Just for reference, there was no Project Impala session last weekend, and there won't be one this weekend either. Dad got his camper back last week, and he'll be away until the beginning of next week. We don't have a session scheduled for the weekend after at this time, but I'm hoping there will be one.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Thanks for the update! I don't know about everyone else, but I really appreciate your posts on the car as I find them interesting and like learning about new things.

DaemeonX

>Thanks for the update! I don't know about everyone else, but I really
>appreciate your posts on the car as I find them interesting and like
>learning about new things.

Looks like our next play date will be a week from today. We'll be changing the oil in the Beetle for part of that time, but hopefully the rest will be spent working on the Impala—probably starting on the brake refit, or possibly putting all the lights and stuff back on.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>Looks like our next play date will be a week from today. We'll be
>changing the oil in the Beetle for part of that time, but hopefully
>the rest will be spent working on the Impala—probably starting
>on the brake refit, or possibly putting all the lights and stuff back
>on.

Excellent *steeples fingers in front of sunglasses*

DaemeonX

Exqueeze you, Gendo doesn't have stubble, you big faker.

BBQ at my place 6/23/19, 4pm

>Exqueeze you, Gendo doesn't have stubble, you big faker.
>
>BBQ at my place 6/23/19, 4pm

I'll bring my stubble and an appetite in which to intake prodigious amounts of meat for my colon to stumble on. (Also of note: I have caught more fish than you this year which makes my stubble better than your burgeoning wizard/pirate/viking/dwarven/Santa beard)

DaemeonX

>>Exqueeze you, Gendo doesn't have stubble, you big faker.
>>
>>BBQ at my place 6/23/19, 4pm
>
>I'll bring my stubble and an appetite in which to intake prodigious
>amounts of meat for my colon to stumble on. (Also of note: I have
>caught more fish than you this year which makes my stubble better than
>your burgeoning wizard/pirate/viking/dwarven/Santa beard)

Boy, that escalated quickly.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>>>Exqueeze you, Gendo doesn't have stubble, you big faker.
>>>
>>>BBQ at my place 6/23/19, 4pm
>>
>>I'll bring my stubble and an appetite in which to intake prodigious
>>amounts of meat for my colon to stumble on. (Also of note: I have
>>caught more fish than you this year which makes my stubble better than
>>your burgeoning wizard/pirate/viking/dwarven/Santa beard)
>
>Boy, that escalated quickly.

Fortunately he still has me beat as he has the boat that we will be using to slay "Teh Halibutts" later this year :)

DaemeonX

This is that "having friends" thing I've heard so much about, isn't it. Might also be "going outside", too. I shall have to try that some time.

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

i mean i'm engaged but that doesn't count

>This is that "having friends" thing I've heard so much about, isn't
>it.
>
>i mean i'm engaged but that doesn't count

owie owie owie,, Oh my poor alcohol abused nasal passages, you who lot of laughter inducing BWUTES!!!!

Project status update:

Dad's in Presque Isle all this week, and alas, next week we're not going to have the session we had planned for next Thursday. Instead of working on the car, he's going to come to my house so we can figure out why my clothes washer has decided that it would rather vomit sudsy water all over the floor than send it down the drain where it goes. :/

On the plus side, we met up last week before he headed north and ordered something like $500 worth of parts and tools, including:

- a bunch of new brake line pipe and fittings to complete the brake replumbing
- the fancy puller kit needed to get the rear axle apart so we can replace the rest of the seals back there (this is one of the many things that appear unhelpfully in the dealership service manual as "use Tool J-5909 to...")
- the little rubber feet that keep the fuel door from crashing shut with a loud metal-on-metal bang when closed; not the most exciting part, I admit, but
- a new grommet for where the wiring and heater control cables go through the firewall, which replaces the old one that's rotted out and allowing engine bay gases into the cabin
- and most notably, both engine bay wiring harnesses, brand new, complete. I mentioned before that we were considering replacing these; well, we decided to. We were going to start with just the one for the front lighting, but Dad noticed that the engine one has been spliced in a few places and decided eh, to hell with it, why not do both.

That stuff should be arriving this week, although exactly when we'll get a chance to put any of it on is an open question given next week's change of priorities.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>Project status update:

<Snip>

> - a new grommet for where the wiring and heater control cables go
>through the firewall, which replaces the old one that's rotted out and
>allowing engine bay gases into the cabin
> - and most notably, both engine bay wiring harnesses, brand
>new, complete. I mentioned before that we were considering replacing
>these; well, we decided to. We were going to start with just the one
>for the front lighting, but Dad noticed that the engine one has been
>spliced in a few places and decided eh, to hell with it, why not do
>both.
>
Both of these sound like darn good choices, as avoiding engine gasses (rich in carbon MONoxide, IIRC) in the cabin is a GOOD thing, and I seem to recall worrying about potential future problems about badly spliced harnesses in a previous reply somewhere?

Parts!

- The blue boxes are outer tie-rod ends for the front steering.
- The smaller black boxes are new wheel cylinders for the rear drum brakes.
- The larger black box is the flex tubing for connecting the front-to-rear brake pipe to the pipes running to the rear wheels (replacements for which are at the bottom of the photo).
- The replacement front light and engine wiring harnesses are in the bags in the upper right.
- The AC Delco box contains a new engine thermostat. We have reached the suspicion that the problem is actually the radiator, but it never hurts to put in a new thermostat too, and they're cheap.
- The thing in the plastic blister pack is a quick-disconnect battery terminal. You replace the terminal on the positive battery cable with it, and then all you have to do is turn the knob and disconnect the cable from the terminal, rather than having to keep pulling the terminal off the battery over and over again. There are more elaborate ways of making a battery disconnect, but this is the cheapest option and it works fine. You just have to be careful where the free end of the wire goes; don't want it flopping over and touching the other terminal.
- The remaining bag is just the firewall grommet and the new fuel door bumpers.

Also, in a separate box:

- Some fresh brake pipe and a bunch of fittings. (Those 3/8" couplings in the upper right are actually the wrong size; had to go and get some 3/16" ones, not shown.)

So, plenty still to do, and a bunch of new stuff to do it with, but less certainty about when there will be time to do them. Things are... not going super-well up north at the moment. They finally gave up trying to work out a way for Gramp to stay in his assisted living apartment and moved him to a nursing home for good yesterday, so I don't know how much Dad's going to be in the mood to come down and work on the car for the next little while. And rightly so, that's not a complaint. I'm just letting you know.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>And rightly so, that's not
>a complaint. I'm just letting you know.
>
Life is what it is G. If anything, I am in awe of you and your fathers' skill at this stuff. I could never do it; I tried when I was younger, and kind of failed miserably. Probably because my dad was not as mechanically inclined as yours.

Oh, I just realized I don't think I ever posted about this—the reason why Project Impala has gone onto an indefinite hold is that last fall, my father and I finally got around to starting a renovation we've been planning to do on my house for a while now. (Some of you may have seen a few mentions of this I've posted on Twitter.) We've converted part of the side porch into a new piece of the warm area and are now making it into a new bathroom, after which we'll be tearing out the old bathroom and turning it into a side/rear entrance.

(Weirdly, this house has never had a back door. The only way in or out on the ground floor is the front. In addition to having obvious implications for emergency egress, this makes having a dog kind of inconvenient, since you can't just let 'em out the back door into the fenced yard.)

Anyway, this is a fairly elaborate project and we're slow-moving old people with various physical challenges, so it's taking us a very long time, and we don't have the time, the money, or the energy to work on the car at the same time. So there won't be any more Project Impala until the renovation is done. :(

On the other hand, new bathroom! Eventually.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

New bathrooms are good. I just had mine redone entirely.

>
>On the other hand, new bathroom! Eventually.
>

Any revisions to the time estimate, or are you still at "Eventually?"

Peter Eng
--
Hopefully, it hasn't dropped to "Real Soon Now."

>>On the other hand, new bathroom! Eventually.
>>
>
>Any revisions to the time estimate, or are you still at "Eventually?"

Thanks to the pandemic, I think we're now at "next year sometime? maybe? depending on how long it takes for a vaccine to arrive?"

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>>>On the other hand, new bathroom! Eventually.
>>>
>>
>>Any revisions to the time estimate, or are you still at "Eventually?"
>
>Thanks to the pandemic, I think we're now at "next year sometime?
>maybe? depending on how long it takes for a vaccine to arrive?"

Annoyingly but understandably, while we wait for the virus situation to stabilize, Dad's still not able to come work on the bathroom, but he has started working on the Impala again, without me. At the moment he's rebuilding the rear differential, which had some nasty oil leaks and, when he got it apart, turned out to have bad bearings as well, probably because of said oil leaks (and the fact that the oil in it was probably the original 60-year-old factory stuff). So that's got to be completely overhauled. He sent me a couple of photos earlier today, but they're on my phone and I can't be arsed right now.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Just as long as he doesn't decide, on his own, to move the project in a complete unexpected, and unwanted, direction without telling you.

Something that, from what I recall of early posts, is not at all outside the bounds of probability.

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"