Sunday, March 1, 2009

One Peugeot, over easy

Turns out that we were very lucky and the only damage to Pujo! was superficial. A few well-placed whacks with a big sledgehammer took care of the dents that were keeping the door closed and a few more got the trunk closing normally again.

That taken care of Doug and Sean replaced the broken out rear window, driver's door window and rear quarter window with lexan which not only is almost invisible but is indestructible and lighter to boot!

Next up on the to-do list was to figure out why the passenger-side rear tire was rubbing. Our best guess is that when the trunk was welded back on after the last accident (before we bought the car) that something wasn't perfectly straight. Sean solved the problem by cutting out some of the fender liner and the pounding out the fender lip with the big sledgehammer (which is getting to be our favorite tool these days). That made a mess of the paint on the already damaged right rear but a little touch up of Krylon Cherry Red made things as good as new (well if you are looking at the car from 50 feet away and have bad eyesight).

One funny thing that happened is that when Sean took the wheel off he smelled gasoline and saw that some fluid was leaking from the general area of the gas tank. Worried, we emptied the trunk (which was still full of our spares for the race) and discovered that a couple of quarts of diff fluid in the trunk had sprung a leak in the accident and had made a big gooey mess of things. But in a twist of fate the rollover had also liberated a big pile of fine dirt which had been trapped in the bottom of the driver's side rear fender and that made an excellent oil dry!

Next week we're planning to look at a few more small issues and then the plan is to take it to the March 15th autocross at Bremerton for a shakedown cruise!

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