After waiting way too long to get parts, I finally received my incomplete order. The company cancelled those items, but I'm going to be giving them an earful on Monday. I don't see how it takes four days to pack up and send my parts. As usual, I'm going to be cutting things close to my 7/31 deadline.
The parts I'm missing are a new fuel filter clamp and the rubber fuel pump mounts. The clamp is not a huge deal since I can clean up and reuse the old one. The rubber mounts are kinda critical though. If push comes to shove, I can mount the fuel pump bracket with some "custom" isolators and zip ties for the trip, but I'd obviously rather not. I found a seller on Amazon who offered expedited shipping for a reasonable price, so I'm hoping that they show up on the early side of their estimate.
Unfortunately, I was much too hot to think about taking a lot of pictures of today's progress. I managed to extract a the busted bolt from the filter clamp and wire wheel it until it was fairly clean, but I ran out of rust converter. I had to run to Lowe's to get the hardware I needed, anyway but they did not have any of the spray can stuff. They did have naval jelly and Rustoleum though, so I figured I'd try that out. I was impressed with the naval jelly! I hope it holds up. The first pic is showing the results of the first 5 minute treatment. After that, I was able to go back to the wire wheel and knock off what came loose, apply another 10 minute treatment of naval jelly, clean it up again, and give it some paint!
Between the filter and it's clamp is a rubber isolater. The one I removed was super dirty and impregnated with rust. I'm going to try to revive it. I have no idea what I'm doing, nor did I even bother to look anything up. I'm just winging it to see what happens.
First, I gave it a hot and soapy wash. There was a lot of undercoating on it, and I figured the heat would help expand the rubber enough to let go of most of the rust, and bring deep stuff to the surface. I was right! My soapy water turned very nasty. Then I dried the fairly clean rubber off and drenched it in tire shine. I'm not entirely sure what I thought this was going to do except suck the stuff in and make it slippery, but It actually helped make cleaning the little grit even easier. The little rust particles are coming off with my finger nail. I'm sure it will offer a little bit of protection when it held back on to the clamp anyway.
Perfect? Nah. Pretty good for the junk I had sitting around? Yeah. More work than this car deserves? YES. I guess this is just how I cope with waiting too long for parts.