The sister & BIL and I picked up the Nissan in Waco the Saturday before last; it had been sitting without so much as having been started for at least three years. We arrived in Waco to find that all 4 tires were (of course) flat, but all aired up nicely despite the appalling amount of weather cracking. I went ahead and bought the new battery sooner rather than later, but we were unable to get the car started despite quite a bit of time being spent trying. BIL was quite wise in suggesting that we just not worry about that until we got the car up to the ranch. *I* actually thought the car was in much better shape than I had remembered, but sort of got the impression that BIL thought it was in considerably worse shape than he imagined.
Loading the Z onto the trailer turned out to be a bit more difficult than we had wished, although considerably easier than it COULD have been. The electric winch bound up with the car about halfway onto the trailer, and we (royal we ...BIL did all the work it seemed) ended up using a manual comealong to pull it up the rest of the way. All things considered, it went rather well ...it would have been much nicer to have just driven it up, but one can't have it all I suppose.
I don't think all the time in the truck was exceptionally kind to me ...I think there was between 6-7 hours of "drive time" when all was said & done. I had a few times that a bit of nausea crept up, and that ever-present worn-out feeling was completely without surprise.
Getting it off the trailer was a great deal easier than getting it on at least (if you can imagine). Once we had it nestled into the shop, I did a fair bit more "checking" on the car ...I had already been able to determine that it wasn't getting any fuel, but my ability to hold a coherent line of thought simply wasn't possible for me at the time. To be honest; I really can't recall exactly what I did and what I checked that evening. I had pulled up the rear carpeting to try to reach the fuel pump; there was a massive amount of rust in the rear from what I can only guess had to do with a leak of some sort in the rear hatch area. I checked voltage at the plug for the fuel pump, and it only had 4.5 volts; a sign that there was likely a problem in either the wiring or a relay. I tried to take off a rusted out plate that I thought led to the fuel pump; it turned out to be some sort of noise insulator.
I found it a bit ironic that although I (finally) realized that maintaining a line of thought for diagnosis of a problem wasn't going to happen, I felt more than capable of taking Ricks electric winch apart and fixing it to the point that it was able to be used again at least. It got messed up by my car, I figured the least I could do was fix it. It's pretty weird ...there's no real "thought process" involved in that sort of thing for me. A great deal of the work on my car will be that way as well; it's going to be when I can't find that one bolt holding something in, or when I'm trying to diagnose "what's wrong" when the problems will start.
Poor BIL was so exhausted after all the days activities that he decided that an early start to get back to DFW in time for church the next morning simply wasn't in the cards, so I actually got to do a bit of work on Sunday. I pulled out the rear carpeting and all of the right rear trim paneling, vacuumed out a bunch of left over broken glass, sanded and painted all of the rusted out sections. I found the fuel pump relay, determined it was good, and then went ahead and ripped out the fuel tank to be ready for the next trip. There wasn't much fuel in the tank, and it was in remarkably good shape for not having had any fuel put in it for over 4 years. I'm guessing that my first order of business on the next trip will entail putting that part back together, but I guess we'll see. One thing I need to be thinking about is making sure that when I put stuff BACK, that it will all be nice and clean.
All in all, I did quite a bit more in the first trip than I had really expected (or even planned) to do; I can only hope that next time goes as well. My only real "goal" for trip number two will be removing the engine and transmission; anything else that happens to get done along the way will be a nice bonus though.
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