73 on a slow road to recovery... by Done Yet?

12 minute(s) of a 308 minute read

About a half day of car time.

I had a few panels from yesterday that needed to be primed on the other side but not enough to make it worth while to dirty the paint gun. So i drug out my repop core support, First thing the opening for the radiator needed to be opened up to match the OEM piece (A/C). Heres the repop support.

and here the OEM piece.

Heres the new after widening the opening.

I stripped the trans cross member also.

And the other panels to recieve some primer.

And last a few shots of the primed panels.

After cleaning up heres a shot of the outdoor bodyshop closed for the night LOL.

Thanks for stopping bye to check out my work. Rob

3-24-2011

Not to much new on my project last weekend there wasn't any maro time. But i have been tinkering after work during the week. A friend of mine was nice enough to let me borrow his glass beading machine. 

And then i needed to test it out LOL... So i threw in a few parts and cleaned them up.



Once clean they were primed and painted.



I began to take apart my intermediate steering shaft. The boot on my 73 shaft was torn, But the boot on my 79 donor shaft was good. And i figured I would just swap the boots and put it back together. Not as easy as it sounds. The shaft on the left is from the 73 the one on the right is from the 79. I have read on here that the coupler and the rag joints were different between the years but figured the boot would be the same. (Wrong)



The boot has a metal washer cast right into the rubber, there is no way to slip it over the cross shaft, so the shaft needed to be pressed out of both shafts, then the boot slid onto the 73 shaft and cross shaft pressed back in.



When i went to slide the washer end of the boot up into the coupler it was about an 1/8 " to big and would'nt fit. The only way this boot would work was to cut the washer out of the original 73 boot and cut the washer out of the 79 donor boot, trim the boot to fit the 73 washer and epoxy the washer to the donor boot. Once dry it was greased reassembled and the paint touched up.

4-3-2011

Weekend Update...

I started out on Saturday morning with intentions of getting my firewall,Dash, subframe, front wheelhouses and rad support in its final color. I had a few areas on the dash that needed a little filler, so those areas were taken care of first so the filler had time to set up. While i had the filler out i started to tend to other areas that needed a little filling.Then i moved on sanding the epoxy on the rest, the subframe, skirts, and core support, getting them ready for paint.









Once i felt like the dash was ready for paint i coated it with some epoxy.
I was kinda all over the place with my project this weekend LOL.... In between waiting for filler or paint to dry i was removing parts that will be used on my car from my donor. I pulled the rear end and springs.



Then i removed the front coil springs and the front subframe. Subframe will not be used but sold. I just removed it so i can cut up whats left of the donor to bring it to the scrap yard.

I also installed my rear deck lid torsion rods and the rear deck lid and filler panel, they are close but still need some fine tuning.

Sunday morning i had an early start so i can topcoat all of the areas i mentioned above. While wiping down my dash and cowl area with wax and grease remover i noticed quite a few little tiny pin holes in the body filler  
As much as i wanted to put color on the dash i couldnt paint over the pin holes and chose to fill them with a finishing glaze and will then have to reprime before painting. However i did get to paint the rest of the parts.
It was a good thing the dash didnt get sprayed because this paint Dupont imron was supposed to be a satin finish.... It sure looks like a high gloss finish to me. I do like the parts glossy that are painted but i will have to buy more piant in a satin to do my dash. I guess when they mixed my paint they forgot to put in what ever makes it satin instead of gloss, so its a good thing my dash didnt get sprayed today.











Thanks for checking out my work.... Rob

4-4-2011

Progress on the donor...

I sold the torque boxes out of my donor, so tonight after work i removed them so they can be shipped out tommorrow to CT.



While i was crawling around with my tools i figured i would keep on cutting LOL. My donor has more than served its purpose and doesn't have much of anything left on it worth saving. So i began to dice it up in manageable size pieces so it can be loaded on a trailer and taken to the scrap metal yard for a few bucks. It still needs a cut or two but it will probably be hauled off along with any other sheet metal i have laying around this weekend. With the donor out of the way that will give my outdoor bodyshop a little more much needed room to work.

4-10-2011

A little headway....

After last weekends paint issue i went back to the paint store and explained that my satin black was more like gloss black after spraying it. So they mixed up a quart of flat black this time thinking that Dupont had given them the wrong formula. The quart of flat was no charge but i did need to buy the activator to go with the paint. After sanding the dash and fire wall with 4oo grit it was blown off and wiped down with wax & grease remover and masked off.



I also had to cover the subframe and core support to keep the over spray off.



Heres a few pics of the dash and fire wall after being shot with the imron.
The paint is still very wet in these next few pics.







Im keeping my fingers crossed that most of the shine goes away as it dries.
Being the dash was sprayed on Sat mid afternoon here is how it looked Sun morning.

I had good intentions of building a rotissere this weekend to roll the car over to finish the underside, Until i priced the steel needed to build it. They wanted 390.00 dollars just for the box tubing, no casters or rotator assy. tubing. By the time this thing was built i would be into it for at least 600.00.
And that just seems to be a waste of money being the car would only be on it for a couple of weekends. So Plan B.... I raised the car up on the jack stands its on and began to finish stripping the very rear of the car up too the trans tunnel. Once this area is primed and painted i will install the rear end and stand the car up on end using the rear axel tubes and jack stands to finish the rest. Here are a few pics of the car sitting about 3.5' off the ground on the stands.

Heres a few shots of the areas that needed to be stripped at the rear of the car.









While i was under the car i also seam sealed in both rear wheelhouses.