Too Many Irons In The Fire

Well, the shifter is being held up by clean-up of the mounting fasteners. They were rusty and I didn't want to bolt rust back on the car. Hopefully that will go in over the next day or two.

And, as a result, the carpet hasn't been fit yet either. Fortunately this isn't a race and with more kid's birthday stuff this weekend, a power outage, and other mini projects, it wasn't going to be. But that's OK because I DID get the old seat covers pulled and shipped off to the upholstery guy on Saturday.

Last night I spent a little time doing some quick sketches of what I would like them to be when completed. I am dialing back a bit from what my ideal would be in order to keep prices down however, which is a good thing. Even the less expensive approach will be pretty spendy considering the car was only $1,300 in the first place, and new upholstery will be more than half that cost again. But the impact will be huge!

The look will be correct for the era, while adding a bit of a "sporty" feel. And reuse of the bright trim will really make this dazzling! Now I just have to wait 3-4 weeks for my new covers, and hopefully no more than that. I guess I will use that time to finish up the headers, finish porting the second head, finish disassembling the seats, frames and interior panels for blasting and refinishing.

Plenty to keep me busy in the meantime.

Starting To Install Shifter...

The new carpet came on Thursday and I wanted to get it opened up and check the fit, so Friday while the kids were napping I pulled the carpet and sound-deadener out. Thinks were pretty filthy, but the floors look amazing! For 45 years old, there is only light rust staining in a couple spots by the seams.

This is why you buy cars from the South and out West. It cost me about $800 to have it shipped here, but if this needed new floors and had the typical rot you see from midwest cars, you would easily pay that in repairs.

I also took this opportunity to cut the hole for the floor shifter. Got to use my new "nibbler" for the hole. What a great tool. Especially if you like 10,000 tiny crescent shaped razor sharp slivers of metal. But, it did a great job.

First Header Well Under Way...

All I can say is, making your own headers is a lot of work! But, I have three of the first 4 tubes in without having to jack up the car ... yet. I just need to do the 4th primary tube and weld on the collector before I can call it done-ish.

I still haven't decided what I will be doing for the final finish, but I'm thinking about alumi-coating.

I am eager to get this one done so I can move on to the second, and considerably easier, side!

Starting On the Headers

I've decided that I really didn't want to put the old truck exhaust manifolds back on the car. They are ugly and are quite possibly the worst performing manifolds available for the car. Even after taking time to port one of them I'm just not convinced that I will be happy with them.

So, I've decided to add headers. There's a couple of problems with that: the headers hang very low, and they start at $369 + shipping!

For my family cruiser wagon I really don't want exhaust that I am having to weld skid plates on to, so I decided to go another route - I bought a kit to make my own. I must be out of my mind! But, we're going to give this a whirl. Below are a couple of pics of where I am at as of last night. I am starting with the hard side. I figure if I can do this side, the other side is a cake walk.

Engine and Trans Installed!

This past weekend I spent half a day getting everything set and installed the engine (long block) and trans in the car, but not before adding a B&M shift kit and installing a new Lokar shift arm so I can convert over to a floor shift.

The shift kit took a while to do, but was pretty straight forward. The shift arm is a dream - what a great product! If I don't have to stay stock, I will never worry about trying to find a correct stock part for the shift linkages again. Great quality and well engineered. The only downsides were it it is much larger than a factory shift arm, so clearance could be an issue (I had to flip mine backward from what I had intended to clear the tunnel) and the price - it was $65 which is roughly double what I could have paid for other alternatives, but this looks great and is very well engineered.

More to come to get things up to date...