Exhausted. The auction Corolla now looks pretty good, however it sounds like a tin can full of flatulent bumble bees. The old muffler was pretty rusty, well what was left of it:
I found a pretty good deal on mufflers at Amazon. $23 bucks shipped with my prime membership, however, it had a 2.5" inlet, and the Corolla had a 1.75 outlet. I didn't want to spend a bunch of coin on adapters, so I got to work.
You can see the difference in sizes (above). The first order of business was to make an adapter plate. First I took a price of scrap and drilled a 1.75" hole.
Then I cut out the plug for the 2.5" inlet in the muffler.
Then I popped it on the muffler and welded it up.
I'm no professional fabricator, but this worked swimmingly and I saved about $15 in adapters by building it myself, out of scrap! It sounds real nice on the Corolla too! In the next Corolla post, I'll cover some of the final cosmetic touches before I put it up for sale.
In part one, I told you about my impulse buy, in part two I showed you a few of the challenges I found that will need to be solved to make this car flipable. In part three, I'm gonna show you the transformation of a cancer hole from "this is hopeless" to "I can live with that."
My fist order of business was to cut the cancer out.
Next, I traced the approximate shapes I needed on wax paper. Then I cut the shapes out of the wax paper and transferred the stencil to some 22 gauge sheet metal.
After cutting my metal shapes I trimmed as needed to fit correctly and welded the whole mess up.
Then I ground the welds with an angle grinder and applied a coat of body filler.
Sanded the first coat with 80 grit sand paper.
I eventually did a second coat of filler, also sanded with 80 grit, and a coat of glazing putty sanded with 80, 120 and then 320 grit papers. After wiping it down and priming, I think I have something that's passable.
I also did some reconstruction of the front of this same fender arch, and the rocker panel with the same methods. I repeated the same process on the passengers side.
To finish this off I needed some paint. A huge point of cost in any flip is paint. I could prep and paint the whole car for around $200, or I could spot paint it for much less. I chose to spot paint for $20, finding a close color in a duplicolor rattle can, figuring that I can paint it later if I it doesn't sell. I've never painted a car before, so I followed this tutorial for blending a rattle can touch up (nsfw).
The final product came out fairly decent. I'm obviously no expert, but my guess is the person shopping for a car in this price range can't be to picky. Each car is practice, and I'll get better on the next one I suppose.
I love mid summer car shows. It doesn't matter if they're at the local Tasty Freeze or at billion dollar race tracks. For 3 years I've taken my camera to Kentucky's biggest car show, the Keeneland Concours d'Elegance, documenting the competition, cars and owners. Featuring Enzo #399, Tucker #25 and a the worlds only Fuel Injected Dino Ferarri (also raced by Paul Neuman).
