An inside job

February 2, 2010

After waiting much of the winter to get the garage in order, I finally got something done on the Biscayne. Last week, (the 24th) my son can over to lend a hand. Together, Josh and i managed to pull the front fender assembly off with a very low amount of cursing. In a short two and a half hours, the doghouse was in the back yard, behind the garage. Here's what teh Biscayne looked like after that;

After pulling the sheet metal off, I was able to get my first good look at the cowl and firewall. I was pretty happy with what I saw. So far, the only real issue is the front right fender's lower mounting bolt point was the only thing that is in serious need of replacement. From what I understand, I'll have to fab this because no one reproduces this little flange/bracket thingee; lucky me. Below is a shot of the right side, followed by the left side.

After such a good day down, I felt really good about the progress made. So good in fact that this past Sunday, (the 31st) I was back out there, furnace cookin away. I was able to pull the front seat and clean out all the crap that had collected in the passenger compartment over the years. Iwas actually surprised to NOT find any dead critters of any kind. This also gave me a good opportunity to check out the entire floor. What I found was a lot better than I had hoped. Yeah there's rust, but not as much as I expected and in some of the places I expected to see rust was nothing. Where I knew there'd be rust, it wasn't as bad as I expected. Below are shots of what I found;

I have a fair amount of work ahead of me. But to be honest, I've seen guys start with far less; so I feel like I'm getting off easy. At least until the bills for the replacement panels start piling up.

Think about this...

'Reading musses up my mind.' ~ Henry Ford (1863 - 1947) US automobile industrialist; founder & eponym of Ford Motor Co. 1903; president of Ford Motor Co. 1906-1919, 1943-1945; introduced Model T 1908; pioneer of assembly line production.

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