Its been a bit! there has been a lot of work i have been doing on the car off and on;
just around the time i removed the wires all out my dad got pretty sick and was hospitalized.
So the progress definitely slowed down a bit, but I am getting things done here and there where and when I can!

I wanted to show here some of the wiring that Dennis returned to me as it came out beaut!
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683916383.jpg


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683916383.jpg
my ignition far right was pretty burnt, cut up, and on its last leg - Dennis did a real clean job whippin up a new one center, along with the lighting on the far
left

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683916383.jpg
Classic Retrofit Fuses all wired up

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683916383.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683916383.jpg
Cleaned up my oil fan wiring to feel more oem as well!


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683916383.jpg
New Engine Harness since I am going EFI/ITB
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683916383.jpg
New Harness for Link ECU/COP setup



http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683916383.jpg
a big reason for going efi was to A. eliminate the CIS B. Start fresh on wiring since there was a LOT going on in this rear corner of the car along with all the CIS
I also have a big problem with not going overboard with this ****


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683916383.jpg
Next up, my piece I worked on is a rather thorough restoration of my tail lights - which will get its own post

Tail Lights PT 1
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1684002755.PNG
(the contrast/black mismatch on the border of the tail lights were driving me crazy along with the bubble'ish look where the paint was just missing)

I wanted to refresh my tail lights - since I was redoing a lot of the wiring, but also needed access to a few things here and there. I think I went above and beyond a bit on what was really needed for the tail lights here imo - I think the exercise was to

• fix the tail lights
• try some new methods out for restoring pitted metals
• replace the lenses or polish clean/repaint them
• replace wiring completely
• figure out if I want to retain the US spec or Euro spec lenses (the cars red and part of me enjoys the overall red factor + saftey of turning the entire lights into brake/running lights for increasing overall visibility footprint for other drivers)

If you're doing this yourself, id imagine just painting them is more than enough.

Like most of our older cars - the tail lights seen a lot of kickback from road debris as well as just aging in general.

The p.o looks to have setup some tow light wiring and in part cut the wires up a little bit and the harness was just loosey goosey in the hole where the wires come through to the engine bay on the driver side.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1684003148.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1684003148.jpg
the caps were pretty beat from all the chips with a lil rust here and there - simple de-greaser cleaning to get an overall gauge on how they're holding up

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1684003148.jpg
the tops were pretty bad on both sides (not horrible) but pretty bad

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1684003148.jpg
the inside of the door and tail light housings were pretty good - suprising it was pretty much rust free - just had some nasty caulking or something here that plucked right off no problem.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1684003148.jpg
after cleaning and hitting it with a brillo a hole broke through real easily - just as if it was a cracker - i tried to poke out any of the delicate metal that was donezo

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1684003148.jpg
did my best to use some rust stoppers and such and clean this the best i could

At this point I was figuring I would grab some new tail lights just to go easy on myself, and then I saw the price tag.... (I was also contemplating the lightweight housings on ebay that a user here from the forum makes but they'd need different wiring harness etc - however they do sit flush after the lenses on which is rather desirable imo so i think at some point i will swap) so off to the next step


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1684003148.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1684003148.jpg
I made the rough shape here in some metal i had left over from the seat pan

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1684003148.jpg
blammo

Part 2 soon

Tail Lights Pt 2

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1684003148.jpg
I used some epoxy here to push the pieces back together as the metal broke over time and whatnot it started to move away and curl


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1684003148.jpg
I removed a few more bits of metal and it worked out great

I sanded and cleaned up a lot of the metal - and coated the caps in epoxy; this was the first time attempting this so i wanted to use this as a testing area as they needed to be protected a bit more, and i can learn for future stuff. no real reason to go this wild as its never seen i suppose.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1684014542.jpg
i now know doing this, that this was waaay too much - just need enough to fill the gaps vs building up material.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1684014542.jpg
using sanding blocks i did my best to even this out despite going waaaaay too hard on the X part - that was rather tricky to get. I had to stop myself from trying to make it perfect

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1684014542.jpg
was pretty happy with how smooth these now look - like i sad tho its real hard keeping myself from sanding these to get them exactly right.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1684014542.jpg
The tail light housings were real pitted on the tops - so taking what i just learned from the caps i applied the same method here... still trying to hold back

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1684014542.jpg
these came out real nice

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1684014542.jpg
These painted up real nice as well. I used Dupli-Color Premium Acrylic Enamel white and Rust-oleum bright coat metallic finish ( the metallic paint worked ok, but sprayed a lot of oil that kept me from having a good coat, perhaps more shaking on my part)

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1684014542.jpg
I wanted to replace these weatherstrips - but was unable to figure out where to find em, im assuming its just maybe butyl harded over time maybe? I just replaced them with generic weatherstripping I got from amazon per "afternoon garage" on youtube's recommendation - and this was nice keeping it real clean and simple

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1684014542.jpg

Pt3 coming soon

I like how you tackle your project.

some advise though, as you obviously still have to do quite some welding (that A-pillar base will reveal its horror once cut open) I would not proceed adding more sound deadening to avoid fire!

i have night sweats thinking about these portions of the body - for now i painted them to slow it down a bit, but once i can get this driving i can get this taken care of