The Road to Recovery

Time for an update. The damaged rear quarter arrived at DMCNW last week after I shipped it off via FedEx Freight. Here's a picture of the huge box that it barely fit into before I shipped it off:


I also purchased four new tires and found them in matching tread, which was harder than it sounds. It's really easy to find tires for each tire size, but super hard to find the same tread pattern on the different tire sizes. I decided to purchase Cooper Cobra Radial GT tires since I could have the same tread pattern on the front and rear. The front tires are no longer manufactured, but I found a brand new pair on ebay. The rears were available from Discount Tire Direct.

I had my old tires removed from the wheels and had a local guy sandblast and powder coat the wheels before I put the new tires on. When I first saw the color that he used, I thought that it was too light, but after putting them on the car, I am very pleased with how great they look. Here's what they used to look like when the original powder coating was flaking off:
 

Now here's what they look like after the restoration job with the new tires:
 

So things are progressing well now. The car is finally back on its own weight with all four tires on the ground. The panel will hopefully be repaired this week and sent back to me quickly and without damage during transit. 

Slowly but Surely

It has now been nearly two months since disaster struck. Progress is coming along nicely. I have already received and installed all the new components for the rear suspension and brakes. The car would be ready to drive right now if the panel were installed. Here is what the car now looks like:


Here is  a nice close-up of the new brake and suspension hardware:


I determined that the bearing was also shot when the wheel fell off, so I replaced it as well. I went to a local shop to have the bearing pressed into the hub carrier assembly. It looked great except for one small detail: they pressed in the outboard shaft backwards! The guy felt like an idiot after I explained it to him, but he also destroyed the bearing while trying to press the shaft out again. So I ordered a new bearing and he gladly pressed the bearing in correctly for free.

I have been super busy with getting everything put back together properly and with doing an all-around inspection of the car. I don't trust any of the work done by the previous owner because of my experience. I have since removed all four stub axle nuts, replaced the rear ones with new ones, and used loads of loctite while torquing them to spec.

One very big problem I've had to figure out is how to ship the rear quarter panel to DMCNW to get repaired. Because of its size, it was super difficult to find a box big enough to fit the panel inside. I finally located a box from an auto body shop that had a GM door shipped to them. It's a tight fit, and I hope that it doesn't get damaged in shipping, but it's the best I can do. I'm still waiting on some final quotes before it is shipped out, but I hope to have that taken care of in the next week.

I also discovered that while the DeLorean was sitting in my garage that it has a drain on the battery coming from somewhere because the battery was dead after sitting for about a month. Luckily the previous owner installed a battery cut-off switch, so that has come in handy after I recharged the battery.

I have decided to keep a list of things that I want to fix. Here's the most recent list:
Fix bent rear quarter panel
Sand blast & powder coat the wheels
Replace tires
Fix or replace radio antenna
New floor mats
Fix the A/C
Replace dashboard
Replace lights in binnacle with LEDs