So with the drive yesterday, I found that the brake pads were all completely worn down and all of them needed replacement. I hoped this would fix the problem with the sound of dragging brakes on the rotors. $60 later, and about an hour and I had new pads all around. I kind of got lucky because the autoparts place were out of the cheap pads, so I got the premium pads at the same price as the cheaper ones.

Going for a test drive, and the brake sound was still there. I didn't know what it was, but I should have seen it when replacing pads.

The rear rotor(s) were WARPED. You could turn them by hand and actually see the wobble that they had. So another run to an Autoparts store and $40 later (really cheap!) for rear rotors and I was set to go.

Going for a drive and the only problem now is the lack of power steering, check engine light, and the loud exhaust. Fixes for those will come.

I had finally gotten the car to a point where I could drive it today. Most of the interior was back in, atleast from the front seats forward, and the lights and engine were working. I had spent all of the day doing little tweaks and installing parts. I put in new light bulbs all around, turn signals and headlights, as well as the R/T wheels from my other car.



The test drive was disappointing. I didn't get it ready to go until about 9PM at night. The headlights weren't aimed properly and I couldn't see really well. The power steering was out. The check engine light came on as soon as I got out of the driveway. The brakes were worn out and dragging, and there was a loud wheel rubbing noise. The exhaust had a loud sounding leak.. and the paint was burning pretty badly off of the exhaust manifold.

Looks like this car isn't done yet.

On my way to the junkyard today I saw a classic Volkswagen stuck on the side of the road. I didn't have time to stop and just kept on going to the junkyard where I managed to score a trunk lid carpet, and several throttle bodies. About and hour later I drove by the Beetle which was still sitting there, and decided to pull over and see what was up.

The guy driving it had been sitting there for a few hours. He was in his 70's and totally had the shakes... but he was prepared to work on his car (even pull the engine and do an oil change right there on the side of the road). He had coveralls, tools, a picnic lunch, and a carpet square to sit on. His fuel pump went out but his daughter was bringing a new one to him.

His car was a great looking and original 74 Standard with a bored out engine, and it sounded like he was an avid VW guy. Said the car was a blast to drive and easy to work on.

I hope you got it running and didn't get stuck for too long!

Thanks to some crafty seat foam swapping. I now have a perfect driver side seat. The seat that we dissected yesterday had perfect seat foam and bolsters as it was a lesser used passenger seat. That seat foam was modified slightly to be put on the R/T seat frame and it all went perfectly.

Here is the new seat foam in question:



Using Zipties instead of the normal hogclips, we put the R/T fabric back on that seat foam and put it all backtogether.







The result?





A perfect drivers seat that will last several more years of abuse.

It didn't take much to get the car running again tonight. Just a battery and some coolant, and it fired off after a few seconds of cranking. The struggle to get to this point was long and troublesome. It wasn't until after three hard days of work that it was possible.

The car idled very well at 900-1000rpm, I was surprised not to have any Vac leaks and it appears there are no bad exhaust leaks. I did have to watch the painted exhaust peices paint burn a lttile bit, but that is normal.

It won't be able to get an oil change and some other finishing details on the engine until Monday, but it was nice to get it done today. It really was.

It also wasn't the only thing I did today.. I worked on some interior peices and got my turnsignals tinted. These will match more closely than the stock amber signals would have.





The paint is Krylon Stained Glass in amber.

With that seat that I had picked up from the junk yard, we decided to dissect it and pull out the foam to repair the sagging driver seat that came out of the R/T. The process is pretty simple to be honest.

Use a 10mm socket and rachet to remove the tracks, and seperate the base from the seat back.

Once apart, the seat bottom has two hogrings on the bottom that need to be removed, and then the 4 fabric channel clips need to be undone. The fabric can be rolled up around the metal frame (which is quite beefy!), but don't go yanking it off. There are a few more hogrings. There is going to be upwards of 9 hogrings between the fabric and foam keeping it all together. You can spend time bending them out, or just cut them with a HD cutters like we did. Make sure NOT to damage the metal rods inside the fabric. Once all of those are out, the fabric can be pulled off. Get rid of the hog rings, as Zipties will be just as effective to use to put back together.



The seat back is a bit easier. Just undo the Z plastic channel, and roll the fabric up. Its held on with Hook and Loop (velcro) on the sides and has 3 hog rings right in the middle of the fabric. Get rid of those and then keep pulling up. Take off your headrest by sticking a small pin in the hole near the base of the headrest. It should come right off, and you can seperate the fabric from the foam and frame.

Thats it for now.





Be careful not to damage the foam, or fabric. If you are reusing it at all. If you don't have replacement foam, you can try to fix the existing foam with more foam and with fabric over it. Sometimes it might just be too far gone to keep.

The R/T could have been running today but we ran into a few small, yet major snags. The biggest one being a motormount bolt was not threading in correctly, and completely tore up the threads. I managed to run to the hardware store before they closed and pick one up.. but it ate up about 2 hours of work that could have spent doing other things.

I did manage to get the heater lines run, install booger bushings, intstall the intake manifold, timing belt, tensioner, covers and motormount. Not too bad.. but it all should have only taken an hour and not hours. Pulling the engine completely would have been quicker.

Here is a glamorous shot of the intake and chrome fuel rail.



In addition to working on the engine I started to tint the clear turnsignals with Kyrlon Stained Glass paint. A few more coats and it will match the other turn signals.





I guess with the trip to the junkyard, it has been a pretty productive day. But we aren't done yet.. there is more coming.

I went to the junkyard today for a few hours. It was the best I've ever done at the junk yard, they actually had two DOHC MTX Sports there, that I took quite a lot of parts off of. I ended up spending about $100 and running away with:

-Passenger Sedan Confetti Seat (with Perfect Bolsters)
-7K RPM Redline Cluster (w/ tach obviously)
-2 Automatic Throttle Bodies
-1 DOHC Intake Manifold
-1 DOHC Fuel Rail with Injectors
-Trunk Carpet and Trim
-Spare Tire
-Spare Tire Cover
-Power Mirror Covers
-Dash
-Dash Vents

Maybe a few other things I can't quite remember. It was a very good day. I will be monitoring the UPull website from now on, and go in whenever they get a new Neon in.

I really liked the way my headliner turned out in my other Black R/T that I decided I would start out by doing that to this car while I am fixing up the rest of the interior. I plan on fixing the Sun Roof early next week so it will go in once that is completely fixed.

Making a new headliner is really easy to do. It just takes a few simple tools but a lot of time and patience. The material I picked out at the fabric store is specifically for headliners and is identical to the material that I stripped off the old fiberboard (excpet its black!).

This is the basic headliner:



Just pull the fabric off the headliner:



Wire wheel off all the remaining foam:



Get some 3M Super 90 (only the 90 will be strong enough to keep the material from sagging and falling off).



Glue the fabric to the fiberboard, trim and you've got youself a new headliner.



I don't have any pictures of the finished headliner, but I will get them up in a future blog post.

Time was spent today working on the new R/T which I will be calling "AJ SLOW" from now on. It will be my normal daily driver of a car, and also my beater in a way. The other R/T that I have will stay insane and will continue to just sit there.

I cleaned out most of the interior of the car. There is a ton of stuff that needs to go, be fixed or cleaned up.



I made sure to take all the brackets I had removed from the car, and the intake and fuel rail... and clean them up and paint them. They should make the engine bay look tons better.



I recieved a new head from a Neons.org member that was out of a 2.4L Stratus. It looked like it was in pretty good shape, and we cleaned it up a bit. Installing it only took a little bit of time.



But unfortunately we hit a snag, and one of the cam cap hole threads were stripped out, and we had to helicoil it. It really took a good chunk of time out from the work.. not to mention caused a nice $50 extra expense I wasn't expecting!