Since the last update, the 97 has been on the aforementioned novice TSD. We didn't do too poorly, except for a part where we got greedy and racked up a 90-second early penalty outside the "loop."
Today, we set out to replace the dented fender, a sticking brake booster hose and a leaking oil pressure sender which was causing the car to lose a substantial amount of oil (though less once I switched to 5w40).
For reference, this is what the fender looked like before:
We pulled the fender off with some great effort (lots of broken clips, bent metal, etc) and were confronted with a damaged fender mount and its twisted bumper foam:
The new mount is on the left, and the old one is (obviously) on the right. It's been twisted pretty badly. We swapped the foam over to the fresh mount and duct-taped it into place for maximum ghettoness.
Once that was done, the new fender went on with some mild coercion:
Screamin' did an incredibly gorgeous job with the respray and let me take home whatever was left, so I could probably touch up the hood a bit if I weren't so lazy.
The bumper, unfortunately, took a pretty savage hit in the accident so is fairly far out of spec. I'm sure the thread is very surprised that it will never be a concours queen.
The oil pressure switch was pretty gross:
It is now happily replaced with one that doesn't leak oil. Had to take the alternator and its belt off in the process. The belt looks pretty beat up as well, so it went on the (growing) list of things to do.
I'll probably be doing some amateur bodywork on the old fender to see if I can work it into a suitable spare:
Unfortunately, after going out for a victory lunch it was determined that the reverse lights have stopped working at some point in the recent past. Both bulbs are OK, so I suspect the reverse switch has gone out.
