Between 265 & 485 SQ/FT My first house, my second garage - 2-car in CA

[Jgaz]

Just read your whole thread. Interesting variety of projects.

I’ll be interested in how you like that belt sander.
I also have owned and used cheap machines but have had no luck sourcing anything used that was an improvement.

 

[JP_CA]

Just read your whole thread. Interesting variety of projects.

I’ll be interested in how you like that belt sander.
I also have owned and used cheap machines but have had no luck sourcing anything used that was an improvement.

Thank you! Glad to hear you enjoyed it! Certainly a big variety, which keeps things interesting.

The belt grinder is really a big beast, but if I'm trying to move metal, I think it'll be what I'm looking for. As I "break it in," I'll follow up here with my thoughts.

 

[JP_CA]

It's finally time to replace the dash in the pickup, so I've started on that in the last few weeks. Naturally, it has spiraled into a much larger project. We'll get to that!

First I wanted to reinforce the three screw holes that always crack.



The glue looks . . uh . . anyway, I glued it. Hopefully this extra layer of epoxy gives it a little more strength.



I got an aftermarket Metra dash bezel kit for a cleaner double-din install, but it comes black and has to be colormatched.



I proceeded to paint it the wrong color! This is "tan" and it's supposed to be "oak."



So, I bought the correct paint and redid it. Very happy with the results. Tape lines are reasonably crisp.



For the 1,000,000th time, I put together a radio wire harness adapter. Nice and neat!

 

[JP_CA]

The dash removal process started with unplugging everything I could reach, which I did carefully. Just look at this ********! The dash is barely there!



Once everything was unplugged, things got a little more violent. Did I break it in half during removal? Yes.







Of course . . I'm already here . . of course the vinyl floor is going to come out. Need to run some wires, need to do some repairs.



Time to deal with this floorboard





Measure, mark, cut!





And . . cut again . . pretty close!

 

[JP_CA]

Only one thing left to do, and that's to start cutting the hole. I figure, there were already rust holes - I can make one, bigger hole!



Getting the panel into position wasn't a very elegant process, but it fit pretty well after some adjustment. These sheet metal **** welding clamps are a little fiddly but I like them.



Started tacking:



This is what it looked like partway through. The outboard weld was a mess. The factory panel actually curves down, so I was spanning a pretty big gap and putting a weld where there wasn't originally a weld. This is because I didn't want to cut out the outboard panel. This is a bit of a shortcut, but it means that I can fix the rust without completely deconstructing the bodyside.

I welded the underside as well for completeness.



Inboard weld ground flat-ish.



A lick of paint and seam sealer to finish things out. Frankly I think I'm going to leave all of this in black rust converter paint because I couldn't find the body color paint that I thought I had, and a new can is in the mail. I want to get this thing back together! This is under the carpet! I can live with that!



All that welding took its toll on my welding helmet, so I finally replaced the front screen. There were weld boogers embedded into the plastic!





I ended up removing the dash harness from the truck, after the fact. I think this will make installation of the new dash easier, although getting some of these connectors undone (e.g. below the brake booster) was a real pain. Still - no broken clips or anything!



After all that, I did some arts and crafts to remake the foam covering where the plastic vents meet the dash

 

[mmsheb]

That's a lot of work! Great progress.
Mike in WI

 

[JP_CA]

That's a lot of work! Great progress.
Mike in WI

Thanks Mike!

Including the 3-week honeymoon, I'm taking 3 months off work. So if the progress seems faster than normal, that is a factor!

 

[JP_CA]

It's been a little windy lately and when I have both the roll door and the person door open, the dustpan likes to rotate back and forth, ringing like a bell.



So . . while I have the sound deadening out . . LOL



Switched proverbial "gears" to get some more work done on the Golf. After hemming and hawing over it, I decided not to weld these myself and instead asked a friend to help me (because he does this for a living). He ended up TIG-brazing these with silicon bronze, which is plenty strong for what we're doing here.








He did a great job. This will smooth out easily to a nice soft edge. Now just need to seam seal and rust protect it, then paint!

 

[JP_CA]

Progress continued on the GMC!

Time to clean up the vinyl. A drill brush goes a long way here.





And, naturally . . "while I'm in there" . . . a cursory sound-deadening treatment. I never really go for full "barrier" coverage, just want to deaden the panels. Always makes the vehicle feel and sound more solid. Everyone has their own opinions on this





Getting all of those pieces cut to fit required some doodling!



Vinyl back in, wires run for under-seat subwoofer:



CAD work





Those brackets go under the seat and eventually got painted black.

I pulled the dash harness out of the truck so that the dash install would be more straightforward. Here's the dash ready for install:



And here it is, installed! This was a big milestone and I was glad to get it mounted.

 

[JP_CA]

In order to get all of the harness connections done, I labeled them with blue tape. But here's the issue - I don't know what all the connectors are for, so I can't label them by function. I also know that if I try to number them, I'll forget what number I'm on ("did I use 8 already? Am I on 9?") so numbers won't work either.

So . . what am I unlikely to repeat? Names! I thought this was actually pretty clever, but I understand if you might think it's a little silly.







So Tom found Tom, Jerry found Jerry, Boris found Boris, and before I knew it, I only had the aftermarket power door locks left to clean up, along with a few stereo connections.

 

[JP_CA]

Final bits - had to do some paintwork where I'd burned the paint on the sill with welding, plus there's a spot on the cab corner that has been showing Bondo since I bought the truck. This is NOT pro-level painting. This is "pray and spray" painting. I'm just trying to get everything body color. I thought I had clear coat . . turns out I didn't. So, no clear coat here. That was a bit of a bummer, but I was trying to get this done before rains came, and I did NOT have time to spare.









This is mostly hidden by the door seal, fortunately! Hard tape line, no gloss! Not great! Better than bare metal though!



That was it! Hooked everything back up and it all works . . except the brake warning lamp, which stays on all the time. Interestingly, when I took the cluster out, the warning lamp bulb was missing - as if someone had removed it . . so I'll figure that out later.

Stereo fits ok in the Metra bezel. I wish it fit better. Especially after all the work to modify the dash etc for that.







Took care of another to-do list item as well. Finally replaced the rubber skirts in the front wheel wells. A dude online makes these and they fit perfect.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/BowmanCustomRubber

 

[JP_CA]

Wipers on the Marauder started ghost-wiping again, meaning another wiper motor failure.

And, sure enough - hella corrosion:



New one got slathered with RTV and a few seals over the nose of the shaft. It's ugly but will almost certainly prevent another failure.



The windshield washer has never worked so I finally dug into it and found that the pump is bad. Even with power connected directly, it doesn't do anything. Easy to swap out.



The Marauder has a 2-tone horn, but only 1 tone actually worked, so while I was at the junkyard, I snagged horns from a newer Crown Vic. Easy swap and now the car doesn't sound like a golf cart when I honk!

Out with the old, busted horns. This car has some front end damage and I think these were part of that.



In with the new-old!



GMC got new horns too. Honk if you're *****, I guess. The old horn was shorted and would immediately blow the fuse, which was shared with cargo light, dome light, etc. . . . super annoying. Easy fix.

 

[JP_CA]

Something a little different . . . I made a font!

The Marauder has this classic text molded into the rear bumper which I've always loved. Here's a sample.



It's also written in the cluster, but the text is slightly different. Here's a pic from online.



I also found this image online:



I wanted to be able to make a license plate frame for the car, but in order to do that, I'd need other letters which I didn't have. So I made a font. I did this with the downtime on my honeymoon, if you can believe that.

I used Glyphs Mini and traced out the first few characters, then adapted from there.



Here's the finished font with all characters. I haven't published it online yet - still working on that.



Using my wife's Cricut machine as a vinyl cutter, I cut out my lettering and voila!





It looks great on the car. I love the way it came out.



Got some rainy day photos from a local photographer @seen_on_skyline . Love the way this car looks.

 

[Jgaz]

In order to get all of the harness connections done, I labeled them with blue tape. But here's the issue - I don't know what all the connectors are for, so I can't label them by function. I also know that if I try to number them, I'll forget what number I'm on ("did I use 8 already? Am I on 9?") so numbers won't work either.

So . . what am I unlikely to repeat? Names! I thought this was actually pretty clever, but I understand if you might think it's a little silly.







So Tom found Tom, Jerry found Jerry, Boris found Boris, and before I knew it, I only had the aftermarket power door locks left to clean up, along with a few stereo connections.

It isn’t crazy if it works

 

[JP_CA]

The Golf is getting some more love as the panel work is happening.

This connector on the distributor finally broke. It still connects electrically, but is sorta hanging out which I very much don't like.



Bought a used replacement on eBay instead of a cheapo new one. Got the engine to TDC, swapped over the drive gear (due to my engine half-swap, 2.0 ABA bottom end with 1.8 head), got the distributor in and lined up, and the car didn't start.

I went through all the in-vehicle diagnosis only to find that I needed to bench-test the distributor, but in order to do that, I needed an LED test light (which I don't have), so I made one out of an old dome lamp bulb. Handy to have!





After bench testing, I concluded that the new (used) distributor didn't work. Brilliant!

What I really needed was the connector, so first I tried depinning the connector to see if I could swap it over. That didn't work (I pulled one of the wires out of the crimp), and the terminals were slightly different anyway . . so I ended up having to cut and solder.







Like new!



At this point the bench had gotten a little chaotic . .



All that work just for a few blinks. Worth it. Car runs!

 

[JP_CA]

Finally found a body shop that could do the paint work I needed for the Golf. Single stage paint is harder to find these days in California, so I had to ask around. A lot of shops also weren't interested in bodyworking the hood, but new hoods aren't available, so that was the only way!

I stripped the car and dropped off the parts. Always kinda fun to see cars without major body panels.



The painter sent some photos during the process. You can see just how wavy the hood was!





A few weeks later, everything was ready!





Mocked . .



They need to fully cure for 2 months, so I can't put vinyl on the lower trailing part of the fender yet.

Overall very happy with the panels. There are a few pockmarks but nothing that really bothers me. And, they haven't been wetsanded, cut, or buffed yet.

Progress!

 

[JP_CA]

The Marauder has a few bad spots in its paint, including aging clear coat on the RL door and peeling paint on the right mirror.



I wanted to reuse this one but would only do so if I could get all the paint off (since it was peeling). I checked my chemical paint stripper which said it was safe to use on plastic, so I went for it. First coat worked great, paint wrinkled and I could scrape it off. Second coat turned the plastic into chewing gum. Had to throw away the mirror cap and go to the junkyard for another one.

Primed:





Did my best to polish out the ashy clear. So-so, not great results.





I also finally fixed the bottom of the seat where the cover was unclipped. Took me some effort to get the seat out of the car, but the fix took about 5 minutes.



Then I "fixed" the tear in the seat bottom using a simple leather repair kit and thick thread. At least it won't spread any more. Doesn't look beautiful, but neither did the tear.

 

[JP_CA]

And, with all of this prep done . . sold the Marauder. It was a good car, but I'm ready for the next thing (although not sure what it'll be yet).

Farewell!

 

[JP_CA]

Other stuff . .

Every time I transport propane tanks to get them refilled, I have to slap together some straps or seatbelts or whatever to keep them from moving around. It never feels great and always sorta freaks me out. So I decided to fix it.

Did some doodling, then did some making. Works perfect. It has rubber feet so I just put it in the bed behind the cab, run a strap through the tanks, and go along my merry way. I need to add tie-downs to the bottom of the truck bed next, but this is better than what I had before.







And while we're improving things . . finally found some better deals on steel cabinets, so I bought 2 more. These are not outdoor rated, so they do get a little wet inside when it rains, but most of the stuff in there is in bottles anyway so I'm not too stressed over it. These are also not fire-rated chemical storage cabinets. I haven't yet found a decent deal on anything this large, but I would rather have one/some of those.

Prep:



Cabinets in:





More space to see what I have, more space to store stuff. Really pleased with this.

 

[JP_CA]

Many moons ago, I replaced the stock seats in the Land Cruiser with some Corbeau Sport seats. They are . . fine. Some things about them I like, some I don't. But they are good for longer trips, so I've kept them. I also have leather cover replacements for the stock seats squirreled away, for when I feel in the mood for that.





Anyway, when I ordered the Corbeau seats, I opted for the heated option. I verified that the truck came wired for heated seats, so I bought factory switches and popped them in.



With the help of a friend, I got the right connectors and terminals to hook up to the factory harness. Not rocket science, but I put it off for a long time.

Recently I decided it was time to hook it all up, so I dug into the wiring info my friend sent me.



So . . when the seat is on LO, 4 is hot and 3 is GND. When the seat is on HI, 5 is hot and both 3 and 4 are GND. A bit odd, but ok.

The Corbeau system is totally different and comes with its own switch. I did some thinking and ended up concluding I needed a relay system to give the Corbeau seat what it wanted, stole the power feed from the Power Seat circuit, and everything should have worked.



The Corbeau system has a power feed, a GND, and then a rocker switch with yellow, green, and blue wires. These all connect to a little electronics box that actually does the seat heat circuit control (including monitoring a thermistor inside the seat, which is cool). My relay system takes the power feed for the seat heat and turns it into the yellow wire either connecting to the blue wire or to the green wire - which is the same thing the Corbeau switch does.

I built relay harnesses with the Corbeau connector and the factory connector.







With everything done, I plugged it all in and confirmed that the seats do, in fact, heat up when turned on! However, they do not turn off. Both sides do the same thing. I stripped down the setup completely, until I was only connecting power and GND to the seat. And after a few seconds of being plugged in, it would start pulling a few Amps of current. VERY strange. I called Corbeau and they picked up immediately - no phone tree or anything - and the first person I talked to was able to help me. They said they never recommend using other switches, of course. But they did send me new control boxes. I'll try those next, just haven't had time to dig back into it.

Weird, eh?

 

[JP_CA]

Couple sewing projects over in the sewing thread too.

Show us your sewing projects!

Installed the cushions. Vinyl is almost too white LOL. Now definitely have to work on seat backs and side upholstery! Still quite a way to go... Bow seating Cockpit seating Sunpad

www.garagejournal.com

Show us your sewing projects!

Installed the cushions. Vinyl is almost too white LOL. Now definitely have to work on seat backs and side upholstery! Still quite a way to go... Bow seating Cockpit seating Sunpad

www.garagejournal.com

 

[JP_CA]

Oily smell in the CX-5 meant it was time for a valve cover gasket. It was pretty gross under the engine cover.





Didn't love finding this either . . . evidence of little friends:



Everything looks super clean inside when the valve cover came off. These cars are great.



And, after lots of cleaning, the plastic valve cover looked like new!



Got all the old RTV off the channel where the seal goes. Everything went back together without issue.



Decided to throw new plugs at it too. I think these were original to the car. 163,000 miles.

 

[JP_CA]

And just like that . . my wife finally got what she wanted, and what she's been asking for - a new car!

We sold the CX-5 to a friend who will surely enjoy it for many years to come.

We're now leasing a Model Y, which has been a long time coming. We always knew her next car would be electric and she is over the moon with it. I feel bad for not doing it sooner.

 

[JP_CA]

Odds and ends . .

Microphone mod kit installed - just a few replacement caps. I found this on eBay while looking for another MXL V63M to match the one I have. I was playing with mic-ing my piano the other day and wanted to know how different these would sound vs the small condenser mics I used.



Burned a trace and had to make a wire bridge, oops.





Aforementioned small condenser setup (pardon the mess). These are actually drum overhead mics from my CAD drum mic pack, but they worked pretty well!





Filled out the M12 battery rack:



And repotted most of my wisteria seedlings. I'm hoping to plant one of these in the back yard. Don't think I've mentioned this project but I started them from seed, from my parents' wisteria.

 

[JP_CA]

Bought an SLK320. I've wanted one of these for a long time and finally came to an agreement with a local seller who had been trying to get a ton of money out of this car. Needless to say, I didn't pay his asking price.

The car is really fun. It's a 6-speed manual. I looked at an SLK230 (4-cyl Kompressor) and hated it, so I was really only looking for a 320. It is extremely short and compact - only a few inches longer than the NA Miata.







Naturally, the day after bringing it home, it wouldn't start (wouldn't even crank). Welcome Mercedes ownership! Easy fix on the K40 relay module - the solder joints fail. The seller included an extra relay. Both were bad, so I fixed them both. Now I have a spare!

Before:



After:

 

[JP_CA]

I went camping recently and brought my 943 as I always do, but noticed it was starting to get really stiff and hard to open, so I knew it was due for a little love. These are some of my favorite projects - easy, quick, satisfying.

Pretty crusty:



All cleaned up:



A little Tri-Flow and Loctite to keep the blade tension right with the Torx screw. Flicks open perfectly. Feels like new again.

 

[JP_CA]

I had a little lull in projects after going back to work after my break - sort of lost focus and motivation to be in the garage. Competing priorities . .

Anyway, there are a handful of things over the last few months that I've squeezed in.

The Land Cruiser failed smog for evap, so I spent a bunch of time fiddling around with it. There were a few things that should've tipped me off that something was wrong:

• Sometimes the idle is rough
• There is usually a fair amount of pressure in the fuel tank when I refuel
• Last time I went off-road, I noticed a small but audible leak at the charcoal canister

I tested the canister and found that the check valve isn't working or a passage is blocked, so I replaced it with a GM part, because the Toyota one is NLA.



I went back to the smog shop and it failed again. I asked the tech how the test is done and that's when I discovered that they pinch off the lines BEFORE the canister . . so the canister isn't even part of the test. I thought that was odd and listened closely while the test was running, only to discover that there was an audible air leak at the gas cap. The tech removed the adapter (where the pressure goes in) and we found that there were two o-rings where there should be only one.

Removed the second o-ring and the test passed. Go figure.

For the Golf, I decided to swap back to my old center console. I also removed the definitely-not-police-siren that I installed in 2017. These consoles have foam for vents which is, of course, disintegrating. Easy!








Also finally got around to seam sealing over the welded rod on the fender backside.






Also lucked out and found an underhood insulator for the SLK at the junkyard!

Out with the old:



In with the used:

 

[JP_CA]

More SLK stuff -

I'm tall, so I have the seat all the way back. The leather rubs on the plastic trim. Velvet tape is an easy way to address that.





Swapped out this old serpentine belt:



Figured out why the radio reception was terrible . . . coax was disconnected from the antenna mast!



And finally . . "bodywork"






Magic! This at least keeps the bumper skin tied together.



Now, more domestic. Our trusty dustbuster was having issues so I decided to replace the battery cells. This was a bit of an agricultural soldering job on my part, but the thing screams now. Working with lithium cells was a bit hairy for me given the heat involved, but all good!

 

[JP_CA]

I've been casually looking for wheels for the SLK. I don't hate the wheels it came with, but they're 16s and I feel they dress down the car a little bit. A friend send me this listing so I decided to take a look:



The wheels were pretty rough in person so I talked the seller down to $300 and brought them home.



Drove straight to the wheel refinishing spot that I used for the Lexus and dropped them off. 3 days later they were ready!





Hemmed and hawed over tires and ended up choosing the Firestone Firehawk Indy 500 V2. I liked the V1s well enough on the Lexus, I figured I would give these a shot. They still flat-spot a little bit but not too bad. We'll see when winter comes. Otherwise, they feel awesome. Super quiet, nice ride, and well grippier than what came off the car.



Mounted and balanced at work (thankful to have access to these machines) and threw them on the car before going for a coastal drive. I'm very happy with they way the car looks and feels!

 

[JP_CA]

The GMC has needed some follow-up exhaust work for a while now, so I finally got around to it. The first thing is finding what sounds like a "jingle" in the system. It truly sounds like they're a washer inside the front crossover pipe (from the left bank to the cat) so I removed that pipe and in the process, had to break all 3 fasteners which hold that downpipe to the header flange. Turns out, stainless needs anti-sieze. I haven't had this happen before, but probably should have known better, especially with deformed-thread lock nuts.



Anyway, I got it off, borrowed a borescope, looked inside, and found nothing. So I put it back on. It was a bust.

The other thing that needed doing was installing the resonator that I've had kicking around the garage for a while. Again, not the prettiest welds, but at least this time I have the correct MIG gas.







The truck is now a lot quieter when cruising the highway, although still pretty loud under load. I think it's a good balance. Still sounds good.

While I was under the truck, I swapped out the front bumpstops to reduce the front rubbing. Not sure if this is a good long-term solution, but so far so good. Truck still rides decent with these in.

 

[JP_CA]

The Land Cruiser windows started getting slow again, which is annoying because I already took apart the switchpack back in Feb 2024. But, it's not terribly difficult, so I cracked it open and found the same corroded contact issue. I cleaned everything, this time polished the contacts, and applied Penetrox to prevent further surface degradation. I'm really not sure whether that will work long-term and would be more than happy to hear suggestions on how to keep these switch contacts happy. My best idea is relaying all of the window motors, which would be a real effort but would probably improve things a lot.



Dark grey Penetrox applied:

 

[JP_CA]

Spent a few minutes fixing worn and torn spots on the Land Cruiser handbrake boot. I consider this "visible mending" and made no attempt to hide the repairs.



Interfacing applied:



Mended!