’79 Mark V by Kuripiiritus

3 minute(s) of a 75 minute read

1-18-2013

Finally in the end of the summer had some time to deal with the broken gear lever. It turned out, that the steering column is not meat to be disassembled. So it was decided to try to weld it as it is (could not make it worse anyways). Fortunately a friend of mine had equipment that was able to weld the piece of *** metal that the outer column is made of. It did not went perfectly, a little angle got in. So it was little off, and now the actual lever end needed fine tuning also, so it would fit once again. As Murphy's law states, that once it's get bad it keeps going - i managed to break off the tip of the lever. Had to weld this also. Once all done, had to do lots and lots of carving, to get the details to move correctly.

The end product looks like this.

This done, the assembly could begin. Made a time-laps from it:

Then for a while it became my daily-driver. The winter was coming, but i did not have a replacement car yet, so the car saw snow for the first time (while i am the owner) and unfortunately the salt/chemical mixture that is used for street cleaning also  Hope that this was not enough to get the rust going as it was only couple of drives before it was garaged once again. So far there is only minimal to non-existing rust.

Getting it out from the snow:

Driving it with the snow was a real experience. As i have on the worn "all seasons" for which "slick" is better suiting. There was like 1000 hp in the wheel, when wanted to get going  But it was surprisingly stable on the highway, when there were lots of other cars in the ditches, was able to maintain steady 50 mph (of course extremely careful driving but still).

Ready for hibernation:

But now i'll go abroad for couple of years, so the progress will stop once again. Hopefully when i return i get to start with the engine rebuild.