Tuesday, September 4, 2012

A toothless grin

I'm inpatient. This is a theme that runs throughout my life. Sometimes it's a very bad thing, other times not so much. Today, it made me get something done early. Can't be a bad thing, can it?

All I had planned to do today (the first day of school and my first day back driving school bus) was to hose down the hubcaps with WD-40 ahead of the weekend, so that they may be loose when I planned to start working on them. But after I had my fun with the WD-40, the screwdriver I had out there to pry off the grille stainless molding was just staring at me. I couldn't help it, and I removed a piece. Then another, and another and all of a sudden, all the pieces were in a pile! There was a lot of grain dust and general crud on the insides of the pieces, so that all blew out when they were removed. I gathered up all retaining clips, but many are missing or damaged. I have found a place that sells new ones, but I'm going to need a lot of them (quick math - 15 pieces per side, 2 sides, 3 clips per piece = 90 clips. The place I found that sells them? $2.25 a piece, or $202.50 if I need them all. Yep, better salvage as many as I can)...

I'm getting old - all my teeth fell out!

A pile of grille moldings. I paid $13 each for the missing two, so these represent a good bit of $ to those that need them.

I'm also trying to figure out how the hubcaps come off. They have these spring retainer clips that are rivited in the middle to the hubcap. Prying on them doesn't seem to loosen them up very much, so I'm hoping to find info out from the folks at OldIHC.org about how they come off. I'm also going to try to be patient waiting for the WD-40 to work between the hubcaps and the wheels.

The retainer clip
A general tire/wheel view from back on delivery day

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