Body work - rust!

So it has been a loooong time since i last posted, work just gets in the way of dreams some times.

Chassis work has progressed as has the motor rebuild, but that's for another post...

This post is about the rust repairs which have finally commenced. The repro body panel sections arrived, the sills turned out to be completely the wrong shape and BLACK CAR who i got them all through were fantastic and sent me the correct ones as soon as i let them know. That is, they sent a new set all the way to Australia, no cost to me at all, as it should be but still, pretty good customer service and i would use them again if i needed to.

Here are the panels as first unpacked. The sills are the wrong ones in this photo, as is one section of front fender repair, but i can still use it.

This past week work began on the rusty sills drivers side (this is an Australian built car, so that means the RH side)

Pretty much the inner and outer sills are trash as is the support inner structure for the front door hinge pillars at the floor as well.

So let the cutting begin! bit by bit. First job is to get the front pillar supported so front of the under front floor support is removed both inner and outer sill sections.

The bottom of the door pillar is also riddled with holes so that needed fixing first

CHASSIS STRIP DOWN - The front end

Well, time to strip the chassis down...

The project is full steam ahead. Rust repair panels are on the slow boat from America, more on them when they arrive an a couple of months time.

The engine has been dropped off to be rebuilt and I wont see it back for 5 or 6 months. More on that as it gets pulled down etc to reveal just what needs to be done.

So the next 8 weeks are dedicated to the chassis. It has had a sound hammering I can tell you!

First job up was to remove the front brake drums and brakes. I was not prepared for what I found. Ive done this plenty of times on other cars so figured they may be a a bit worn...but...

On the left side, the brake assembly was missing one spring and rod that holds the shoe down and the other was bent way out of straight. The right side I couldn't get the drum of until I wound the shoe adjustment right in. The pics tell it, the grooves in the drums are far deeper than the photo shows and I think puts them beyond use, the shoes are down past the rivets and are missing sections on brake lining and have been running on the steel for quite a while i presume.

That done it was onto the top and bottom arms, with getting the shocks out. Another baffling battle.

I use a home made set up for getting coils springs out. I have used them on the Galaxie and the Cadillac and now on the Fairlane. Makes removing them a breeze. Basically a 2 ft length of threaded rod with cross plates inside the spring and a series of greased washers and a nut on the top  of the spring tower. And simply wind it up to compress the spring, remover the bottom ball joint, lower the arm and wind the spring down. Reverse to put them back...

The lower shock mounts appear to be off another car, using the saddle style mount (that I am sure the Fairlane did not come with) These were bolted in place on one side with square head nut and bolts too inaccessible to spanners that I am convinced they were never done up more than finger tight in the first place. The fruits of the dodgy conversion and a testament again to the hard life of the car is the worn out shock mount holes in the lower arms

The next big challenge was removing the top and bottom arms. The top arms are a no brainer. But the bottom were a puzzle to start with. Past yank tanks I had, had bolts that went right through and this looked the same due to the large hex head on the 'bolts'. But nope. They simply would not budge. A read of the 1959 form workshop manual revealed...nothing. So I hopped onto google and found a guys blog where he showed pictures of them...as pins. Thank you Google and 'ranchwagon' blogger.

Two came out relatively easy but two were so rusted to the inner bush that they just refused to budge. In the end I destroyed the bushes around them using chisels and heat to strip them down to the pin, at least with one pin out of each side and the bushes being so stuffed and worn i was able to wriggle the lower arms off.

Anyway, for the enlightenment of those who may be doing the same vehicle and are not intimately acquainted with them, THIS it the pin that goes right through the bushes...

 So loose has the front end been, that the front LHS hole for the pin through the chassis has worn the hole right out past the reinforcing plate:

 OK, All arms off next up was the sway bar.

This car has a chassis literally full of dirt. All encapsulated nuts in the chassis appear to be firmly rusted up due to the dirt probably having also spent a lot of time wet. There was no way I was going to try to wrench the bolts out, as I figured they will either snap or tear out the nuts. After getting a finger in the access hole each side and scooping out the packed in dirt i got a blow torch in the hole and heated the offending nuts before I undid them. The thought of trying to remount the sway bar into snapped off nuts in a box section wasn't appealing at all!

So now i have the front of the chassis stripped...I've said it before and I will say it again...Boy has this thing been hammered! All upper and lower arm bushes were badly worn with some being no rubber bush left at all, Ball joints sloppy, tie rods sloppy, mounting pins for lower arm bushes and the shocker mount holes worn through, brakes shot. I truly wonder how many miles were done in the car in terribly unsafe condition, it must have wandered all over the place.

time to work on the back and see what horrors await!

BODY OFF

This week ends adventure was taking the body off. NOT what I intended to do but it had to be done.

Sitting around having a chat with a car friend, convinced me to take the step I knew i should. Really, the intent with this car was fix up the brakes, replace any worn suspension parts, get it running and fix the rusty sills. The car had other ideas I guess!

The rust in the sills became the rust in the box sections where the chassis mounts, and further probing showed bad rust in the rear wheel arches. But by far the biggest indicator of being smart to take the body off was the fact that  E.V.E.R.Y. S.I.N.G.L.E. B.U.S.H. in the suspension was rooted. Add to that the fact every single nut and bolt was rusted up, and that the chassis rails are literally full of dirt, and that ... well everything was going to be a whole lot easier with the body off.

Saturday was taken up with undoing everything that attached the body and chassis. Fuel lines, brake lines, cables and mountings, and rear bumper bar. Yup, all day. About 14 body mounts. I undid the first one, undid easy and that gave me false hope for the rest. ALL the rest either snapped, spun the encapsulated nuts, just wouldn't budge or spun the whole mount. Say hello angle grinder! Same went for the rear bumper bar. A recipicating saw ended up being the cure for those bolts.

Sunday mornings job, lift it off. After jacking up front and rear about 4 inches to make sure all was clear, I chocked the body and attached the gantry to the front and lifted it up, then placed a pre made frame under the front mount points.

Then for the rear I put a sling under the back quarters and used a fence post to hook the chain too. Then lifted the back up.

At all times, should the block and tackle or any other part of the process have failed, the body would have dropped no more than 6''. There was no way i was having it fall 3 feet if it all went wrong! That gantry by the way, was the best $200 I ever spent. A friend closed down his workshop due to illness and I bought it, It has lifted many many cars since.

Then, job done it was sweep up time...I make a mess and find it worth putting the tools away and sweeping up the crap at the end of each stage.

 At the moment the tail end rests on a strong table and axle stands. Before work gets going on the body I will make a frame up for the rear and link it to the front one. I may even make the frame such that i can tilt the body on its side for rust repairs...we shall see. I have used rotisseries on other cars. I noticed the rear door gaps looked 'wrong' and concluded the body had sagged in the middle, possibly due to there not being any steel of substance in the sills anymore. Cured for the time being by jacking up the centre of the body which aligned the doors and made the top of the fins flow into the doors nice and straight as well.

This is going to be much easier job now and well worth the weekend.

REMOVING THE FRONT CLIP in one go

The decision was made that i had to remove the front of the car.

The rust in the sills and the mudguards demanded such if I was ever going to do a proper job of them. Removing the motor and transmission would be a whole lot easier that way as well. In a perfect world I would like to have got it to fire up, run well and not have to removed any body parts, but it didn't turn out that way for this car. It may have been from a 'desert' area of  the country, but it still has rain. Never have i seen so much built up dirt and mud on a car. And that = RUST.

I will do a walk through of how I removed the front clip. I hope i don't have to pull it apart more, as I like the idea of not pulling apart anything that does not need it...which brings me to a very important part of the job. BAG AND TAG every nut bolt and cable

First order was to remove the bumper bar. 4 bolts on the chassis rails, I managed to get one undone and had to take to the other three with a cut off disk. 52 year old rusty bolts need that at times you know. If you have had experience with skun knuckles and bruised fingers from pulling cars apart you will understand...

Second was to remove the bonnet (It can be done with the bonnet still in place but for 4 bolts it saves weight and flopping around by taking it off.

Third step was to remove the radiator itself

Fourth step was the front radiator support bolt. Angle grinder job again, it was so banged around that nothing would undo it.

In the case of this car, I also removed the radiator support panel before removing the front. Bugger of a job with the usual rusted up bolts and tricky locations that also required removing the battery tray. To be honest it would have been easier to have removed it after taking the front clip off.

I removed it so as to fix rust in it.

It is actually far more extensive than the picture shows, so out it came anyway.

Fifth step was to free the mudguards from the body. 6 bolts each side. On this car, the RH side lowest bolt was rusted off and the guard was held on with...yep, more fencing wire! The RH side middle bolt was also just not there, either someone forgot to put it there in Broadmeadows or the guard had been off or attempted off and removed then. Either way, it made me miss that bolt on the LH side and it wasn't till it was loose but not loose enough that I had to go hunting (say hello read the manual first)...

On each side there are 4 bolts that hold the mudguard to the body and 2 that hold the inner guard on.

Bolts 1,2, 3 and 4 are the guard to body bolts. Take note of the number of shims in place so you can put them back later. Bolts 5 and 6 are the inner guard bolt locations, also shown in the next image as 5 and 6 as well.

Sixth step is to disconnect any wires that run from body to the front clip, including the radio aerial in this case.

By now, the whole front clip should be loose.

Seventh step: You will need two or three people. I had one at the front and one each side. This is the be careful part if you are wanting to protect paintwork on your doors.  The front clip will come forward about an inch at which point you will need to pull the bottom of the mudguards out so they can come up. Pull the clip forward and up. The rear of the clip will need to lift high enough for the inner guards to clear the suspension upper arms. There will be no need to disconnect the fresh air flexible tubes, they just sit over the pipe and will slide free.

I forgot to mention, take off the front wheels and support the chassis with stands. Not a jack but actual proper stands OK! That lets the A arms drop lower so that inner guards will clear them better. Then just walk off with the clip, it is not very heavy.

That is the process that worked for me. The challenge will be putting it back on haha!

And if you want to remove a mudguard itself, after taking off the bumper bar, after taking out the grill, after removing the front valance panel, after disconnecting the air vents, and anything else I have missed, there are 20 bolts each side for the mudguard itself...

And here is what you will have...

UNDER THE BONNET

What lurks under the bonnet? (that's 'hood' for ya'll in USA)

Quick language lesson here, translation from Australian to American

Bonnet = Hood
Boot = Trunk
Mudguard = Fender
Petrol = Gas

The next probable thing for a barn find car is to if it will run. I have had a 1964 Cadillac that had sat for 25 years that started and ran fine, that never got rebuilt either. So maybe I will be lucky this time...

Dirt. Lots of it. First order of the day was to clean the crap out of the engine bay and see what I have. Several litres of Kero and scrubbing later it still looks almost the same! There is no paint left (as far as can be seen) on the engine at all. Just before cleaning I discovered there were no spark plugs in the engine so I put a set in to fill the holes before starting work.

I had no way of telling how long plugs had been absent from the engine but figured that a lost of dirt may have gone down the holes over time, so a careful compressed air blowout was in order. All but one cylinder actually proved to be remarkably clean. One however produced chunks of oily rusty crud and oil itself.

More questions as to what the condition of the cylinder might be. The engine was stuck fast. After two weeks of soaking them with diesel there was no way it would budge and there grew the thought that it may well be the prudent thing to pull it down and see what we have. If the heads come off then I may as well go the whole way is the thinking as I write (It may turn out to not need a rebuild as it is low miles) and we shall see...

While soaking dozens of bolts around the engine with RP7, I had to jack the car up to get under the LF exhaust manifold (interesting note: The RH manifold is unique to Australian tanks) and found more evidence of the cars hard past. The engine sump is actually sitting hard on the cross member! It would appear that the engine mounts have failed. At some time, someone has put a 1/4'' slice of rubber between the member and the motor. Perhaps another farmer fix?

After 3 weeks of soaking in diesel I removed the heads to find the cause of being stuck...

Number 5 bore was very badly rusted. The other bores show no scoring that I can see and the rust rubs off clean. After a thorough clean up of the crud, the pitting in the bore is very evident.

So at this time, the top of the engine has been put back on and it will await a full rebuild.

Generally any old barn find was parked for a reason other than just stopped being used. There will be some 'reason' I believe, major or minor, that gets it parked and from there on in its all downhill deterioration for them. The condition of this car says to me, a very hard life followed by a head gasket.

At this point the engine had been removed along with the transmission, in the process of sitting jacked up overnight it also proceeded to empty the sump all over the floor from the worn through hole from the cross member. I find it astounding that the car was used long enough after the total collapse of the engine mounts so as to wear a hole!

WHEN WAS IT PARKED? And who owned it new?

For all 'barn finds', it seems the date it was parked is truly significant. I guess it is regarded as some sort of time warp vehicle, the more evidence of not being disturbed the better.

So what do I know about this car besides the statement of having been parked in the early 1970s?

First thing that happens when cleaning up is a search through all the dirt, rat shit and crap under the seats and in this ones case, in the seat. All sorts of things had been used to make the seat comfortable enough to sit on at some time in the cars life. Old clothes, newspapers,and a potato sack among them!

Now, I believe there is enough evidence to date it last being driven in mid 1975. Simply based on the youngest scrap of newspaper found stuffed in the seat, part of the Nhill Free Post (that cost 10c) dated
April 1975. The next youngest find were two receipts from a sort of Masonic Lodge dated 1972. This also has the names of two people, who are deceased and buried in the Nhill Cemetary it seems.

That this was a country car there is no doubt. Aside from the amount of soil in the car, there were a lot of wool bale clips in the boot, the boot lip looks very hammered and no doubt after the car was no longer pristine got used as a ute...after all the boot is very cavernous. Add to the collection of bits in the car, the unused shot gun cartridges and dog rego tags and you get farm car.

The next interesting proofs come from the body. Country Victoria roads in the 60s were likely dirt. That's what killed the first Falcon and gave ford massive headaches. The front and sides of the car are stone chip city, hundreds of them! No doubt from a life of following behind other vehicles. The underside is virtually sandblasted from gravel. The country roads have been harsh on the Fairlane, although it may have done low miles (9000 on the speedo...109,000? maybe) I think they were hard miles if the state of the rear shackles and other bushes are anything to go off.

Add to that the left hand rear leaf spring having snapped the main leaf and been arc welded back together. The fix also included a couple of layers of 3mm flat and twitching up with fencing wire...as is the steering idler arm. The left side park brake cable from the drum has been ripped off as well.

I hope to find pictures of it in the barn/ shed when it was first found, and try to put together more of its history. It has moved through at least two other hands since finding and being purchased by me.

A WEEK OF CLEANUP LATER

I took a week off work (self employed) save for a few little jobs and got to work on the fairlane.

I was pretty keen to see what I had got, and to be frank, needed to clean it up so I felt I had something worth looking at and dreaming about. First order of the day was a wash, where i discovered the true color (albeit quite faded) followed by an even bigger scrub of the inside.

The front seat looked like it had been used as a trampoline by an elephant and a food source for rats. Fortunately John provided me with a serviceable lower front seat and the back seat was actually very good, dirty but good. Out came the seats and the remnants of carpet and felt, and out came a 44 gal drum of dirt and crap. Included in the rubbish are clues to the cars past...more on that later.

After a good clean I found a floor that was very very sound, no rust except for a spot related to some severe sill rot. After getting into the boot via the back seat (no keys) it was fond to be full of junk as well, mostly car parts not related the the Fairlane, wool bale fasteners and more red dirt, but is 100% free of rust, The spare wheel carrier has a spot the size of a pea.

Next came a good clean of the door trims and other inside bits and the fixing of the front seat. The back of the front seat is not the best but for now a mexican blanket makes the inside more respectable

Next up was still more time on the outside, a good cut and a polish, the boot lid needed a bit more and got a rubdown with 1200 to remove a million dots of rust (possibly a left over of angle grinding near by some time in the past), the sides of the car are also showing the result of a decade on gravel roads but cleaned up nice.

The last job was the fixing of the only blemish....That is, not the real patina but the result of some body taking to the doors with a scraper and stopping short of even a half job. As far as I am concerned that just spoiled the genuine patina and looked out of place. Solution was to put on the only paint that I intend to other than when the sill rust gets fixed.

So here it is after a weeks efforts. Now attention will move to things more mechanical for a while

This car still wears 99% of its original 52 year old paint and will remain that way.

A SPACESHIP LANDS

I first saw this car on Ebay after a day at the local hot rod show.

The PALMER HOT ROD RUN is held every October and for it the main street of town is closed off and its one big mall of cars parked all the way up and down the street. The first year we lived out here (a small country town) we had old cars to take. A 'rat' EH Holden and a Flat black 'rat' Galaxie hearse to take, but the last two years not so. The EH didnt cope with its new country surrounds, the wife didn't cope with its falling apart state, so it was sold and the hearse ended up being sold to pay for the large shed floor to be concreted.

So after a day dribbling over eveyone else's toys the fingers did the ebay thing and well...many of you will know what that leads to...

Two weeks of self induced anxiety later, the deal was done and the wait for delivery was on.

So it was that at midnight on a Monday, said spaceship landed. The next morning greeted me with one very dirty dusty motor vehicle and me hoping i had bought (sight unseen save for ebay pictures) well...

TANK FAIRLANE, the latest addition to the shed

This is the latest vehicle to grace my life.

Purchased after a lot of pondering. Which is kind of odd for me, usually buying a car is a passion decision, one made quickly with the heart and not the head. Yet this time the head seemed to be making the most noise. Usually I have always needed to sell one car to buy another (probably like most people) but this time I had the $... Just wasn't certain that now was the time to spend it!

After a lot of reading lately about doom and gloom, the economy and the global oil supply I felt this time i had to make a head decision, would I invest in becoming more self suficient or blow it on a car that frankly is a want not a need?

After a blast down the road in a decidedly not cool 2012 Ford ute with rockabilly blasting, the heart won. I just pictured flying down the road windows down, "Paramatta hot rod man'' playing loud and just knew i wanted this spaceship on wheels, to hell with peak oil...this baby will burn a barrel of crude oil every tank!

so here it is:

It really should be no surprise to myself...I have been car mad since my teens and have seldom been without some sort of  'classic' car in my life.