Last Friday I finally did something that I'd been wanting to do for some time; I took a day of vacation and worked on the TA all day.
One of the previous owners had sprayed the entire underbody with that rubberized undercoating, and it was on everything but the exhaust. I removed the rear sway bar so I can replace the bushings, and used my angle grinder with a 4" wire cup brush to start removing some of the gunk. I cleaned the rear axle housing and repainted it, then cleaned the sway bar and got it ready for repainting. Most of the bolts had so much undercoating that I could barely get the nuts off of them, so I had to clean those too. What color should the sway bar be painted?
When I came out from under the car, I looked like I had been working in a coal mine all day, and I had little red marks all over my legs, where the wires had come off of the cup brush and stuck me. I had to take a shower just so I could eat lunch.
I then removed the headliner and remaining interior plastic pieces so I could start repainting them. I got all of them cleaned, and part of them repainted by the end of the day on Saturday. I think I'm going to buy new screws and fasteners; I just hope I can remember which ones went where.
I removed the rear brake drums, wire brushed them and repainted them. One of the brake linings had totally deteriorated, and fell apart; both were very rusty inside, so I went to Advance Auto and bought new brake shoes and wheel cylinders, but the nuts on the brake lines were frozen so badly that I rounded them off with my nut wrench. Now I've got to find a way to get them off of the wheel cylinders. I also decided to replace all of the springs and adjusters (I just hope I can remember how they go back together; I left the other side so I could use it as a guide).
I found out the car has air shocks on it. I removed the lines and plan to replace those with regular shocks. Any recommendations for reasonably priced rear shocks?
Needless to say I was very tired and dirty at the end of the day. I took another shower, and then had to clean the shower to get rid of all of my mess. Really felt good to be able to set aside a whole day to work on the car, but now it seems that I'm even further behind than when I started.
