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The exhaust manifolds arrived from Perogie. They look decent, painted with a coat of some gray cast-iron color paint. Measure the outlet size: 2 1/2". Check the parts book: the OEM exhaust piping for all FE V-8s, 406s and 427s included, was 2" diameter - not acceptable, have to have something made up. And, in a burst of exuberant stupidity, I ordered a set of Edelbrock RPM Series mufflers - with 3" inlets and outlets. Oh well, better too big than too small.
The spare tire well and the area under and around the rear load-floor panels has been cleaned, the seams cleaned of their sealer and doused with SEM Rust-Seal (expensive stuff, hope it's worth it), the flat exposed surface rust dosed with their Rust-Mort. As I'm compressor-challenged I'll put a quick coat of gray Krylon on the area to protect it for now, then squirt some 3M Silicone Body Sealer down the seams.
Lots more cleaning, prepping around the back end, and some experiments in Adaptive Rust Treatment 101. Pick up a cheapie 1-gallon bug sprayer and a good-quality WD-40 pump-spray bottle at Orchard Supply. Hose out the left rear fender inside the car, let dry, fill sprayer with Duro Extend rust-treating goop, pump up and spray. Lesson #1: If you're not careful the sprayer applies about twice as much goop as needed and it drips all over. Lesson #2: if you are careful it can lay down a thick but even coat. Extend dries to a coating like Rust-Seal, but thicker. Hope it does some good. I decide to try a pre-treatment in another part of the fender, where there's more evident surface rust. Put a couple ounces of Rust-Mort in the sprayer and squirt it on. I don't believe SEM warrants Rust-Mort unless you brush it on, but in this case there's barely room for the spray-bottle tip. In any case it does its turn-the-rust-black thing just fine.
In a lot of areas I don't see a need to use a rust-converter, even Extend, but I'd like to squirt some kind of protective coating in there. Saab uses (or at least used to use) a protective oil coating. Maybe I'll see if I can scrounge something similar.
The Donahue stuff arrived a while back. Good stuff. Mostly small bits and parts; the biggest single piece is the windshield seal. Still, it's really nice to see stuff like a perfect NOS driver-side kick-panel in the right color. The enclosed note says that they have a NOS tailgate weatherstrip - do I want it? Let's see here: it's a critical part. The original is marginal at best. And it'd be just about impossible to adapt anything else. At $150 it ain't cheap, but then the odds that I'd ever find another one anywhere at any price are just about nil. Time to fax Florida again.