Parts car went away. SWMBO was tired of looking at 2 non-running cars in the driveway (and I couldn't blame her), so I had the '79 shell hauled off after I stripped it out a bit. I sold the interior to somebody on a 924 Forum, pulled the dogleg 5-sped and torque tube (they're for sale if anybody knows anybody who wants them), pulled off marker lights and electrical connectors, and harvested some sheet metal to eventually fix a couple of rust spots on the '88, including both front fenders (and both doors, just because). Spent a little time with a cut-off wheel, too...
That will probably be a "next year" project.
Got fresh tires - Vredstein Quatrac in a 205/60-15 . One of the few V-rated tires in a 15" size and I went up in width from the stock 195/65-15 and cleaned-up the stock phone dials a bit. They could stand to be re-finished, but not on this go-around.
The PO had replaced the underlying shift lever:
but it was hitting the metal on the side of the tunnel (see all the missing paint), so I installed a short shift kit to take up the slop at the transmission end (which I thought I took pictures of, but I guess I didn't). Anyway, that seemed to have cured the shifter situation, so I rewarded the car with a new inner boot and a "custom" leather boot (the old ones fell apart when I went to take the shifter off)
I also replaced the plastic shift surround (the PO had the old one held in with self-tapping screws because a couple of the tabs had broken off) and a new piece of carpet for the console.
Put the car on all fours after a year in the air (needs a bath):
Drive belts squealed when I drove it last year, so I replaced belts (and needed to replace a tensioner rod in the process):
Also replaced the spark plugs, plug wires, cap, and rotor. Still not starting.
Everything I read on-line pointed to the ECM not getting signals from a couple of pulse senders located on the back of the head. The connectors crumbled when I went to check signals, so it seemed like a plausible failure mode.
"Easy to reach" location (the long "heater hose" pliers I just got from Harbor Freight were the ticket for pulling the old sensors out.
Yeah, that doesn't look too happy:
That's better:
Once I got the new sensors in and connected correctly, IT STARTED AND RAN!!!
Took it up the street just to check how things worked (we're on a dead end, off of a dead end with a cul-de-sac). Clutch pick-up was good, but brake pedal travel was a bit longer than I like. Will plan to re-bleed the system and maybe adjust the push-rod going into the booster.
The oil pressure gauge was always a little flaky, so I bought a new sender. On my short test drive, the oil light started flashing, too, even though the gauge was reading good, so I shut it off and put it back in the air to do an oil change and replace the oil pressure sender - it's under that oily mess with the two wires connected to it.
You can sort of get to the sender from underneath - 24mm open-end wrench needed to loosen it, shortened 24m wrench needed to tighten it (thank goodness for $12 Husky wrenches from Home Depot that I don't mind cutting in half).
And then I made my $100 mistake...
After spending hours contorting myself to get the sender itself tightened, I over-torqued the little electrical connector and snapped it off.
So, now I wait for another new sender to arrive so I can replace it again, put oil in the car and see if the flashing light goes away. In the meantime, I was able to scrub the under-tray and also notice the myriad of oil leaks on the bottom of the engine, all of which I'm going to pretend I didn't see until I'm ready to do a complete engine re-seal (which won't be any time soon)..
With luck I'll actually be able to drive the car before the snow flies this year.
Thanks for reading this far. Thanks, too, to all of you whose build threads I've read over the years with far more ambitious projects than this one who make it seem easy and who provide motivation to keep plugging away at things (whether you know it or not) - like irish44j's old 924s thread which provided me the strut assembly picture I needed to get myself un-stuck during my reassembly process..
When folks ask how I "learned" to mess with cars, I tell them that the first step is to give up the fear of turning a wrench - there's always a car community that can help with questions and provide guidance. And yes, you may break things along the way, but it's all part of the process.