The next major step in the restoration of the Silver Bullet was to have all the minor rust spots and small sections of rot on the body taken care of, the dents removed and the body sanded and primed. Since I’m still commuting in the car, I couldn’t wait for the whole paint process to be completed. This stage should have taken a week, but I didn’t get all of the trim off before I had to drop the car off, so that added an additional week of downtime. The body is in amazing condition now. It’s perfectly straight and there is now no rust on the outside of the body. There is extremely minor surface rust on the backside of the nose panels that I noticed, but that can be dealt with easily. I also noticed that I do have some rust developing in the spare tire well that I need to fix before it gets out of control.

I also had new window seals and chrome lock strips installed in the front and rear.

I’m leaving all of the trim off for now since it will go back for painting in January. I’ve reattached the rear bumper, but I’m having a lot of trouble getting the front bumper back on. The driver’s side bracket is slightly bent, and getting everything to line up is a real pain. I’ll probably just wait until after it’s painted and only go through the process once.

All this driving sure takes its toll. Driving home Wednesday evening as I was on the San Mateo bridge in traffic, I realized that I could no longer shift into second gear and the rest of the gears were really difficult to find. I got it into third and decided I would drive as far as I could without shifting. I was able to cross the bridge, exit on Industrial and head all the way up to the mall in third gear. Luckily I hit most of the lights and just really slipped the clutch the rest of the way. I pulled into a parking lot and confirmed that second gear was gone, but that I could still get all other gears. I carefully got back on the freeway and headed home.

I left the car home on Thursday. I caught a cold on Wednesday night, too. By this morning I was still feeling bad, so I stayed home from work, but I did take the time to repair the Silver Bullet. I got a jack and jack stands and decided to just work in our garage in our building. No one seemed to mind.

The right hand allen bolt that holds the shift tower to the car had somehow backed itself out. I also noticed that the sleeve guard that covers the pin on the shifting linkage had slipped off again. I had a 2002 Haus shifter upgrade kit that I never installed on the Land Shark, so I decided it was time to fix this the correct way. Out came the exhaust and drive shaft. Out came the shifter assembly. In went all new bushings, linkage and bolts. The Silver Bullet is back in business, and it shifts like it is brand new!