As I was poking around, I finally found an actual rust hole. If this is as bad as it gets, then the old girl is doing pretty OK.
This is at the top left corner above the engine bay, behind the air vent louvers. Not even sure how you would get up in there to fix it.
Next, the headlights were both aimed in crazy directions. Derp eyes for real. The screws to remove the chrome bezels to get back into the headlight buckets where the aiming screws are located was not going to be easy, on account of these rusted screws that wouldn’t turn with a screwdriver. Soaked them in PB Blaster for a couple of days.
Harbor Freight sells the best screwdriver for the job.
With the headlight bezels removed, I could finally get at the headlight aiming screws.
There were broken and missing screws, more rusty metal, and alas… The nylon blocks that the headlight aiming screws screw into are split and just spin without moving the headlight.
Well, at least I was able to find the right screws to replace the rusty chrome bezel screws. I took the better of the two that I had removed to Napa and they were able to identify the size and thread pattern for me, though they didn’t have any in stock. They are #10-32 machine screws. I bought some at a little Ace Hardware down the road that were 2 and 2 1/2 inches long. The ones that came out of it look like 2 1/4″ which they didn’t have in stock. The 2 inch ones worked fine.
I also made a trip to a little tire shop down the street from my house and got the new tire mounted on the Empi wheel. When I got home with it and tried to put it in the spare tire well, it had apparently shrunken back into the old smooshed position.
Metal memory.
So I got the scissor jack and scrap wood out again and made it fit.
