Well, needless to say, I was very happy that I now had a vehicle of my very own. It needed a
little work, though. Since I had moved to college, Ol' Blue had basically been my sister's car.
Her and her friends had done a number on him. The first problem to deal with was that the nice
vinyl seats had giant holes in them, and the stuffing was coming out. So I went to Wal*mart and
got myself some blue and navy seatcovers. Unfortunately, the covers were made for a newer car,
and I had to attach the little hooky things in places where they weren't meant to go... But they
stayed on. Yay!
The second problem was that the radio didn't work. Actually, the speakers didn't work.
The little radio lights would come on, but no sound would come out unless you went over a
bump the right way. So I took out the original factory speakers and wired in two old stereo
speakers that I had lying around (I knew they would come in handy some day!) and put
the speakers in the back seat. Taa daa! A home-grown stereo system. It wouldn't be shaking any
windows anytime soon, but it suited my purposes.
A little problem that cropped up was changing the license plates. In attempting to remove the
rear license plate, I discovered that the plate, the screws, and the car had all become one. (Rust
works in mysterious ways.) I finally talked my friend Shawn into helping me with the plates. We
ended up (ok, ok, he ended up) unscrewing one of the screws and chiseling off the other
screw for the back plate. Shawn then re-threaded the hole in the tailgate (yes, by hand...poor
guy). The plate was then screwed onto the car, and now dangles by one lone screw. Taa daa! I
now had a license plate on the back.
Unfortunately, the original plate was still attached to the
front of the car, and Ohio law says that the plates must be displayed on both the front and the
back of the car. So, the usual college ingenuity setting to work, I put
duct tape over the old plate. Then I used
some thick fencing wire to wire the new plate to the front grill. Once again, I had triumphed.
Things I've Fixed/Improved
Seat covers
New speakers
New fuel tank
New rear brakes
Rebuilt front brakes
New tailpipe
Duct tape over the holes in the tailgate
Plastic caution tape over jagged edge of tailgate
Duct tape over cracks in plastic interior
New right axel and right ball joint