Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Pathy fixed, Adventures with Garage Doors

Well, I officially hate roll-up garage doors now.  Mine broke.  And it broke beyond repair.  Twice.  After I took it completely apart and reinstalled it (properly).

What it is, is that old hip roof on the garage just doesn't lend itself to roll-up doors.  Not the way this thing is set up.  You can tell the garage originally had barn-style doors, and so I ripped the overhead door out, and with the help of my best carpenter/girlfriend ever, built these up.


I'm going to try rigging the opener to work with these--yes, it can be done, and it's not that big of a deal.  But for now, the old manual barn door style is just fine.  And, an added plus, I bought myself about 18" more garage space.

So now the Miata can live inside again, and I can HOPEFULLY turn my attention back onto the Camaro.  It's been tough, but if nothing else major breaks, I might actually get some work done on that damn car!

The Pathfinder seems to be all fixed up now, too.  I rigged up a small heat shield made of a sandwich of aluminum plates and fiberglass, with a little copper RTV thrown in to keep it all sealed up.  I used short self-tapping screws to get it fastened in.  No smoke, no fire.

The wierd thing is how quiet the Pathy is now.  I never realized how much noise that transmission was making, but it's so quiet and smooth now, I have trouble hearing the engine and hitting my shifts.  I'll have to get a tach to replace the dead one in the dash.  Also, the gearing in the '96 tranny is noticeably taller.  It's a little tough starting in second now, but on the top end, cruising at 80mph is about as effortless as it gets.  So we'll see how far past 225,000 miles that will get me.  Sure is nice having it back in action.