I pulled the alternator off and took it apart to see if I had messed something up when I reclocked the back cover, but it looked okay to me. I took it back to the shop that had fixed it last fall, it had a bad a bad regulator, and the tech spent over an hour trying to get it to work. It had him stumped after installing a new regulator, brushes, a couple of jumper wires and checking out all the other components. So, I left it and he said he'd ponder what could be the problem and let me know when he got it figured out and fixed. He called the next day and said that the new regulator that he had put in was also bad. Another new one made it work, finally. When I picked it up, he wouldn't take anything for the repair as the original regulator must have been bad too. Brought it back, put it on and fired it up, shows ~14.5 volts now. Finally!
I've been putting off installing the left fender for a while, I hate sheet metal work, and I just knew I would knock at least a little paint off it, no matter how careful I was. And I did, though just a little bit.
Tried to hang the fender on the alignment bolts in the cowl and rad support, but I had mounted to horn and it was hitting the headlight connector, so I took it off and the fender sat down where it should. Started lining up bolt holes and adding shims to get the door gap looking good, and even with the door. The front bolt that joins the bumper/grille filler was a bear, but finally go it in and snugged up. There are two more bolts that join the fender and inner fender, I got the front one close and managed to get a 1/4" bolt in and pulled up close to position, but the rear one, just ahead of the wheel opening was about an inch from it needed to be. I'll save that one for last. With the help of a 2X4, floor jack, pry bar, lineup bar and some adult language, I got the rest of the inner fender bolts around the wheel opening in and snugged up. Amazingly, the ones at the top that bolt it to the inner fender support lined up perfectly and went right in.
Back to the last problem child, er, bolt. The metal pieces were within an 1/8" of together, but the bolt hole was off by about 1/2". So, I used a little right angle, really low profile air drill and drilled an 1/8" hole down through the welded on nut to get the location, then drilled up from the bottom with a 3/8" bit to put the 5/16" bolt in and tightened it up. I also installed the brace rod that supports the bottom of the front fender skirt, then went around and tightened all the other bolts.
There is one other problem bolt, and it's at the top of the fender in the door jamb. The hole in the fender tab is about 1/4" too far forward to get the bolt in, so I'm going to have to get something in there and slot the hole to get the bolt in. Still cogitating on how to do that, there's just not much room to work with.
I installed the headlight trim door which makes a big difference in the looks of the front end. Got the hood hinges bolted onto the fenders too, but haven't put the springs on then yet though.
Another task was to install the new air filter and make up the line and fittings to the filter base from the right valve cover.
Tomorrow after breakfast, my friend Van is going to give me a hand hanging the front bumper. That'll really make it look better.
I haven't figured out what to do about the in-dash tach not working, but IF I can get my hands up behind the instrument cluster and disconnect the cable that goes to it, I can make up a new cable to connect to my classic Sun tach that I can mount on the steering column. Haven't decided on that yet, though.
I'm slowly getting the list of things remaining to do whittled down and not many parts are left to go back on.
Some day, not too far off....
