The New Project: Part Deux!

[njsteve]

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.



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:

[njsteve]

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.

[njsteve]

So, 7 years and 3 days after this:



It's cleaning time again!



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.

[njsteve]

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.





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



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

[njsteve]

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