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Rebuilding A Junker Cutlass Into A Kinda-Sorta Faux-Four-Two Musclecar, Part 6:



Along with the paint, I'd been doing a short list of other minor fixes, like getting the horn working, getting the
heater blower working, and, since it was late November by this time, borrowing a set of studded snow tires
so that I could drive the blasted thing home. :) As I was prepping to do so- I'd gotten it titled and licensed
by that point- the old heater core let go and started pouring coolant into the interior.

I looked up how-to instructions online, and the first step given was "remove passenger side innder fenderwell".
Oh, whoopie. Four some odd hours later, I had the new core in the everything topped back up with coolant.



After a few more days of small-potatoes tinkering- and letting the slow-drying enamel cure as long as possible
before I subjected it to the cold and snow, I very gingerly drove it home late one night, after an ice-storm.
Brakes behaved nicely, steering was solid, all the lights kept working- except the dash lights.
When I went to dim them, they failed completely. I would later replace the headlight switch.



Once it was warm and dry in my own shop, it was kind of stuck there for a while, since it was now full
on winter. As I had time between other work and customer jobs, I'd wander over and tinker with this,
that or the other thing in order to check it off my list. One day, I decided I'd replace the air-conditioning
"doghouse" with an aftermarket AC-delete heater duct. Which meant I needed to pull that fenderwell again.



The swap was pretty straightforward, and going smoothly, when the power went out. :)
Fortunately, thanks to a couple of LED camp lights and a flashlight, I was able to
keep working, and the the new duct installed in a couple of hours.



The power came back on right about the time I was finishing up. :)
The new duct is much smoother and less obtrusive than the unneeded AC doghouse,
and will provide valuable extra room if I eventually put in that big-block.






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