| ||
Got the tailgate weatherstrip from Donahue. Solid gold - one part I never expected I'd find NOS.
More gutting of the interior. The floorpan area is in good shape but I still need to clean Ford's water-absorbing seam sealer out of the body seams, Rust-Mort the seams, and re-goop them with something modern. Time-consuming, but it's fairly satisfying to actually see some progress being made. I suspect that a tube of paintable silicone from the local hardware would probably be at least as good a sealant as the 3M body sealant I'm using; this stuff's main virtue seem to be that it dries very, very fast - meaning you can't put down a long bead, then go back and smooth the whole thing; you have to do each seam in 2-foot segments.
I've also ordered a set of the 16x8 Vintage 45 wheels from Vintage Wheel Works and some 255/50ZR-16 Firestone SZ50s from Tire Rack. The whole pile is being shipped to Custom Alignment in Mountain View for mounting and balancing.
Got the wheels and tires. Very pretty. The wheels look to be better quality castings than the American Racing Torq-Thrust design it's derived from. The tires are impressive-looking, of course it'll be a while before I can tell how they work. The wheels are made with a 4 1/2" rear spacing, which is just about equivalent to the OEM wheels.
Interestingly, the Firestones (made in Japan by their parent company, Bridgestone) are one of a number of newer Japanese tires that have a rubber ridge molded into the tire near the rim to protect the rim from curb impacts. A good idea, but on the stock drum-brake hubs the ridge on the inside of the tire leaves about 0.025" clearance to the ball joint. When trial-fit on the '70 Galaxie disc spindles the clearance is closer to 0.125.