The Snowball Saga - '68 Standard Revitalization Project by Blitz

4 minute(s) of a 767 minute read

9-26-2012

Ok, no pics of the headliner yet... it came partially unglued so I'll wait to show it off until the guy comes back to do the vinyl top & fix it. 

In other news...

Took the whole front end out of the car, including the springs and shocks of course.

Rolled it outside to do some more cleaning up with the steam cleaner. Like my front wheels?

Also got the trans pretty clean while I was at it. I'm not planning on painting it or anything, it's just bare aluminum.

Next, a very important but simple way to strengthen the weak shock towers on these cars. The "Boss 302" reinforcing plates.

Preparing the area:

Test fit:

Welded in place:

Welding done by Felix - here he is at work on the other side:

Look at the mess on the driver's side shock tower. It's been welded before, and it still needed a couple cracks welded up. In fact, there are a couple more since doing this that we didn't notice the first time around. Argh!

In the end, I'm most likely going to have all the things in this kit to stiffen up the front end. The one piece export brace is a must.

Anyways, I spent the better part of Monday getting all the disc brake parts off of a 1970 Cougar parts car in the wrecking yard. It was kind of a pain in the butt, but I got everything I needed:

The booster will be a core that I'll exchange for a rebuilt one. Same with the calipers. Master cylinder, I'll just get a new one. The rotors will be turned on our resurfacing machine (lucky we have one). The distribution block, I'll just clean up and rebuild with one of our rebuild kits. The pedal I'll just repaint and put a new pad and trim on. For the pedal bracket, I'll just modify my original drum brake one (pretty easy). More on that later.

Firewall modified to accept the booster. The car already had indentations from the factory showing me where to cut, so this was no problem. Just needed to drill out the bottom / center stud hole (outlined on engine side), and extend the large central hole upward (outlined on inside of firewall).

Anyways that's the latest on the Snowball. I'm making videos about both the suspension upgrades and the disc brake conversion. No real ETA on when those will be finished, I'm waiting until I get the front end is reassembled so I can do some conclusion shots of the nice shiny stuff in place. Of course, this is the time to paint the whole front "doghouse," so that's coming soon as well. Hooray for progress!