The Pearl of Ghent, A car nobody wanted.

I can't stand wheel locks and immediately remove them from all my cars. 

Ah, gotta love the swedes.

That's some impressive adult'ing, sir. I would not have that restraint, which I'm sure you know.

I picked up the new caliper and managed to get it painted.

It's not a perfect match. The bracket is the OP's paint job, the caliper is mine. If you stick your face in there you can tell, but from 10 feet away, through the wheel, it'll be fine.

Just needs to be bled now, which isn't something I can do on my own.

I missed the cars n coffee...

The brakes are bled and I took her for a spin. Everything seems fine so I'll drive her to work today and find out for sure.

Some cosmetic updates. When putting my plates on I noticed that the front plate holder was attached to the bumper with double sided foam tape.

Nice. No holes in my bumper. But foam tape isn't the strongest thing on earth. it would eventually come loose. I decided to be proactive and found a tow hook style plate holder. I found on on E-bay. It was inexpensive and arrived relatively quickly. As with all things from E-Bay that are guaranteed to fit, it didn't fit.

If you powdercoat something with threads, the threads get larger... I took it to work, rummaged through the Metric Dies box that nobody ever touches and found the right one. A quick thread chase and we're back in business.

This time it threaded right into the tow hook port and I was able to assemble the rest of the holder.

I removed my plate from the original holder, mounted it on the new bracket and made the fun discovery. The tape had started to peel away already. PO had solved the problem by blasting a couple self tappers directly into the bumper.

I think I just sat there for a half hour. I thought about just putting the plate back and going on with my life. But I had "modified" the new holder and wouldn't be able to return it.

The only way is through.

I figured Id head down to the hardware store, get a couple of those plastic push-pins to fill the holes and move on with my life.

But my car isn't quite white.

I'll get some colour matched paint and spray the push pin heads.

that seems like work. Surely someone else has come across this problem. A quick Google search directed me to BumperPlugs.com, a company that sold properly paint matched plugs to solve this exact problem. They're not cheap, at $35 a pair, but that is way cheaper then repairing and repainting the whole nose of the car. I decided to give them a go. I'll report back when the arrive.

Lastly my venerable old magnetic numbers have decided that they're ready to rest now...

I contacted the company that made them to see about getting another set. A few emails back and forth and we had a design. They arrived about a week ago.

looking sharp.

one more project before I can shove the camaro back in the Garage. I picked up an IPD rally skidplate a while back and I really should get that mounted up. The roads suck around here. but Capitalism is unstoppable despite my best efforts and I have to work all weekend. So maybe next weekend.

So. Good news and bad.

Since buying this car I've been trying to find a rattle from the rear end. I found it. The rear brake service has eliminated the rattle.

The suspension is now quiet enough that I can hear the wheel bearing that is failing.

$100 bucks and a new one is on the way.

Got the plugs in on Friday.

Had to enlarge the holes and just stuck these in. Perfect match.

That's all for now.

Wife liked these but never fallowed through on one. See that you're some what close in the Tacoma area. Swear I've seen a house that purple color on 18 in Auburn while driving for work.

Going to try to get to The Ridge for the Lucky Dog event in April. Just going to watch for now. Might try and see what it would take to get on track for fun.

In reply to brad131a4 (Forum Supporter) :

I'm not in Auburn, so that's not me.

We are also trying to get to the Ridge for April... no guarantees though. Details in the other thread.

Hee hee... neat.

Well, It's been just over a year we've been together and it's been mostly good. I have no desires to sell it off or trade it in.

10/10. Would recommend.

Washington has entered fool's spring, a couple of days of lovely weather before returning to the drizzle. after months of darkness and rain it almost feels criminal to be indoors on a sunny day. I unpacked my supplies and gave her a good clean inside and out.

Saturday morning was the monthly Cars n Coffee meet and we drove to that where she continues to get an appropriate amount of attention. People are curious about this uncommon thing and I am more than happy to talk about it.

After the show we stopped at a Ukranian Deli and then headed home.

Saturday afternoon was spent cleaning and organizing the garage. getting my plates out of boxes and hung up and clearing enough space that I could actually get a car in there.

Speaking of plates, when It came time to renew the registration I wanted nothing more than to get those default rainer plates off the car. She now sports the National Park plates that were originally on the Camaro. A nice anniversary present for the young lady.

Last June I noticed the factory splash guard was handing down and rattling under the car. To fix this I picked up an IPD aluminum skid plate. I then stuck that plate in my garage and never touched it again. We'll, now is as good a time as any...

The garage was clean, the weather was nice and Pearl was already inside. I ate breakfast on Sunday and headed straight out to the garage.

The old panel came out easily. Just 7 T30 screws.

Drop the old plate, install the new one with the supplied hardware, Robert's your mother's brother.

I read the instructions before installing. they said to use a washer  on each bolt and to put one between the plate and the subframe. They included 4 washers. That's not enough. I made a trip to the hardware store to pick up another 8 washers. Perfect. We're good to go.

Instructions said to place an M8 nut on top of the radiator support, hold the front of the plate up to the hole and thread the M8 bolt in from the bottom. Now the experienced among you might notice a problem here. if the plate is in place there is no way you're getting a wrench onto that nut.

I decided to drop the bolt down through the hole in the radiator support, put a lick nut on it to hold that in place, then put the plate on it and hold it in place with a nylon nut.

That is a much better plan. I don't have any M8 lock nuts. Back to the hardware store...

Back from the hardware store with 2 shiny new M8 lock nuts I'm ready to install this thing. This is when I discover that the supplied M8 hardware is all M7.

Now I'm angry. Back to the hardware store. You know who has a ton of M7 hardware? Nobody... that's who. I decide that I'm going to get M8 hardware and just buy every peice I need. washers nuts bolts everything. that way there won't be any problems. I'll have everything I need.

I got back to the garage with all my new hardware and I find out why they opted for M7. the hole in the radiator support isn't big enough for an M8.

Wasn't.

It is now.

I  own a drill and I am tired of playing.

once the holes were enlarged the inverted hardware dropped right into place and the Plate bolted in with no problems.

Excellent.

I put her back into the driveway and took some time to really clean the area. put everything away. Future me will be pleased with past me.

Behold, 8 full feet of usable clear workbench space.

Ready for the next project.

Welp, that workbench doesn't look like that anymore.

One of the things that bugged me about this car was how yellowed the headlights were. Just really looked like I didn't care. I tried wishing they were nicer but that didn't really work, so this weekend I set about polishing them.

I used a kit from Griots that included a ceramic treatment so hopefully they don't just yellow up again immediately.

It was relatively easy to do, even with one arm in a sling, and it looks good.

Also: the moose is loose.

One thing I am starting to notice here on GRM is that there are a lot of very interesting cars. Not helping is the fact that I almost pulled the trigger on a couple of Volvo wagons years ago. One was an 850 Turbo, and if I remember right, I think the other was as well. I wasn't able to get the first one due to not having the finances fully in place at the time, and the other escaped me literally the day I had the money for it. What sucks about the second one is that it was coming with a lot of goodies that would have woken it right up. Now i gotta see what even a base model C30 would go for in my area thanks to this thread lol

The 4th was my soft deadline for having the camaro back on the road, and due to the arm, I haven't even started on it. That meant that Pearl would be representingat the 4th of July show again this year. 

I wanted to do something nice but also cheap before the show to spruce her up a bit. And I am the king of rattlecans so I set off to find a coil-cover in a junkyard. All the local yards were bare but I found a place called Dick's U-Pull-It that had a V50.

That's a funny name. I wonder if they know...

Yeah... they know.

I picked up the new cover for $25 and threw it in the parts washer at work.

Once it was clean I taped it up and hit it with my favourite Duplicolor Blue. I hand painted the lettering and finished with some 2K clear.

Then it was just a matter of swapping it onto the car.

I also spent $100 on a titanium oil fill cap for literally no reason. I have a problem.

Its got some flaws and I'm keeping an eye out for another one to try and make it perfect (I'm keeping the original in case I ever want or need to undo it) but It'll do fod now.

The show was nice, weather was good, some friends dropped by and we ate barbecue. 

The owners of these two Volvos were also there and invited me to a pair of back-to-back Volvo meets this coming weekend.

I think I'll go to at least one of them.

Afterwards Pearl will go back to her role of daily and I'll go back to trying to get the Camaro roadworthy again.

I liked these cars when new, and even more after I owned a Mazda3 and Mazda5.  Thanks for sharing your journey!

I've missed about every car show this summer. Haven't even looked up dates or anything. Now I found out I'm gone to San Diego when the Ridge Lucky Dog race that is coming up. Man I feel like a failure! 

Good to see the car is coming along. Always liked the look of those and they still don't disappoint when I spot one. 

Ok. Now I don't plan on updating every time I take the car to a meet, but today was fun.

Swimbo and I drove up to the former XXX Rootbeer for a Swedish car show. I expected to be the only C30 there, but I was not.

If we recall, I bought my car from a guy whose daughter was away at college. She didn't have a parking space and the car just sat at home. Well, after graduating she bought another, and there it is. A lovely reunion.

Not to be outdone, this dude rolled in with a genuine Polestar Edition. 1 of 250.

I've never seen 3 in one place before. So all in all a pretty cool day.

Butts.

Dangit. Is this the Mazda 3 I really want?

Also, in my haste and in this dark room, I initially thought XXX Rootbeer was the color of the gal's C30. Whoops. 

This update is a mixed bag. A little good, a little bad.

A localish club hosts Cars & Swedish Meatballs, a low key swede meet for Volvos, Saabs, and any other swedish makes at the IKEA in Portland. Poetland is about 2.5 hours south so I havent made it down to one yet but with this being the big anniversary meet I decided to head down. 50+ cars showed, mostly volvos but about 6 Saabs rolled in. The full spectrum of well preserved classics to gamblers, race mods to oh no won't somebody think of the children inducing rat-rod customs.

We hung out for about an hour before convoying to a park right on the Columbia River Gorge for photos. The convoy was a bit of a disaster. Portland's highway sytem had us zipper merge onto the freeway, immediately breaking up the convoy, then the weather opened up on us, visibility went to near zero. I found a another volvo and just stuck to their bumper, praying they were part of the group and I wasn't just following a random person home.

We eventually made it to the park bug we had lost the light, the wind destroyed the photographers canopy and we did not get the group shot. The park was about to close and I still had a 2.5 hour drive. I headed out.

The drive home was terrifying. The weather would shift wildly from thunderstorms to fog to wind that would change lanes for you. I passed three separate collisions. Eventually I made it home safe. 

Three minures from home some wangrod in a Mazda 3 rear ended me. 

It was a minor hit on s right turn yield. Guy was clearly looking over his shoulder for a gap in traffic and then went for it, except I was still there.

I pull over.

He does not.

Guy decided to turn a minor fender bender into a felony hit and run. I gave chase, on the phone to the police who advised me to stop chasing him as they wanted to be the ones to not chase him. I broke of pursuit after I got the plate number. and waited in the rain for an officer to get around to helping me. another hour. I have to pee.

At least I have my emotional support moomin.

The damage is minor. Just going to be oaitwork I'd guess. I took pics in the morning.

Got an appointment with the body shop for a quote, we'll see if the police do anything (doubt it) or if Im gonna have to file for myself.

So... cool.

Got the quote from the body shop. $1300 and change. Waiting to hear from the police to at the very least get an actual report.

I'd love it if they, you know, actually did something, but they've been blowing people off left and right since we tried to hold them accountable for that kid they murdered...

When I spoke to the officer night of, he told me thst the plate number I gave them matches the description of the car I gave them, which means they know who it is. So... go get them? While the drugs are still in their system.

Rant over.

Looks like pulling the bumper, inspecting the crash bar, then repainting the bumper.

The damage is minor but the paint is flaking, so it will continue to spread until it's repaired.

Grumbles.

In reply to AClockworkGarage :

Cheeky Mass effect Stickers :p