A kind of lesser 'projects' thread?

[Kiwibird]

Maybe not the right section but I thought to keep the forum more active we could have a "What did you do to your Thunderbird" thread/section?



Lemme guess, with my luck we already have such a section? - if so I couldn't find it

[65bird]

Pulled my front seats out of my Bird last week. The covers on them were still good minus a couple of seam splits. I bought the foams from PGclassics in Canada for about $243 shipped to my address, gave them to my mate and he got them fitted with the original covers. All good now just waiting for the weekend now to install them.
My car will not be a full resto car, just a slow fixer upper and enjoy. The next thing I will concentrate on is the air conditioning and repairing the passenger front window. Just small things to list for lesser projects with small budgets.
Cheers.

[Kiwibird]

Sadly I can't add to this thread 'cos I haven't done ANYTHING to mine for a bit, next week maybe!

[DaveG]

Hi Guys
Well this Saturday I'll be doing some belt adjusting, Alternator and Power Steering, I've also got to reroute one of my transmission oil lines as it's too close to the exhaust. So that will be my day Saturday, Then hopefully drive her on Sunday

[DaveG]

Well that was an eventfull day, Started out with the plan of simply adjusting belts and cleaning the car ready for Tomorrows cruise to jells park, what's that saying about the best laid plans.

The power steering belt adjustment took on a life of it's own when the adjusting bolt boss on the water pump decided to crumble under the stress of retightening the bolt, needless to say the power steering pump just fell to one side all limp like, since it now only had one bolt holding it, standing back looking I figured well i dont have another water pump so i guess Tomorrow will be in the daily driver, I rang Phil my mate and he came straight over, after some head scratching we decided to have a go at a patch up job so i could drive her Tomorrow. The power steer pump is held to the engine with a bracket which has two holes an upper and lower allowing the bracket to bolt to the engines water pump, the upper hole is to secure the ps pump bracket to the engine while the lower slotted hole allows adjustment for the belt. It was the lower adjusting one that had cried enough after years of tensioning & re-tensioning this would normally be a 3/8" threaded boss but was now only half a boss as the other half had crumbled away, So We made up a bracket, bent and drilled some 1/4' aluminium plate i had laying around to retain the the lower bolt, this bracket is also attached to the upper bolt allowing the PS pump belt to be pulled tight and the lower bolt to be tightened, not sure all that makes sense but it's what we did and the bottom line is a temporary fix, so I can drive her tomorrow, now I better get about looking for a water pump as next weekends job will be to get this back to how it should be. there is no substitute for a bit of good old Aussie Engineering and a mate whose willing to help (Thanks Phil) and we didn't even use any fencing wire. Cheers Dave

[65bird]

Good on ya Dave. don't you just hate that when it happens. Try do do a simple job then it ends up a disaster. I can recollect a time on my Mistsubishi Verada a simple job just to give the side of the motor a quick hi pressure clean to get all the oil gunk off and when I started the motor the drive belt slipped two teeth and destroyed the motor. Anyway good Aussie imagination prevailed in your case Dave. I'll see if I can make it to Jells park today.
Cheers.

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