<VV> Friday Night Fights

[Jeff Schramm]

Friday night I went out to the shop to work on my '65 Monza sedan. Once
again I was happy to see that the car had not flipped over spontaneously, so
the evening was off to a good start. I didn't really have a plan, so I
turned on Smackdown on the TV for some background noise while I thought
about my next move.

Some background info - this car is straight and surprisingly rust-free,
showing about 53K miles which I'm sure are original. However, it was a mouse
hotel for a number of years before I bought it. I've spent about a year just
taking care of the cleanup. The interior is stripped and disinfected and the
floorpan is painted with POR15. The only serious rust was under the back
seat, but it didn't rust through and has since been reinforced with the POR
fiberglass kit. Everything in the tunnel was removed thanks to more mouse
nesting. The tunnel has been cleaned up and painted with POR15. Now that I
have new brake and fuel lines and the new wiring harness installed it seems
like putting the tunnel back together is a good next thing to do.

One thing that has been bugging me is a stuck heater cable. I decided that
would be the project for Friday night. A quick look at the heater box levers
didn't show anything obvious so I decided to pull the fan motor to see where
that took me.

Apparently, the heater box assembly was the luxury suite at the mouse hotel
- the cage fan was completely stuffed, and there were at least three mouse
mummies in there. The fan itself was corroded and useless. More stuffing
could be seen up in the heater box, which explains why the cable didn't move
- the baffles were jammed with mouse nest.

The heater box had to come out because it's a biohazard, so I vacuumed out
as much nest and other "stuff" as possible and started disassembly. The
thing-the-fan-motor-bolts to, which I'd call a plenum but I'm usually wrong,
came off easily. However, the foam ring that seals it against the heater box
was half (and is now completely) gone. I checked both vendors' catalogs
twice but I didn't see a replacement, but it shouldn't be too hard to find a
substitute at Williams Hardware. I'm thinking a toilet flange gasket will
work, which is appropriate if you think about what the mice have been doing
in there.

The three nuts holding the heater box to the body got a shot of PB Blaster
and came off easily. That's when I discovered the fourth nut that's not
visible from underneath the car (but it's right there in the diagram in the
assembly manual if you bother to look - don't ask how I know). The next hour
was spent trying to get that nut off the wrong way, from underneath by feel
using an open-end wrench and a lot of cussing. The RIGHT way is to look at
it from the left rear wheel well first, and realize that a socket on a long
extension will actually fit up there. Once I did that the nut came right off
and the heater box came out with only a little more cussing.

At that point I was ready to call it a night. I haven't checked over the
heater box yet except it looks like there's some sort of rubber or neoprene
seal on the big baffle. The mice ate some of that, so I'll have to come up
with a fix.

The good news is the heater cable moves freely again.