June 14, 2000- I wet sanded where the drivers seat sits so that I could put the seat back in position. I mounted the driver-side mirror and the rear view mirror. I also worked with the windshield insert rubber.
June 15, 2000- I worked more with the windshield insert rubber. I painted the air cleaner mount and the insert that attaches the body to the gas tank.
June 18, 2000- I wet sanded the body. Only the hood remains unfinished.
June 25, 2000- I sanded the hood once again, and it looks excellent. The windshield glass broke on me the first time I put it in place, so I took it back to the glass shop, and they put the glass in for me (Somerset Windshield Glass). After this situation, I found the limitations of my patience or maybe just the limitations of my wallet. It cost me $120. (One of my first ideas was to cut a side window of an old Ford Bronco to fit in the windshield. This is impossible. Side window glass cannot be cut. There are internal stresses in the glass. This type of safety glass shatters into tiny fragments when cracked. While I was trying very slowly and gently to cut this glass with a Dremel tool, it exploded into thousands of tiny pieces. This side window safety glass did not break from the force I applied but seemed to break from energy stored inside the glass. I presume that internal stresses were manufactured into the glass.)
June 27, 2000- I removed the manifold. It had a hole where it was welded before. I put the rear hitch on the frame. I fitted the tailgate into the slots. There wasn�t much difficulty.
June 30, 2000- I painted the manifold after Weimer�s Blacksmith welded it. It looks like they did an excellent job. They said it was "acetylene welded."
July 10, 2000- I can�t say much about my Jeep because it�s not here. It�s being painted at Sculton Auto (Mike Sanner's Shop). I�ve worked on my Jeep every day even though it�s not here. Spooky isn't it. The float is a @#$&!. The float has reversed polarity from the new gauge. I decided to bend the cork float the other direction. It didn�t bend. It broke. The result was many trys wire nutting the float to a wire made out of coat hanger. I hose clamped them together. (Later, the float would stop working due to faulty grounding, and it would be replaced with a new float. This float was also backwards and needed to be bent. This reversed the rheostat in the float. Another problem was that the new gauge would only read about 3/4 scale when the tank was completely full. I fixed this by biasing the gauge with a 20k ohm 10-turn potentiometer with one end attached to +12 volts and the other grounded. The potentiometer slider terminal connected to the full float terminal. This allowed the gauge to read from empty to full when the float rheostat read from 10 to 160 ohms.) I spent $300 on paint. Just Paint!! I cleaned up the garage and went in to change the wiring diagrams.
