It's been awhile since I posted anything about this project...mainly because I haven't had anything to post though. For awhile, it was looking like I was going to have to sell Coral. My wife and I have been talking about packing up and moving back to Ontario at somepoint this year, mainly to be closer to our families, and as such, one of the casualties was going to be loosing Coral. It was going to be too expensive to bring it back or ship it, and even when we got back to Ontario, we'd have to find a place to keep it parked to work on it.
But, in an interesting turn of events, it looks like we can bring it along with us when/if we move. We did some looking into shipping options for our stuff and renting a truck and a full trailer is only going to be about $200 more than getting a moving pod, so looks like Coral is going to be coming along.
Which means, I can keep working on her and get it rolling/on the road sooner than later.
I have been doing some work on it behind the scenes for awhile. I cleaned up all of the suspension components, installed the drivers side suspension, and started picking away at the 4AGE again, this was all in the idea I was going to be selling everything, so I could get top dollar for everything. I finally got around to removing the broken oil pump bolt from the block. Ended up welding a ton of material to the broken bolt and used a set of vice grips to spin the bolt out.
Also cleaned up a bunch of hardware and brackets. One thing I really wanted to do was clean the valve covers up to make them look nicer. I hot tanked them and sandblasted them at work. Then I sprayed them black, masked the letters off, then sprayed them gunmetal.
Turned out pretty good.
In doing this, I have about 2 hours worth of work on the front end again to get the suspension back together and put the front end back on the ground. I also sold some stuff along the way, including my Personal steering wheel. BUT, in selling it, I managed to make a bit of an upgrade. I found a really rare 1994 built Momo 5Zigen N1R steering wheel for essentially the same price as what I sold my Personal wheel for. The interesting thing about the wheel is that it's a D-shaped wheel, which I haven't ever seen before and am looking for more info on it.
The interior looks really good now, the steering wheel fits perfectly and actually gives me more room thanks to the flat bottom.
I'm really looking forward to getting this thing back on the road sometime soon, and I'm really glad we found a way to keep it in the family.
Keep an eye out here for more updates shortly....