Body on Rotisserie

I moved the body from the wooden stand to the "rotisserie" frame I'd fabricated. In general went well.

I'd decided to use the front & rear body mount hole as the point of connection to the frame. For the support I used 1" dia. black pipe.

Front Mount

Rear Mount

The rotisserie was basically fabricated using two Harbor freight engine stands with a spreader bar between them. While still on the wooden stand, I hung the front & rear sections of the rotisserie from their mounting bars. I determined that I had to cut 3" from the spreader bar.

After doing so, I tightened everything up, jacked the body up & temporarily supported it with saw horses under the bumpers. I dismantled the wooden stand, jacked up the body again, removed the saw horses and lowered the rotisserie to the ground.

The rotisserie frame is sturdy and rolls easily.

Body on ....ready to move.

In the garage ready for reconstruction!

Rotisserie

Did more cleaning on the underside of the chassis pan. Waiting on new seat rails to arrive & be welded in before I can undercoat the bottom of the pan.

Inspected the body more closely this week and it's going to need a lot of work on the bottom of the body...rocker panels, forward mount & heater channels at a minimum. Fortunately, most of the panels I need are available from restoration parts suppliers.

After some ought/debate, I decided I needed to fabricate a "rotisserie" capable of securely holding the body and allowing me to turn it to the best position to work on it. I had to extend the height

I started working on the design. I discussed it w/ my brother & sent him a sketch & some pictures I pulled down off of the web.

He pointed out that the pivots were Harbor Freight engine stands. I was able to purchase 2 on sale for less than what the parts/pieces I needed to build one would have cost me.

I had some 2x2" square tubing laying around the garage & was able to fabricate the frame.

Front End Rebuild - Done!

A very productive weekend..well for me anyway...the Pat's in the Super Bowl...not so much...

I was able to work on the project both Saturday & Sunday mornings this weekend.

Started off with installing the new parking brake cables for the disc brakes on the rear wheels. The right rear side tube that comes out of the chassis had been crimped and it took a little "adjusting" to get the cable into the tube & moving freely, but they came out fine.

The next job was to replace the front & rear transmission mounts. I haven't cleaned up the underside of the chassis yet & have been spoiled by working with all the clean, painted stuff on the front & rear ends. After a little effort the mounts dropped in and were tightened down.

New front transmission mount.

New rear tranny mounts.

Then I started working on the front end. First I pulled the backing plates off of the wheels and wire-brushed, painted and re-installed them. The tie-rod ends, steering damper, shocks, wheel bearings. disc brake hubs, calipers and brake line/hoses were all replaced.

Finally, rolled out into the light of day! Still have some work to do...

need to bleed brakes, install new heater control levers & cables, as well as new accelerator and clutch cables, re-install seat guides and pedals from the old pan.

I'm pretty happy with the way things have turned out so far.

It's only been a month since the car was delivered!

Rear Brakes Istallation - Made Better

We'd decided to upgrade the original rear brake drum configuration with an EMPI disc brake kit.... Once the calipers were mounted, the location of the inlet of the brake line into the caliper bothered me. As you can see from the pictures below the inlet is located on the rear of the the caliper. I had a concern that a brake hose exposed like this could be damaged by something.

So.... last night my brother Dave came over to see if we could engineer a better solution. After some healthy debate/discussion we agreed that a longer hose was not the best answer to the problem. He came up with a better plan & we took a quick run to the auto parts store. We bought the pieces & parts we needed.

After a quick stop for some steak & cheese "grinders" we went back to the garage and went back to work. Dave bent up a short section of brake line to get it around to the front of the caliper. Then we attached the short section of brake hose (to allow the caliper to move) and a union the male end of the hose to another section of brake line and fit it to the stock brake hose.

I think the result looks good, is a robust installation that will perform well and last.

Tomorrow the front end brakes!