welcome to the doghouse

well sadly I am afraid not much is going to be happening in the doghouse for a while. my wife has declared that this year we are finally going to remodel the kitchen. so I tore into that today. have about half the cabinets torn out and started knocking down one wall that we are going to move back a ways to move the dining room down a couple feet. it should be interesting but it is going to take most of my play money for a while.
fortunately I negotiated a somewhat unique arrangement with my employer a few years ago. when I renegotiated my contract I got a pretty significant salary boost. however since at the time I was doing ok I asked them to give me the increase in a lump sum payment every march. so this way I always have money if I have to pay in for taxes and it gives me some play money every spring for projects. unfortunately for the doghouse all my play money is going in to new cabinets this year. oh well once I get this done I should be able to use that for a few years and say but honey we redid the kitchen for you and that way I can buy that new multiport fuel injections system for the jeep. it may take a while but I will get it. wish me luck. this kitchen remodel is blossoming into a much more expensive proposition than I had planned lol.

mustanggarage: I have that same deal pending remodel of the house. Best of luck and let us see that remodel in pics as a FYI.

there is a sale going on for the rapid air tubing that I used in my garage. it is going for 9.99 for 100 feet. so I bought 2 of them plus some other things. I am going to run it over to the south wall and loop it back around the front of the shop so that I can add some drops near the doors. I am also going to use some of the old cabinets and lumber from the kitchen to finish a bit more of the south wall. and my power hoist a top is going to be delivered tomorrow. so I am getting a bit done in my shop while I am waiting on the electrician. yesterday I tore into the lincoln and pulled the blend door actuator motor out. what a pain in the butt that job was.

That sounds like a plan there on adding more air and storage in the garage. Give us a picture of the cabinets in the "before" installation mode. More folks should hunt down recycled cabinets for great garage storage. It sure cuts down on clutter and a spot for everything saves lots of time, something they are not making anymore.

Once I get my hands dirty and the tools out I can really get to work, you are multi tasking projects in the kitchen and the doghouse for sure there Mustanggarage!

well these are pretty ugly cabinets, that is why we are removing them from the house. I went ahead and hung them the other day. I am still deciding how I want to finish that area. I want to build an area to store my big fan and air conditioner in the winter. I also bought a big battery charger with a 200 amp boost from harbor freight yesterday that I want to put there. since I still need to park in front of this space I will probably just build an open area there that will allow me to store these things but be recessed into the wall a bit to make a couple inches more space. I will not put doors on it because with a car parked there that will be inconvenient. I also should build a space for my hydraulic press when I am not needing it. anyway I am going to think about it a while before I finalize the plan. then I will just stick it together. it likely won't look great but hopefully it won't look terrible.

What is most important is does it do what you need it to do Mustanggarage.

Organized and useful is what is pretty IMO, whether the stuff matches is optional.

here is what I have done so far. I had a bit of a challenge lifting those into place myself. they are heavy lol. anyway I have them mounted. I intend to build some "boxes down below so that I can recess the stuff I want to store into the wall space a bit. the boxes obviously need backs because that insulation is torn easily that is one of the reasons for my continuing saga of walling up the lower part of the shop. above that cross beam it is just the insulation but it is unlikely to get torn up there.



of note there is a 4 foot flourescent light attached to the bottom of the cabinet as this cabinet was over our peninsula in the kitchen so I think I will make a narrow bench top there because finding flat space to set stuff is always a premium lol.

This is making a great work area. If I know you I would think you are contemplating some of that white pegboard under the cabinets and above your bench would be a good spot for tools you need easy access and spot to work off of MG.

thomask said:

This is making a great work area. If I know you I would think you are contemplating some of that white pegboard under the cabinets and above your bench would be a good spot for tools you need easy access and spot to work off of MG.

Click to expand...

as a matter of fact I have a nice chunk of that left over up on my loft, and that is exactly what I was thinking.:rockin:

Well I got a couple things done this weekend. I got the blend door actuator motor swapped on my nieces lincoln. however there is another little plastic lever that was broken that I had to find. the 98 lincoln mark viii is a really cool car but they were only made 2 years and there are a lot of unique parts for it so finding parts is a pain, I did get the new part in today so hopefully tonight I can button it up.

I also swapped the mirrors on my jeep. I never liked the mirrors on it, and besides the bolts were all rusted and looked terrible. someone who will remain nameless said they needed to be thrown away because they were obviously beyond saving so I had to show him.



30 seconds with the wire wheel on my grinder and he could not believe they looked almost new. then I powdercoated them black to prevent them from rusting again. it is amazing to me how people think that just because something is a bit rusty or old that it can't be fixed.

My daughter is the opposite. when we bought the jeep and started cataloging all the things that needed fixed she just said " but you can fix it right Dad" It made me proud.

then I also got my power hoist a top installed. it is ready to pull the top off the jeep so I can get in there and get some work done on it as soon as I finish the lincoln and get it out of the way.



this is a bad picture I will get some better ones as soon as I find my camera. I took it in the house to take some kitchen pictures and it is now hiding from me.

Repairing things is becoming a lost art. Now days we as a society like to replace every so often and we wonder why we are in debt and our stuff we buy is junk. The years of buying a quality product that will last a lifetime are over.

Ok. Last night I got the lincoln back together for my niece and the heater and everything is working properly. what a pain. these cars are very dificult to find parts for I looked for weeks to find the stupid little plastic arm I needed to get this fixed. but my niece is coming home from college friday so she will need her car. and now I can move it out and bring in my convertible to get started on it again soon. but in the meantime I am going to try to do some work to the 67 before my daughter gets her school permit in june and before the first car show. I don't know what all I am going to do to the trunk but I want to do something a little bizarre. I have a couple linear actuators that are just sitting in the back of my pickup I would like to do something with them. what to do, what to do?

we pulled the engine from the cherokee. and found a problem that explained why it was not running well. the intake valve on number one cylinder had a collapsed lifter. I thought at first that the cam had wiped a lobe since we had such a hard time getting it started. the starter also had a broken housing so I get to replace the flex plate as well, if the one from the 4.2 engine won't work. I don't know if it will, I have to do some checking.




I am going to keep the trans and transfercase for now but once I swap the engines I am going to junk the cherokee. too much rust to justify repairing.

If you were closer it would be nice to get some of the parts for my cherokee build.

yeah there are lots of good parts on there I just don't feel like taking the time to strip it and sell it piecemeal, so I will take it to the salvage yard and let them do it.

I had been hearing a really bad sounding noise that I thought was from the differential on my 89 convertible so we pulled the cover and the axles last night and it turns out it was a bad wheel bearing. It was strange though because it only made the noise when you were going slow and turning. anyway. put in new wheel bearings and rear shocks since the ones that were on were leaking. and now it no longer is making the noise. next plan is to paint that cervinis hood I bought for it. if the tile takes much longer I may get that done next week.

well I have not gotten around to painting the hood yet, but I did decide to replace the carpet. since the top was leaking before we got it, it had gotten wet and smelled pretty bad. I let it air out and it did not bother me too much but my wife couldn't stand it. and it looked pretty bad. I was hesitant to do it when I did the upholstery because pulling that center console is a pain. well I decided to get it done. so I pulled the console and the carpet. the console was looking pretty scuffed up in places so I decided since the rest of the interior is two tone black and grey I would do the same with the console. I painted it half black and kept the upper half grey. I have a new shifter bezel coming but it is not here yet. then I swapped in the new auto custom carpet. this is a lot harder on this car than it is in a 65 or 67 mustang. but I got it done. I also fixed the speaker wiring and replaced the grey boots for the seat belts with black ones. I ordered a new set of 5.0 floor mats and they are not here yet either. I then replaced the sill plates with black plates that say mustang. I did not take any progress pics because it looked so crappy during the install lol. it turned out really well though. I took it for the first shake down cruise tonight and stopped off at the gas station for a soda and this guy starts ogling the car telling me how nice he thought it was.

you have to remember when I got this car I really did not care much for the fox mustangs but I am growing to like this car a lot. I still have a lot of little things I want to do to it but the list is shrinking.

ok here are a few before pictures.

during the interior restoration.



after the upholstery and carpet, floor mats. etc.





center console



with the boot on.

I have gotten a couple other things done while we have been working on the kitchen. I have the cervinis hood sanded and primered.



I hope to get it painted tomorrow. if I can get out of the kitchen for a while. I suck at painting so it will probably take a lot longer than it should though lol.

also I have to eat some crow. on my daughters mustang I bought this really gorgeous polished aluminum saginaw powersteering pump that matched her march serpentine belt setup.

I had read that the total control rack really doesn't like anything but the krc pump that total control sells. it says you can use them but that it is not really recommended. well the krc pump is about twice the cost of the saginaw pump and I did not like the look of it as well so I decided to buy this one. well after driving the car for a few months now and now that is getting hot out the powersteering pump has been making a lot of noise and a couple weeks ago my daughter thought she had blown the car up because she said it kept wanting to die and it was steaming up and the temp gauge went to 250. when I looked it over there was powersteering fluid spewed out of the top of the pump and it was smoking on the header. no antifreeze anywhere and the radiator was full when I started it, the temp gauge stayed right at 200 which is where it runs that correlates with about 180 on my i.r. temp gun, so I didn't think anything really was wrong with the engine. so I bit the bullet and bought the krc pump. I really did not want to spend that kind of money on this car right now but I want it to be well debugged by the time school starts so I bought it and swapped it in yesterday. of course it took lots of tweaking to make it all work but it is in.



not quite as pretty or clean of a setup, but it is in and it works. no more howling powersteering, I know the pump and the rack will work well together, it is the same setup I have in my car. I drove the car for about a half hour yesterday and it worked great. I also drove it to work today and it worked great. I am going to drive it for a while and debug it so hopefully I will get all the little quirks worked out of it before school starts.