Or knuckle-scrapes, body odor, and dirt in the eyes…
It was a little bit of a trial today removing the drive-shaft and getting ready for sheet metal work. I managed to get the drive-shaft down while only partially blinding myself with rust and dirt from underneath the ‘Vette. Then during removing some fiberglass covers, I manage to cut my hand without noticing it. Jackie noticed it though and exclaimed, “Dad! You’re bleeding!” It had mostly stopped, though, so I kept working.
Jackie’s trial was that she had to put up with my body odor. I had left my work clothes in a pile in the hamper from when I worked on her Fiero last Saturday (in the hot hot sun I should add). They then fermented, and made for a wonderful boque of sweaty male. Unfortunately, I had no other “grunge clothes” to don, so smelly B.O. ridden outfit it was. I was only allowed to continue after we opened the garage door (which came at the cost of mosquitoes) and I promised I would wash the work clothes before our next session.
On the restoration front, there has been a fair amount of progress since March. We finished the engine rebuild and it is looking sweet! We finished removing the steering column, the power brake booster, the brake pedal and mountings, and the gas pedal.
The 350ci Small Block is now assembled!
We are getting ready to weld in new sheet metal in the floor pans, and as part of the prepration we’re having to clear the area around the welds; specifically the door sill area. This requires removing the door and then the fiberglass covering the door pillar, and door sill. We started by using the engine lift to hold up the door while Jackie removed the hinge bolts.
Jackie removing the driver’s door.
After the door was placed on saw horses, we worked on removing the door pillar fiberglass cover with Jackie drilling out most of the rivets.
The driver’s door resting on saw horses. We’ll take care of the parking-lot rash when we repaint.
After we removed the door pillar cover.
The door sill itself is going to be a little more involved. We need to cut through the bonding joints and we want to make sure not to cut in the wrong places, so we need to do a little more research.
More to come, hopefully with less blood-letting.