On the lower part of the sills on each side of the Europa Twin cam there is a metal strip and a fiberglass valence. The stock color of the valence is a very bright metal flake silver. Kind of a 70's disco ball silver. The panels that came with this car were a bit beat up so I spent some time grinding down the cracks, tears and chips and repairing them properly with fiberglass. I followed this up with a little Bondo and some sanding to get everything smooth and looking good. A nice coat of primer followed by some spot putty and some more primer and they were ready for color. I didn't have any silver paint in stock so I tried a rattle can from Auto Zone and it turned out horrible. Sanded that off and stopped by Advance Auto Parts one day to find a quart can of Duplicolor premixed silver metal flake, ON SALE for half off. If it was regular price I would have just bought it. But because it was a close-out item, I had to read it, and inspect it, and finally decided all was well, so I bought it. Turned out fine, just really settled so it took a lot of shaking and stirring to get those flakes all evenly mixed up. I set up the panels on a table outside as it was a nice dry sun shiny day and I didn't feel like taking out the cars and covering things up in the garage. The silver shot real nice and glistened in the sun. I followed up with some clear coat and crossed my fingers that no bugs would decide to do the back stroke in the clear pool of clear coat. About an hour later I was talking with my son John as I exited the garage and I saw a Dove hovering about 5 feet off the table. It was almost in slow motion that I yelled NO!!!! and the Dove quickly turned in mid air and flew away. I don't know if he would have landed in the clear or on the clear coat, but I was glad he missed, and I brought the still tacky panels into the garage to dry overnight.
The next day they went on easily enough. A self tapping screw or two at each end holding the ends onto the fiberglass fender lips. Now there is a visual image - a fender with lips. Anyway, the top of these panels is simply held on with one long strip of double stick tape. The stainless steel strip that runs across the top of them is held on with little metal clips which are riveted to the body. It worked and looked pretty good when I finished it all up.
Back to my missing 5th gear. I knew where it was - in the transmission. It's just that the shift linkage didn't want to go there. I set up shop at the back of the trans with my Polish Creeper (an old carpet) and a drop light. I laid on my side and inspected and poked around and twisted the linkage back and forth trying to figure out what was not quite right. After a while the G-forces of laying on my side without support for my fat head put a strain on my neck so I got up and found a suitable head support device. An old but clean oil drain pan flipped upside down did the trick. Now I was able to investigate and contemplate without having to hold up my head. Of course, in walks the spousal unit. She stops at my feet, surveys my situation and says something like what the H_E_double hockey sticks are you doing? Are you crazy? Using a dirty oil drain pan for a pillow? Hey, it's clean I told her. Pretty clean.
After poking around a bit, I surmised that I had two minor adjustment problems. The first one was that the detent that pushes against the ball was a bit worn so the detent would not push the ball into the hole. It was just trying to push against the ball sideways. I took out the detent cam and fabricated a little metal strip covering out of 10 thou steel and epoxied it in place. The other piece to this puzzle was that even though the cam was pinned in place, the hole where the pin went was a bit sloppy so the cam could actually pivot a bit until you clamped down the locking nut. Thus as I tightened the lock nut, the cam moved out of adjustment. What was required was a big channel lock pliers to hold the cam in place as I locked down the lock nut. Now I could feel an even side to side movement and when I moved the shift arm one way, the detent moved enough to get into reverse, and when I moved it the other way, it felt like that should be the missing 5th gear! I dropped her down and got everything ready for a trip to my interior guy the next morning.
Ken Socs (K'n's) in Des Plaines does nice interior work and I had scheduled to drop the car off Tuesday morning after the Memorial day weekend. Since his shop is right by the train station in downtown Des Plaines I just took my laptop case with me in the Europa so I could catch the train to work in downtown Chicago. A real commuter car. I wonder when was the last time this car was driven to work? So anyways I pulled the Europa out of the garage and off I went. Morning rush hour traffic was a mess (yes, even in beautiful downtown Des Plaines) but I did manage to find all the gears including 5th on my short drive to Ken's. Ah, success! One bug down.
I dropped the car off with Ken. He had previously done the new seats and modified the Banks Europa crash pad for me. Both (all three?) of which were already in the car, now he was going to do some finishing details like the headliner, vinyl coverings for the a-pillars and more vinyl around the rear window. He was also going to make me a new center arm rest pad and door insert along with new sun visors. The old ones were very petrified, and he refused to let me put something so old and crappy in a nicely done new interior. The cruddy old sun visors might have Cooties!
Next - Europa Euphoria, Part 32
