Help Me Identify This Part.

Anyone have any idea what this thing is? the part circled in read? I think it has something to do with the A/C, but I'm not sure. I cannot find it in my handbook anywhere.

Interior Stripped, Engine Tear Down Continues

Today was a wildly productive day here at the MattCave, though not all of it was focused on the tear down

I started the day off strong, by finishing off the interior. The last thing to go was the heating/AC module that is mounted to the inside of the firewall. What I didn't realize initially is that it's hooked up to all kinds of hoses and stuff in the engine compartment.

Here's how the interior looks as of right now. The only thing remaining is the steering column. And the only reason that's still there is because I cannot figure out how to disconnect it. Yet.



Here's the pile of wires that came out of the interior. This will not be a fun mess to untangle once it comes time to re-wire the interior. I wonder how much of it I will actually need?



It only took me about an hour to get that far, and then I got diverted. I spent about ninety minutes editing together the latest episode of "Rise of The MattMobile," which should be posted sometime tomorrow. I will of course include a link here when it goes up.

And then it was back to work, this time on the engine. This is where I'm getting a little nervous. I took a lot of time to label a bunch of stuff, and took TONS of reference photos of how everything looks. But it's like an onion. Or an Ogre. Both have layers. Right? For each wire, tube, hose, or component I remove, it reveals new details that I could not see before. Which means more photos.

Just for kicks, I started off on the passenger side. I removed the A/C coolant reservoir, the power steering fluid reservoir, and some other A/C related component that I cannot name. Taking pics and labeling everything along the way slows down the process, but it's well worth it. Not only do I get to learn a lot about how the car is built, but this will help me put it all back together.



Here's how it looks as of right now.

After that, it was cleaning time. The garage has gotten pretty cluttered AND dirty over the past two weeks, so I moved a bunch of stuff out of the way, and mopped the floor. With all the fluids coming out of the engine, it's getting pretty gross, even though I'm capturing most of it in a drip tray. Without it, I'm sure the garage would be a catastrophe. Best nine dollars spent on the project so far.

Then I loaded up some parts into the Chyrsler, and took them to the dumpster. MUCH better. Much more breathing room in the garage now.

Tomorrow I will continue with the engine dismantle, and maybe do some more saw work on the body. I'm definitely getting closer!

"White Collar" nod to Raiders of The Lost Ark.

I rarely watch television, so when I do, I try to watch shows that are pretty darn awesome. One such show is "White Collar," which is currently on its third season.

To cut to the chase, last season the protagonist Niel Cafferty swiped a ton of art from a German World War II U-Boat. In episode 2 of this season, they showed a shot of the loot as seen from a web cam. If you look closely, over on the right hand side, you can see what cannot possibly be anything other than the lid from the Lost Ark, as seen in "Raiders of The Lost Ark."




Here's a shot of the ark, for comparison.



While it's clearly not an exact replica, the two angels facing each other, on a rectangular, gold plated lid is a pretty nifty homage to Speilbergs masterpiece.

Saturday Progress Report: Radiator Removed!

I learned my lesson the last time I messed around with my radiator, and made draining it the first order of business tonight.



After messing around with removing a few more tie-downs in the front engine compartment, I decided the goal for tonight was to remove the radiator from the front of the car, along with the support system that holds it up. It took about an hour, and it was very messy.

Here's a picture of the front of the car, that shows the big gap where the radiator used to be.





And here's all the junk I removed.



I'm also starting the process of hauling off the pieces I don't need. I sawed up the plastic back seat, and threw it in the trunk of my car. I'm going to get rid of everything that will fit in my car. After that, I'll probably just rent a cargo van or something, and haul the rest of it to the dump.

The Roof Has Been Removed

I wanted to get rid of the roof today. I attacked it with my Ryobi cordless reciprocating saw, but by the time I got to the last cut, it just couldn't do it. I don't know what happened, but it kept stalling out. Like it was running out of power. The battery was fully charged though. Maybe the way the metal was hanging, it was pinching the blade. I'm not sure.

Well, I'm not one to wait around, so I went out and purchased another saw. This time, I went for a middle tier saw that plugged in. Here's a pic:



And HOLY COW did it make all the difference. It tore right through the rest of the roof, and then a couple support struts. All in seconds. I will have to video tape this thing cutting, as it is night and day compared to the kiddie version Ryobi tool. Lesson learned.



In other news, I've been doing little home improvement projects from time to time. Today, I put up this neat little rack system thingie to hold my bike off the garage floor. Works like a charm.

Glass Is Gone.

Today was a very interesting learning experience for me. The punchline is this: if you pay a professional money to do something, they will probably get it done a lot faster than you could if you did it yourself.

Now granted, half the fun of this project is doing it myself, but I think I need to be more open minded to hiring someone to do something that might be overly problematic.

A glass removal guy came over and LITERALLY in five minutes had both the front and rear glass out. He didn't even crack the rear glass. Had I called him earlier, there would probably not be a single shard of glass on the garage floor. Food for thought, that's for sure.





With the glass out of the way, I can start in with the reciprocating saw and really pull the car apart now. yay!

Glass Removal: Pro Style

So far, I've gotten about ten little cuts on my hands and feet from stray glass. I'm SOOO done with this. I called a local glass place, and they're going to come out later today and remove them both. $120 bucks well spent.

For reference, I'm using this place:

http://budgetautoglassincirvine.com/

Front Windshield = Smashed.

My new rule is this: Don't trust hillbillies on youtube.

To make a long story short, today I was doing research on getting my front and rear glass removed. I found a place that was going to do it for ninety bucks. Seemed fair, and clean, and safe. Then someone posted a link to a bunch of hillbillies breaking glass on a car. It looked fun, and the glass broke cleanly.

Turns out, it's not fun, and the glass on MY car doesn't break so cleanly.







For reference, this is the tool I got from Amazon that was designed to slice through the seal around the glass, so that it would lift off cleanly. I learned about this ALSO from a youtube video. Time to delete that bookmark.



After about ten seconds of use, the blade snapped clean off. That's why I switched to the smash approach. Right now, I've put about an hour into scraping the glass off, which is not only dangerous, but really not very fun. The other side effect is that there is glass EVERYWHERE. It kind of turns to dust, powder, shards and chunks when broken. I guarantee I will be cursing that decision for weeks to come.

I'm not entirely happy, but the good news is I got much of it on video. So that's something.

ROTMM - Episode 5

A new episode is up! See the reciprocating saw in action!!

AND an introduction with a couple of Orion Slave Girls! yummy!

Electrical System Removal Continues

Despite getting very little sleep the night before, I managed to be really productive on the MattMobile project yesterday. Which was Monday, by the way.

The day started with an early morning dumpster run. As I tear parts out of the caprice, they tend to pile up in the garage. My trash bins are full, and it was getting hard to navigate. I threw a ton of stuff into the trunk of my daily driver, and disposed of it.

As the evening approached, I turned my attention to the removal of the electrical systems. The thing that is really taking time is not so much the removal, but the labeling of everything I disconnect. I honestly don't know how much of the wiring will be re-used, but I'm preserving as much as I can for right now.

As it stands right now, the wiring has been completely removed from the drivers seat on backwards. Which is the easy part, if you ask me.





I had a few parts on ebay recently that did not sell, and the asking price was ridiculously low. This confirms my suspicion that there just isn't much of a hungry market for used/beaten-up Caprice parts. This is not really a big deal, as I wasn't really counting on offsetting the cost of the Car by selling off parts, but it does mean I now have to dispose of a ton of junk. And I quite literally mean "one ton." To that end, I started tearing down parts into pieces that would fit into my regular car. I started with the seats, as they were taking up a lot of room in the garage. It was actually kind of fun pulling them apart!



Off to the dumpster they went, along with a few pieces from the dashboard. The garage is actually MUCH more accessible right now, and I definitely think it was the right thing to do.