A 30 year journey, and a 2nd chance.

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I had redone the interior of the car headliner down back in the 90's, but never removed the carpet. So I started gutting the interior first. And at the same time started to remove all perm. and temp ballast. Once the seats, console, carpet, underlayment, seat belt ends were out, I started weighing everything and listing all coming out, and going back in later. Using scaled weights, and had a starting point.

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It was also time to get rid of that junk stock shifter once an for all, ordered my choice of B & M gated shifter, something I can bang rather than slide. And never risk slipping it into neutral. And a decent tunnel mount to mount it on, and started modification of the Console to slide over it if I go back to EF/S again later.

But, once (for the very 1st time since the car ran down the assembly line in December 1984), that the quite dirty carpet, and 42 lbs. of very heavy underlayment was out of the car, I finally realized very quickly why the car was so dang heavy.

The floor panels and up the firewall up high for some unknown reason was plastered 3/4" thick all over with heavy black mastic seam sealer (like tar w/ fibers in it everywhere, and every floor drain plug was over filled with that heavy crap, and zip broke out a hook knife, the shop vac and started chipping, scraping and vacuuming up the mess, and did so for more than a week. Pics to follow.

Once I was done vacuuming the first time, I weighed out 24 lbs.of the chippings and scraping. Time to see what was left, found a few cans of bright silver paint in the spray paint cab. And sprayed over the mess, easily showing what I still needed to work on removing.

The second go around was another 20 plus lbs. And sprayed again.

Layed the carpet out on the driveway, broke out the power washer, put together a concoction of soaps, and got all that dirt, stains, and carpet backing that turned to dust over the years out of the carpet,, hung it over the fence to dry,, then weighed replacing it or using the old much nicer now looking clean carpet, it weighed much lighter now, and was already form fitted, so decided not to replace newer, it was light.

And got to work removing the stock shifter and cable, preparing for the new shifter and mount to arrive. And installed the new shifter and mount, fabled up the cable end in the engine bay, and got that all mounted and working correctly and adjusted.

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I actually started with the passenger side auto window that was sticky, pulled door panels off cleaned away all the old hardened grease on the rails, sprayed w/ silicone lubricant, and both slide like new again up and down. And measured up for a passenger window outer upper belt window scraper I damaged attempting to get that slow passenger window up once in a hurry. Have not found that replacement part quite yet but a line on a few new ones.

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