Update

Another crazy month has went by, and in addition to it being freezing cold outside, I had another Germany trip, so production is not what I would like, but I have been doing a little work. Below is a shot of the RH Torque box and the RH Front Frame rail before I pulled them out. We knew about all of the rust in the rail, but as I started cutting, I found more. The RH rocker rail is chewed up on the end, but I think I can fix it and paint with the special anti-rust paint I have.


The frame rail and torque box are out except the back plate of the torque box. It has about 20 spot welds to the firewall that I am cutting from the floorboard. I am going really slow with this so I don't dent the floorboard.



One other thing I got done, was to pull the gas tank. It is in really good shape. Just a little clean up and new gaskets will get the job done here. The rear trunk area in in good shape except for the outside wheel wells, which I knew were in bad shape from the beginning. I am not going to go in here until I get the front completely fixed. I had to pull the gas tank to keep from blowing up the joint when I was welding. I'm glad I didn't go far when I cranked it up when I got it here, because I got about half a gallon out of the tank !!

I had the transmission hot tanked and it got all of the grease and grime off, but there is still aluminum oxidation on the outside of the housing. I have tried to wire brush it off, but it is not real successful compared to the amount of work. After talking to some people around on coatings and such, I am going to mask off all of the machined sections and lightly blast it.


I got to a point where I really needed a blast cabinet. I had been waiting until they were on sale at Harbor Frieght, and finally hit it and had a 20% off coupon. This one works pretty well. With the Shop-Vac hooked up, a light inside, and the air compressor running wide open, it works pretty good.

This cabinet has pretty good room in it. I have the fan blade in there laying down right now.

I was able to get the fan pulley and most of the fan blasted today. It was just warm enough to paint the fan pulley, so it is done. The fan will be ready for paint soon as well. I have to be patient when blasting because it doesn't take long to run down the pressure on my compressor.