New Windshield

It's nice to have a windshield that's actually clear.

The poor guy from Safelight took three hours to install it. An average, newer windshield takes an hour. I'll be happy to not have water dripping inside the car when it rains, though.

MSII Unit and Relay Board Mounting

I had originally planned to mount the relay board somewhere in the engine bay, but I couldn't find a suitable place that I thought was protected from the two natural enemies to electronics; water and heat. I had both the MSII unit and the relay board loose in the glove box until I decied to mount them properly. I'm a little limited in my options because I have the pipedream of someday returning my Behr A/C to working condition and still have the console mouted inside.

I settled on mounting the MSII unit on the bottom of the glovebox and the relay board inside it.

Not too bad and the relay board uses one of the bolts from the MSII unit to hold it in place. The plexiglass dust cover works nicely in there.

Of course, I'm just waiting to get my car back from the shop so that I can take her to the drive-in again soon.

Title!

After a full year of owning the car, I finally got the title transferred into my name and had the car properly tagged and registered.

When I first received the title, it stated the wrong VIN. Apparently, the car had been mis-titled since at least 1978, according to the Kansas Highway Patrol. After the previous owner graciously investigated, hired a lawyer and pushed the case through the Kansas court system, a Kansas judge granted a "quiet title" on the car. This means that the car gets a clean title and all previous history gets erased. Nice.

So, that took 6 months or so, and then I had the car down for 6 months or so doing the transmission, shifter linkage, various gaskets, a battery and the EDIS. I found it hard to pay for the registration before the car was actually on Texas roads. So now, after more than a year, I finally have the car in my name. Yippee!

We're still working out the insurance/nose damage issue, but I'm confident that that will be solved soon. I have a weekend roadtrip to Austin (375 miles or so) planned in a few weeks, so I will hopefully have everything fixed by then.

Well, That Sucks.

My friend backed his in-laws' Lincoln Navigator into my kidney grill. It's pushed in an inch or two. Looks like crap and it broke one of my Hella 500 lamps. That sucks.

Well, it could have been worse. No one was hurt and the car still drives.

Shortened Bumpers

     Aside from a recent guibo (flex disk) failure, I decided to spend my time adding my Hella 500 driving lights, fixing and moving the existing fog lights as well as pushing the huge, federally-mandated 5 mph bumpers inboard. They made great benches, but they look a lot better whne they don't stick out far enough to mimic park benches.

Before:

After:

Here's how to push a stubborn front bumper inboard while you take your time with the set screws:

With the fog lights relocated under the bumper and the Hella 500 driving lights mounted in their holes, I think that I'll be able to handle any form of darkness.