Fun in the Sun

Bloody hell, I forgot to take the camera again. Quelle tragadaire (as we say in German) for yesterday we took some huge leaps forward. We put a welded bead down the driver’s door post, for strength, and Gene started to Bondo up the panel. I vacuumed out the trunk and the car and removed 100 lbs of sand, I also cleared out 17 Falls worth of leaves and twigs. The big old rust holes in the rear wheel arches and under the rear seat are sealed with plates and weld. (I now have body shop hands, covered in tiny nicks from the jagged edges of the tin and I can’t unclench my fingers after hours using the tin snips). I also closed up the gaping holes in the trunk and the next step will be to Bondo, prime, paint and then seal with tar, damn this car is going to be solid.

In true Appalachian manner Marco failed to show. Apparently he had a good week and earned enough beer and nicotine money so he didn’t need my largesse or me. I suspect that he realized that he had an appointment with the chassis and the sandblaster again and that may have been the reason that he simply drove up and down the road all day on his decrepit ATV. He drinks about a gallon of soda a day so I bought a couple of cases of Walmart’s finest (cheapest) first thing and put them in the shop fridge. Haha your loss Marco.

We also reached a big miles stone today inasmuch as we are starting to put things back. The gas tank is ready to go back in, having been primed and sprayed. I just need to get a new fuel gauge sender, which I ordered today. With the tank in I can then disconnect the bleach bottle by the radiator, which is currently my 2-quart tank.

I will get some pictures of my patches and post them during the week so that you can fall prostrate in front of my bodyshop manliness.
Money spent; $8 on sodas (git) $76.99 Gas tank sender.

The 100 year car?

Another fulfilling evening for Team Galaxie. The major achievement was getting the damaged door pillar straightened. We could have saved hours by just Bondo-ing it but the greater the Bondo the less the strength. In addition the fill would be right behind the drivers door and I am sure that 20 years of door slamming would eventually crack it out. So Gene sat outside and heated the pillar with a torch and I lay inside and gently tapped the panel out. Success!! (of course the car was like a sauna when I finished but it was a small price to pay).

In another minor step forward we primed and painted the gas tank and the bumper brackets. None of this will show when the car is rebuilt but I have the satisfaction of knowing that the job was done right and will last forever. I have also decided to extend the projected life of the Galaxie. The car is now 44 years old and will be in its prime at 50. So is it too much to anticipate it lasting for 100 years? Nah, Kimberley, I predict that in 60 years your grandchildren will be ingratiating themselves in the hope of being bequeathed the car.

The DMV (part II)

This might be a wild guess but I am thinking that the DMV rotate their staff according to a psychological evaluation

Thursday is the day for miserable old crones whose life ambition is to destroy ones faith in the American dream. Tuesday, on the other hand, is the day for happy smiley people who only want to fill you with a childlike sense of wonder at the beauty of the bureaucracy of local government in all of its majesty.

You may have already guessed that I got the Galaxie titled today.

More fun with Gene

For a brief moment I started to feel a touch dissatisfied with the progress that we are making. It seems like we put in a huge day and when I look at the car I can’t see what we did. Then it struck me that I had probably overdosed on car shows, you know, Pimp my Ride, Wrecks to Riches, Trick my Truck. Now I know that they don’t actually get a full restoration done in 30 minutes (duh) but they claim it takes a week. Still they have a huge team and work 24/7. Team Galaxie comprises of Gene, Marco and myself and now the evenings are drawing in we will shortly be down to just one day a week. The good news is that time is not of the essence and the real problem is that I am excited about getting this proud and haughty beauty back on the road.
So progress this weekend; I get the gas tank slosh and spend hours getting the rust out of

Me with a tank full of stones

the tank. Marco came up with the ultimate solution, which was to fill the tank with rocks and shake rattle and roll for 30 minutes. After that we sandblasted the tank and found several small pinholes that the slosh is supposed to seal. Gene (the professional that he is) decided that we should Bondo the outside first and get this, he also sanded the Bondo down. This is the top of tank, which is not only out of sight but pressed up against the body. This is the quality of his work


Gene gives a master class

Marco sandblasted the underside of the chassis and body and then sprayed on the primer. The smell of the paint made me retch at 20 feet but Marco is spraying happily with no mask and a cigarette in the other hand.

Marco proving that he can live without oxygen


I got the hardware off the bumpers so that we can get them sent away for re-chroming. Damn there is a huge amount of metal and brackets, these bumpers are build like a box girder bridge. One of the great things about working in a professional shop is having the right tools. The air powered impact wrench made short work of 43 years of rust and I would still be there if I was using a socket wrench.


The last time she was on the road


I am going to have to replace the wheels with 15” in order to accommodate the front disks which means that I have a set of 14”alloys surplus to requirements. One of Gene’s buddies turned up on Saturday and in conversation it transpired that he has a set of skirts for the Galaxie (skirts are the panels that shroud the rear wheels and I think that they make the car look even cooler). It may be that a straight swap is going to happen here and that works fine for me.

Finally, between writing this entry and publishing it, Gene arrived for a coffee and a chat. He thinks that he may have a set of 15" wire wheels and that would be so sweet. Watch this space.

The (wretched) DMV

I have this feeling that the DMV is staffed exclusively by withered old crones whose life regret is that they were born too late to have served in the Hitler Youth (although judging by their appearance some of them probably served under the Kaiser).

Today I went to title the Galaxie and I may just have well talked to the outside wall for all the help I got. It appears that the car value charts that are used to assess the fees payable, do not go back to 1963 so they need a bill of sale. In addition the hill billy that I purchased the car from did not bother to title it (in the trade this is known as title jumping, I am learning so much). Now the DMV want me to explain why it was not titled in 2002 which is the last date show, but how would I know?

So the best that they can suggest is that I need to get a bill of sale from the last person shown on the title and I think that we can all agree that is no help at all, especially as the DMV bill of sale form states "under penalty of perjury". Jesus I fake that and it is 6 months in the slammer followed by a slow boat back to frigging Blighty.

So the conversation ended with

"I am sorry but do you actually have a helpful suggestion?"
"No, next!! "

God bless the DMV

Repairs

I managed to squeeze in a couple of hours on the Galaxie last night, between the end of my working day and the end of the daylight. Gene has been doing this stuff for the last 60 years but last night we did something that he had never done before. We glued a metal patch onto the rear quarter. Apparently glues have advanced to the stage where they are stronger than weld and of course it is cleaner, easier and no danger of overheating and warping the metal. That was the sum of our labors but it was good to see the rust holes disappear.

Saturday will be another full day and if Marco does not show I will be underneath sandblasting the chassis and underside. I can't pretend to be looking forward to it but getting the underside really clean, painted and tarred up is going to be a priority especially as the plan is that the car will stay in the family for the next 20 years.

I have scoured the four quarters of the Internet for information on converting the Galaxie to front discs. There are some rumors that the parts from a Mustang will bolt on but no real definitive statements. It looks like I will bite the bullet and just buy the kit, it probably makes sense to buy new brake parts. This is what it looks like https://dfbrakes.com/products.asp?id=32 .

This Saturday I will remember the camera so the next post will include plenty of progress type pictures.

Money spent: Thinners $50, Tank Slosh $35

And on we go,

Well we made huge progress this weekend, sadly I forgot the camera so no pictures this time. Sorry y'awl.

In fact we made more progress that should have been possible as Marco set to work on Friday and got the brakes working. Gene loaned me a master cylinder (which will be returned next year when I convert to front disks) and with the two new slaves Marco did a complete brake job in 3.5 hours for which he charged me $28, is that a deal or what?

So on Saturday Gene and Marco attacked the underside of the car and the inside of the trunk. They uncovered what I thought were vast rust holes but Gene says that they aint nuttin, she's rusted out exactly were I expect her to be and I'll have um done better than she ever was.

The driver's door has to be replaced and we got a spare with the car. I set to work sanding it down and discovered that this door was white, then black, then primer followed by red. Eventually someone spilled blue all over the glass and let it run down the door. The trick, so I was told, is to hold the sander flat to the panel, in this way you uncover any low spots. When I was finished Gene pointed out two minuscule imperfections that will be filled before we paint. I have this happy feeling that the Galaxie is going to end up looking better than the day it left the line in 63.

The sides, underside and inside of the door were all tickled with the sandblaster and let me tell you people that is a brutal summbitch. We found some rust along the seam but nothing the maestro can't handle and again better than new.

And that was about my day apart from getting the damaged door off and set to one side, which was about as heavy as I could carry. I wonder if they are called muscle cars because you need muscles to repair them. I also discovered that the sand from the blaster gets everywhere and even after a 30 minute shower I was still picking grains from some very recessed nooks and crannies.

Money spent ; $24 on paint stripper, wire brushes and assorted odds and ends.

More Prep

Well it might not appear that we made too much progress but things are moving on. The big issue is the panel behind the driver's door. (I don't care about the door, as I have a replacement). We got the porta power in behind and pressed out most of the damage but the line of the seam is not right. Gene (who knows about these things) reckons that we can put a torch on it and get the seam straight with an air chisel, and who am I to argue? So it looks like that will be the big job for Saturday. Anyway here is where we are today.


The driver's side panel after we tickled it with the presses. If you think that this looks bad, it was infinitely worse before we beat it up!

We also had a look at the rear quarters and discovered that we are not the first to boldly go..... As you can see from the photo someone has beaten us to it. Even though this is quite a nice repair the other side has already rusted through (see previous pics). As the plan is that this proud and haughty beauty will stay in the family for the next 20 years it is all going to be redone in metal courtesy of Gene.

You can clearly see that pop rivets and bondo in this repair. It is all coming out to be replaced with a nice welded panel.



Finally one of Gene's buddies turned up and with the benefit of a pint of White Lightning proceeded to give us some advice. Here's to you JP


Tomorrow is Saturday and I shall be putting in a full day on the Princess. Call me sad if you will but I am so looking forward to it. Watch this space.

Progress

Well just as I was finishing the blog below Gene arrived. I told him my story and he offered to make it alright. So he wandered off into the 92 degree heat and got all the parts that I needed and arranged for me to pick them up the same day. So now I have brakes and shocks and paraphernalia and something to fix on Thursday night.

I laid out all the brightwork and trim tonight and my goodness there is a lot of it. There must be at least 50 pieces of aluminum and chrome whose sole purpose is to make the Galaxie look pretty. There was no superglue in those days so each piece is held on with myriad of screws. I guess you could not afford the labor these days to build such a thing.

By the way I have suddenly realized that I paid (far) more for this project than the original owner did back in 1963.

Money spent; $204

Shopping

How I hate shopping. That is unless I can walk into a store pick up what I need and be home in 15 minutes. Monday all I wanted was 4 slave brake cylinders, a set of rear brake shoes, a set of shock absorbers and some brake fluid.

Now I accept that out here in the backwoods some obscure parts might be hard to find but come on people this is that land of the Ford here. Anyhow, Autozone could only provide a set of rear cylinders and wanted me to identify the type of shocks fitted. In a fit of pique I told them to poke it and took my business to Advance Auto. Now these folks were as useful as a chocolate fireguard. They could only supply the rear cylinders but only if I told them what size I needed. Now I am in a high dudgeon so I just stomped off home ignoring the pleas of the clerk who assured me that everything could be ordered.

Of course I will have to go back cap in hand and order the parts otherwise I will have nothing to do this weekend.

On a happier note I was able to find a complete set of exterior and interior trim screws on Ebay so at least I got something.

Money spent; $39.50

The Adventure Starts

The Galaxie is home. Here she is finally out of the rain. The last safety sticker shows 1994 so I am guessing that was the last time she was run. Sifting through all the parts I found the original owner's details so it might be fun to call him up (if he is still alive) when this project is finished and as his address was just 60 miles away, show him his beautifully restored car.

This is the only rust that we could find and in
the scheme of things it is pretty trivial

So what have we done? Well I drove her into the garage and discovered the no brakes syndrome. It was more like an "oh crap how do I stop this thing syndrome." This is not an issue as the complete brake system will be replaced anyway, but getting the brakes to work will be a priority. In the fullness of time the front brakes will be converted to power assisted disks so I don't want to spend a huge amount of wedge on the drums. Fortunately my mentor, Gene, has a spare master cylinder to loan me so I just need to get 4 slaves at $12 each and a set of rear shoes and that should do me.

All the bright work loaded onto my truck for
the journey home and polishing

And now for a story from the "Irony Department". We needed to change the wheels for some old ones that we don't care if they get covered in primer. Gene gave me the big old jack and suggested that I jacked it on the frame. I pointed out that if I jacked it on the differential I could get both wheels in the air at once. Having got it in the air and the lug nuts off I found that the tires would not clear the wheel arches, because the suspension was driven up into the body. Gene looked down, smiled and said "Now how do feel about jacking it on the frame?"

Money spent; $312 on primer, grit and assorted preparation stuff. It all fitted into a small cardboard box, still at least I got two free rolls of towels.

Next step to repair the brakes and replace the shocks.

Gene and I cleaned up and enjoying a well-earned beer