Scruffy Gets 'Skinned

Happy Birthday to ME!!!

Yeah, my birthday. 50 years old!!! That's like, 89 in bin filler years!!! So what did I do for my birthday??? It was a little low key, actually, but it was good. I'd scheduled it as a day off, like I often do, at the end of last year. I'll usually go to the beach or something, but the week before my wife got her new hip!!! The first few days were some of the worst post operation days (physically, at least, the one before she had a tough mental time from the pain medicine they had her on) and our home is one of the worst arrangements for having a new hip in. Consequently, we didn't do much. My younger boy and I went to the 99 cent store to refill my candy drawer, I bought a Little Caesar Extra Most Bestest pizza and breadsticks, and got an Unbound energy drink and two $2 lottery scratchers from the AM/PM (one winner, another ticket, as yet not changed, YAY!!!)

I bought myself a radio for Scruffy. That shortcoming had been honestly one of the more annoying parts of driving her. Since it's the same arrangement as in Saturn 3, I was going to get the same one, or at least the same style, as the one I've got in there. Found the newer models of it for a reasonable price, then started looking for the double DIN install kit to fit it in. For basically a flat rectangle of plastic, they wanted over $20!!! At my previous job, I would have just made one up in around 10 minutes, but since I'm not there any longer, I just looked for comparable ones in the single DIN size instead!!! The one I got has the same features, but in a size that fits the install kit already in there, for about $11 less. I made up a side-by-side picture of before and after, since that's not all I did!!!

Since I already had the dash board apart, I was giving everything that could be got at a good wiping down. Under the fuel gauge there was still a lot of glass fragments from the windshield incident!!! Several months back I'd gotten another dashcam-back-up cam mirror from Woot, and a 12v to USB converter to run it. Installed the converter and ran the wires up to the mirror, as well as pulling the cable for the back camera to the rear. I still have to come up with where that's going to mount and connect the reverse signal wire to it.

Remember when I got the console to put in Jade??? One unforeseen issue, the window switches have a different arrangement in the new style. Next time I hit the junkyard I'll check to see if the connector looks the same, and pick up one of those if it does. Anyway, I swapped the new black one into Scruffy, and the tan one will go better with the interior of Jade. Tightened up the parking brake a bit while I had things apart, but went overboard and when I tried to drive it to work the next morning, it was tight to where it wouldn't start rolling with just your foot off the brake. Put that back where it was after work that day. In the before and after, you can see four things: the new radio, the black center console, a USB port added right below the temperature control, and the microphone mounted in the slot under the radio. Oh, and it's a lot cleaner.

A couple weeks before, Woot had a bunch of shirts in purple. I have three purple shirts, but one is getting a hole in it, so one of these will replace it!!! Several were previous designs (including one he'd had for Christmas 7 years ago), only with a different shirt color behind them. My younger son had a tree design he liked, and I found the "My cat went to Space Camp" (apparently the best loser in the Sci-Fi Kawaii derby) design I liked. I'd made mention of the date they were on sale until to the boy, and he remembered right before it ended, and I hit the "Buy" button on both of them before it ended. Showed up the day after my birthday!!!

Some weeks back I'd gone to Wal Mart, and happened to be by the locked up spray paint while there was an employee there. I asked how long to get it unlocked, and he replied, "Not too long", so I ended up buying three 16-oz. cans of Krylon satin black. Over the next few weeks I finally got the body panels for Scruffy painted. At first I'd scuffed them up with some sandpaper, and it was too coarse, all the scratches showed through. Not to mention, I'd laid it on too thick and it came out with several runs. Sanded it down with progressively finer paper and shot it again. This time it came out splotchy, flat in some areas and glossy in others. More sanding, and a final attempt before I ran out of paint. Third time is a charm!!! Finally got all the door and quarter panel skins put on after work yesterday!!! I'm not sure if the sub structure of the drivers' door is tweaked or what, but it has a big gap to the outside on the back and to the inside on the front. Didn't look damaged, and functions fine. Guess I'll just have to make it gull wing to fix that!!!

Oh, and apparently having the dash all apart caused at least one of the instrument lights to burn out, as well as the odometer, so that's all got to come apart again. Even though I never had that area taken apart. Sigh. Gave me an excuse to order some LED lights for it.