The Comet Guy

As you all know I had some bare metal showing on the ole Mercury so I decided to get some grey primer/sealer and at least spray the parts that needed to be covered with some paint. I had some help from the neighbor kid and his friend in masking off a lot of the trim, emblems and such and offwe went with 4-5 spray cans of dupli-color grey primer/sealer which makes the car look a little different. not sure if it’s a good different yet. Still debating whether I should get a box of the stuff and spray the entire car or not.

What are your thoughts? What color should I paint it after I get the body work done? Should I keep it the original white like I have been planning on or should I make it some other color?

I want to know why everyone across the globe is complaining about high gas prices? I mean I DO understand that they are very high compared to last year however have we looked at some of the other prices? I mean you pay $10.00 a ticket to see a movie, if you want a large drink you pay 3-5 dollars depending on where you go. Let’s not even get into the grocery store or retail clothing and items like that. They are even worse!

All the while our minimum wage jobs and even jobs with a decent wage are considered sub-par because even though you are getting a check each week or every 2 weeks there is only so many ways you can stretch it before your wallet goes broke. If you’re one of the lucky ones who never has an empty wallet I applaud you for either spending wisely and conservatively or being amazingly wealthy.

I was fortunate to have filled up my tank when gas was only $3.87 a gallon this past week thus avoiding the $4.09 that it has reached locally today. When it comes time to fill up this coming week however I’m sure I won’t have a choice and will have to pay the 4+ dollar premium for the cheap gas.

Hopefully something will happen.

Well if you don’t live in a cave you have probably heard the latest news where people are pushing the government to issue a SECOND stimulus check to taxpayers in America. Now what I want to know is the following.

Is it just me or is there something wrong with this picture? They are not doing anything to keep gas prices from rising, they are not trying to keep important items like food costs down. They are not trying to keep healthcare costs at affordable prices. Instead they think it will make things better if they give us another check which MIGHT be able to help us fill up our tank? Chances are that if they do give us a check it won’t be very big and in the long run it won’t matter either way.

Anyone else got any thoughts on this? I would love to hear them!

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gtF_r6YW589BUegKGbzv4jQP-g_AD90URO003

According to the link above the sales of Spam have been increasing as rapidly as the increasing costs of everything we deal with from gas for our cars to other food on our table.

Because of the of the rapidly rising costs of oil we consumers are forced to pay more for everything that is transported to our local area by truck or other source of transportation. I’m sure there are a lot of people out there that have been forced to alter their work schedule, vacation plans and even their diet in order to preserve the ever dwindling amount of cash flow in their wallet.

Yes the IRS was nice enough to give us a “stimulus” check to try and help the economy but what good did it do for you? I used mine to pay off my credit card from all of the debt that I had incurred from putting gas into my car the previous 3 months BEFORE the gas prices went up to $4.00 in my location.

No matter what happens however I will NOT stoop to eating SPAM for from my dinner plate. How about you? What are the gas prices in your neck of the woods and what are you doing to help preserve the cash in your wallet? Feel free to put a comment on here with your thoughts and feelings on this.

Check out the following web-site that utilizes very good advertising techniques…

http://producten.hema.nl/

So after my last car accident I had been looking/wanting some sort of chrome or chrome look alike grill for the PT Cruiser. What I found isn’t exactly the perfect fanciest grill, however it is very easy to install. What am I talking about? I am talking about the Flexible chrome strips that AutoGrilles on Ebay sells. They come precut to the proper size and are already backed with double sided 3M sticky tape. Last Friday night I started with a nice clean wash job removing all bugs and tar from the winter months and applied a nice coat of wax to the vehicle. After that I installed the strips for the custom grill by pulling off the tape backing and lining each piece up by eye when installing. Overall it was a very easy installation and I plan on purchasing a “beltline” kit which I think will give my cruiser a nice look. Let me know what you think about the partial installation picture or the addition of a beltline kit or anything else you would recommend adding to my cruiser in the future

Well everyone, as the title of this posts states the 65 Merury Comet does indeed live to see another day. A week ago last Thursday I brought it home from storage without too much difficulty, just a slight antifreeze leak inside the car from the heater box assembly which confirmed the need to replace the heater core.

I started by removed the hoses to the heater core from the engine block, it’s nice how they mount them up towards the front and top of the engine where you can actually get to them unlike on the newer cars where you are lucky if you ever find them! Once I removed them (and consequently cleaned up the mess of antifreeze) I Made sure all of the coolant was drained out of the heater core and removed the hoses inside the car as well. Inside the car I removed the control cables from the top of the heater box assembly and was able to pull the whole assembly out of the car. Once I had it removed I finished removing the hoses from their attachment place on the back side of the heater core and I began removing the clips that hold the heater box assembly together. Once I did that I pulled it apart and you can see in the pictures the mess of leaves and maple seeds or as we called them as kids “helicopters” that were trapped between the heater core and the heater box. I then pulled the motor/squirrel cage assembly apart and removed all of the rubber gaskets and foam seals from the assembly.

Once I had the Assembly cleaned up I spray painted the heater box with a multi-textured trunk paint that when sprayed on looked horrible but as it dried it ended up looking very good. Once the paint finished drying I installed all of the new rubber gaskets, and foam along with the new heater core that I got from AutoZone. The next day it was nice out and I began looking for a new blower motor seeing as how I didn’t want to have to rebuild the whole assembly in a year when the blower motor did finally quit for good. After some looking and calling around I ended up getting a four seasons 35400 single speed fan motor from Advance Auto Parts which was delivered on the next day which ended up being Sunday. Once I picked this blower motor up I was able to crimp on some wire connectors that allow me to unplug my blower motor at a moments notice so that it will make future heater system work more readily accessible. From here I was able to install the new fiberglass defroster duct that I purchased from Ebay

With all of these items completed it was time to install the whole assembly back into the car and cut the heater hoses down to length and install them with new hose clamps that I purchased to replace the rusty ones that would have been difficult to replace with a few more years of rust.

With all of this completed I was able to check all of my hoses and fill the coolant system back up with the proper mixture of coolant and water which took only moments. After reconnecting the battery the car is still able to leap to life and get up and move like before.

Unfortunately the day after I finished all of this work I noticed that the passenger side rear tire was going slowly flat on me. Now I’m not really surprised about this because all 4 of the tires are pretty bare as well as dry-rotted from sitting in my grandparents side yard. So I called up CNC Tire the best place in Ohio to buy tires for any car and got prices on new and used tires from them. The following morning I was able to take two of the four tires down to CNC and had them replace them with brand new 195/75-R14’s. Now that I have all 4 installed the car does ride much smoother.

This past Friday my friend Joe and I took the old car out for a drive on the open road over to work a few minutes down the road and it seems to run very well and there did not seem to be any problems such as smoke or dripping from m heater box assembly like before so I felt fulfilled. The only thing I did notice was a puddle of coolant that had been “Belched” out of the overflow tube and on to the ground. Some research on this issue on the Yahoo Comet forums I found that to prevent this you want to fill the radiator to the top of the rows inside so once the weather dries up and warms up I will recheck the mixture of coolant/water and remove a tad if neccessary.  Overall I believe this was a successful project and I look forward to driving and working on my car much more as summer comes up on the horizon.

Please feel free to comment on this summary of this project and ask as many questions you might have, I may not have all of the answers but I am learning more about the old Comet each and every time I work on it.

Thanks for reading

Did you ever have one of them days?

I know it’s wrong to laugh at the poor girl in the video but it’s still funny in a weird sort of way. Also it’s a physics lesson that proves that what goes up must come down with gravity.

One morning while on my way to work I happened to notice that the drivers side exterior mirror on my 2002 pt cruiser had a nice hairline fracture right down the middle of it. This was kind of a disappointment and I am still trying to figure out if it was caused by the fact that it was a heated one or the fact that there were some real nasty potholes I hit about that time. It worked to my advantage that I had a mirror sitting in the garage from when I got a full set to replace the passenger side about a year ago.

From beginning to end it is a fairly easy process. You open the door and remove the pillar cover on the door itself with a interior molding removal tool (ie a large flat blade screwdriver in my case!). You simply remove the (3) 10MM nuts and the mirror will fall off so be careful to dig down in the door and unplug the electrical connection first! I didn’t think of that when I did the passenger side last spring and it was difficult to hold it up and try to unplug it at the same time. Once the old mirror is removed you will need to carefully remove the protective gasket from the inside of the original mirror and reinstall it onto the replacement mirror. With this done you can then bolt the replacement mirror back into place and reconnect the wire molex plug inside the door. Simply reinstall the pillar cover and test your handi-work!

I think the pictures explain it pretty well however if anyone out there has any questions please feel free to contact me and I will try to answer them to the best of my ability.
*note: I’m not sure about the actual wiring, but I’m sure the aftermarket mirrors will attach in a similar manner so anyone who has been considering updating their Cruiser mirrors should note that it is very easy to do.

Thanks for stopping in and checking out the site! Please feel free to leave your comments and/or suggestions for the site! Please check back soon for more updates on my Comet as the weather warms up there will be lots of work and possibly a new home for the car as well

Admitting defeat is never easy. However I think I may as well own up to this one. Last Saturday I began the process of attempting to replace the front brake pads and rotors on my 2002 pt cruiser. This however proved to be more difficult than it seemed and I ended up taking it to CNC Tire in Massillon Ohio on Monday.

I was able to get the tire off, then the caliper and even the pads. After some pounding with a rubber mallet the rotor itself came loose so I figured I was out of the woods with this one right? Well not quite. You see to remove the rotor completely you also have to remove the caliper mounting bracket. SO back into the toolbox I go to find the right metric socket / wrench for the job only to find out that the heads on the bolts must be an odd size as my 17MM is too small to fit and my 199MM was too big and began rounding off the corners on the one bolt that I tried to remove. The only SAE socket that was even close was a 3/4″ but it seemed like it would round off the corners more quickly than a 19MM. Once I realized this I called CNC tire and they said that they would be able to do it monday if I dropped it off on my way to work (which is less than 2 minutes from there).

In the end it is a little frustrating because it should have been something that I could accomplish on my own, but at the same time they only charged me $70 and they flushed and bled the whole brake system for me which was something I was going to have to take somewhere and have done eventually anyways.

I was however able to remove the cracked mirror on the drivers side and replace it with a spare one I had received when I ordered the passenger side one off of ebay a year or so ago. Pictures and documentation of that project are to follow along with an update on the Mercury Comet as I begin to work on it here in the next few weeks when the weather warms up again.

Thanks for reading, please feel free to comment