dimlight65

A tie rod kit, drag link, and window channel seal have been ordered... so the woes of earlier posts should be resolved in the coming weeks. We discussed Heim joints (or the ultimate wackiness of rack and pinion), but decided on stock replacement for now.

We recycled one of the "Dajiban" license plates... I'm not 100% sure about it yet, but I'm sure it will grow on me...

Is good plan, tovarisch! I had not considered that, actually.

The driver's window has a bad habit of coming out of its track when rolled all the way down. So I made a travel stop... which... um, stops the travel... when the window is this far down... Hopefully this will keep someone from dropping the glass out of the track again until we can replace the channel rubber.

This look... was not cutting it for us. But I didn't want to run these... so John made some... which look like... when installed. I think they are awesome!

I took the three sections of navigator footrest and attached them together with an aluminum strap... Then John applied purple grip tape to them... and the dead pedal & driver floor... We liked the look of the dimples rather than the holes... so we didn't cut out the holes. Of course, I am going to be very annoyed when something pokes a hole in one. But that's a "Future Tim" problem.

I'm sad because I can no longer justify the added expense of the DAJIBAN license plates... So I have to run regular plates like a cave man... But I am happy because the van is legal to drive again... But I'm sad again because I'm 99.78236475% certain that I blew out one of these today... Probably this one... It started out popping like an exhaust leak (duh!) then got worse and worse as I drove. Now, I might as well be running open headers.

It's an airplane pilot/co-pilot intercom I bought off of Amazon. IIRC, racecar intercoms were a bit more spendy than this Chinesium thing.

John has made the same argument. Ok, we will grok the steering bits and fix what's ailing it.

Dang! I was going to say "It IS a guitar effects pedal! I'm going for this effect." But, yeah... it's an intercom.

Fortunately, it has only happened at around 30mph or so. I think I have found the setup I want, but I'm going to have to cobble it together myself. But yeah, this is priority #1, for sure.

Occasionally, I get a "Death Wiggle" shimmy in the steering. Frankly, it scares the crap out of me that it could happen on the freeway where I can't slow down to make it go away. So I want to install a steering damper. Looking at the setup... it really shouldn't be too difficult. Oh, disregard that motor mount. I have new mounts to go in there... eventually.

Yesterday I installed this ground wire on the wiper motor... Then I remembered I had these... so I replaced the, frankly kinda ghetto, wire with a pretty braided copper strap... Can you see it with the hood open? Of course not... but I know it's there!

The '97 sliding door vans (like mine) have a stupid little kick up under the passenger door. Which is where I (and a few "real" Dajibans in Japan) have routed the zorst... I think it "ties the room together" and makes the kick up look like it's there for a reason.

The new navigator's footrest arrived yesterday... So I immediately cut it in half! Ok, yes. That is the old one, but I cut the new one in half as well. Why? Because John had a great idea... Three, half sections still make a 1.5x wide footrest, but looks a lot better than my original idea. And here's the fourth section as a dead pedal... So, we'll have the driver's floor... And the whole thing, sort of thing... I will have John inspect them and do a final up-gussying before final installation.