I can be a bit pretentious at times...

I can be a bit pretentious at times, and maybe I over use the ...

I found this fantastic coffee place in Carmel, Indie Coffee Roasters, @indiecoffeeRSTR. It’s a cool coffee shop on Main Street in an old house. Great spot to write a blog on a Saturday morning.

It’s way too rainy to paint the Jeep frame or prep the ground by the deck for my hop rhizomes, so here I am enjoying my cortado and a scone.

Maybe I should re-title this blog, ‘How to procrastinate and justify it’...

HAPPY EASTER!

Sometimes life gets in the way of a project and life wins...

Eli calls and his roommate hit a speed bump and now there’s an intermittent noise. I’ll work on explaining the purpose of a speed bump to the roommate later. So they decide to come home for the weekend and I’ll take a look. Roommate hits a pothole “pretty hard” on the way over to our house the next day and now it’s rubbing. This car is not having a good week.

We got the car in the garage and up on jack stands and here is what we found.
The strut is broken and rubbing on the inside of the tire, so it’s tow the car or replace the strut. I don’t know how much you know about 2003 Mercury Sables, but they have a lot of rust. It was an ordeal.

The spring was broken in two pieces and the top plate had separated from the strut. Turns out there are ball bearings in the top plate. I know this because they are all over the floor of the garage now.

This may be the pothole, but I’m not sure. Based on the amount of damage there may have been a small 3 bedroom home available for rent inside his pothole.

Fortunately, the strut is fixed and the car is at Eslers for an alignment. Now I can get the mustang out!

Snowmageddon:
So, it was too cold for me to pressure wash the Jeep last Sunday, but it seems it wasn’t too cold for Jeff to get in some spring time yard work.

Jeff’s theory is that as the snow melted the fertilizer would sink down into the dirt and be nice and wet and ready to fertilize. I’m not the only redneck in the neighborhood.

Here is another example in a long line of “it seemed like a good idea at the time”

From the last post, that sweet lift got the body off the frame. 

Next step, let’s get that mud cleaned off the frame so we can paint/coat the frame. 

By the way, I’m really happy with how good the frame and body look, not much rust. 

It was supposed to rain, or so I thought, figured I might as well let God wash some of that mud off the Jeep. After all He made said mud. So I rolled the frame out in the driveway to catch some rain. 

Dang April showers snows. It sure seemed like a good idea at the time. Let’s hope I don’t get any letters from the neighborhood association.

Turned out too cold to pressure wash so we rolled it back and will wait for another day.

Things tend to get out of hand.

We had multiple electrical issues due to broken connectors, poor splicing, and well age. Pulled the wiring harness and had it rebuilt by Aeromotive.us in Elgin Illinois. A rattle in the engine and after dropping the oil pan and a quick look necessitated pulling the engine. The chassis, undercarriage, engine compartment, pretty much everything was covered in mud -possibly due to the following:

Just a note, that is not me in the picture...

Pulled the grill and radiator off to prep for more easily pulling the engine, figured I might as well pull the fenders off, pulled the engine and took it off to B&C engine Service where it sits now.

Not me here either. Spending spring break power washing mud off a Jeep, priceless!

I thought to myself, I’m not that far from having this body off... Consulted with my neighbor Jeff, another redneck, and decided the two of us could pull this off. Two floor jacks, 9 2x6 8 footers, and one 4x4 later and we have a beautiful body lift in my garage.

This is where she sits now. The chassis rolls in and out nicely for easier cleanup and painting/undercoating. Once this rain stops we can carry on with it. All this from an engine rattle and a couple of electrical codes.