This thread will be an archive of the ongoing efforts it's taking to ressurect my car, and also manage to daily drive it. I'll break each post down into monthly updates to catch up to speed, and then update as progress is made.
As I bought the car:
The next day I brought it to work to check it out and noticed something in the parking lot.Me, last august wrote:Mechanically, it's terrifying. The engine purred when I fired it up so I just bought it and off I went. To find out that there's something seriously wrong with the brakes, it's only braking with one wheel right now, and only all the way down at the very bottom. I'm pretty sure that it's the right front that brakes, because if you push down hard and bottom the pedal out the right front locks, it veers, and I crap my pants. It also misfires under load, it feels like spark or fuel related. Oh, also when I let off the gas and coast there is a horrific metallic growling from the rear end. It smells of mildew and rat Whoooosh, there's moss growing in the carpet, and the odometer doesnt work.
I drove this one home 46 miles from Puyallup white knuckled in honest terror the entire way. I made it roughly halfway give or take with my chase car, stopped in Seatac for gas only to find that I couldn't find my phone. Turns out I left it at the previous owners house. It was at this point my chase car went home, so I drove the Civic back in the dark with only a vague idea of where I was heading, got my phone, found it had died, and then proceeed to make the trip back to Ballard flying solo without a lifeline. Good times.
Turns out the spare tire well was full of rusty water, the spare tire was missing, the jack and tools had corroded into an unrecognizable hunk of oxide, and the fun discoveries just continued.
But at the end of the day, it was still mine.