| |
Okay, it's been an even longer time since an update. There's several reasons for that. We embarked on a house remodeling project that ended up taking twice as long as planned. We're still working on the yard and some other odds and ends.
Then a friend gave me a '65 Mustang convertible roller - basically a bare shell with a '90 5-liter motor. A complete basket case, worth every penny I paid for it. For a number of reasons, I decided to tackle it before finishing up the wagon. First, it's a much simpler car (convertible top mechanism aside) and parts availability is - well, the old metaphor about swinging cats comes to mind. Second, it gives me a chance to try out axle guys, body shops, etc. that I might think of using for the wagon. Finally, and most importantly, whereas an old station wagon attracts little but scorn from the spouse, she sees at least some potential in the Mustang. So this one is nominally 'hers' and if it comes out well it buys me a little more credibility for the other project.
The Mustang's been in progress for a few months now, the shell has been rust-stripped and I'm in the middle of a bunch of structural welding on it. Working on the underside of the Galaxie had been a truly debilitating experience - it'd taken me nearly three months of evenings to strip, clean off, POR-15, and undercoat the bottom of the body. I will never, ever, ever do that again.
So this time I built a simple rotisserie. It's not perfect, and doesn't have the bells and whistles (or, more properly, wheels and hydraulics) of the commercial models, but it works fine for something Mustang-size, and I've got a total of $150 in materials and maybe a dozen hours of labor into building it. I designed it to tuck in as closely to the ends of the car as possible, leaving me with room to maneuver around the car even in my shortish garage.
The rotisserie has already saved me the time invested in its construction several times over. I'll have the front structure reinforcement, the in-floor subframe rails, the new rear floor pans, and all the other welding (except for replacing the bent, rust-holed left rear fender, but I'll leave that to the body shop) done this week - without sacrificing myself to a month of back pain in the process. It will be on its wheels and off to the body shop as soon as I get a rear axle under it.
I'll eventually put together a log for that car too, but first I need to migrate everything to a new server and probably to some flavor of full-fledged content management software. Just takes time.
The wagon hasn't been totally ignored. It's very close to being ready for paint, as soon as I can dig all the front-end sheetmetal out of storage. Mechanically, I decided some time back that the big E4OD transmission wasn't going to cut it. More properly, I decided that I wasn't going to cut most of the tunnel out of the car's floorpan to make the big E4OD fit. So the E4OD just went off in partial trade toward a built-up 4R70W from a transmission shop run by a local Shelby Clubber. I'll be content if I have the powertrain mounting sorted out by the end of the year, and out for body and paint work by March.