04.10.08
Stripping the Body
This morning, I finished removing all of the wiring from under the dashboard, including the long control harness that snakes thru the left side of the car to the rear of the car. I also removed the radio. This is going to get trashed. It was an old Kenwood unit with a cassette tape player. I need to figure out my new dashboard layout. The converter box and fuse box came out easily. I’ll want to make a better panel to hold these in a convenient location. What does the converter box do? The plans don’t say!
Then, I removed the directional indicator control lever and steering shaft . The shaft was removed by unscrewing the mount from behind the dashboard and loosening the clamp on the extension tube. I had to remove the shaft by uncoupling the rubber coupling at the steering box and then pulling the shaft out from the front of the car. The firewall mount is still in the car and will require two people to remove it.
Next, I managed to undo all of the remaining body bolts by myself – OK, one of them sheared off – and this got the body loose from the chassis. The body is now ready for removal. All I need to do is make the saw horses to support the body and find a few friends to help me lift the thing off and flip it over.
I went to Lowe’s and picked up the materials that I need to make the saw horses. Then, I started cleaning up all of the parts that I had previously removed . That’ll take another day to complete.
I also picked up the four aluminum wheels from the media blaster this afternoon. They came out great but at $228.00 each to polish them, I think I’ll try polishing them myself. Eastwood makes a wheel polishing kit for just this purpose. Add Clear Powdercoating is $65.00 per wheel, so I may try an Eastwood clear coat for that.
