Monday, May 26, 2008

Spot weld cutter

Took a trip to northern tools to pick up a spot weld cutter. Unfortunately they only had the spring loaded kind and the harden bits. So it was a little squirrelly when I tried to cut some of welds out. Just attached to the old electric drill and started drilling them out. I took a punch and made a small hole for the cutter spring guide. Technique wise, I sped up the drill to its highest rpms and slowly dug in. It was more successful that way - couple of runaway holes though. 28 holes later, the front dash and the upper dash are separated. Allot of small shaving were everywhere.

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Gutted dash some more

I got a chance to work in the garage when the sun wasn't making it an oven today. Still had three fans going to circulate air. Removed more stuff. Got the original Delco Radio and in dash speaker out as well as the heater controls. While I was at it I got the heater core, vents and the passenger kick panel out. Also got allot of the old insulation out. Vacuumed more sun flower seeds out of the car and some of the rust I had knock into the car. Tomorrow I will drill out the spot welds and remove the panel if I can.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

MORE rust

So I cleaned up the dash some more. Chiseled away at some rust and vacuumed. Took out the air vents so that I could get to the attach bolts that held the dash pad on. the best surprise yet was opening up the vents and finding dried up sunflower seeds in the air ducts. hundreds of shells fell out of both side and made a sick mess. Vacuum time. So after that mess - I had to take a screw driver and wedge open the small bracket that held the dash pad prong on. It involved use of a mirror, small screw driver and curse words. Many curse words. The curse words didn't help out as much as I'd like but I got the pad off. There would have been no way to pull it off by hand without breaking something - like a finger. I had to remove all of the dash guts. So now I need to order a new dash tin and get a welder. But first figure out how to get the old one off.

In the mean time I am still working on the Steering. I was going to replace the manual steering with new power steering components but, since the old one works fine and it would cost some money and research to get the right parts for a 455 brackets/ pulleys/ hoses/ pitman arm , I opted to stay with the original. I did clean it some more to knock off as much rust as I could and cleaned it with some Eastwood paint prep. Then I use POR-15 on it so it won't rust anymore. I'll order a repop steering knuckle (rag joint) when I order the dash replacement piece. The steering will be set and later I will try to restore the original deluxe steering wheel.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Dash replacement


Got a chance to remove a little more rust off of the dash. Next - remove the dash pad. So I removed glove box door, glove box, steering column, instrument cluster, and Dash pad screws.
I can see a little daylight from underneath the dash. The rust is completely through. So I'll be buying a new one to weld in pretty soon.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Windshield removed

Got the windshield out and took a look at the rust underneath. Looks like I'll have to buy a replacement upper dash panel and cut the old one out.

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Manual Steering box removed

The manual steering box is incredibly rusty looking and seemed to have some slop in it. So I tried removing it but the pitman are would not come off easily. So a stop at O-rielly's today and I came back with a pitman arm puller. Three turns and it popped off. I should take the puller back but since I never like taking tools back and I always need more. I hope that my wife does not read that. Cleaned the gear box with a power drill and abrasive pad. Looks ten times better. I clean it a little better tomorrow and slap some paint on it. I have the option of upgrading to power steering at this time but the gear box is in good working order and seems a waste to throw it out. I can live with it for now. But I do need to get a brand new rag joint. So I'll order one tonight and hopefully be able to put everything back together.