Part 2

Our first decision was a tough one: Where are we going to work on this car? 

Two people live in apartments, so they're out.  The third has a garage, but only room for the one car that's already stored in it.  I have a two-car garage, but it already has two cars in it; one is the wife's Mini, the other is my 350z. 

I decide to test the waters, so I broach the subject with the Mrs.

"We just can't figure out where we're going to keep this car..." I say. 

She doesn't bite.

"I guess I could move my car out of the garage and keep a car cover one it...".

Still nothing.

"But then again, your car is driven every day, rain or shine, whereas mine is only driven when it's sunny", I say out loud to myself.

"No way" she says, not even making eye contact.  That settled that.

So with nowhere else to go (I was NOT serious about moving my car out of the garage), we set up a work area off to the side of my driveway.

If you've ever had to work on a car in gravel, you know it's not fun.  I have done it many times, but only when I was younger, and only on a Sunday when I absolutely had to get the vehicle fixed that night because I needed to get to work in the morning.  I'm not interested in doing that anymore.

So off I go to the hardware store to pick up some temporary work surface: four sheets of 3/4" plywood.

For the next couple months, this was our work area.  It wasn't bad, really.  It made it a LOT easier to find the nut that you dropped, and you could just hose all the crap out from under the car with compressed air.

The first step was to drain and remove the fuel tank; we don't want any unfortunate fiery accidents.  We pulled the rubber fuel line from the fuel pump and ran it into a gas can.  Turn the key on and let the fuel pump do it's job; the tank was empty in seconds.

Now we can start getting a better look at the car.  We get the wheels off and find a tiny bit of rust on the brakes.  It's a good thing we planned on replacing them.

We planned on stripping all of the air conditioning components out, so we pulled the fan and radiator to make room.  Then we pulled out the AC pump and condenser, and (a few days later, thanks to a very stubborn bolt) the alternator).  Lots of room now...

As part of the AC removal, you have the heater and AC cores in the car that have to be removed, also.  They're fun, because they're buried in the dash board and bolted in from every direction in multiple layers.  You have to peel it like an onion unless you want to brake something.  We don't, because we want to try to sell some of this stuff to offset our other expenses.

We finally get the dash, heater, and AC stuff out; nothing but wires now.

That's enough blood, sweat & tears for one day...