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I suppose I ought to say something here at the start... My 2G has been down for a decade (give or take) and I finally have a place of my own with a pretty decent garage. I'm headed to Illinois tomorrow to trailer the car to its new home. The picture in the Vehicle Profile is actually more together than the car has been for a while. When I left it, the dashboard was on the toolbox behind the car... Anyway, I'll be grabbing some pics of it in its current condition when I get to town. I'll try to get them posted up here quick, but no promises.
 
Saturday Aug 1:
Plan of action for today: Get to Illinois.

My father and I drove out to Bloomington/Normal, IL. It rained on us the whole way. We grabbed a quick dinner and crashed at a hotel for the night. Driving in 7 hours of overcast and rain, that's a check into the Loss Column. Arriving exhausted but alive, that's a check in the Win Column. So far, the trip is a wash.

Sunday Aug 2:
Plan of action for today: Get the car off stands and onto dollies, sort car parts.

We headed out to where my car was being kept with a plan to get the body off of the jack stands. Because I had sold all of my stock suspension (with 2" drop kit by Megan, I had purchased a set of "Universal Car Dollies" by DJS Fabrications to accomplish that task:
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These things are much more beastly than they appear in this image. Here they're configured for pinch weld mounting. The supports can be removed to go under wheels/tires, and they come with additional mounts to attach the dolly directly to a wheel hub. They will also help us get the car onto the trailer with a nice smooth rolling action!

Dad and I got the vehicle off the jack stands, and attached the dollies to the pinch welds. We got an internal, wheel-to-wheel measurement to confirm my "guestimate" for the U-Haul trailer. We also grabbed an external wheel-to-wheel measurement, just in case. The internal wheel-to-wheel was 39.5 inches. External was obviously wider, but I don't remember it off hand. Oh, and I forgot to take pictures. Everything went smoothly getting the car on the dollies, so that's a check in the Win Column! Hey! We're up one!

Monday Aug 3:
Plan of action for today: Get the U-Haul, get the car on the trailer, pack the U-Haul with car parts. Sign for a 10 yard dumpster, fill with trash and moldy items. Go back to the hotel, leave Tuesday.

We get to the U-Haul rental location and immediately measure the trailer. Internal dimension on the dollies, 39.5. Open air measurement on the inside of the trailer, 40. Sh*t. We're too narrow. On top of that, the ramps add ~2" to the open air between them. Now we're ~42 inches. And we're adding 2 checks in the Loss Column. Now we're down by one. We have to come up with another solution.

Thankfully, Bloomington/Normal has several pick-and-pull parts places. Being the birthplace of all Eclipses, I figured my odds were good that at least one of them would have an Eclipse I could yank rims and tires from. The first stop (shout out to McLean County Auto Salvage) had two early year 3G's. With that win, we're now back to even! A quick DuckDuckGo told me that the wheel pattern was the same from late 2G to early 3G, so we set about pulling wheels. In fact, the wheels on the donor 3G Spyder where the same that came on my 2G GSX! Someone had rattle-canned them black, though. And by the condition of said rattle-can job, their prep-work could use some more attention... Prep-work aside, we got the wheels and tires for $150 + our time (which was assisted by the use of MCAS's battery impact, thanks again guys!). Place another check in the Win Column, we're back in the lead!

We head back to the U-Haul with a solid plan. Now I'm thinking, "Get the wheels on the hubs and I've got these TEIN coil-overs that I can use to replace what's left of the factory suspension. Then we can roll the car right up the trailer!" Now, let's get to U-Haul! In case I didn't mention it, the primary business of this particular U-Haul location is used furniture, not truck rental. And the guy who normally does the U-Haul is on vacation. Are you seeing what's brewing on the horizon? Because, at the time, I completely missed it...

We pick the narrowest internal gap trailer he has, we have our truck already confirmed, so we begin the paperwork. The truck even has a full tank of gas! Tally 1 for win! We get the truck hooked up to the trailer with zero issues. Now let's test everything to make sure the lights work. They don't. Sh*t. But there's another trailer! Let's check that one. They still don't work. Ok, it's gotta be the truck. Tally 1 for loss. Luckily he has another of the same length that isn't reserved. Tally 1 for win! While he's moving the trucks around, some of his furniture business employees block the first trailer. You know, the one that's on the paperwork... Tally 1 for loss. So, we hook up the second truck to the second trailer and we have functioning lights! Tally 1 for win! Alright, now let's get all the paperwork swapped over. Oh, and truck #2 only has a quarter tank. Tally 1 for loss. And now we wait. Apparently, truck number 2 wasn't showing up as a truck we could swap to. Calls to corporate on his part FINALLY got us on the road about an hour later... But, we're moving again, so +1 win! And straight to the gas pump for a $70 fill up... +1 loss... Now, we have the widest gap trailer, and the least fueled truck, but we're on the way with a solid plan. +1 to both, and we're still up one in the Win Column!

Let's get some suspension put in! I start at the back and get the old struts/springs pulled and the TEIN's installed. Now it should be a simple matter to get the fronts done. Wrong. I can't find nuts to hold the TEIN's in place at the top of the tower. Sh*t. Well, at least I got the rears installed. Throw a check mark into the win column, and 1 in the loss.

Well, there's a bunch of places nearby(-ish) where I can buy appropriately sized nuts. I'm expecting the dumpster to be dropped off any minute. I leave that to my father, a family friend, and my former roommate to figure out while I go pick up some hardware. Shout out to Ace Hardware, got the right number and size of nuts for the coil-overs. +1 win! Left my example nut from one of the rears on the counter. +1 loss. But hey, we're even for the day! And soon we'll have a dumpster! +1 to the Win Column!

Now, let's get the fronts installed. I find the right suspension fork under the car. Perfect, let's start there! I get that coil-over mostly installed. It doesn't seem to want to go into the fork. Thanks to lack of good rest and almost constant movement over the last three days, I'm running on lizard brain as Monday draws closer to a close. And lizard brain say's "Good enough! The weight of the car will press it in, and we'll be set. Now, let's straighten out the steering." They won't turn. They'll rotate all day long, but I can't seem to muscle them back to straight. +1 loss. Ok. Let's get the left suspension in, then we can put the dollies under the front tires and go back to the original plan of dollies under car, car onto trailer. Now, where is that left front suspension fork? Sh*t. It's on the strut I sold to a buddy because I couldn't break it free, and you can always buy another left front suspension fork, right? Nope. Discontinued. +1 loss. Now, it looks like we're going to be a little uneven in the front, but, we can get everything onto dollies, and ...hey... That front right strut looks crooked... SH*T! Jack up the car, and the coil-over had popped out of the fork. Thankfully, everything still looks solid, but I'm reserving judgement for later when I get to putting the suspension in. We'll call that one a wash for now.

So, I pull the coil-over, and with all the wheels on dollies (it's AWD and no drive train to make sure everything spins correctly, I figured why not put some under the rears, too) the fronts tuck into the wheel wells with no damage to body or suspension. Perfect! Add 1 to the Win Column and we're up for the day!
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Except the dumpster never showed. And back to even with that +1 to the Loss Column.

That's it for this entry, the next one will be up as soon as I finish writing it!
 
Tuesday August 4:
Plan of action for today: Everything that was supposed to happen on Monday. Including calling the dumpster people to demand delivery in the morning.

**The following contains brief mentions of nudity and a whole lot of "do not try this at home." Reader discretion is advised.**

Bright and early, I get a text from my former roommate. He said, "The dumpster guy was cop knocking while I was in the shower, so he got naked soapy me answering the door." Dumpster got delivered, and the dumpster delivery guy got a little payback for not delivering on time, we're calling that +2 to the Win Column! Today is starting off great! Also, the family friend will be headed our way with some block and tackle, rope, and a come-along to help us get the car on the trailer. There's another +1 to the win! Now we're three up!

Between me and Dad, we're starting to get everything out of the basement and the stuff we need staged by the truck, and the stuff we don't chucked in the dumpster. Then I get a text from the family friend. He had a "heart thing" at breakfast and is in the hospital. No points here, because I'm not playing with that. He insisted we not come visit and that he would be out no later than tomorrow morning. That meant Dad and I now had to come up with another way to get the car on the trailer.

We figured we could use the straps I bought to secure the vehicle to the trailer in place of the come-along. Then all we would need to do is overcome the lip of the ramps, and the lip onto the trailer and the whole thing would come along smoothly! Longer story short, 45 degree ramps are the same as 90 degree walls to those dolly wheels. The same with 30 degree ramps... +1 for the loss column. We can't get the car on the ramps, much less the trailer.
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As you can see, we got nowhere. I called the closest towing company to see what they might be able to do about getting us a winch to just drag it up. They said they could get out to the car tomorrow morning (+1 to both because they'll come, but it'll be Wednesday), but they couldn't promise they could do anything (+1 to loss), and I would still have to pay for time since the drive would be around an hour round trip, plus the time it took for them to assess... +2 net to loss for the tow truck.

We're still up one, and the family friend was just released! He says he'll be out at the car soon. Of course, we give him some sh*t, but are thankful that he's alright and is still coming out to bounce some ideas around.

Dad and I fill the dumpster with junk and load the truck with car parts. Now all that's left is to get the car onto the trailer. +1 to the Win Column! The family friend shows up and we start discussing the finer points of block and tackle, come-alongs, and how we might be able to get the car up there without the tow truck's winch. Why not try? We're close already! The former roommate is back from work by the time we get set up with the come-along. Now we have 4 people to get eyes and hands on this car. +1 more for the win! We determine that our current ramp setup is insufficient and instead decide on putting down flooring underlayment on the ramps and flats of the trailer. This will ensure a smoother rolling surface for loading and unloading. We know that the wheels can go over a 3/8" bump with relative ease, and the former roommate offers up his scrap pile to build ramps from. +1 to the win column for the scrap pile, and +1 for having easy to load ramps!
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Because the front wheels were a little crooked, we only had three wheels per dolly on the fronts, so we were paying a LOT of attention to those as we used the come-along and a climbing rope to pull the car up onto the trailer. We should have paid more attention to the rears. The dolly under the right rear got held up a bit and was kicked out from under the tire since the wheel was able to freely spin. I figured if the wheel still spins, and as long as it doesn't lock up on us and shatter the differential, we're still good. If it does lock up on us I'll need to rebuild a diff that might be destroyed under power when the car is finished. Either way, I'll call it a win if we can get the car loaded onto the trailer. So, +1 for car on trailer!
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Now, since I can't remember who came up with which good ideas, I'll just say "we" for the rest of this section. We thought it might be a good idea to get the dolly back under the tire to make it easier to offload in a straight line. We have the factory scissor jack, let's put it under the car and see what happens. Worst case scenario, if it doesn't work, we're no worse off than we are now. We strapped the car down enough to move it and found a pretty close to level spot in the drive way and up she goes on the jack. We pulled the wheel, and managed to get everything high enough to put the dolly and wheel back where they belonged! And another +1 to the win, we've got this solidly in the bag! We get everything strapped tight enough to play Cotton Eye'd Joe and we're ready to head back to the hotel for what will be our last night in Illinois for a while.
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With our tally safely 6 points in the win column, it'd take a serious catastrophe for things to end up at a loss, so that's where I'll leave you until I get the final post written! (Cliff hanger, ominous music, and whatnot)
 
Wednesday August 5:
Plan of action for today: Get the car to Ohio, get the car in the garage, unload the truck on Thursday.

Outside of construction the drive to Ohio was mostly uneventful. It just took much longer than expected. What was supposed to be a 7 hour trip turned into almost 10 with the reduced speed (per U-Haul's towing safety guidelines) and the long waits for construction.

As the second owner of this car (purchased in Bloomington, IL) this is the first time she's been out of the State she was born in while I've had her, maybe the first time period. So, here she is, for (what could be) the first time out of Illinois, just across the Indiana border:
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And the obligatory welcome to Ohio:
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(Do not use a cell phone while driving. I totally stopped on the freeway to take this picture... :shhh:)

The car is in my driveway! However, we have another problem to solve. My former Ohio roommate was expecting to be able to help earlier in the day. Now that we've arrived later than anticipated, he needs to spend some time with his kid, but he'll be able to help unload the car later. So, Dad and I start figuring out how to get the car off ourselves. The family friend sent us with the climbing rope and come-along that we used to get the car onto the trailer, but neither will do us much good to get it off. My driveway slopes upward toward the house (most do, those that don't have a tendency to flood...) and the trailer is pointed down hill. Meaning, we can try to push the car uphill, on a trailer, or we can buy a pulley and some chain. I know, let's buy a pulley and some chain! We affix the chain to the tie-down loops on the back of the trailer, and pull the rope through the pulley to the hook on the come-along. Now when we ratchet the come-along, the car moves backward, uphill, and off the trailer! Isn't physics fun?!

We get the car most of the way off the trailer and run out of rope. We've gone as far as we can go without the former Ohio roommate's assistance. And, as luck would have it, the car has achieved balance on the trailer and ramps. It won't roll forward or backward without assistance. So we set the brakes on the dollies and start unloading the truck. It's better to do something while waiting for help. We end up getting most of the truck unloaded by the time the former Ohio roommate is able to assist.

With a little wiggle and shimmy, and almost losing the front left dolly (big shout out to Dad for calling that one out in time!) we get the car into the garage!
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Sorry, this picture kind of sucks, but it was after 9pm when I took this. Not a lot of light outside...

Now, I have car parts in my garage, car parts in my living room, and car parts in my storage/weight room. It looks like the old Mitsu factory exploded in my house and I couldn't be happier!
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In case you ever read this, a big thank you to everyone who helped! This would not have happened without you! Thank you.

And with that, the real journey begins!
 
Not much of an update here, and no pictures yet.

With my family in town, there wasn't much time for the car. I did some part cleaning last weekend and I spent some time at the local Pick-n-Pull this week getting some parts off a 97 GS they had. I went with the intent of picking up just the front left suspension fork, but had a few other ideas of potential parts to pull. I ended up getting the front left fork (turns out I needed the right), factory dash tweeters (blown), the center vent (with switches), the dashboard/door airway trim (both sides), driver door switches, defogger vents, all 4 fender liners, and replaced the missing nuts I needed for the suspension. All for less than $200. Gotta love a PnP!

After I got back, I realized that the fork I already had was the front left suspension fork, and I had just bought another front left suspension fork... :ohdamn: Back to the PnP for the front right suspension fork! On the plus side, the front left forks appear to be discontinued, so I have a replacement if one breaks... Although, if one breaks, I imagine I'll have a few more issues than just needing to replace a suspension fork.
 
After a quick visit to the local Cars-n-Coffee Saturday morning, I spent most of the afternoon getting the garage sorted enough that I can put the daily in beside the Eclipse. I also got my block on the engine stand and the transmission and head on my tool cart.
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(I didn't notice that stick protruding from my bumper until this morning LOL)

I spent most of today clearing off my firewall, removing harnesses, lines, insulation, etc. I also spent a decent portion of today taking pictures without a memory card! :ohdamn: So, unfortunately, I have no pictures of pulling anything off the car... I also pulled my fenders with plans of busting as much rust as I can, and coating everything not visible in POR15, and maybe some undercoating on top of that... I'm still not sure how I want to go about busting the rust in the engine bay/shock towers. I'm thinking wire wheel + man hours + rust inhibitor + primer/paint? That'll probably wait until I have my firewall and shock towers welded up, though...
 
Saturday I decided to pull my door rubbers and the body harness. The door rubbers came off OK, and I'll have to do some straightening on the driver side. That center "catch" didn't want to let go, and ended up being bent almost 90 degrees by the time I got the rubber removed. The harness was pretty straight forward, but I got hung up at the fuel pump connection, so I ended up freeing "most" of it instead. While messing around in there with the harness I noticed how bad the rodent urine smell was... Apparently, when mice and rats use your car for a house and a decade goes by, there's a little 'residue' left over. A quick search of the Internet led me to find a solution of peroxide, baking soda, and dish soap. I mixed up around three times what the recipe called for, and set to scrubbing. It worked quite well, no more urine smell! But it got me wondering, did I just put something into my car that will cause more rust? Once more, to the Internet! This time the results were less conclusive, some people recommending peroxide/baking soda to remove rust, others saying use it if you want to create rust... ugh... I decided to use my small stock of POR15 to do the tub on Sunday.

Oh! And I remembered to put the memory card in my camera this time!

Here's a bit of a what my floor pan looked like when I started. There's quite a bit of surface rust and pitting around every join, every drain plug, and even some minor paint disruption from rust underneath the primer (although that's harder to see) on the driver's side. There is substantially less on the passenger side, but I decided it can't hurt to do the whole floor pan.
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One of the rear drain plugs, this one was the worst of the bunch. Still, not too bad when it comes to rust...
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If you're following along, don't forget your PPE!
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And your rust remover of choice:
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After several hours of wire wheeling and battery changes, I'm finally ready to seal everything in the tub.
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You can see just how old my POR15 is by the names on the containers...
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And we have success!
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I'm actually waiting on the second coat to tack up a bit before I finish off the can onto some of 'formerly' rusty areas. I've only got a small amount left, not enough to save, not enough to do a full coat, might as well!
 
I did a LOT of wrapping last weekend. I got the rear shelf stripped and wrapped with black trunk carpet. I also did the headliner, sunroof panels, and sun visors. I got photos of the rear shelf, and tried to get video of all the headliner stuff, but since I'm still getting to know this new camera, I only got the visors.

Regardless, let's break down prepping and wrapping the rear shelf.
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The tools of the trade.

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My material of choice. It's just a standard "trunk carpet" in black.

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I carefully pushed the rubber bumpers out with the 90* hook pick and some slight wiggling. The key is to press the little tabs on the sprue that holds the bumper to the board. The string supports came out pretty easily, basically, just untie the knot on the underside and pull. They come right out.

Next, I just picked a corner of the fabric and started pulling. I tried to keep as much of the board together as possible, but there is a little of it that stuck to the original carpet. The surface of the board was still pretty smooth, so I felt ready to start stretching the new fabric.
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It's a little difficult to see, but there is a "front" and a "back" to most fabrics. You can see it in this photo if you look closely. The fabric has a very fine texture on the "front" and a much coarser, shinier, texture on the "back."

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Wrapped with the bumpers installed! I opted against making the holes for the string supports for now. The clasps that form the loops are a little corroded on mine, so I'm going to look into ways to clean those up, or replace them with something better...

Video of wrapping the visors:


Oh, and there's more pics of everything on my flickr. Link is in my signature.
 
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I decided I'd clean up and refurbish my valve cover over the weekend. I'd found an image that I liked of a crinkle coat VC with white lettering and a red :dsm:, so with that in mind, I set about cleaning.
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The tools I used. Eventually, I took a wire wheel to it after I got tired of trying to scrub away the factory paint by hand...

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And I needed something to scrub! :D

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All cleaned up! This only took a couple hours, and I'm pretty happy with the results...

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Getting ready for a new coat!

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In case you've never seen crinkle coat before, it's quite an interesting texture up close.

I used a sanding block and some 180 grit to bring the letters back to the aluminum. That took a bit of back and forth and a bit of time... Here it is, in all it's crinkled glory!
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I also got a decent amount of video on this one, check it out!

Now I've just got to figure out what I'm going to do next weekend...
 
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Got a little done over the last weekend that took way longer than it would seem... I got my new carpet in a while ago, and finally got the chance to do some fitment/trimming.
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I've got more trimming to do, but for now everything is cut where I can confirm it needs to be.

I also did some repairs to my dashboard. I broke the radio/climate control supports (cough 10+ years ago) when I removed the dash and figured now was a good enough time to fix it.
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Just a little polyurethane epoxy in the crack and a bout 7.5 minutes of clamp time, and we have a fixed dash!

The video is up!


That's all for now. More updates next week!
 
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Finally starting the conversion of my interior from tan to black this weekend. Well, I should say, RE-starting the conversion. I've mostly been doing touch ups of stuff I painted a decade ago. Thankfully, SEM Landau Black is still SEM Landau Black!
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Speaking of SEM Landau Black, I need to buy more... I used three cans getting these parts (and a few others not pictured) painted and I've still got quite a few more items to spray. Based on the coverage from the three cans, I'm looking at needing about 5 more. Might as well get six, then...
 
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