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4/4/99 Got a lot of little things done this weekend. The automatic shifter is fixed and I finally installed it. I can finally put the engine and trans in whenever. I painted under the dash, so that is finished and I can start installing things back under there. I worked on the inner half of the heater box. I sanded on it for quite a while and then totally covered it with Rust Ender stuff that neutralizes rust and turns it into primer. I then primed it completely on Sunday and will paint it this week. I received my firewall pad and engine wiring harness. I also received the hard transmission modulator line that I ordered, but it does not fit. I don't know what it's supposed to fit, but it's not going to fit a TH350. This thing is WAY wrong. I pulled apart the steering column and started cleaning that up. I will just primer it because I don't know the exact color that the interior will be yet. I also bought a replacement brake master cylinder, so as soon as I replace the rear wheel cylinders, I will have completely new brake system, except for the lines, which are fine. Dad re-painted the firewall with some good gloss black during the week. It now looks exactly like I wanted it to. I am very happy with how that turned out. I installed the tie rods and put some tires on the front, now it's actually starting to look like a car again. :-) 4/6/99 Sanded the rust off of some of the steering column parts and painted them. Dad mixed up the good gloss black and painted both parts of the heater box. I can put that in anytime now. I already have the new heater core and the complete seal kit for the heater box and ducts. Nothing will happen this weekend, I will be riding my motorcycle out in the desert. We will put the engine in next week. 4/14/99 Dad got the trans dip stick finally installed. The chrome one that I bought did not fit very well, we had to find a better o-ring for it. The engine will go in on Saturday. I re-assembled the steering column and did some re-assembly of the heater box. Both are ready to be installed this weekend. I am looking for a drivers side door. 4/16/99 New pictures here. The dash before I start sanding on it Under/behind the dash is cleaned and painted and the shifter re-installed closer to the dash the frame re-assembled 4/17/99 The engine is in! I hooked up and adjusted the shifter. I bolted on the power steering pump and hooked up the new hoses. Dad is working on custom bending a fuel line to go from the pump to a filter we will mount on top of the manifold. I cut off the collectors on the exhaust pipes because I will be running stock exhaust manifolds instead of the headers that were on the car. We need to have a couple of short patch pipes made to link the pieces of pipe that bolt to the manifold and the rest of the exhaust pipe. I decided to find a replacement drivers side door instead of re-skinning the door. It will be a bit cheaper and a LOT less work. 4/28/99 Not much happening in the past week. I was sick this weekend, so I did not go to Vancouver to pick up a drivers side door. I will try this weekend. Dad got some patch pieces for the exhaust made and he tack welded them in place last night and will finish it later this week. 5/3/99 Dad got the exhaust finished up near the end of last week and it looks good. He also started working on the area in front of the left rear wheel opening. That is the one place that had body rust and I bought a patch panel for it. He got a chunk of it cut out. I found a drivers side door for my car in Vancouver, WA and my roommate picked it up for me, as he was going to Oregon on Saturday anyway. That is about a 3 hour drive from Seattle, so I am glad he could do it since he was going right by there anyway. The door is perfectly straight and only a little bit of surface rust in a couple spots. I brought the inner fenders and radiator support into the garage and will spend this week cleaning them up and painting them. 5/4/99 I sanded on the radiator support last night and need to do some sand blasting to remove all of the rust. My wiring harness is finally back and I will pick that up this weekend. Dad started working on the front left fender. He cut off the bottom and was fitting up the patch panel. The detail of the patch around the wheel opening is not very crisp. I would like to find a fender that has maybe been damaged on the front and use the lower rear portion to patch mine. Dad got the patch for the rear quarter ready to weld up. That patch has much better details than the front fender one does. 5/10/99 Worked on the car Saturday. Dad welded up the patch panel by the rear wheel opening and did some Bondo and sanding work on it. Looks good! I did some sand blasting on the radiator support and cleaning on the inner fenders. Those pieces will be painted early this week, then I can install them and the fenders. I got my dash wiring harness back. They even put the labels on the fuse box! Now I know what things are. :-) I still have to swap out the drivers door, moving all of the insides over. We also did a little work on Bob's truck. It has been sitting in a pasture for 3 years not running. He pressure washed the green stuff off it and we towed it up to the garage. Seems that the engine is froze now, we could not get it to turn. Uh oh! I will pick up my latest roll of film tonight and scan a couple pictures for tomorrow. 5/11/99 New pictures. A shot of the engine back in the car another of the engine in the car Cutting the front fender apart The front fender patch set in place The rear quarter patch cut out The patch has been welded in and bondo'd 5/12/99 I primed the inner fenders and the radiator support last night. Dad continued to work on the area of the rear quarter that we patched to smooth it out perfectly. I will paint the radiator support and inner fenders this weekend. I learned how to mix the paint and all of the adjustments on the spray gun so I can do that myself now. The glass is out of the door and I started sanding on the new door. I will get it totally sanded and primed before I put it on the car, it will be much easier that way. 5/24/99 Well, I painted the inner fenders and radiator support last night. This was the first time that I have mixed the paint and setup the gun myself without my dad there. I learned a couple of things while painting, so each part looks better thanthe one before. When talking to my dad later, I found I had the air pressure way too high at the gun. Oh well, now I know for next time. 5/31/99 I really wanted to work on the car all weekend, but didn't make it. I assembled the radiator support and inner fenders and cleaned and painted some more bolts. I installed the repaired dash wiring harness and sanded on the dash a bit. I also removed the drivers door. I have the new door that I will strip and prime this week and I also need to repair the lower hinge. I installed some of the plastic things that hold the firewall pad in place. Those are a pain in the butt to install. 6/5/99 My roommate and I took the 3 hour road trip south from Seattle to Vancouver WA to All American Classics in search of a left front fender or enough of one to use as a patch panel for mine. We got there and they had quite a few Camaro's out in the junk yard. We ended up finding a brand new repro fender that they had mailed to someone and it was damaged during shipment. It has 2 small dings and the rear part is twisted a little. They wanted $75 for it. I was thrilled with this find. It should be easy to straighten and requires no cleanup work or anything. They also had in the yard a 67 RS convertable for sale as a whole for $4500. This thing looked like it had been wrecked and someone started to fix it by replacing the front fenders. They were all different colors. It has a steel cowl hood on it. The interior is pretty much gone and the car was full of junk. The entire headlight assemblies were missing and the radiator was gone. the top was also trash. I just laughed after seeing what they wanted for it. 6/7/99 Removed the windshield tonight. We sharpened a couple of scrapers and cut the seal with them and lifted it out. We cracked the windshield down the middle, but I will put a new one in anyway, so I don't care. The seal at the bottom of the window was not watertight and there was a little rust with one small pinhole. I will clean that up and seal and paint it. I decided I am going with the light blue interior color, so I need to get a can of paint the correct color so I can paint the dash while the windshield is out. Dad is happy with the fender that I got, should be a piece of cake to straighten and install. 6/14/99 Got in two good days of working on the car this weekend. I got the new drivers door stripped, and it required a little bondo work, so we did that. I cleaned around where the windshield sits. There is a 4 inch long section that is rusted through. I cleaned it really well and we will patch that. The lower rear corner of the drivers side door jam had a rusted out section. Dad cut that out and made a patch and welded into place. Looks great. These are the last 2 rust spots on the car, so after this we just need to finish sanding the old paint off and fill door dings and things and then will be ready for paint. I got the chrome trim off of the top of the windshield. I could not figure out how to remove it when the windshield was in, but now with the windshield out, I could get a better angle at things and it came off nicely. I can now paint the entire windshield frame without worrying about the chrome. I can also buff out the trim and when I reinstall it everything will look sweet. I also masked off the dash and sanded and primed the dash. It needs to be sanded again with finer paper and then primed again before painting. I ordered a can of paint that matched what color the interior will be, so we can paint the dash as soon as that arrives. I also found a touch up spray can of the 98 Dodge truck Intense Blue Pearl that I am painting the car with. I sprayed that on my old fender and put it in the sun and we ooooh'd and aaaah'd at that, it's going to be a cool color on this car. 6/17/99 Sanding, sanding, sanding, sanding, and more sanding. That's about all there is to do right now. I got the paint that matches the color the interior will be and it looks like it will be nice. Probably about a two more weeks of sanding and bodywork and we will be pretty close to painting it. 6/20/99 And more sanding. I worked on the cowl piece and the lower front valence. I decided to replace the lower front valence because it has been repaired before and is really rough. At $70 for a repro, it's worth it. I am also going to order the front brake lines because I added the power brake booster and the old ones won't reach. 6/29/99 I received the valence in the mail and it looks great. Just bolt it up and paint it. I also received the new shifter button and screw kits to mount the grill. Dad is still working on the left rear quarter, he is almost finished with that and the left door is about done. Just some work to do on the rear under where the bumper is and we should be able to prime the hole car and start block sanding I guess. 7/3/99 I recieved the front brake lines, so I can install those. I had to get new ones because there is a length difference between the power and standard brake lines. Since I converted to power, I had to replace them since the standard ones come up a little short. Both rear quarters a primed now and the dash is primed. We can start block sanding and picking out the little dings. 7/11/99 Took out the gas tank this weekend hoping to have access to the back side of the rear valence. Guess what? There is an inner panel, so we will have to pull the dents with the stud gun and slide hammer. The rear corners on both sides of the rear quarters need a little bit of work too. I will be block sanding and priming more this week. My parents were in the Return to Renton car show this weekend. I stopped by and there were several hundred very nice cars there. 7/14/99 More sanding. :-) Dad continues to work his magic on the sheet metal and the car keeps getting straighter and looking better. Getting close to being done with the back, then will continue around to the other rear quarter. I sanded and primed the right front fender and did some sanding on the grill that sits below the windshield (forgot name). I will have to sandblast that to get all of the paint out of the grill part and there is a little surface rust on the bottom. 7/19/99 Just more sanding this weekend. I also took apart the guage assembly and sandblasted the outer shell because it was rusted. I painted it with black primer and may just leave it like that. 7/20/99 Dad was working on the passenger side door today. He brazed the holes where the trim was mounted with rivets. I will not be putting trim like that back on. He then pounded on a few high spots and we layed a little bondo on the low spots. We should be able to finish that door tomorrow. Then we can work on the drivers side door. 7/22/99 I worked on a little bit more rust behind the rear wheels. Dad will cut it out and weld in a small patch. A couple more pics of the bodywork will be coming soon. 8/4/99 The car in primer another of the car in primer Dad spent a couple of evenings taking care of a couple smaller rust spots. On one he had to cut a small patch and form it to fit the curves of the area. It looks great. I should be able to paint the dash anytime and then I will install the wiring and guages and switches. 8/8/99 Dad has been working on some small patches around the rear wheel wells. 8/10/99 Dad is still working on little patches to rust areas. I color sanded the dash and glove box door also. 8/16/99 Dad polished the dash and then showed me some areas that needed more sanding, so I sanded the dash again. I think this time should be it. I started working on the trunk floor by doing some fitting of the new piece and began making cuts in the existing floor. 8/30/99 I sanded the dash again a week or so ago and dad buffed it again. There were still some spots left after the first time I sanded it. I have started working on cutting out the rusted trunk floor and fitting the new piece in. I should be able to start installing all of the knobs and switches and duct work under the dash. I can install the steering column and get it hooked up too. We will be moving the car to my parents house after they return from vacation so it will be closer for both of us to work on it. I think we will get more done that way. 9/14/99 We are working on moving the car to mom and dad's house this week. I was out there last night trying to fix the wiring on the car trailer and dad took a load of parts home with him. 9/28/99 We moved the car to dad's house last night. We should be able to get things done a lot faster there since his house is closer for me and, well, he lives there. He will work on it on nights when he usually wouldn't bother driving to where it was to work on it. Right now my projects are to re-assemble the dash and cut out the trunk floor. |
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