The Resurrection of Vixen Continues...

["Stragand, Dave" <dave.stragand@xxxx>]

Hi All,

I dragged myself out of bed at 1am on Saturday morning and drove the 8 hours out to PJ Grady to get my new passenger door. It looks great, and I thank Rob for his time and energy to come in on a Saturday for me. While I was there, I also picked up some door struts, stainless bumper letters, and outline step-plate inserts. Dan Deutsch even called up to say hi while I was there. My girlfriend loved looking at the 30+ cars Rob had at his shop. Now she finally has an idea of what one's supposed to look like when all put together. =)

After getting a good night's sleep after a 16-hour day of driving, I spent Sunday working on the car again. I backed the car out into my driveway for the first time in a year, and got ready to do some work on the doors. Looking back at the engine revealed 9" flames coming out the grating on the engine cover. OUCH! I had forgotten to tighten one of the fittings on the fuel distributor, and it had sprayed fuel all over the rear of the engine. It had ignited and was now burning up the car. I grabbed a fire extinguisher from the garage (I hope those of you reading this carry an extinguisher in -every- car you have) and put out the fire.

There are three extinguishers in my garage. Two are Halon, and one is powder. You can guess that I accidentally grabbed the powder one, of course... so I spent an hour cleaning the yellowish dust off of the engine. While cleaning, I checked thoroughly for fire damage, but found that the engine cover support slide was the only damage (some melting). I guess I got off REALLY lucky this time.

I did mount my driver's door and new passenger door on the hinges, and did some preliminary lining up. Rob had suggested a course of action for the alignment that I will now outline:

1) Install the rear glass, as it is a structural element and may affect the alignment of the doors (I wonder about this. Is that really the best course of action? I would really prefer to reduce the risk of breakage by not installing it until the doors are aligned and tensioned... Could I just install some wooden shims to hold the window frame in the correct position?)
2) Install the T-panel and align the doors to the T-panel. (Seeing as how I don't have any other body components on the car yet, I can not line them up to anything else -- I'm not even sure if the lock striker pins have been moved.)
3) Tension the torsion bar, and check alignment and motion. If incorrect, release tension on torsion bar, shim, and retension torsion bar.

Comments on / additions to this procedure are of course welcome, and greatly appreciated. Looks like it may be a lot of trial and error...

I also started swapping over some of the components from my old passenger door to the new one. The exterior door handle was easy, as was the lock. The sliding window seems a bit more difficult, but I'll work on that tonight.

While everything is all disassembled, now would be a perfect time to install some remote door actuators. Are 35 lb solenoids enough, or should I go for 50 lbs? Again, any suggestions on remote door opener packages would be appreciated.

-Dave Stragand
VIN #05927
http://www.projectvixen.com



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