The Slog

I had plans, and I needed The Caprice to be finished.  I was running out of time and the weather was not cooperating at all.  It was very cold and it rained a lot, and also on every Saturday for at least a month.  I was very frustrated to find that although the heater box was not leaking anymore, there were other leaks in the same area.  Exasperated, I broke down and bought a portable garage from Harbor Freight and, with April's help, erected it in the rain.  It turned out to be a great thing, because not only did it rain a lot after that, the walls kept the freezing wind away and made it almost tolerable.  I worked on the car every available waking moment I had.  I didn't take many pictures because I was really in a hurry trying to get everything done.  The following pictures represent several weeks of work and unfortunately only hit on some of the main highlights of a lot of the things I did.  Like for example, having to have new AC hoses made, which still turned out to be the wrong size.

Knowing the neighborhood would not be happy about the structure, I tried to hide it as best as I could.  Also, I had to use the Suburban to ratchet strap the structure to so it wouldn't blow away in the strong winds and storms.

I had to take the fender off to access the leak.  If I had only known this earlier it would have made working on the heater box much easier.

One of the leaks was coming from between two body panels.  The sheetmetal on the firewall was pulled away from the other inner structure and there was some type of sealer between them.  The sealer was in bad shape and it didn't appear to be seam sealer or something that came from the factory so my guess was this was a previous attempt to fix this issue from many years ago.  After a lot of testing with the hose I determined this was one source of a leak.  My father-in-law was down one weekend and he was able to run the hose while I had my head in the floorboard with a flashlight.  I was able to get C-clamps and pliers and hammers and access the metal in order to flatten it back together.  In the picture below I have flattened the top part of the lip but not yet the bottom part.

After getting all of that done, I chipped away a lot of the old and cracked seam sealer in other places as well.  I cleaned everything, taped it off, painted it and then applied new seam sealer.  I did this not only on the inside firewall area, but also on the outside.  After all of this dried I found yet another leak while testing.  In the picture below, right at the bottom of the A-pillar, you will notice a hole.  This is not a rust hole.  This is where, from the factory, when the panels didn't line up, they just filled the area with seam sealer.  It was all brittle and cracked.  The hole shown below is after I've chipped away all of the old seam sealer but before resealing it.  After this photo I resealed the area with new seam sealer.

I also needed to install the new cruise control.  I had prepared for this much earlier and left the wires taped up under the dash because I knew this project was down the road.  Though I had the wiring figured out then and had labeled the wires well, I had forgotten some of technical side of how to wire it and it was challenging for a while, but with help form the forum I got it figured out.  Taking the wheel off and putting it back on turned out to be a huge issue.  Getting the stalk installed and the wires run wasn't as bad as I had feared, but the bearing and race for the steering column had become slightly bent and wouldn't go back together correctly, causing the steering wheel internals to not seat back in far enough.  I fought it for what seemed like forever.  It was freezing cold each night after work and dark, and between the seemingly endless leaks I kept finding and the the steering wheel problems and my deadline looming my frustration level reached higher points than any other time in the entire project.  Fortunately, Brian was able to stop by one Saturday and help me get the steering column bearing situation fixed and I was able to get everything put back together.  The only problem after that was that a small piece of the old plastic chipped and caused my horn to no longer work.  I'll have to go remove that piece from the parts car when I get time so I can get my horn working again.  The picture below shows the new stalk with cruise control.

At this point it sometimes felt like I have spent more time in this position than driving the car.

At long last it was time to install the new insulation and carpet.  This is the only picture I have of the entire process.  The insulation was not preformed and turned out to be very time consuming to get a correct fit.  Also, the preformed carpet had a very thick, rubber backing, and though it is a quality piece that insulates well, it made the many test fits and trimming to be tedious and time consuming.