This restoration project is making slow but steady progress. It's amazing how long some seemingly simple things can take. ('PITA', which I learned on this board, is my new favorite acronym). But I am taking my time and documenting plenty along the way. The major advances since my last post have been dealing with the glass, electrical system, removal of the passenger side fender, and assessing rust, at least in the front half of the body.
The glass required more sweat than anything. The rubber was stiff and very tough to cut, I practically whittled the rear window out. But in the end it came. The door glass wasn't too bad, with the exception of the now expected problem of one bolt on every assembly being nearly impossible to remove, either being frozen, stripped, its backing nut loose and spinning (and/or inaccessible), rounded out/off. But I'm sure I'm not telling anyone anything they don't already know.
With the encouragement of folks here I did tackle the wiring harness, at least most of the way. It's now disconnected from everything (and exhaustively labeled and photographed). It's more or less just a forward bundle and aft bundle still running through the tunnel. I haven't pulled it all into the passenger compartment yet, mostly because I'm worried that my labels might get stripped off pulling it through the footwell. But everything is in a bag, easily stowed in the smuggler's box and out of the way.
The passenger side fender was mainly a problem of waiting for the right tools. Man was I excited to get my compressor and angle grinder so that I could cut an unexpected weld holding the front point of the fender to the front of the tub. I was very disappointed that the fender didn't just fall off once that cut was made. Turned out to have been welded also at the front of the outer rocker (and deeply bondoed over) and, worse, along most of the seam to the inner support under the wheel well, and here caked over with thick asphalty undercoating.
Once the fender came off I was very anxious to see what structural damage might have required such desperate measures. I was pretty happy to find that most of the problems were confined to the vertical support (in this case a simple piece of roughly cut sheet metal barely holding the badly rusted outer rim of the original support in place. There's some holes in the wheel well, especially up high (as on the drivers side), and I don't know how much of that will end up having to be replaced. But most of the metal there seems pretty solid.
Below are pictures of these last few accomplishments, and a few other rusted areas (yes, the cavernous hole peeking out of the passenger side rocker opening is ominous.) I'm off for a week or so break, but will be looking forward to starting to address some of these problems soon, instead of just uncovering them! I am lurking on Craigslist waiting for the right welder to come along, but it won't be too long before I just bite the bullet and buy a new one. A new Hobart Handler 140 can be had for about $450 from a few online sellers. I'm sure it would be a worthwhile investment.
First, the glassless look:
The nice clean underdash area, the wiring harness bundled, bagged and stowed:
Finally, both fenders off:
Upper passenger side front wheel well:
Upper driver side front wheel well:
Passenger side rocker/front wheel well junction (scary):
All for now,
Mike