buffers that the job they do is not only better than a hand wax job with today's harder clear coats, it's also much, much quicker and much, much, much easier. I was told it was important to keep chemicals off of the woodgrain because the material it is made from would absorb them so I covered it with newspaper-endrool. I hope to eventually make custom, cardboard pieces that I can quickly tape up and reuse for this purpose.
