4 Hours? Hmmmm same amount of time it took me to compound and polish 85% of that 78 Estate Wagon.

After some more thought, I have tentatively decided to give this car a frame-off job. All I have to do is store the Centurion at my warehouse at work, and I'll have the garage open. If I need extra room after the body comes off, it will go in the backyard behind the garage.

Let the games begin!

BTW, I ordered outer rockers from the "Rocker King" in WI. I will be getting the necessary floor pans from Classic Fabrication. Both sources are significantly cheaper than the competition.

Hood came off today...

Can you believe I had to cut off the freakin' hood bolts?? I can't catch a break with these things.

I took another rust/dirt bath tonight getting the rear bumper off. All 4 bolts promptly twisted right in half.

What a mess!

I've been just disassembling things one piece at a time, bagging and photographing everything...

I decided to grab the cutoff wheel and welder this afternoon..

This was one of the areas I was concerned about being able to fix myself:




With some patience and a couple hours, it's done!




I took care of another hole that was about 2" wide on the top of the rocker where the sill plate goes:

Nicely done! You have great talent for this.

So...


Is it bad if I want to go back to the garage rather than sleep?

Outer rockers should be here early this/next week.

Not at all Adam. I wish I had your energy.

Winter has hit here as of Thursday, so things are really going to slow down for me, although I do have heaters....

Couple things today...

I replaced the part of the floor next to the front driver's seat today. I know they make a replacement panel for this, but it looked easy enough just to make myself. I had to replace the strip on the rocker that butts up to the floor pan before I made the floor piece first.






Remember these nasty dealies on the front end when I pulled the fenders?




I decided to tackle one of them today..turned out ok, but I think I will work with it and smooth some things out before they get painted.

Chrome / stainless.... talk to Mark at Finishing touch in Chicago.

Did great on pot metal and chrome and polished the stainless so it looks like chrome.
Didn't lose anything and gives a discount for BCA members.

Thanks for the lead, Bill. The pot metal on this car is pretty sad.

You got the fever alrighty...The get er done variety. Good thing there's no vacine for that.

Oh my god....."a couple of hours and all done". WOW. Yeah forget about the car being too much for you, you're too much for the car! LOL

Looks awesome. Someday I gotta learn that. I'd really love to be able to work with metal like that.

My welds are still pretty sloppy, so I have some extra time in cleaning them up and grinding, etc. I suppose that by the time I'm done doing metal work on this thing, I'll be ready for anything


I had to fire up the heater in the garage this weekend. It's getting cold! My idea of extending my garage out to the backyard to make a 4-car tandem garage is getting really tempting...hmmmm.

Adam,

Hang in there man. The progress you are making is really starting to show. I do not know what your time frame is but you seem to be moving along.

Stevo

Outer rockers came yesterday...they are perfect!

I ordered front floor pans from Classic Fabrication this afternoon. I will have to fabricate a piece for the rear right floor under the back seat, same as I did with the drivers side.

The trunk floor will be a pain, too. No one makes panels for the trunk. I also have to figure out how I'm going to replace the trashed trunk seal channel. Not to mention, the underside of the bottom trunk lid.

I made friends with a Sheet metal worker (think A/C ductwork) and he made me a trunk pan. Said it was a challenge and didn't charge and arm or a leg.

After that it just got welded in. You can see some of it in this picture.

Another Saturday, another update..

Rocker panels came early this week, so I started cutting the bad bits out of the driver's side. I could've cut the whole thing out, but I don't have hte doors on as a guide to keep the gaps correct, so I left the "good sections" of the old rockers there and grafted pieces onto it.

As you can barely see in the first photo, the inner rockers are toast, too. I will get the car jacked up tomorrow and finish welding in new metal there. Then the drivers side rocker will be done....




Measuring to cut!






Here is the bad spot in the front. Note the rotted out cowl corner...gotta fix that as soon as I get the rocker done.

The LH rocker itself is done, finally. I got really tired of welding and grinding while laying on my back. I swept up my mess and took a break from metal work, and grabbed a couple parts to clean and paint. This is my favorite part Instant gratification!

I took the shift indicator and took it apart to clean and paint/polish each part separately. I had to re-color the letters. The chrome is a so-so candidate for rechroming, but I can live with it for now. I can always do it later.
I also cleaned up the column shift linkage that connects the column to the transmission.








My garage is a mess. I've been holding off installing new shelves on the back wall because I want to extend the garage out to the backyard so I can have a 4-car garage. But...I'm having trouble justifying the expense.

Looks good, Adam. Keep up the good work. I can only agree that sometimes leaving the rough work and focus on the small parts can be very satisfying...

Adam,

Watching from afar and thinking to myself, "I'm sure glad that's not the car you had me look at before shipping...."

Cheers,
JMC

Me too, John! The white convertible was a very solid car. It's now in Germany with a very happy new owner.

Didn't get very far today...just finished up the inner rocker and rebuilt the lower cowl. I had to guess on what it looked like, since there was literally nothing there to judge from.

Here's the photo I posted above:




Here is the current condition...it's cleaned up a little more now,though. The piece hanging down is actually going to be used to bolt the front fender to the cowl. That portion of the cowl went with the fender when I pulled it off. Same deal on the other side, too.






I started hacking out the front floor section that needs to be replaced.

I also removed some of the body mount bolts on the drivers side. How do you remedy a situation where body mount bolts break off and you don't have access to the nuts on the other side?? Cut an access hole?? Or remove the body, cut out a hole and weld in a new nut??

Do it... You will be glad you did. This ain't your last project. BTW, you are doing a fantastic job, and I'm really glad to see her shaping up. One final note: We were hoping/expecting that you'd make it down for the "event" last month. It looks like you must have been home working on a Buick while everyone else was goofing off. Oh well, maybe next time.

Kevin

Hey Kevin,

I was duck hunting that weekend, and was bummed I couldn't make it. A friend from up near Chicago told me he was there, and was looking for me. That weekend was the only weekend I could get out the hunt, so I had to jump on it.

I heard it was a great success, though!