Final Preparations For Registration

Today, after work, I drove to a vehicle inspection office to reserve a time for the registration. People had recommended a place in Tuusula but after getting there, the price was over 300 euros! I had asked around before and had heard offers of about 150 euros so I decided to call a few places. After a few phone calls, I had an inspections time for tomorrow at 10 am. Cost was about 140 euros. Still expensive but only half compared to the first place.

Now that I knew where drive, I could get the temporary plates. You need to specify every trip you plan to make to get them. Today I needed to visit a friend to adjust the headlamps and tomorrow drive to Vantaa for the inspection.

I got home and started doing the preparations so I could drive the car. I emptied all unnecessary tools and other crap from the car and then bolted the seats back in place. Then I put some other tools that I might need on the way in the car and added some coolant. Now the car was ready to go!

The 15 km drive went without incidents but I did find a bug. The wipers got stuck between the hood and the windshield! They didn't fit between the gap there. I would have to check it out in the evening. Adjusting the lights took about 5 minutes and after chatting a bit, I started driving back home. And another problem appeared: the starter motor still turned slowly when the engine was hot! The heat shield didn't work...

I filled the gas tank on my way home and also noticed that the fan was on. So the fan and sensor were working! Yay! I got home and started the final tweaking. First was the wipers. I had changed the blades and the new ones were a little higher that the original. Now the wiper arm got caught to the hood. The blade retainer was made of plastic so I just cut it a bit until the wipers cleared the hood. Just barely but at least they worked.

Second thing was tuning the hood a bit. It didn't always close properly so I tweaked the locking mechanism. When it worked, I added some window washer liquid and was done for the day. And hopefully ready for the inspection.

Exciting to see whether I get plates tomorrow!

Frame Number

Before I could get the car registered, I needed to add the vehicle identification number (VIN) to the frame. I had borrowed letter and number punch tools for this and went to work. The number should be on the passenger side front frame so I decided to put it in the wheel well. I removed the wheel, cleaned the frame a bit and started hammering. It was quite difficult to get good lettering because there's not much room to swing the hammer but at least I got some kind of markings to the frame. I hope it is acceptable.

Next I cleaned some of the wiring in the engine bay. The AC wires had not been taped up yet so I did that. I also noticed that the heater motor did not work any more. It was time to dig out the multimeter again. I tested the wires and it seemed that the wires coming from the AC control panel were cold. Most likely some connector had come loose when attaching the center console. *Sigh* I guess I need to remove the cover panel and take a look. Luckily I don't have to remove the whole console.

Final job for the night was adding the other wheel well carpet to the trunk. Again I removed the interior panels and seat belt and placed the carpet in. I wonder who had cut the carpets because the shape of this one was all wrong. I trimmed the carpet a bit, cut a few holes for the belt fasteners and put everything back in. Finally a complete carpet set was in!

Only one more mandatory fix left before I could try to register the Corvette! The headlamps were pointing in random directions and would have to be adjusted. The problem was that I didn't have an alignment tool so I would have to get temporary plates again and drive the car to someone that did...

Garage Cleaning

I was finally getting car parts that had been sitting on my shelves for nearly two years back where they belonged. So it was time to do some cleaning. My garage is really small and the Corvette just barely fits in it. I need to park it so close to the right wall that you can't move on that side of the car. The length is also so tight that the garage door just barely closes. I need to back the car out to the yard to do any work.

Now that I had the interior back in the car, I could clean the garage a bit and get more room in it. While doing this, I made a discovery from the storage room: the rear wheel well carpets were there! I had forgot about them and they were covered by other crap so I hadn't found them before.

After cleaning, it was time to continue the project. First issue was the dash pad. I unscrewed it, reconnected the light bulbs and started testing the lights. The indicators had stopped working so I began from those. Quickly I found the first problem: a fuse had burned. I replaced it and tested again. Now the left side indicators worked fine but right side front and back indicators didn't.

I removed the light bulbs, which seemed to be fine so I dug out my multimeter. All the connectors showed normal voltage. Strange. I couldn't find anything wrong from the wiring so I desided to replace the bulbs just in case. And after this everything worked perfectly! Well, that was easier than I had feared.

Next I desided to bolt in the valance panel and spoiler. Another relatively simple task. First I had to attach the retainers but then bolting the panels went without problems. Job done.

It was getting late but I decided to do one more thing: place one of the missing carpets in the car. I unbolted the rear quarter panel, seat belt cover and the seat belt retractor itself. Then I needed to cut a few holes to the carpet for the retractor bolts and put everything back together. The trunk was much nicer now!

Only a few more things left before registering the car!

Details And Dash

Next on my list were a bunch of small details. First I installed the exhaust gasgets. The headers were blowing a bit after the collector because there were no gasgets there. I removed the bolts from the flange, installed the gasgets and put the bolts back. Small and fast task.

While under the car, I also installed the starter motor heat shield. When the engine was hot, the starter turned really slowly. When cold, it worked fine. Most likely this was because the headers went a few centimeters away from the starter and heated it up. Hopefully the next hot start would be easier.

Then came the door weatherstrips. First I tested the weatherstrips to see how they fit. Things seemed fine except that the idiot that had painted the car, hadn't even removed all the old screws that held the weatherstrips in place. Some of them were broken or rusted in place but still. I spent a few hours removing them all by drilling or screwing them out with pliers.

I had bought Bison Liquid Rubber for attaching the weatherstrips and the instructions said I should roughen the paint before using it. So I checked the routing of the weatherstrip, sanded the door a bit and finally applied the glue. I proceeded in short sections by first adding glue, then pressed the weatherstrip in and finally added some tape to hold everything in place.

I then left the glue to dry for a day and removed the tapes really carefully. At first I needed to really slam the door shut but after a few days of settling, the weatherstrips found their place and hopefully wouldn't let water in anymore.

After waiting for a few weeks, I finally received the last item for the dashboard: the nut for the headlight switch. I also got the valance panel retainers so now I could get the car ready for registration. Hopefully...

I screwed the switch to the dash panel and went to put it in the car. And many a curses were uttered! After screwing in every panel except the left lower dash pad, I was a bit worried if it would fit in. And it didn't. It took me a complete evening of raging and fighting to get the panel in place. First I needed to unscrew the dash, then remove the windshield padding, next the speaker etc.

When the panel finally went in between the steering wheel and dash, I had to reconnect the speaker through a tiny gap. Then attach all the gauge lights by lying on the floor. Next were the speedo cable and tach wires. And finally the headlight switch wires and vacuum hoses went in. I'm not sure what was the problem but the switch connector wires were way too short so I had to build an extension for them.

Finally, late in the night, I could screw the panel in place and test it. And some more naughty words escaped my lips. The brake warning light and high beam warning light bulbs had come loose while manhandling the panel in place and for some reason the right indicator light was on constantly. Perhaps I had connected the wrong light in while working blind on the floor. There was no room to get my hand behind the tachometer so I would have to unscrew the panel again to put the bulbs back in. But that would have to wait for another day as now I really needed a beer.

And that's it. This blog has finally catched up the current situation. From now on I'll try to write an update when I get something done. There still are a few things on my list before I can register the car. Hopefully I get them all done next week.

Fan Temperature Sensor

For the fan to work, it needed a temperature sensor. I had bought a simple sensor and a fitting to place it in the lower radiator hose. I would need to drain the coolant, cut a piece out from the hose and add the aluminum fitting in. Then I could just screw in the sensor and attach the wires.

But I ran into a problem. The largest fitting I could find was 42 mm in diameter but the hose was 48 mm. No matter how much I searched and asked around, I couldn't find a larger one. Next I thought about building one myself. Should be simple to buy a short pipe, drill a hole to the side and weld in a nut. But I didn't have a welding machine...

I called US-Parts in Helsinki and they had the solution. They were selling a Hayden Automotive fan sensor model 3647 that I could use. It had some good and bad sides. The good news were that now I wouldn't need to drain the coolant, cut the hose and that I could adjust the temperature settings. The bad were that I would need to add new wiring for the sensor and that I didn't know how accurate the sensor was when it wasn't actually touching the coolant. Despite these, I bought it.

I attached the control box to the driver side fender and checked the wiring. Luckily I could use almost all of the wires in my own harness and only needed a few new ones. Here's how I connected them up:

• Red wire - permanent power: I still had room in my power junction so I connected the wire directly to it.
• Black wire - ground: There was a large ground wire meant for the actual fan near the sensor so I split it up to two wires and used the other for grounding the sensor.
• Yellow wire - ignition: I had an ignition wire already in my harness as I had meant to use it to power the other fan sensor. So I just connected it to the new sensor. Oh, and originally the ignition signal was spliced from the windshield washer power wire.
• Green wire - AC power: This signal would force the fan to turn on when AC was on. As the AC had been removed from my car, this wire was unused. This wire could be used if I'd like to override the sensor with a switch later.
• Blue wire - fan 1: Connected directly to the fan itself.
• Orange wire - fan 2: Not connected as I only had a single fan.

Final bit was to attach the sensor itself. The instructions said that I should place it as close to the upper hose as possible. I found this a bit strange as shouldn't the fan be turned on when water exiting the radiator gets too hot? If air flow by itself is not enough to cool the engine? Isn't this the reason that normally fan sensors are in the lower hose? Based on this I installed the sensor as low in the radiator as the wire permitted. Unfortunately this was not very low as the wire was so short. Oh well, I could tune the fan activation point from the control box so it was OK.

And now I had a complete electrical fan control system in my car. I just needed to test it and adjust the fan activation point.

Engine Bay And Electrical Fan

I needed to install the expansion tank and electrical fan to the engine bay. The tank just needed to be bolted in place but the fan needed a custom bracket. I started from the tank.

The right side inner fender in my car was in pretty sorry state. Not broken but dirty, faded and paint was stripping off. I didn't want to add the tank before tidying it up a bit. So I sanded the old paint with some sandpaper and cleaned the surface. Then I applied some flat black paint to it. I did this with a brush because I didn't want to cover everything up for spraying.

The fender looked much cleaner afterwards. Also note the near-factory radiator support brackets! For some reason they were loose and didn't hold the radiator in place. While testing the car we just tightened everything up with a piece of wood :D It would have to be fixed later. Most likely the bracket is just a bit in the wrong position. Then I just bolted the expansion tank in, connected the hoses and filled the tank with coolant.

Then it was time to tackle the fan. I bought a fan that had a large shroud around it. Its size was almost perfect for the original radiator and I hoped that if would cool the water more evenly than just a basic fan. The shroud had a groove at the bottom and couple of bolt holes on top. I would need a support that would fit in the groove and another for bolting the top to.

I decided to use the original fan shroud attachment positions for my own brackets. So the first thing to do was to cut a piece of cardboard and see how large my brackets needed to be. After getting my approximate measurements, I drew the shape on a metal sheet and cut it out. The difficult step was next: bending the sheet without a brake. As I didn't have any real tools for shaping metal, I just squeezed the sheet between two planks and then hammered it to submission.

After a few nights of cutting, bending, hammering and cursing, the brackets were ready. I smoothed the edges with a file and then painted both parts. I wanted them to be matt so I first sprayed three layers of red primer and added four layers of matt black. After the paint had dried for about a week, I also decided to add some clear to protect the paint some more. At least the bottom bracket would need this as it would receive all the water and dirt from the road. I sprayed both parts with a few layers of matt clear and left them to dry.

After a week it was time to put the fan in the car. I checked the brackets and for some reason the clear had turned them really glossy. Perhaps two matt paints make a glossy one? Oh well, luckily the surfaces were quite smooth so the glossy brackets would do.

I bolted the brackets to the car and the fan to them. I was quite happy with the results as everything lined up perfectly. Next needed part was the fan sensor.

Rest Of The Interior

After getting the center console in the car, rest of the interior was somewhat simple to put together. When I bought the car, I got a large box of interior parts with it. They had been sitting in storage for nearly two years so my first task was to thoroughly clean and inspect them. I had some Autoglym Vinyl & Rubber Care that I used for nearly all pieces. It returned a nice shine to the old parts.

While going through the interior, I found out that it was far from complete. It was missing the rear wheel well carpets, rear window frame, rear window lower trim, kick panels and center console side trims. And to add a few more, the air ducts to the side vents were also missing. Wonderful when I thought I had all the pieces when buying the car... Oh, and all the pieces that went to the roof were black. I had thought they should be black but later found out that they should be the same color as the rest of the interior...

I started from the T-top center panel as it seemed to be under other parts. Then came the windshield trim. They were simple to screw in but I needed to fiddle with them many times to get everything lined up. Finally I added the sun visors over the trim.

I had noticed the missing kick panels quite early in the project so I had already bought some used ones for my car. They were black but I simply cleaned and painted them to the correct red color. While attaching them, I also noticed that the door sill plates were on the wrong sides of the car. Luckily they were held together by just a few screws.

Then came the rear panels. I started from the roof trim that just screwed in. But when installing the rear quarter panels, I noticed that they should come first as some screws were cowered by the roof trim. The quarter panels were also the most problematic panels in the car. They had some glued metal inserts for screws but both sides had many rusted in screws that I couldn't remove. On top of that, both sides had many broken off screws.

I found a repair kit for the inserts but now needed to get the old screws out. A couple of them were quite easy to remove but some seemed almost impossibly tight. I tried pulling, turning, drilling, shouting, cursing and kicking but couldn't get all of them out. I'll have to see if I can come up more ways to try. Maybe crying? For now I just put the panels in the car without all the screws... Finally I placed covers for the seat belt retractors and the "trunk" was done.

One of the final pieces were the door cards. But of course they had problems as well. The panels are held in place with velcro like retainers. Unfortunately most of the retainers in my doors were broken or full of paint and unusable. So I had to order new retainers and am still waiting for them.

The last missing piece is the left dashboard panel with the speedo and tachometer. I need to attach the headlamp switch first but when doing that, I saw that I'm missing the nut that holds it in place. So, yet again, I had to wait for three weeks for it to arrive from the US before putting the panel in the car.