I'm very sorry for your misfortune, but I thought that it was pretty well known that you can not sand blast body parts without warping them. I've seen several cars years ago that were scrapped because of this. When I was doing my car I had some areas blasted, such as the door jambs and trunk seal area, but told the blaster not to touch the large areas.

Bought a '70 chevelle deck lid a few years from a seller whose price included media blasting.I told him it wasn't necessary and agreed to meet him at an upcoming swapmeet.Well he went ahead and blasted it anyway and it pretty much ended up looking like your roof.
Needless to say the deal fell through and he agreed to a refund & how I felt about it.

Any updates on this? I hope it can be saved.

Thank you for asking. It means quite a bit.

It’s savable. I’m not happy about it, but really the roof is far and away the worst part. I’ll have to spend time shrinking all the sheetmetal into shape and it’ll need a skim coat of filler. But honestly the quarters had a little more hiding than I thought. And while I’m annoyed about the doors I think my dad and I can fix them too.

Otherwise I’ve been having an issue getting head studs for the engine and I can’t put the heads on the engine without them lol. Milodon makes studs. But all the lengths are wrong. They sent me the right length, but the wrong size. It’s been about a month now and I’m still waiting to hear about them sending me the right size and length studs.

Also, it’s been brutally hot and sticky this summer. The car is sitting in a wood garage which wicks the moisture away so the car hasn’t rusted at all. I figure in the fall I’ll be able to get the car in primer and jump into the bodywork. Hopefully I can have an update with engine and blower stuff soon.

Glad to hear. It's a very interesting build not something you see everyday. Good luck.

Well. Things only change if you work on them. So today I was able to spend some time on things.
The Milodon head studs finally showed up. It took forever to get these sorted out because first their height was wrong, then they sent the wrong width studs, then I finally got everything right. After cleaning the decks I got the heads dropped on their dowels and slathered in arp lube. Then tightened everything to 80ft/pounds. Except the lower corner studs. They went to 65 as they’re known to crack on the 1970 specific heads. AMC actually recommended a different torque sequence on these heads(which I followed).
I needed a little motivation after the heads were down so I got the intake down to see how much it needed to be cut. After that I dropped the blower plate and blower into place and marveled at it for awhile. Then I sent pictures of the intake to the machine shop and took a ride there to drop it off. He’s going to get it back to me Monday after an initial cut to see how much more it needs.

Then my dad and I got the front axle back on the car. I need to modify the front spring shackles a little for proper clearance. So I’ll bring them to work next week to trim them down. I was going to be done for the day but my dad and I started looking at all the holes in the firewall. And then I started the generator to run the welder, and welded most of the holes shut on the firewall.

I also ordered a rear floor pan for a Nova, and a front floor pan for a javelin. Hopefully that’ll give me enough sheet metal to weld the floors back together. Pictures of that will start once the car’s in primer next month. I’m waiting for the humidity to go down some into the fall.

Thanks for reading. I personally think I’m going to leave the car in primer for awhile and just get it built. And I can do the bodywork at a later time. I always wanted to live the Two Lane Blacktop life anyways.

Finally have a little time to make an update. The text should roughly follow the pictures I’m going to post.

After looking all over the place I finally found where Marty hid the other shock mount I remember him playing with at one point. It was in the bottom of a toy bin. He hid it for later. I got it installed in my little mount and welded to the frame so both front upper shock mounts are complete.

I’ve been working on removing the passenger side floor pan. I picked up a Javelin replacement. It’s almost the same except for near the hump. I’m still working on getting it cut out nicely so I can begin the process of getting the floor installed around the cage.

After Scott(my machinist) cut the upper edge of the intake to clear the valve cover rails I brought it home and tried it. It was much closer but now the china walls at each end of the block were hitting the intake first. So I took a ride back over there and he cut it while we bullshitted for a few minutes. He had .070 cut off the walls in about 5 minutes. Unfortunately it needs to be cut on the intake mounting pads so I brought it back to him today. I brought a NOS factory intake gasket to measure the thickness(.015) and he’s going to cut another .010 on both sides. Hopefully then it’ll sit nice and I can leave the intake on while I figure out all the pulleys and mounts in the winter.

I started messing with mounting the 70 challenger BB radiator I had laying around. After some trial and error I came up with these little mounts that will hold the radiator, support the hood/hood pins, and can eventually also support the fiberglass fenders. I’m not a fabricator in any way, shape, or form. So feel free to make fun of them.

I measured for the pushrods today. On the valvestem on the left I ended up at 7.900. So I placed an order today from Competition Products for a set of valve covers. That wasn’t without its setbacks. I guess I haven’t turned the engine over since I bolted on the pan. And I hit a spot in the pan and it wouldn’t turn. Taking it apart I found a stud holding the Aviad pan windage tray was hitting the connecting rods. After first trying to trim it down to the nut. I ended up cutting off the whole stupid thing. I found a NOS oil pan gasket set in my basement so I used those 50 year old cork gaskets since I destroyed the first set removing the pan.

I also got around to finally making the small -12 feed line for the external oil feed to the block. And I had a local shop make a small -6 hose for the valley oil line. It’s a little too long but it’s not in the way of anything so it’ll ride.

Marty wanted to sit in the car and help work on it over the last couple of days.

Thanks for reading.

Had a little time over the last few days to play with the car here and there.

Got the fuel cell and battery box loosely installed in the trunk so I can eventually start planning out my shutoff, cables, and hoses.

Ordere 1” valve cover spacers and got them installed. Once glued to the block I found that 1 rocker arm on each side ended up lightly touching the spacer. So I had to clean it with a file to fit. I caught most of the shavings and after I ran the oil pump primer for about 15 minutes one day I’ll swap filters out hoping that caught most of whatever was left before I start it. I ran the primer for about 5 minutes today while turning the engine to get oil up all the pushrods and rocker arms.

Of course after that I found the valve covers also hit the rocker arms. But the valve covers require other machining too. So once I have all of the parts I need they’ll go to Scott so he can do everything at once.

At the end of the day I test fit the intake back on. Scott cut .025 off, adding back .015 for the steel shim gasket I’ll be using. So a true loss of .010. It’s going to be close but I should be able to get all the bolts in. And then I wanted to see if my Grant Flamethrower distributor would clear the blower/ drive. Which I believe it will.

My dad and I are hoping that next weekend we can get the engine painted, and within a few weeks get the car in primer. Before winter I want to drop the engine and trans back into the car so I can start figuring out all of my pulleys, drives, hoses, lines, and linkages. It’ll be a lot of work. But the engine really needs to be in the car to do it.

Thanks for reading.