Update 6/16/2013

I have been making steady progress with the restoration of all the parts, I recently had my two little cousins come and stay for a week. They are just as crazy about cars as I am so they helped out quite a bit which was great to have a few extra hands! Here is what we got done:

Tail Lights

After having the tail light assemblies sit for some time, I finally got the hardware that I needed to complete them. The lenses had some cracks in them and I did not want to replace them so I ground a small trench along the crack on the inside of the lenses and filled it will epoxy just to prevent water from going inside. Then cleaned the housing and peeled all of the old sealant from the grove. Also the chrome on the plastic piece was polished as best as it could be. After putting new sealant and placing the lenses in the housing the lenses were buffed thoroughly.

 Door Panel Pieces

Since I was working this past week while my cousins were here I wanted to give them something to do while I was at work and despite my instincts, I let them work on some parts from the car. I forgot to mention that they are 15 and 12 years old, but I knew they wanted to see this car done as bad as I did so I gave them the task of cleaning up all of the parts on the door panel. Besides not taking a before picture they did great, washed all the parts, polished all the chrome, and used black restore on all the black parts.

 Steering Column

While I had the help around I wanted to tackle something a little bit bigger, so I decide to restore the steering column. This was great fun for me and my cousins, like always I pulled it pretty much completely apart making sure to take TONS of pictures so I could remember how to put it back together. After everything was in pieces the column got sanded, primed, and painted satin black. The section of the column that sticks out the firewall and gets connected to the gear housing got paint white to match the other steering components. I was originally planning on refinishing the wood on the steering wheel but after pulling off the cover I found that there was no need to, the wood was in amazing condition. The previous owner must have put the cover on as soon as he got the car. So the only thing to do was paint the supports and put everything back together. I must say I am extremely happy with how it came out!

Engine Update

I got a call a couple of days ago from my uncle, relaying the progress of my engine. He said that himself and the gentleman rebuilding my engine have pulled it completely apart and that some water got into two cylinders and corroded the piss out of them, so they will need to be re-sleeved and I am going to need new pistons. I guess this isn't terrible news considering that all I need to do is pay for parts and he is willing to do the work free of charge.

Update 6/02/2013 - Part 2

So I have started going through the parts that I have and cleaning them up, here is what I have done this past week:

Center Console

I completely disassembled the center console. The previous owner replaced some switches and there is a couple unfamiliar hole drilled that I think he wanted to add some additional switches. For now I am not going to try and cover the holes but I will mostly putting more switches in the cutout spaces just to fill them.

Front Blinkers

The front blinkers were fairly easy to clean up with exception of these two mounting brackets that had rusted  and could not be used. I replicated them as best as I could by welding a bolt to piece of sheet metal and they turned out pretty good, I painted them white so you wouldn't be able to noticed them through the amber lenses. I washed the housings and I think some of the black undercoating got splattered on the housings because I scrubbed and scrubbed but was not able to get it all off. Maybe I shouldn't have cared but i'm just stubborn. The old and cracking heat shrink was cut off and I wrapped the wires in electrical tape, winding the tape in one direction and again in the opposite direction to make sure no water gets in. I sprayed the rubber seal in WD-40  and let it sit for some time to rejuvenate it and lastly polished the lenses.

Rear Bumper

I discovered that the middle section of the bumper was cut out for some reason! I decided I would take it apart and salvage what I could. After seeing how rusty the inside of the bumper was I soaked it in penetrating oil and started to try and loosen the nuts holding the rubber strip on...*SNAP* the bolt sheared right off! No effort at all. I figured that one wasn't so bad, and tried a second nut, nice and easy now...*SNAP* there goes a second bolt. Now I just want to get the darn thing off and what do you know they ALL sheared off. Next I worked on separating the corner section from the cut middle piece. I won’t go into detail but it ends with me throwing a wrench and trashing the bumper sections!    

Side Marker Lights

The four side marker lights didn't look too bad at first glance but it was a different story when I took the rubber covers off, at least for the front pair. One of the front marker lights was extremely rusty and even had a hole in it. I ended up only working on the two rear marker lights since I am going to need to find another front marker light. Like the other assemblies, I took it completely apart, buffed the chrome, polished the lenses, and rejuvenated the rubber. I wanted to make sure that the housing would stand the test of time so I       POR-15'ed it (doing the 3 step processes).

Dome Light

The dome light really didn't have anything wrong with it, was only a little dusty, But that was enough for me to take it all apart (partly because I wanted to see how everything works). I just washed everything with soap and water, then dried thoroughly. 

Update 6/02/2013 - Part 1

Sorry for the delay on posting, I have been rather busy with other family matters, but now that I have a second to spare I would like to update you all on my progress. First off, I made really good progress on organizing the wealth of parts that I have. There are still a couple of boxes of parts that I have really no idea what they are, but I'll leave those for another day. For the parts that I did know, they were placed in boxes and labeled. The transformation of the space that I was given is pretty significant, Just take a look!

The next step is to go through one box at a time and restore the part inside so that when I do the final assembly of the car all the parts are ready to go in without having to clean them up.

I'll be doing more update posts like this one showing what I have done, as well as technical information of various processes that I used and the products I used. If any of you have questions on how I did something or suggestions please don't hesitated to leave a comment.