In earlier posts (Day 50) I had begun work on the wiper motor. Reassembly was challenging, particularly getting the brushes into proper alignment and the motor casing back on. I wanted to test the assembly, but it has a number of electrical connections and relies on several relays to work. I attempted to reassemble the wiring harness and jump the assembly to my wife's car. To do so, I first had to repair the main fuse panel. There were four contact points that were missing or damaged. I recreated three of these. After re-installing the fuse panel I energized the harness and got - nothing. Tracing the power from the battery outward, it quickly became apparent that the bottom half of the ignition casing is missing, along with it's power connections.
So, at this point it appears that not only do I have to locate the missing part(s), but the entire current wiring configuration is suspect and will need to be traced circuit by circuit to figure out what was altered and what was not. So, for now, we will just assume the rebuilt wiper motor works. If it doesn't, I have two spares that came with the car. . .
I also finally pulled the disks from the front trans-axle assemblies, allowing access to the dust cover and hubs for cleaning. My screwdriver didn't like removing the screws.
Once off, the dust covers were like no other parts I have cleaned to date. The brake dust had baked onto the parts in a thick coating. It took not only a wire brush, but chipping and scraping with a flat screwdriver to get down to bare metal. Surprisingly, once off and brushed, the dust covers were downright shiny with nearly the original galvanized sheen. The hub, shaft, and boots, cleaned up nicely as well.
Last Friday I wheeled the chassis outdoors and pressure washed it. It took a lot of gunk off, but didn't improve the appearance significantly. This past Friday I did the same with the engine & transmission. Under the layers of grease were some rusty parts, and some (like the transmission housing) that look pretty good. The biggest change - there are now identifiable parts in there instead of one gooey blob.
Yesterday we had a workshop with several other cub scout families to work on our derby cars. Here is my completed car. I will get photos of the kids cars up once they complete them.
