Today was a beautiful late spring day in Northern Virginia and an excellent time to do some shade tree mechanic-ing.

A 1983 GSL that I'd bought for parts was waiting to be slightly dismantled and the start of the dismantling went rather smoothly. It will be giving its Koni adjustable struts and ASP springs in donation to a newly acquired 1984 GS (aka Demon), as well as it's Tokico Illumina adjustable shocks.

The front end dismantling went better than I had hoped and with lessons learned from working on the other 84 GS (aka Ogre), I had the struts out in under an hour.

Then I moved around to the back to get the shocks out...

NO PROBLEM thought I to myself - and the cat wandering by.

I went to pop the hatch when I heard this rather unsettling snap, crackle and pop then proceeded to watch as the hatch disintegrated in my hands sending shards of safety glass raining down upon the spare tire and leaving several larger pieces in my hands.

After cursing my previous statement of "no problem", I went about cleaning up the mess that I had just made and making mental notes in my head that I needed to go to Home Depot and get a tarp to cover up the car.

Safety glass does clean up quite well, even though there are pieces still left in the hatch.

Figuring that I can make lemonade out of the lemons I was given, I looked at the hatch support struts and the were still good. Demon needs hatch support struts. WONDERFUL! Ogre also needs better side windows and I'll have to go search the forum to see how to get them out.

Well, the Tokicos came out without a problem, and they, along with the Konis, are now awaiting installation into Demon.

All in all, it's good to have a parts car around - I had already pilfered some parts when I was doing Ogre's front end rebuild, and probably will use some more for Demon's even about and beyond the ones I'd already taken off.

Still, I am going to have to get a tarp, and eventually a new hatch as I want to be able to give away the GSL once I have taken everything I need off of it - after all, it is a clean shell with discs all the way around and someone must be able to do something with that, especially when it is FREE.

Now I am off to Home Depot to get that tarp...

 

Do you need a hatch?

 

That would depend entirely on price - if it is reasonable then yes - if it is not reasonable then yes, but I'll have to wait as two other beasts have demands and designs on my wallet, this one can wait as the tarp is now covering the gaping hole.

I want to get my 84 GS ready for a drivers school I'll be attending on the 9th of June, that right now gets the bulk of my resources. I also need to figure out if I really want to replace the oil pan gasket on the other GS that I have, and attempt to replace the O-rings on that wonderful bee hive oil cooler.

Getting another hatch would be nice though

 

I will pick one up--probably by Sunday evening. It's yours for a reasonable offer. Good luck with the oil pan.

 

Thanks mucho brah, just another example of RX-7 community looking out for each other. I'll shoot you a PM

 

so - why did it shatter?

 

I too am wondering how the back hatch broke. I've had some heavy stuff fall onto my back hatch of my '83 before without any damage at all.

 

Sounds like a nice afternoon of work.

I have two that need stripping but I worked on my new out building yesterday afternoon instead.