Post 12: Milestones

Haven't had much time to post, but that's because I've been busy working on the Ford.

Milestone 1: Early last week I finally finished cleaning the undercarriage.  It only took me a few weeks to clean off 60 years of grime, but it was just about the worst job I've ever undertaken on this car.  I'm definitely glad I did it but I can see why people send car bodies out to get blasted and cleaned by professionals.

Here's the last bare metal I uncovered:










Milestone 2:  Saturday morning I finished painting everything under the body with Zero Rust.  I could have finished Friday night, but I ran out of paint with only the wheel wells to go.  Strangely, I didn't take any pictures of the completed project.  I'll get those up tomorrow.

As the paint dried, I started working on spreading seam sealer around under the front of the car.  I'd never used it before and was surprised at how easy it went on, but I only spent about half an hour on it before I couldn't stand being under the car anymore.  I've spent week after week under there and I still have so much to do... I just needed a change of pace.

So, I broke my "finish the body and firewall before working on anything else" rule.  The weather was perfect (low 70s) so I went out back and started blowing the suspension apart.  It felt good to use tools other than scrapers and angle grinders for a change.  I got the entire front and rear suspensions removed and arranged the parts into "sandblast" and "non-sandblast" piles before calling it a day.

Today, I spent pretty much the entire day cleaning the frame.  It's not done but I made a lot of progress.  I also cut off all of the old brackets and hangers that I know I won't use in the future, including the rear shock mounts.  I know these cars were mass-produced but I'm kind of surprised at the poor quality of assembly at times.  The shock mounts were nowhere near evenly spaced, and many of the welds on the crossmembers and frame are porous or burned through.  I may spend some time re-welding a few joints after everything is clean.

















I figure I'll try to work on the seam sealer after work this week, maybe just an hour a night or so.