Decided to get a car as opposed to my 15 passenger gas hog, and what I took home was Amy. (That's the prefix on the license plate) I'd never driven a manual transmission before, nor did I have anyone to show me, so it was an extremely bumpy start, and scary long ride home seeing how Amy I picked up from ~50 miles away.
Unfortunately I don't have any pics of picking her up in Mar 2012, but a week later I'm driving down the interstate and hear a LOUD KNOCK from the rear; I make it to my destination, and you can see how much tire was remaining.... so, new tires..
amy is a 93 protege dx, damaged in the front, bent hood, no grill, and lots of seemingly ghetto rigged stuff, but mechanically sound w/ good mpg
*Clicking on images will open the full image*
That's right, random pieces of metal drilled to the headlights, to somewhat hold them in front of the bent radiator core support. The brackets were shattered and were a mix of plastic, duct tape, and card board used to shim them forward.
You can see the headliner, or lack there of... only problem is the genius that had the car previously sprayed blue spray paint on the material that was constantly flaking off, so I had paint falling off too.... and the paint penetrated the foam down to the cardboard...
Awful.
Belts, leaking valve cover; new ngk spark plugs got rid of the misfiring/extremely rough idle from the bosch plugs. The belt on here bypasses the unnecessary (IMO) AC, the one thing I agree with the previous owner on.
Head off, replacing valve cover gasket; had one of the 10mm head bolts snap in half in the head, but got it with an easy out.
Checking those drums for odd sounds.... note to self, an impact screwdriver is about the only thing to take those screws out if the hammer method fails.
This cat did not want to let go, even after I started driving.
Trying to bend the headlight brackets into a somewhat straight shape; found unbroken headlights/brackets at the salvage yard, and jerry rigged them more cleanly onto the quite bent core support.... hours of alignment frustrations...
With a new $1 black rattle-canned grill from the salvage yard, and some polished headlights, nothing *looks* seriously bent from the outside, except for the hood
A year later
Unfortunately I don't have any pics of picking her up in Mar 2012, but a week later I'm driving down the interstate and hear a LOUD KNOCK from the rear; I make it to my destination, and you can see how much tire was remaining.... so, new tires..
amy is a 93 protege dx, damaged in the front, bent hood, no grill, and lots of seemingly ghetto rigged stuff, but mechanically sound w/ good mpg
*Clicking on images will open the full image*
That's right, random pieces of metal drilled to the headlights, to somewhat hold them in front of the bent radiator core support. The brackets were shattered and were a mix of plastic, duct tape, and card board used to shim them forward.
You can see the headliner, or lack there of... only problem is the genius that had the car previously sprayed blue spray paint on the material that was constantly flaking off, so I had paint falling off too.... and the paint penetrated the foam down to the cardboard...
Awful.
Belts, leaking valve cover; new ngk spark plugs got rid of the misfiring/extremely rough idle from the bosch plugs. The belt on here bypasses the unnecessary (IMO) AC, the one thing I agree with the previous owner on.
Head off, replacing valve cover gasket; had one of the 10mm head bolts snap in half in the head, but got it with an easy out.
Checking those drums for odd sounds.... note to self, an impact screwdriver is about the only thing to take those screws out if the hammer method fails.
This cat did not want to let go, even after I started driving.
Trying to bend the headlight brackets into a somewhat straight shape; found unbroken headlights/brackets at the salvage yard, and jerry rigged them more cleanly onto the quite bent core support.... hours of alignment frustrations...
With a new $1 black rattle-canned grill from the salvage yard, and some polished headlights, nothing *looks* seriously bent from the outside, except for the hood
A year later
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