Was able to get quite a bit done this weekend. The car is finally going back together and the pile of parts on the work bench has shrunk considerably. Yesterday, I finally addressed an issue from the factory. The gentleman we purchased the car from mentioned that for whatever reason, General Motors did not install the lower bushings on four (4) body mounts. These are the two mounts on each side of the car in front of the rear wheel well. After getting the car up in the air for the first time, I quickly found that it was indeed missing four bushings. Kirbans, and other G-body suppliers, offer kits with just these four bushings, new bolts and washers. However, I have at least two sets of used bushings from prior restorations and found the ones I removed from our '70 Cutlass several years ago. I cleaned the bushings up and using a 15 mm socket removed the body bolts and installed the bushings. Luckily, all four bolts were in great shape and I had no issues removing them.
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Today, I started by cleaning up the intercooler. Per the instructions on a Turbo Regal website, I first poured a solvent into the intercooler and sloshed it around. After doing this several times, the fluid became progressively less black in color when I dumped it each time. After the solvent, I then flushed it with soapy water and also scrubbed the exterior. I had already blown a lot of road debris out of the fins with my air gun, but I was still able to get more out with the "jet setting" on my hose. The paint was coming off the tubes and also in a few places on the flat surfaces. I was able to carefully remove the foil decal affixed to the top of the intercooler with a razor blade and will glue it back in place later this week.
After blowing the intercooler dry, I used my angle grinder with a Roloc fiber disc to clean each tube. Most of the paint, or whatever was on there from the factory, flaked right off. It almost appeared to have the same consistency as powder coating although I am not sure how prevalant that was back in 1987. I then dry sanded the rest of the intercooler before flushing it all out again with clean tap water. I used a small hose pick to straighten a couple of bent fins and also pried a couple of small stones out that were lodged in them. After that, I baked it in the oven at 200 degrees for a little over a half hour to ensure that all the water was evaporated from the inside and also from the fins so as not to cause issues with the new paint. A couple of light coats of semi-gloss black made it look like new.
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