The Resurgence of Ruby

Finally, after sitting dormant in my driveway since early 2010 when the AC compressor starting doing it's fourth of July impersonation, R&R is heavily underway to get Ruby back on the road. We will most likely have a plate and insurance by this time next week.

Over the past few days, things have started to happen. Carpet got taken out and re-dyed medium gray. Today new sneakers 235/70-15 got slapped on the soft 8s (bitching about Wally World to follow).

Pics will be coming soon, most likely right after dinner. I gotta run out and flip the Pork on the BBQ.

Pics of when I got her in January 2008







Interesting to see the mileage here
Spawn - sold to Tailpipe.
Parts car - Traded to Pat for a set of Impala Rims
Ruby - 135K
Dusty - 213K


When I scored the Soft 8s! Notice the pillars still body color


Woo those Indy 500s are tight!


Getting ready for my very first car show


Not to mention first time I ever used automotive paint!


My boy with his future car looking good!


Ruby in the first SE Impala Nationals at the Daytona Spring Show 2009


Here is Ruby at the top of her game:


30 degree temps were not kind to her hood!


Current and progress pics soon!

I remember when my wagon looked like that. :p

This is ALL good. If you are screwing around with this thing, you AREN'T defiling the Cougar.

Multi-tasking, lol

So, did Crapmart scratch your wheels and tell you to stick it because they're "not factory" or did they refuse to mount your tires because they weren't new with labels still on them? Those are my two issues. I have taken my DeLorean wheels to them to see what they say if/when they scratch them. I'll let them pony up the $500+ for new ones.

lol I went there when I first got my wheels and they said "We can't mount wheels with more than 8 lug nuts." I was like "Um... there are two bolt patterns drilled into the wheel." and the "tech" says to me "I don't know what that means."


Never again.

WTF?! Now THAT is scary.

THey dicked me in several directions. I need to go back as reading the site, I see that they overcharged me $5 per corner. 20 bucks is 20 bucks....

1. When I ordered them online there was a statement that said they would call when they arrive (entered cell phone #). They also said they would be 5-7 days to deliver to the store. Well they got there in 2 days, but they never called. Not terrible, but then it was a rush as I got an email stating that they would be returning them and refunding my money.

2. When ordered, I KNOW that I read it was free mount and balance. Website now changed to say all fees extra. $62 extra I was charged. Still a good price for 4 but 62 more bucks than was planned (should be getting 20 back when I go bitch at them later).

3. You have to pick up online items at a counter (fair enough) as the tires don't get sent to the tire area (actually I have no issue other than it was a PITA.

4. So I have a cart with four tires but no time (and don't have the wheels with me), and I go by the tire desk. I ask, do they need to be on the car, or can I bring them in loose. Tech says, "Loose is alot easier for me and then I don't have to worry about load rating/speed rating, etc.." Cool deal easier for me too! I ask how late they are open. Dude says back by 6PM no problem to get them on by 7.

5. Roll home from work, my son has the four rims off the car and ready to go, load up and go to the store arrive at 5:40PM

6. Clerk: I can't mount loose rims.
Its too late, I can't do it today
We have a discussion about #4 above, and he writes it up overcharging me $20 (tires bought from wal-mart mounted free website says ) I'm tired and don't argue, cuz I just want to go home and couldn't get the website to load on my phone right to check.

7. We get out of there around 8:15PM

The tires do look good and have a $50 mail in rebate on them. So I guess some hassle was okay, but it's just the robotic stupidity of the employees that gets to me.

Eh, that's everywhere. Robotic stupidity is rampant.

It is rampant, but Walmart has the highest concentration of it. I think it's a requirement for employment anymore...like getting burped at by a female cashier recently. Needless to say, "Walmart" is now the phrase uttered by the 4 of us at the register whenever someone burps now.

Following the interior thread Chris did my OCC, We have procured the imitation dynamat and will be installing later this afternoon when the shade appears.... if anyone is bored and wants to come help....free beer, lol

Sounds tempting, but sadly I have family in town, otherwise I'd consider coming up!

Free beer?

Curses, can't drink beer. lol

Sprocket wrote:

Following the interior thread Chris did my OCC, We have procured the imitation dynamat and will be installing later this afternoon when the shade appears.... if anyone is bored and wants to come help....free beer, lol

If I were only closer!!! I take you up on that

In recent years, I have found that a 5, 10, or 20 dollar bill given to the 'tech' that is doing a job for you, gets real nice results. The money gets their attention and shows them that you care enough about them, your car and the job that they are doing. This is, of course, once you have decided that the guy isn't a doofus, and he's a good, smart man who may just not be in the best mood to do his best job. Buying a guy lunch has gotten me primo service when it mattered to me.

Shouldn't have to pay people extra to do their job. If they don't like said job, there are plenty of doors they can walk out seeing as it's a garage.

Also, screw Walmart for tires. Some nitwit refused to mount my snow tires this past winter because A) They were 235/75 and for "safety" reasons they couldn't go past factory size (225/75) and B) because they were on "too narrow of a rim and the side walls would blow out.

Deleted last post to get this build thread back on track....

Got the kinda-dyna-mat in tonight,. Didn't put the carpet back in yet, as I want to get at least the non shifter console in there to go with the Bonnie's Photos taken, but still in the camera...

After several test fitting of the non shifter console, we reinstalled the carpet tonight and got the rear seat in, and the carpet hold down thresholds reinstalled. Again photos taken but not uploaded. Did not drill any holes for the console as I want the seats in first and time is of the essence.

We are doing this work for about an hour a day, and need the car on the road by Monday.
I would have really liked to get into the headliner, and fixing the rust, but that's all going to have to wait.

Last night I spent several hours on my father-in-law's car to ready it for the trip back to Texas.
'97 T-bird. I'm secretly wanting one now, it's a nice car...

pics soon, it's 9PM and I have to go make dinner.

My boy let his friend take his camera and didn't get the pics off the card first.....
They shall be coming soon.

She's back on the road as of today. Made the maiden voyage to the gas station and I drove it as I wasn't sure she'd make it as it was almost out of gas and running like crap. Put 3 gallons in as we were in a hurry. Mind you she hasn't gone further than around the block in 2.5 years. Rolled up about 35 miles on it tonight. Ran our errand, stopped and got a can of Seafoam. Instantly better. drove to the cheap gas (15 cents cheaper) and filled her up. By the time we got there she was smooth.

The new owner took over and rode us home....First day of college tomorrow!

Couple of pics of the re-dyed carpet back in. Sorry for the out of order pics, as the below carpet pics are on junior's camera which he lent to a friend. More stuff coming soon. Did NOT take any pics of the power steering hose replace. It got pretty bad, about a pint every 20 miles.....lots of undercoating for him, lol

Also swapped out the window switch cover on the pass front door, to one that matches colorwise.




2 cans of 'dye' from Advance Auto, medium gray. Looked pretty dark at first, but alot better once it got in the car.
Probably could have used a third can as it looked a little stripey in a couple of spots, but once in, not so noticeable.

While I was out of town for 3 weeks, junior took it upon himself to pull the drivers door panel and pop the window arm back into the slider so the drivers window works proper like now. Kudos for him. Got a set of manual seat rails for the pass side, so by tomorrow he'll have a passenger seat bolted down (he's cleaning and painting them today as they were surface rusty from sitting in a mosuito farm of a car at the JY (pool of standing water in the cabin, thousands of little blood suckers while we unbolted them)

hard at work

have a 9c1 cluster and dash surrond to go in, along with a few other goodies.

Yo save that for Thanksgiving, I'm coming down that day LOL

Like that sound deadening!!!

Curious about that Lowes/Home Depot sound deadener.Does it work as well as the high dollar
stuff and will it stick to the roof in the future as well as the good stuff?

Ive used it in a few wagons (currently in Jade). Not on the roof though...but I see no issue with it. Its the same stuff ( just not as thick and 1/3 the price ). It works and is better than nothing.

Let's put it this way. As soon as we got on the road in my OCC after Chris drove out of the airport garage I noticed the difference. How you may ask? The blue OCC is my 10th wagon and it was noticebly quieter. It took me two rolls to do Ruby. I will be doing it in every car I pull the carpet out of from now on. Wasn't very expensive at all, find it in the roofing section.

Stingroo wrote:

Yo save that for Thanksgiving, I'm coming down that day LOL

Deal, it's all wired up, you can copy the pin out.

It functions?

What is that deadener called and where was it purchased?

Gastt wrote:

What is that deadener called and where was it purchased?

Lowes is where I buy mine...

About how much does a roll cost? It looks rather thin I would probably double up on the floor.

I redid my floors in this stuff. Cheap ($3 or so a roll) and effective. Good for rust control too

It's thin but heavy, single layer is all you need. It has tar or someting in it. I was surprised how heavy it was. I got mine at Home Depot in the roofing section, I thought it was more than 3 bucks though but it was fairly cheap.

I went to home depot last night the only stuff they had there was $16 a roll. I'll have to check out another HD or a Lowes.

That was it...it's about $13 a roll at Lowes down here. Not sure what Robert got for $3 though...

Okay, finally got the cluster swap done up to a point. Only issue is the woodgrain on the dash surround, doesn't match the doors or the spear on the right side. For now, we decided to black out the spear with electrical tape to see how that goes. I voted to black out the AC vents OCC style to tie into the seats better, but was nixed on that deal.

Ran a wire from the tach out to the ign coil and spliced it in. Went out with the ebrake cable through the firewall the up between the wheelhous and the fire wall and dress it out with a tie wrap on the accelerator cable.


Here we are with oil pressure (put the sending unit in during oil change today) and RPM!!! Wooot!



Dash back in almost there (bottom cover still off in this pic)


View from the back seat


Another view


The center console is just sitting there. We have a grey one with a center shift, but he's not sure if he wants it or not. For now, it's there. I think we are going to Two-tone, grey and charcoal to spruce it up a bit.

Sprocket wrote:

Ran a wire from the tach out to the ign coil and spliced it in. Went out with the ebrake cable through the firewall the up between the wheelhous and the fire wall and dress it out with a tie wrap on the accelerator cable.

THANK YOU! I have been wondering for ages where to run that wire to on the coil.

I could have told you. Fool.

I did ask you fool! And you told me to run it to the ECU

That's what I was told. Then I got new info. :p

It was a tight fit. Luckily the car is 20 years old and grommet is kinda hard and dried out so there was a little bit of space. I used 16 gauge wire, stripped about 2 inches of insulation off the end and twisted the strands around a wire hanger and the taped to make the diameter progression as small as possible. Then pushed it down though the firewall and slowly (as not to scrape the insulation off) until I had enought to push it up to where we needed it. Was a lot easier with two people I would guess.

Stingroo wrote:

That's what I was told. Then I got new info. :p

That's what I told him, as I heard that from siljknot who sold me the cluster. I did find a reference and a link to that method, but the link was before the great crash of 2009 over on ISSF.

I spent an hour in manual trying find a Pinot for the ECU and found a page for the U11 cluster that showed the wire coming off the white from the coil to the cluster. Now there are two white ones, one goes to the distributor (I cut that one) and the other goes into the harness, so I'm guessing that's the one for the cluster but don't know where it pops up inside the cabin.

Works for me. Thanks for the rest of the info. That'll be the 1st thing I do when it comes out of the garage. I'd like a working tach, it's only been a year.

So a year and half later, Ruby is coming back into my life......

I took her back from my boy, after he bought the white 96K 92 wagon. I was planning on using her as a parts storage shed, however, my decision to sell the OCC will see her pressed back into service, while I complete the t56 swap into the 94 (I NEED a wagon on the road). She looks like hell right now and needs a tune up and a headliner, but the AC blows cold.

Glad to see this one is going to come back to life.

Pull a Crovo and paint it a flat color. Cheap and easy and will look a lot better.

Keep the updates coming!

-Mike

Looking forward to seeing your progress!

ordered a tune up kit today.

Need to pull the headliner and fix the rust in the roof, then respray the car in a flat. Haven't decided on a color but want to do at least a two tone, FL is too hot for black