Alright, Monday was respect for the elder day here, so we had a three day weekend this weekend! So, naturally, I got out there and got some serious work done, haha!
The first thing I tackled was the little safety handle that bolts to the dash. Originally it was a wire frame, with a plastic handle covering the frame. The frame stuck through two holes in the dash and nuts held it on. Well, the plastic had long since deteriorated and after searching for a while for a new handle I got to thinking that maybe I could clean up and just use the handle frame.
I'd need something on the front side of the handle so that the nuts on the back could pull down tight. At first I used a set of nuts on the front and back, but the shiny silver and hex shape really bothered me. So, I went to the store, bought some M6 Allen head bolts, cut off the top, drilled them out and tapped them. They threaded on no problem and once painted white I think the handle ended up looking pretty good!
ToyGuy gets credit for this. He spent quite some time polishing the front grill up while I was running around working on other stuff. I think he did a great job and it looks pretty sharp bolted on!
Those triple carbs keep screaming "Me next!" every time I look at them, haha. Oh, the grill looks pretty nice too!
These two covers are the transmission tunnel covers that cover up the shift linkage and the speedometer cable (can't access the speedo cable from the bottom, haha). This is what they looked like when I started.
Hanging out to dry after cleaning up and painting.
While those dried I got to work cleaning up one of the aluminum trim pieces for the bottom of the door sill. These things had quite a lot of corrosion. The one on top I hadn't started yet and you can see how gross they were, haha. The bottom one is after a couple of hours with a wire brush, carb cleaner, oven cleaner, a scoth brite scrubber and finally some aluminum polish, haha.
Installed on the car.
By this time the two covers for the trans tunnel were dry so I went ahead and bolted them down.
ToyGuy came over again and helped me bolt the hood on (it was kind of in the way and I was afraid I'd drop something on it, haha).
One of my headlight mounts was clearly losing the battle against rust as one mount had completely rusted off. I'd been searching for a new one online since i found out (for about 5 months now) with no avail. Finally, we swung by Classic Car Nagoya and they happened to have a very clean one in the shop! They only had one though, haha.
So here's the nice one holding my Koito sealed beam on the passenger side.
I then cleaned up the one that wasn't dead, sprayed some clear paint on it to hopefully slow the rust down when it decides to come back, and bolted it onto the driver side. It should be noted that the driver side headlight is actually a Stanley sealed beam (which is why they have a different color). I'm fairly certain though that the Stanley light is the original light form 1967. The Koito one is obviously a replacement. Some day I'll hunt down another matching Koito and put it in place.
At any rate, she's starting to look like a car again!
Next I spent some time cleaning up the aluminum trim and bolted it to the front fender. Then I mounted the antenna (although in these pictures I got the mount slightly wrong, it has since been fixed, haha) and bolted the front fender on.
Then I cleaned up the headlight surrounds and put those on as well.
Put the driver side headlight surround on along with the driver front fender.
Now she's really starting to look good. I love that blue air filter box peeking out from behind the grill.
I then got sick of digging through a cardboard box to find the hardware I needed to install something. So I sorted it all out. Not bad considering that's all brand new hardware. Not a single used bolt nut or washer floating around in there, haha.
Cleaned up and bolted on the rear trim.
Then I installed the final trim coverings around the front. I still need to bolt on the one for the hood, but aside from the front bumper and turn signals, the front end is pretty much complete!
Since the paint shop still has all my chrome (I'm really not happy about that, it should not take 3 months to get something chromed, especially when you quoted 4 weeks...) I decided to get to work on the brakes.
So the first step was dismantling the brake master cylinder and linkage and getting it all cleaned up and replacing anything that needs to be replaced.
You can see the linkage on the right side of the master cylinder. That whole area was packed full of what I assume to be 40 year old grease. The stuff was disgusting to say the least, haha.
Pulling it apart resulted in the most foul smelling disgusting brown goo coming out as well. I'm glad I took it apart, I don't want that stuff floating around in my brake system, haha.
Here it is completely dismantled. All the rubber looks acceptable actually, which is quite surprising! I think just a solid cleaning and carefully putting it back together and it'll be a-ok! The only thing that broke was the one snap ring that holds in the piston. I'm sure I can find another one of those though.
And that was about where I ran out of steam and decided to call it a night, haha. Was a very productive weekend though!
Thanks again everyone for all the inspiration and comments, it has been really motivating to hear all the good replies!
Cheers
David
