The Webmaster Zone

OK, for all of you that have been emailing me wondering when I'm going to update the web site, here it is. The reason that I haven't been doing much work on the car is because I moved from Vancouver to Seattle recently, which took a pretty hefty chunk out of my free time for the last month or so. I did adjust the valves a few weeks ago, to my suprise they were almost all too tight. After my dropped valve incident, I'm pretty paranoid about keeping them in good condition now. Unfortunately the mechanic that worked on it torqued the valve cover down too hard and destroyed the gasket, and of course I didn't have a spare on hand so I temprarily made one out of a big piece of cardboard and some blue gasket sealer. Seemed to work fine until a new cork gasket arrived. My main problem now is water leaks, highlighted by the torrential rain that arrives here in the Northwest in November and my continued lack of having a garage. I took the seats and the carpets out of the car two weeks ago and I've been trying to dry out my beautiful new floorpans and track down the leaks since then. I drilled two small holes in the back of the floor pans to let the standing water drain, and determined that my hardtop is leaking a lot of water especially around the quarter lights, the back of the door and the latches. It is in pretty rough shape so I pulled it off and put the soft-top back on which has reduced the flood to a trickle. I also noticed that the fresh air intake was a little swimming pool and was dumping water through the vent into the cockpit, so I got under the car and poked some wire up through the drain hose (to the right of the trans in the trans tunnel) which then of course released a gush of cold dirty water right up my sleeve. I'm going to make cleaning this drain part of my routine maintenance and do it every time I'm down there greasing the U-joints. The leaks that remain are one in the driver side behind the dash, which might just be that the wiper bezel nut needs to be tightened, and around the posts of the windshield. I've had a leak problem ever since the windshield rubber was replaced (or new leaks, rather). Hopefully we will get some nice weather soon so I can pull the windshield and try to extract the one snapped bolt for the center stay rod, and also file a bit of material off the frame leg so I can get the bottom bolt in on the passenger side. I might also switch the order of the post grommet and body-to-frame seal (currently the order is frame-seal-grommet-body) and use some silicone sealant in that area. The dash cover got warped when the idiots that installed my windshield put it in, so I need to straighten that out too. I wish there was some light after work in the winter. I hope I can find all the leaks soon and put the seats back in, I *really* miss driving it. I'm also considering buying one of those EZ-UP type instant garages for working on the car while its raining (which is most of the time in winter).