First Car Show

Car show season has arrived. The local car show was just down the street from my house and was organized to bring awareness about autism. I didn't preregister, but registered once we arrived.

We were the only DeLorean at this show. We met another owner from a city about 25 miles from me a few weeks ago at a local cruise-in at this same place, but we didn't bring our DeLorean to that event. They were unable to come to this show, but it was nice being the only DeLorean there.

I was given a spot next to all of the motorcycles at the show:
 

 

 

The reactions that the car got were very positive. I didn't hear anyone say anything negative about the car. One guy commented that he was surprised that they didn't come with a V8 in them. We had about 10 people ask us about the flux capacitor or where it was. Even though we had a "do not touch" sign on the car, we discovered a few fingerprints after the show was over.

We even won an award for our first show. We got the "Sponsor Choice" award, shown here in the car:
 

It really was a great time associating with so many people that have such a passion for their cars. I am also a fan of Corvettes, and there were two red ones there that I thought looked just fantastic. One was a 1979 and the other was a Z06 from an unknown year:
   

 

 

There were also quite a few cars that I didn't like, as well as a few that made me scratch my head, like this 60s Mustang that had been supercharged. There were three gauges that they mounted outside of the car, which I am not a fan of:
 

I'm looking forward to participating in more shows this year. I definitely need to get the air conditioning working for the summer heat first.

30 year old DeLorean spare tire

While working on repairing the clutch hydraulics, I tested my spare tire and discovered that it would not hold air for more than a few hours, even though the tire looked like it was in perfect shape. It felt hard as a rock to the touch, which gave the impression that it had a lot of air pressure, but when tested, it would register zero.

Thanks to the vast info available online, I discovered that you can't buy a spare tire from a regular tire shop, and that the best option is to go to a junkyard and find a newer car that has the same spare tire size and to swap the newer rubber onto the DeLorean spare rim.

I also discovered that the spare tire size of T125/70 D15 is a very common spare tire size today. I went to the pick-a-part junkyard and had a bit of trouble initially finding one, but eventually found a few. I picked one that had the most recent date stamp on the tire. I paid $10 for it and headed over to Discount Tire to have them swap rims.

I was hoping that they would just do it for free since I have bought so many tires from them in the past, but they charged me another $10 in labor to switch them out. I didn't bother taking any pictures of the newish tire, but it is holding a steady pressure of 60 psi, in case I ever need it in the future. This was a very easy thing to do, but I just had to take the time to go find a tire and pay to have them switched. More time consuming than difficult.

DeLorean CV Boot replacement

While I was under the car repairing the frame rust last month, I noticed that the CV boot on the driver side was not even attached at the lip. I also discovered that the passenger side CV boot was nearly in two pieces. That's bound to happen after 30+ years.

So I ordered a CV boot kit from John Hervey at Special T Auto. It was back ordered and took a few weeks to get, but it came with everything I needed to rebuild the CV joints. This was a relatively easy job, but just messy. Luckily I have a stash of latex gloves to help keep my hands a bit cleaner, and I used plenty for this job. There is a great write up on www.dmctalk.org on how to rebuild the joint. Since mine has been trouble free and hasn't made any noise, I decided to not completely disassemble the joint itself, but to just wipe out as much of the old grease from the joint before repacking it.

Here is the drive axle with one of the joints removed:


It really was as easy as the write up shows. Once the drive axles were removed from the car, and I did them one at a time so I didn't mix them up, I put them in my vice for ease of working on them and went to town. I simply removed the old boot clamps that were obviously original to the DeLorean. I then disassembled the joint. The hardest part was the old snap rings. The new kit even came with replacement snap rings, which I didn't realize until I had completed the first joint. The old one works just fine, however.

Here is the half-torn CV boot from the passenger side:


I used dozens of paper towels wiping out the old grease before putting on the new boot. I repacked the grease on both sides and worked it in before sealing everything up. The kit came with heavy duty zip ties that allowed me to tighten them really well to ensure no leaking. Here is one of the joints all put back together:


Here is a completed drive axle with two new boots:


The hardest part of the job is taking the drive axles out of the car, and then back in. The actual job of rebuilding the joints is easy if you follow the instructions. After approximately 100 miles of driving, the boots look perfect and show no leaks anywhere.

Back on the Road

After taking a couple of months during the winter to tackle some rust repairs and clutch hydraulic repairs, I was able to button everything back together on President's Day and get the car on the road again. I realized that I have not taken very many pictures of my car since I bought it last year, so I snapped a few pics for the heck of it after the successful road test:




 

I have significantly reduced my mental to-do list. Here are a few items that I will have to tackle soon:

Replace CV axle boots on drive axles (passenger side outer boot is torn)
Replace Thermo Time Switch to fix cold start issue
Replace non-functioning power antenna
Find and replace suitable spare tire (doesn't hold air)

Some possible to-do items:
Replace 30 year old transmission gear oil
Replace cracked dashboard
Replace motor mounts
Get an alignment
Fix interior lights to come on when door is opened

I'm sure there's more, but that's enough for now.

DeLorean Clutch Issues Resolved

As seen in an earlier post, when attempting to remove the clutch pipe from the slave cylinder, the clutch pipe snapped off right by the bolt connection on the end. I pulled the SS clutch line and hooked it directly to the slave cylinder, but the line was too close to the exhaust.

I bought a replacement clutch pipe from DMC Houston and installed it. When I went to bleed the system, the clutch pipe started leaking badly at the connection with the SS clutch line. I must not have tightened it enough. It now works flawlessly. Here is a picture of the new clutch pipe attached to the slave cylinder:

Much more space between the clutch pipe and the exhaust now compared to when the SS clutch line was hooked directly to the slave.


Here is a picture of the old clutch master and slave cylinders once they were removed:
 
The DeLorean clutch master was a Girling and the slave cylinder says Bendix. The slave still worked great, but I decided to replace both since they were originals. I don't want to repeat this job for as long as possible.

Below is a picture of the new clutch master installed. This was taken after it had been there for a few months:

DeLorean Rust repair complete

This turned out to be a much bigger job than I originally anticipated. Once I started searching, I found patches of rust in various spots on the frame from the very front of the frame to the very back. The most obvious places were on the gas tank closing plate and the front frame extension. In earlier posts, I showed the before and in-process images of the gas tank closing plate.

After taking a wire wheel to get the epoxy off the rusted areas, I attacked it with a flap wheel grinder to get it even cleaner. I then wiped off all the dust and then applied two coats of POR-15. The gray color matches fairly well with the original frame color, so in many places I didn't even bother to top coat it wih Krylon Smoke Gray. It only fades in UV light, so since most of the frame never sees the sun it should be fine.

Here is what the bottom of the plate looked like after my repair job:
 
 The top part of the plate was where it was rusting the worst. This is what it looks like now:
 
A closer look reveals the pitting that was occurring on the top side that is now painted over:
 
I also bought new bolts and washers as the old ones were old and rusty. Here is the plate almost completely bolted on again:
 
Here is more of the frame in the front all repaired and looking sharp:
 
Here is the rear part of the frame. The rust wasn't bad here at all, except around the tow hooks:

DeLorean rust repair begins

When I first bought the DeLorean and had my first peak at the underside of the car, I could see that there were places where the epoxy on the frame was peeling off, revealing the bare frame underneath. I knew that I would need to address this quickly. I started by removing the fuel tank closing plate from beneath the car. The bottom of the plate didn't look that bad, but when I saw the other side, this is what I found:

Liquid had pooled in this area sometime in the 30 year life of the car and much of the epoxy was bubbling and flaking off. I could peel a lot of it off just with my fingers. The frame itself looks to be in good condition and hopefully won't require a lot of work to touch up the problem areas.

I whipped out my trusty 6" grinder with a wire wheel and went to town on the plate. It was slow work. I discovered a lot of pitting on the top side of the plate, but the plate didn't rust through in any places. It is definitely salvageable. This is what the plate now looks like, with some close ups of the pitting:


 
I have a can of POR-15 that I will be painting on all areas that I am repairing. I will then add a layer of the appropriate paint to match the rest of the frame. Good progress made for the first day.