We finally start work on the car

Friday was a very disappointing day also. Nothing arrived. I'll have to call Chris on Tuesday to find out why the parts we ordered on Dec 20 have not arrived yet. Even with the holidays and the vendors being in California and based on what Chris told me, the parts should have arrived no later than yesterday (Friday).

I drove over to Jason's house today. He had a nice surprise waiting for me. Both the Sparco seats were mounted to their brackets and waiting for installation into the car.


We start out by cleaning the engine bay to remove all the grease that has built up over time. This way we can determine if there is still a problem. While doing this, we figure out that the battery terminals are not attached properly, so they get tightened.


Then we removed the factory seats, vacuumed out the carpet and tried to install the new Sparco seats. Unfortunately, the seat brackets provided were for the CRX and in this case, the parts are not interchangeable, so they do not fit. We resort to back seat and bench racing (below).


The good news is that we did manage to get one new item installed - the Sparco steering wheel.


After one success, we decide to try installing the Suspension Techniques 22mm rear sway bar. However, there is a pair of welded nuts that need to be removed and we don't have the tools to break those nuts free (or maybe that is Jason's polite way of telling me not to work on the car), so after checking to make sure that all the parts are present, we wrap up for the day. Check out how much thicker the new sway bar is (below).


Jason is quite the installer. I'm glad to have him around to help do the installation. He showed me how to do stuff and I actually played with air tools to do some work too. Very cool.

We are out of bits to install on the car at this point, so unless something happens, this will be the last install related post for 2006.

Odometer: 232,097