Ready to move

Chris called yesterday, and said Ron wanted me to come by the shop today to see the car and answer some questions on the fender. This week he started fitting the fender on the car. He still needs to trim the front edge an inch or so to where he has the bonding strip.

Rear view of the fender. The new fender will bond to the stock bonding strip.Test fitting a bumper, looks like it's a relatively small pie that will need to be added, but pretty certain the bumpers will be customized to match the fenders.

Side view of the fender. After Ron gets the other fender prepped and fitted, he's got to build up the bonding strips with duraglass to space them out sufficiently to meet the fender flare and provide a watertight trunk. Not sure if I'll be able to talk him in to the rotisserie for that operation so he won't have to fight gravity.

At home today I cleaned the engine block and got a coat of paint on the block. There's still some paint required on the top of the heads and the valve covers, and the back of the block. Once the paint was dry, I bolted the tranny back up to the engine, and dropped the engine and tranny back in the chassis. Now the chassis is about ready for the move to the new house in the next couple weeks.

Front Suspension

 Last weekend I got all four wheels back on the car again. The free action bearings are in the upper and lower control arms along with new ball joints. I installed new poly sway bar bushings.

Left front suspension. Same deal - free action bearings, new ball joints, new sway bar bushings.

RIght Rear Fender Removal

Ron is now back on Mutt, working on the right rear fender.

 He's using a midyear bonding strip at the top of the fender to bond on the new flared fender.

Behind the door jamb Ron is using  sections of the old fender to create a bonding strip.

 The stock bonding strip is across the middle of the wheel opening. The center section will be cut out so it doesn't interfere with the wider tires and wheels.

Free Action

Seems like I've spent weeks grinding all the forging parting lines off the front control arms and rear links. I finally declared done, and mailed the bits off to Paul Newman for his Free Action Bearing kit to be installed in all the components. Rather than rubber or poly bushings, everything is now spherical bearings.

Here's the rear kit, plus the custom valved Bilstein shock and the lowering bolt for the rear spring - next to the shorter original bolt.

Front suspension has grease fittings on all the bearings. 

Here's the rear suspension all back together.

I've been busier than the body shop over the past couple months. In addition to disassembling the front and rear suspensions, and grinding off all the forging lines, I got the interior kit and transfered the stainless trim from the old door panels to the new ones. Eagleton's has a new owner, and seems like they're going to start moving forward again.

Started finally

Mutt moved over to the active part of the shop and has had a couple days put into reversing the damage of the media blaster. Lower portion of this fender has been replaced as well. Next week while I'm in Africa they will start on replacing the rear fenders.

Sent from my iPhone

Last Horrah

I think today is the last shop time I get until I return from Africa late next month. I pulled the dog bones and links on the rear suspension, and started removing the front suspension. I had hoped to get it all off so I could ship it to Paul Newman to get it fitted for spherical bearings. Unfortunately, the front suspension is taking about 3 times as long to tear down. I was one bolt from removing the left front lower control arm, when I found that I installed the bolt before installing the suspension cradle in the frame - the bolt doesn't come out, nor does the control arm. I started sanding the parting lines off all the forged components. I don't think I'll go as far as polishing everything, but I do want to remove all the rough edges.

I stopped by Eagleton this week, and it looked like they might be getting ready to start on it. :-)

A little sun for the chassis

Saturday I pulled the chassis off the lift, now that I have four tires again, and rolled it out in the sunshine. I then rolled it under the lift to use the lift to pull the engine and tranny out of it so I can detail the engine. Following the drivetrain removal, the chassis was rolled back on the lift so I can put it on jackstands, pull the suspension, send the pivoting parts to Paul Newman for spherical bearing conversion, and clean the chassis.

I've now got the engine on a stand. OSH had a no sales tax weekend so I picked up a couple cans of engine enamel and a can of caliper paint. The engine needs some serious oxidation removal. The whole engine will be coated in GM gloss black to hopefully combat this oxidation problem once and for all.



Hopefully this cleaner will help with that task. It worked reasonably well on the timing cover and valve covers.

The tranny is on a dolly. I took a ride on the bike up to OSH tonight to replace the 15mm deep socket that cracked when I tried breaking loose the last bolt on the torque convertor when I split the engine and tranny apart. I think this is the first real tool casualty of the project.