My suggestion is go ahead and drill out the screw that is in there now.
You are going to do some damage to the cover since this guy "fixed" it,
after you get it off I would suggest using some fiberglass resin to remold
the area. I used a standard fiberglass resin bought at Home Depot to do a
similar job and then sanded and painted the part.
Good Luck
-----Original Message-----
From: Eric A. Yates [mailto:eyates@enteract.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 1999 3:49 PM
To: spitfires@autox.team.net
Subject: Steering column cover question
Hello all,
My '78 Spitfire has a problem with her plastic steering column covers (the
two pieces that surround the column behind the steering wheel).
I tried to take this cover off the other day and discovered that the two
screws that hold the halves together were mismatched. One of them is
correct, the other is a wrong screw that someone had simply forced into
place, stripping the hell out of the plastic threads in the top piece I'm
sure. The wrong screw will not come out, and as you know, it is not
something I can grab with pliers or anything because it is so deeply
recessed in the bottom half of the cover.
I have no immediate need to remove the covers, so this is not an urgent
problem. (Before I had wanted to take them off to give myself more room to
remove my dash and guages, but I worked around it.) But, when the time
comes, how the heck am I going to get these cover halves separated without
ruining them?
And as a follow-up question, why in the world would someone knowingly take
the wrong screw and be so damn lazy as to simply force it into place,
probably destroying a larger piece of the car in doing so? I have found
little surprises like this all over my beloved Spitfire. I can understand
getting frustrated and having difficulty locating all the little parts to
do a job right, but I can't fathom simply wrecking a part of a car for no
reason. It is not as though a slightly different screw with the correct
threads could not have been found, even if this were done 20 years ago. The
screw that was used is clearly just the wrong damn thing, something that
was lying around the shop so the guy just drove the sucker in there.
Someone please help me understand what could make someone commit such
crimes against an innocent lbc! :)
Eric.
-----
Eric Yates
eyates@enteract.com
1978 Spitfire 1500 FM 71614 U
Chicago, IL USA
|