Dissassembly Complete

 Today I finished the dissassembly of the car.  With this done I can see all the rust spots that need to be addressed.  There are several that I couldn't see before so I need to order more sheetmetal.  A few I could fix with bondo and fiberglass patches but this car gets none of that.  All problems will be fixed with solid sheetmetal and the car will look great and last forever.

Issues I found today were that the rear window rust problem is worse than I though originally and I need to order more window channel parts.  Also, the trunk appears to have 2 or 3 holes rusted through so a new trunk floor is in order.  One thing I can say is if you ever attempt to restore a classic car over 50 years old, don't even try it is you have a budget because you will not get it done.

Here's what the car looks like today:

We are taking my Chevelle to a car show next Saturday.  After that it will go into the storage facility.  This car will move into the garage to begin serious work.  

Next steps will bee to build a body cart for the car.  I need to remove the body from the frame to begin the sheet metal work.  This will make it easier.  Especially for the floor replacement.

Liz helped me remove the rear window today.  We purchased a tool at Harbor Freight that consisted of a braided wire and a couple of handles for the wire and a tool to slide the wire under the window glass and into the interior of the car.  The with a person inside and one outside you saw the wire back and forth to cut through the urethane window glue, then the window just pops out.  Pretty cool.  We were able to salvage it for re-use.

I am really excited to begin the serious work on this car.  I have no idea how long it will take me to get the rust under control but I don't care.  This is my hobby and it takes what it takes.  I usually get real worried when I find serious problems with one of my cars thinking I won't be able to fix it.  With this car, and it is in the worst condition of all I have done, I have not worries.  I have never done sheet metal replacement before to fix rust but I am totally confident I can make this piece of crap looking car as good or better than new!  I don't know why I am not worried at all, I probably should be because this is way beyond what I had planned for but for some reason I just know that I can do this.  Its weird, and I'm happy to have this to try.

While this is going on I will occassionally take a break from rust and work on the frame.  It will also be totally disassembled, derusted, rust proofed, and reassembled.   This is my second priority right now because the frame is in pretty good shape.  Only major problem is it need a rebuild of the rear end, another project I have never done but I'll figure it out.

While all this is going on I have a couple issues with my car still that I want to fix soon so I will be bringing it out of storage occaisionally to work on those.  Nothing major, just need to fix a couple of speakers and the AC is not working correctly.  Appears to be a leak.  I think I fixed the leak yesterday but I need to recharge it.

We are planning a trip up north for mid Juen to visit family and friends and I am hoping to bring my Chevelle for this trip.  It is running great and I really love driving it.  The only thing that will stop me is that it only have 300 miles on it so far and that may cause me to worry too much on the trip up.  That is not enough milage to get all the bugs worked out as my daughter Jessica found out with her trip to Florida with the Mustang.  No one listens to Dad.

Anyway, thats all for now.  I'm off to work on my other hobby.  Reading.  I am currently re-reading the Jack Reacher series start to finish and when books are available I switch to the Spenser series that I'm also re-reading.

Oh, the engine was moved to storage today where it will sit untill the frame has been completed...I have no idea when that will be.