So, Richy's back yard was a jungle that I had to clear -and that took a bit of time to do being a crew of one. I moved the car to the back yard and began a review of the problems with the car. The one bright spot being I actually had a car with a G@#dammd fender tag. The FCBO membership should be relieved as well given all the apoplexy I caused over proposing the fabrication of a replacement fender tag for the GT.
The decode showed it was indeed an S23, and it still had the correct features listed on the tag. I think thats an October 1 birthday code; and That interior code was hit by something and the second digit cant be made out but the interior is clearly an "H6XA".
First thing I found -and it really annoyed the living s#!t outta me- was the big deal restoration it got many years ago included changing all the factory bolts for ACE hardware store nuts an bolts
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I found myself sayin "WTF??!!"
a lot!
meanwhile, under the hood...
Seems like the kid yanked out the vacuum ball.... and all the vacuum lines that went with it. You can see the hot water valve is gone too; We're all heat all the time now.
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No more receiver-drier, or A/C lines either. A bare compressor sat on the engine serving as nothing more than a belt tensioner. Even the Condenser was missing from the front. Jeeeze kid, couldn't you have sprung a couple of bucks to fix the friggen A/C instead of just ripping it all out???
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While we're at it, lets loose that pesky hood to radiator seal... and the cowl seal was gone as well. Nice resto work boys.
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Hood mounted signal lights were history along with the under-hood insulation.
I noticed one of the high beam lights had leakage current making the filament glow when the low-beams-only were on. And having no experience with hideaway headlights, I'm still pretty sure they're NOT supposed to snap open with a hard clunk when I turn on the headlights.
The A-arm “dust covers” were also gone, along with the splash seals everywhere else on the car!
Oh an how about that brilliant job of attaching the negative ground lead to THE FRIGGEN EXHAUST MANIFOLD!!! I'm a dummy and even I know thats stupid!!
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The rear window chrome trim retainers were corroded away an could no longer hold the trim in place and there was bubbling under the paint by the c pillar.
But it got better. Under that nice vinyl roof, there were warts… everywhere. Great – the roof is going.
You know the door plates the have the "sport fury" script attached? Yeh, well, those were attached to the doors with RTV because the *** hats who restored the car broke the tangs off of them. Oh and the cheap stick-on wood grain they used on the console and the door plates was all puckered and peeling off.
A new headliner was put in... sans the shoulder belts- and all attachment points were completely covered over. Great, restoration by 3 stooges auto shop. I'm guessing the "kid" who had use of the car is the one who removed all the lap belts and left them piled in the back seat.
yeh, the driver side window was replaced at some point in recent time and now it doesn't shut correctly, the glove compartment door wouldn't latch closed anymore, the console door had no hinge and just laid on top of the console, and the rear seat escutcheon plate was missing the emblem.
Ooooh its gonna be a long road to recovery for this beast... BUT...still, the S23 was closer to being fixable then the GT and it seemed dumb to destroy a rare S23 to fix a rare GT, so I began decided to restore the S23 first, then work on the GT. I had to start drawing up another list of parts to buy, parts to restore, …and I still needed a friggen fury donor car!!
This brings the 2009 chapter to and end.
