New DeLorean Luggage Compartment Hood Struts

The luggage compartment hood struts on the car have been strong enough to keep the luggage compartment open, but had lost the strength to "push" it open. Even the previous owner noted that he was going to replace them, but sold it to me before he had a chance. This has been a very low priority item for me since I have owned the car, but I decided to finally get it done.

In a previous post, I noted how when I ordered them from DMCMW, I was mistakenly sent rear louvre struts. Julee at DMCMW was so great and quickly sent me correct struts as well as a return label to ship back the incorrect louvre struts. They arrived at my house by the next weekend and I was able to swap them out in about 10 minutes.

The hood now goes up much easier with these bad boys installed. Here is one of them in its new home:

New DeLorean 140 Amp Alternator

Before I undertook the job of cleaning up the look of the engine bay, I discovered that I was having low voltage readings on a drive home from a car show. After the car had cooled overnight, voltage was back up to where it should be. The car had the original Motorola 90 amp alternator, so I didn't have a lot of confidence in its ability to last much longer. Since I want my car to be as reliable as possible, I decided that it was a good time to go ahead and replace it.

Before I replaced the alternator, you can see that the voltage readings were not even up to 13V, which is a drop from where it used to be:

Here is the original from a picture I took a couple of years ago:

 

In the picture above, you can also see the stove piping to the right with the rusty bracket it is secured to over the exhaust manifold. These have both since been removed when I switched the routing of the intake piping in a few posts back.

I thought that the installation would be a direct bolt in and that the wires would hook right up with no modifications. I was surprised when I compared the two alternators side-by-side and discovered that there was a wire coming off of the new alternator where none existed on the original. See the wire in the picture below:

 A quick search at the DeLorean forum revealed that I just had to cut off the ring connector coming off of the car's wiring harness and crimp the wire to the wire coming off of the new alternator. I crimped them together and used heat shrink tubing to keep a clean look.

I also took the time to remove and clean the alternator mounting bracket. It was looking pretty sad with surface rust. I used a wire wheel to clean it up and then painted it black before installing back on the car. I forgot to take a picture of it. It's possible that nobody will see that clean bracket again since it's covered up by the new alternator. I also cleaned the grit and grime off of the belt tension bracket since I had it off the car.

Here is the new alternator all hooked up and working.

Notice the stove piping and the exhaust manifold bracket that have been removed to help clean the look of the engine bay.

When I first when to start the car, I noticed some strange behavior of the battery light in the dashboard. The battery light would flash with the key on but engine not running. It would flash for about 20 seconds until it faded into a solid red, then it would start blinking again. It did this continually. I thought that I had hooked something up incorrectly for sure. Another quick search on the DeLorean forum revealed that this is normal for that alternator. Apparently it is the result of some undocumented test mode. So I suppose that it will do that for the rest of the alternator's life.

Engine bay progress

I was able to spend most of my Saturday just working on the car. Most of the time was spent working on the fiberglass repair for the lower engine cover. Part of the lower engine cover broke off around one of the holes where the hood prop bolts to the cover. I seriously underestimated how much time and work it was going to be. Had I known this, I wouldn't have even bothered repairing such a minor thing.The repaired fiberglass is so thin and feels so weak that I don't feel that it was worth the work.

Here is the break in the fiberglass. Very minor.

I applied the fiberglass the night before to give it plenty of time to set. It was really hard to get the fiberglass to conform to the corners to make it shaped like I wanted. It thus resulted in me having to add much more fiberglass material than I wanted to, which I regretted the next day.

The next day, I needed to sand down the fiberglass to match the shape of the rest of the cover. Trying to do this by hand was taking way too long, so I used a grinder and then a sander. It turned out smooth, but the remaining fiberglass just doesn't seem very strong.

I then wiped the cover down with acetone and lightly sanded with 400 grit sandpaper. I then wiped it down again with acetone and painted the cover using SEM Trim Black. I will post updates of the engine cover once I have made more progress.

I then focused on other parts in the engine bay. I used POR 15 to put on a couple of coats on the engine cover grill retaining strips that were rusting, and also on the metal bracket that holds the ignition resistor:

  

 I may apply another coat of POR 15 if it needs it. If not, I'll finish them with some SEM Trim Black to match the rest of the engine bay and then reinstall.

I also finished restoring the plastic coil cover assembly and it looks fantastic. I wiped it down with acetone to try and get it as clean as possible. I then sprayed a couple of light coats of SEM Trim Black to clean it up really nice. Below are the before and after photos:

 

As a parts order arrived from DMCMW, I discovered that instead of the new hood struts that I had ordered, I was sent a pair of rear louvre struts. You can see the difference in length here:

Luckily they are a great company to work with and correct struts are getting sent to me this week. They will include a return label for me to return these struts that I have since my rear louvre struts are in excellent condition. 

In asking for advice on how to restore the look of my air filter assembly box on the DMCTalk.org forum, I receive the advice that I should wet sand the plastic with 600 grit wet sandpaper to restore it to its original glory. In my attempt to make it look new again, I nearly destroyed it. 

First, using wet sandpaper to make it look new failed miserably. All it did was scratch the surface where there weren't scratches before. I used lower grit sandpaper to get rid of the top layer, which made it look like this:

I tried multiple things to make it look better. I first tried a product called Forever Black that I have used on other trim pieces on my Jeep to make it nice and black. Probably because of the sanding, this made the filter assembly look terrible. It looked worse than before. I then sanded that all off and then used a semi-gloss black spray paint. That looked better than the Forever Black, but still not the look I was going for.

I then sanding it down again, made it as smooth as possible with the 600 grit wet sandpaper and then sprayed it with the SEM Trim Black. Bingo. That was the look I was going for. 

For those looking to make their air filter assembly look new again, I recommend just cleaning it with acetone and then spraying with SEM Trim Black and it will look as good as new. 

This is what it looked like in the restoration process:

 

As seen in the picture above, I also took the time to paint the engine bay with SEM Trim Black. I didn't take any pictures of the process of taping off the car and painting. 

I started by wiping down all of the fiberglass with acetone to get as much black and dirt off. I then lightly sanded everywhere with 400 grit sandpaper before wiping it all down with acetone again.

After taping off the windows, quarter panels, rear fascia, motor, coil assembly, hoses, and nuts & bolts I wanted to retain in the color silver, I put on a few coats of SEM Trim Black. It was really hard to get the paint into the corners where the rear quarter panels meet the fiberglass body. I could have done a much better job with the panels off the car, but I didn't want to take the time to do that. 

More to come as I assemble and fix up other components of the engine bay.

Engine bay restoration progress

A couple of months ago, I decided that I would tackle a cosmetic restoration of the engine bay, but try not to go overboard. I asked my family to point out things that they noticed looked old or worn out, and they pointed out the many rusty bolts, faded black, old and yellowed stickers, and other things that I decided to tackle.

In an earlier post, I shared how I had modified the air intake and removed the unnecessary components from that system. I am still in the process of improving the look of the plastic air filter assembly. More to come on that in a later post.

Below is the engine bay before I started doing any work:

 This is how the engine bay looks as of recently:

I started the project by first removing the lower engine cover and the metal stay that holds it open. I plan on refinishing both. See below for some progress of other items in the engine bay that I have been working on.

This metal light switch bracket was rusting quite badly and the paint was flaking away. It was one of the biggest eye sores of the engine bay. Even the bolts that hold the resistor to the bracket were rusting badly:

Another couple of pictures after I removed it from the engine bay:

 

I cleaned up the rust using a wire wheel and a flapper grinder wheel. I plan on using black POR 15 and then giving it a nice finish using SEM Trim Black spray paint. Below is a picture of it next to the lower engine cover grills and the metal retaining stripcs. 

Here is the lower engine cover before I began restoring it. The original stickers are faded and have wrinkled. The grills have changed over time from their original black to almost a purple look, which is more noticeable in the picture above. My lower engine cover was also missing some of the metal retaining strips that hold the grills to the cover, and many of those that are in place are rusting. 

 The original black paint has also worn off in some places where it has apparently been rubbing other pieces:

The original stickers on the lower engine cover were not all created equal. The "negative earth" and the vacuum routing stickers that were wrinkled from heat and time easily peeled off, but the 30+ year old glue that stayed behind was a beast. I didn't use a special adhesive remover like I probably should have, but I used Goo Gone. It worked to get off some of it, but not all of it. I eventually ended up wet sanding where those two stickers were using 600 grit wet sand paper and it eventually worked in getting off the rest of the glue.

The emissions sticker didn't look too bad, but I decided that if I'm going to paint the whole cover, I should replace that sticker too. I ended up basically having to chisel it off one tiny piece at a time. Luckily my wife assisted with that, but her arm was very tired at the end. Goo Gone cleaned that up nicely.

After the retaining strips and the grills were removed, this is how it currently sits. I am going to clean up the rust on all of the metal clips that hold the retaining strips on, but I will not remove them and they will just get painted black since they are covered by the retaining strips.

I have decided to do something a little bit different for the grills on the lower engine cover. I am going to paint them with a stainless steel paint that another owner recommended. It is the Seymour brand of paint. I bought it from Summit Racing as it was cheaper than buying directly from Seymour.

I used cleaners and brushes to remove any dirt and grease off of the grills, which is kind of hard to do because they are so flimsy. I then attempted to straighten any of the fins that had bent or been misshapen over the years. A good tool to do this with is a Popsicle stick. I then put on two coats of primer on each side with plenty of drying time in between. Below is how one of them currently looks, prior to the stainless steel paint. More to come on the grills. 

As you can see in the "before" picture of my engine bay, you'll notice the plastic ignition cover looks terrible. It was broken by a previous owner and they attempted to fix it with what appears to be RTV sealant on the top and what appears to be hot glue on the bottom. In addition to it being broken, the original sticker that shows how to jump start the car was a nasty yellow color.

I contacted someone at DMC Talk that was parting out a DeLorean and purchased an ignition cover and a new engine bay light switch. Below is the new cover after I had removed the old and yellow sticker. It needs to be cleaned up some more and refinished with SEM Trim Black. 

On the left is my original cover and on the right is the one I purchased:

Ready to replace DeLorean headliners

The headliner in the doors has seen better days. They look like they were replaced by a previous owner at some point in time and that they didn't do a very good job of making sure the new headliner was tight. There are also some spots that are faded or appear bleached.

Here they are prior to removal:

 Some DeLorean owners have found cool writing or "cave drawings" on the back side of the stainless steel body panels or under the headliner. My car didn't have anything noteworthy:

Upon another owner's recommendation, I went to Joann's Fabric to see if I could find a replacement headliner that I could use. I took one of my headliners with me to see how closely the color matched up. The two stores I went to had only three colors to choose from: black, gray, and tan. I wasn't pleased with how the gray compared to the one currently in my car. It seemed to be too different of a shade of gray for my liking, so I passed.

The pics below show the new roll of headliner at Joann's that I didn't buy on the left with the current liner on the right, comparing the back and front side of the headliner panel in case the front side had faded:

Since I have the headliners removed, I am motivated to find and install a color that I like. Stay tuned for future updates.

Rusty DeLorean oil pan bolts

In the goodies of extra parts that the previous owner gave me when I bought the car, there was a bag full of new oil pan bolts and washers. The original oil pan bolts are looking mighty poor, so I decided that this would be a quick and easy way to clean up that part of the engine.

Before new bolts & washers:

 After the new bolts & washers. Also cleaned up the timing cover chain bolts with a wire wheel:

 I was surprised at how the condition of the oil pan bolts varied so much. Some were covered in old grease or oil and others had what appeared to be aluminum oxidation and had no grease or oil:

I wasn't able to access all of the bolts, and likely won't be able to without lifting the engine. Since I don't see those bolts on the back of the pan, I won't worry about it for now. I will see what I can do about cleaning the oil off of the pan at a future date.

DeLorean Door Sill Seal Replacement

One of the many eye sores on my car includes the original and deteriorating door sill seals. After 30+ years, the rubber is hard and is falling apart in many sections:

These are very easy to remove and are held on by 5 or 6 phillips screws. The original rubber is held on to the metal bracket that you must reuse. The metal bracket has a rivet on each end to hold the rubber on, as well as an adhesive that makes removing the old rubber a pain. Here is the seal after I removed one from the door that shows the rivet on the end:

  

The rubber tore to pieces during the removal. I had to grind the rivets off on the ends as you will need them gone in order to make a flat surface for the new rubber. After I completed the first one, I decided to use a wire wheel to get any remaining glue off of the metal bracket. It cleaned up very nicely, but nobody will ever see it since it is covered up by the rubber.

The new rubber does not come cut for the holes for the screws nor for the notch to go around the amber door light. I inserted the metal bracket into the new rubber and held them in place together using some clamps and vice grips. I then used a drill to make holes for the screws, and then screwed the screws into the holes to hold the rubber in place. I then used tin snips to cut a notch out for the amber door light, then reinstalled them on the door. They look much better than before and will help give the car a cleaner look than before.