Re: The New Project: Part Deux!
 

Hi Steve
I actually have checked out cars for sale in New Jersey lately,I figure if I find one there by fluke,at least I know someone that I could have a beer with before driving it home.I drove from Toronto to Vancouver before and Vancouver to Montreal along time ago.
Grant

Re: The New Project: Part Deux!
 

Started working on the car today after being away on a trip. Attempted to get her registered since the forms from Customs finally showed up. Of course once I got there, the DMV lady said I have to contact their headquarters on Monday, since the car is coming from a foreign country. (Of course that advice was completely different from what they told me the last time I was there a couple weeks ago when they said I needed the Customs form to complete the paperwork package.) [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/rolleyes.gif[/img]

I replaced the leaky valve cover gasket and got the horns working (it was a disconnected wire at the relay - solved that one pretty easily). Click on the photo to hear how she sounds at the moment.

http://i1087.photobucket.com/albums/...h_SDC11122.jpg

Re: The New Project: Part Deux!
 

Nice...I love the Pontiac exhaust!

Re: The New Project: Part Deux!
 

In today's &quot;Give A Mouse A Cookie&quot; update, it all started this morning with me taking the rear seat out to fix some of the wrinkles in the seat cover. I pulled the back seat and set it in the 80 degree sun for an hour to soften up. Since I wasn't just going to sit around for the hour, I pulled the other seats out...and then the carpet...etc.

Anyway, I had a bag of hog rings so I adjusted and pulled and remounted all the new seat covers till 90% of the wrinkles were gone. They must have been installed in the Canadian winter and ended up being too loose on the seat foams. It worked out very well in the end.

http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/t...c/SDC11123.jpg

The upright cushions are done, the ones lieing flat are warming up.

http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/t...c/SDC11130.jpg

Re: The New Project: Part Deux!
 

And while all the seats were warming up I pulled the carpet out to see what the floors looked like. All the original tar paper insulation was in place and actually very pliable and sticky (a real mess actually). Sitting in the sun the stuff was just as tacky as the day it was installed 40 years ago.

http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/t...c/SDC11139.jpg

I wanted to examine the floorboards so I started carefully pealing with a plastic putty knife and got all of the tar paper insulation up. The car was originally rust proofed when it was new and it looks like they lifted the carpet and slathered the tar paper with extra cosmoline or some other goop and it pretty much saved the floors but it left a black tar mess in places. Here is what it looked like after a few hours of peeling:

http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/t...c/SDC11143.jpg

http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/t...c/SDC11142.jpg

http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/t...c/SDC11144.jpg

http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/t...c/SDC11145.jpg

http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/t...c/SDC11146.jpg

http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/t...c/SDC11147.jpg

http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/t...c/SDC11148.jpg

Re: The New Project: Part Deux!
 

And look what arrived yesterday:

I ordered a reproduction of the original owner's license plate from these guys: http://www.licenseplates.tv/

It turns out that the CWT-160 plate number that was listed on all of the car's dealership repair orders was in a unique 3-letter/3-number sequence that started in 1973 in Ontario. So it looks like that is as close as the original day-one plate as I am going to get.

http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/t...c/SDC11151.jpg

Re: The New Project: Part Deux!
 

So, 7 years and 3 days after this:

http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/t...sprayday1a.jpg

It's cleaning time again!

http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/t...c/SDC11190.jpg

I set the car on some truck jackstands to get it in the air as high as possible and then soaked the underside with purple stuff cleaner diluted with 2/3 water.

It then donned the Tyvex suit and face shield (much better then the raincoat I wore back in 2005). I then spent the next 8 hours pressure washing the underside. I think the key to getting the undercoating off this time was using hot water. I ran a heavy duty garden hose through the window and hooked it to the washing machine hot water feed. It worked great!

Half way through the day I ended up pulling the aftermarket exhaust to get a better angle on the floor boards.

http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/t...c/SDC11160.jpg

Re: The New Project: Part Deux!
 

Here are some preliminary shots while the car was still wet. That hot water worked well on the 40 year old undercoating. I definitely was a smart idea to get a full face shield. When the 3000 psi hot water hits the undercoating it tends to blow it off in chunks that fly back at you. The black you see on the frame rails is the original black overspray, though it looks kind of grey when wet.

http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/t...c/SDC11168.jpg

http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/t...c/SDC11167.jpg

The undercoating came off the tank nicely to reveal the original date stencil.

http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/t...c/SDC11175.jpg

Original vapor cannister hoses in place (unclamped as originally installed at the factory)

http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/t...c/SDC11177.jpg

Re: The New Project: Part Deux!
 

The floorpan. Gotta get rid of that white paint on the driveshaft!

http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/t...c/SDC11179.jpg

http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/t...c/SDC11189.jpg

Re: The New Project: Part Deux!
 

Very nice Steve. Good ideas!