October

Ah, October. The best of months.

Yes, I know it is the middle of November. In my defense, I did start writing two weeks ago. I just didn’t like how this kept coming out.

Mostly October was frustrating. Why? Accessory brackets. I’ve never given a second thought to this stuff before. They’ve always just worked. Up until now, that is. The headers made one of the power steering pump brackets not work at all. Supposedly a spacer was all that would be required, but it didn’t line up enough to get the spacer to work. This was compounded by the compressor bracket that came with my AC kit as it also was intended to use the same header bolt the power steering used. It wasn’t too surprising there would be issues with those, but even the alternator bracket no longer fit. A spacer would have fixed that, but it was on the front and would affect belt alignment. I don’t have a way to cut things with that much precision.

So the month was spent buying other possible solutions and returning them, modifying what I had, and banging my head against the wall. I was about to admit defeat and buy a $2000 accessory kit that would have been guaranteed to work when I found a recommendation for a smaller company’s brackets. While not as elegant as I would have preferred – they are just flat, bare steel plates with spacers – they were a fifth of that price. Very cumbersome to install and being bare steel, were already rusting by the time I got them. But after a couple of test fits and some paint, I think they’ll work out ok.

Then I needed to figure out belt lengths since they were no longer anywhere close to the stock lengths. I sacrificed a couple of old belts to make a kind of measuring tape and managed to find three that would work. A full month to achieve what I thought I was going to finish up one evening in early October. Which, I suppose, isn’t too bad considering how things have gone so far.

November hasn’t been horribly productive yet, but things are slowly moving forward. The engine wiring is waiting on a new battery cable. Once I have that, I can at least crank the engine and make sure I get oil pressure. Then once the fan and AC are wired, the electrical system will be complete!

Next steps are the cooling system and exhaust, then I’ll do a test start. All I have left at that point are brakes, rear springs and the differential. Assuming it all works, Pandora will finally be able move out of her box under her own power! And only about six months (so far!) past my target completion date. Sigh.