More!

Got the brake calipers back today, they're sitting downstairs in the car, i should have taken a photo to make this less a wall of text. so thats one job down.

Heard from dad last night that the guys at the garage had sucessfully extracted the bolt from the front trunion so the trunion and the wishbone are both fine. they'll do the other bits when they have spare moments as I'm not in a rush.

Hoping to go up, not this weekend, but the following to start stripping the undercoat from the chassis. The pricing on blasting was too much, so i'm going to do it by hand. Shouldn't be too hard and hopefully wont take too long, i'll have to make sure i have a couple of beers handy when i start. I'm tossing up whether to try packing each chassis rail section in dry ice and chipping the undercoat that way, or doing the heatgun/turps trick i used on the floorpans.

i was going to go up this weekend, but i have to stay in town and get my house in a state where i can rent it. once thats out of the way i'll have more time and money available to focus on the car. I'm looking forward to getting the chassis done as then i can actually feel like i'm moving towards having my car back. Actually finally assemble something.

I've got a few liters of molasses coming and a big drum so i'll be using paint stripper on all the small suspension components then soaking them for a week in the molasses and water to remove rust, then an ospho bath followed by POR-15 should finish them off quite nicely.

Not many updates but much work

SO, the front bulkhead went to the panel shop a couple of weeks ago and is now complete. Had a little more rust than we thought. ended up getting it media blasted to clean up the firewall and get the remainder of the underseal off.

I'm waiting for some photos, apparently the panel shop took a pile of photos.

Ended up repairs to the heater and firewall (known), rebuilding both A-pillars (semi known), Repairing the outer skin near the passenger side body mount (known), the innerskin of the passenger body mount (unknown) repairs behind drivers side body mount (unknown) . Apparently its primed in 2K and had new underseal applied too. All done.

Now i need to get the bonnet down to him for the same treatment.

I rang the guy who was recommended for the chassis media blasting but its looking quite expensive. So i might have to spend some time with a heat gun and some beers while i'm up working up that way over the next month.

Sent the brake calipers to the shop to be rebuilt, while i was up at my parents last weekend i pulled apart the rear suspension assemblies and removed all the suspension bushes from the radius arms (and the front wishbones).

I loaded the rear axles, front shocks and springs along with the lower wishbone that has the seized bolt in the trunion on to my dads ute. He was dropping them off to the local mechanic to disassemble them for me. I only need the shock tops as i have both replacement springs and shocks. the axles need to be pressed (which i dont have) and i'm hoping some heat will help the trunion bolt.

Fingers crossed.

And DONE!, well Phase One

 So, disconnected the handbrake cable, jacked up the front of the car and lifted/slid the body tub off the back on Friday night.

Got stuck in this morning and pulled the rear axles and diff off basically we're completely disassembled.

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The great news is the chassis looks perfect, the rear shock mounts are fine, diff mounts are fine. Had some horrifying moments pulling it apart, the left rear upper shock bolt didn't have a nut on it, the rear brake hose between the left and right wheels was basically rusted through, many bolts in the drive train that were loose. It was pretty terrifying.

Had a little clean up too, still a mess but not as bad.

I still have the rear half-shaft to pull apart, but other than that now its the slow and painful process of cleaning and painting everything.

Oh yeah and i picked up my bits from the UK, YAY!