Thursday, April 23, 2009

Three to go...

The body is almost ready to come off the car but there's three more tasks remaining. As usual, the steering wheel refuses to come off. Then there is the mount holding the windshield in place, and lastly, wiring, a tiresome process.

At the hardware store last week, I found a faucet puller that looks like a steering wheel puller, but the clamps that grip underneath the metal are thinner. Good news is that the clamps slip in to the spot where previous pullers failed. Bad news is that the clamps were too weak from the force of pulling and started to bend. Back to the drawing board for what feels like to be the fiftieth time.

Even with the amount of WD-40, liquid wrench, and this ultra liquid wrench that can only be ordered online, the windshield mount refuses to come off. The driver-side windshield came off without a hitch after a few bolts were unscrewed, but the passenger-side windshield is proving to be as stubborn as the steering wheel. One possible explanation for this is that located above the passenger windshield mount is the antenna mount. So it is possible that rain water has gotten into the windshield mount and rusted the bracket to the mount.

The wiring is not as much a riddle as the other two remaining items, but it's painfully boring and tedious work. Label each wire, affix label, take a picture, draw a diagram, repeat over and over again. The last amount of wiring to disconnect and document go to the steering wheel and different areas on the engine. One day I just need to sit down and grind through this process to be done with it. I can only imagine the pain of putting the wires back on the car.

So minus these three items which don't sound like much but are actually pretty time consuming, the body should be ready to come off after unbolting a few body bolts. Also, there is the side project of making a body rig to store the body in the one-car garage and give us an easy way to roll the body out into the driveway when we want to work on the chassis. The car restoration books and television shows definitely make this whole disassembly process seem way easier than it actually is.

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