Imperative #1 has been addressed: I've plowed into the side yard most of the crap that came out of storage in order to make some working room. Imperative #2 is next week: the flourescent fixtures piled by the side of the garage for the past five years are now going to be hung and wired.

The interior of the car is pretty much cleared of anything that could be unbolted. I don't have weight distribution numbers handy but I remember seeing somewhere that the big wagons were tail-heavy, something like 47/53% front/rear. With the big FE engine up front I found that a little hard to believe - until I hefted about 50 lb of tailgate window, maybe 35 lb of tailgate window lift motor and other hardware, probably 120 lb of rear load-floor decking, 50 lb of rear bumper bracketry, and nearly 50 lb of big, rust-gutted mufflers out of the rear end. Oh well, at least whatever new mufflers I use will undoubtedly be lighter.

Speaking of exhaust, I've now got a set of 406 exhaust manifolds on order from Perogie Enterprises. That's all for now.

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No manifolds from Perogie yet.

The garage lighting is done. Yee-hah. I think I'm tired of bending EMT conduit for another five years.

Having light means seeing all the grime and dirt accumulated in the garage - from the floor to the rafters. Bah! Pick up a new filter for the shop-vac at Home Depot. A ten-foot-long scrap of 3/4" PVC water pipe fits snugly into the tool adapter. An hour later, the rafters are a whole lot cleaner.

I'm still spending scattered moments cleaning the two or three different varieties of Ford body filler off the back half of the car wherever it seems even slightly loose. So far as I can tell, there's:

• Black, crumbly stuff used in huge gobs over bare metal at various holes, gaps, and seams; whatever flex this stuff had when new departed twenty years ago, so wherever it's cracked free of the metal there's at least a touch of surface rust.
• White stuff, still fairly elastic except where exposed to direct sunlight, generally used to fill gaps and pockets in painted areas.

Consensus opinion is that all roads to a restored early-'60s Galaxie go through Greg Donahue Collector Car Restorations. I ordered a couple tiny bits and the big Ford parts-book set from them a few months back. They definitely stock a useful range of bits and parts, though their catalog would be somewhat smaller if it didn't list just about every part twice. Some late-night scratching produces another shopping list, everything from a windshield gasket to a driver-side kick panel to door lock knobs, as well as some questions for them about door weatherstrip and etc.

Into the fax it goes...

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