The Next Step...

Things went different directions for a while, after my wife and I had settled in to jobs and such after moving home from North Carolina. The next stages I don’t have many pictures of but I had to get into things I had neither the experience nor the tools to do. With the help of a couple of great friends and neighbors I was able to learn some things and tackle some serious problems.

One of the major things was that entire cowl top had to be replaced. At some point in the cars former life, the hood had been opened too far with enough force to bend the top of the cowl from side. I was able to get another cowl but it was cut from a car at a local salvage yard and the person who did the cutting didn’t do a nice job and made my replacing the cowl a much more difficult job. With that said I replaced just the top of the cowl. My lack of experience proved itself yet again when we put the rest of the front end back in place and both the front corners of the cowl were a fair amount higher than the tops of the fenders. So we pulled things apart again and fixed the error. the finished pictures are in the Images Gallery. Refinished cowl pictures

I knew that the suspension and underside of the car need some attention. Not to bad as far as the body was concerned but the front suspension was in need of some rework. I removed all of the suspension and replaced all the bushings, ball joints, and swaybar bushings, and endlinks. As well as newer heavier front springs to deal with the extra weight of the 351W. At the same time I wire brushed the entire underside. Cleaned and converted any rust and primed and painted the floor pan and engine bay.

After all this was done I did a quick scuff of the existing paint and tossed a quick coat of primer on the car as it needed to be pushed into service as a daily driver for a time.