Steering wheel and seats

A family trip down to Kentucky was the reason I found this original wood grain steering wheel. My cousin lives next to the ultimate Mopar guy. The man has two original Cudas, a couple Studibakers, A 32 dodge roadster I believe it was, Satellite, Super Bee, and a couple New hemi dodge trucks. The man had a couple original hemi's just lying on his garage floor, I was offered one at a crazy low price, but money right now is tighter than usual for a teacher. Well he pulled this steering wheel out and I was drooling at the mouth. It only had the one crack. On eBay they start around $300, I pulled this one for $125. Everything is there. It was great. Another great find.

The seats were bought off of eBay. I all ready got them and all they need is new covers... I will have black interior... I was priced out the lowest at $800 for 69 charger seats from a couple different sources... well I bought these for $475. I really didn't need them right now, but a deal like this with the headrest and everything was hard to pass up. I love my wife for letting me get these. ( I love her for other things too... hahahaha)

Gas tank drops...

Though it was nice to see the tail panel in place, we still have much more fun to go. We jacked her up and removed the gas tank. Once the gas tank was dropped we could actually see the how bad the floor has been eaten away. It was more holy than the Pope!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As I crawled under the car to spray the frame rails and assess the damage underneath, I could see we have a lot of work to make sure the car has a solid frame throughout. There were a couple holes in the frame that are repairable. We'll get to that later. Once I sprayed underneath I applied the Rust Mort to stop the rust in its tracks.

The old gas tank is now waiting in a pile with the rest of the car to get dumped or rather SOLD to the metal yards. My cousin is taking it all away for profit. Farewell!!

Happy Birthday!!

Saturday May 17th was my 28th birthday... It also marked another big replacement piece for Rusty. We wiped her back-end enough to place the new tail piece. After adding a couple fabricated structure pieces to ensure strength, I spot welded the tail. It took a couple tries seeing how the piece wasn't completely flush with the original back end. When we took off the other part some of the steel was bent, BUT after we hammered her in we got our nice fit. It is so much nicer that I can look at that butt and say , yummy... Well, you get my point. It looks good.

Two Tail... prt2

I just got the new tail panel in and it required body work. You can see a small dimple on the right side of the key hole where it looked as though someone jabbed it with a pen. Instead of sending it back (which I would have liked to do for a $400 part) we grabbed a hammer and smacked it back level. A little filler will smooth it out and wham, looking new again. I mean I've had to do work on every piece of this car, why not the new pieces too! I don't think I've received one part that was perfect, but what in life is?

How's the tail?

As soon as we finished around the window it didn't take too long to start planning the next surgery. For now the trunk lid will wait, we moved on to the second best part of this car for me, the taillights. Looking around this area we knew we'd have to find the spot welds and drill them out. The grinder was back at work and revealed the factory weld spots. After the second spot weld I thought my arm was going to fall off, but all whining aside I kept going. I'm guessing I drilled around 30 spot welds or so. We had to be careful not to damage the brackets that held the taillight panel in place with the trunk floor. These can range from 60 - 100 dollars brand new. Mine were not rusted at all, so why not save a buck or two right? Since we are replacing the bottom valance as well we just cut off as much as we could without destroying the structure and brackets. She looks bare from behind now, but it's got to get worse before it gets better.

Dutchman Panel...

This past weekend was very satisfying. The back window tunnel panels and the dutchman panel are now in place. We made sure to check the window fit before actually welding anything down. Well we tacked it in place, then welded it. The lines line up. The only problem was that on the drivers side the window panel is slightly lower because of the way it was cut. I had to crawl under in the trunk and weld the space to fill the gap. This will be all leveled once we use the body filler.

It took hours to complete the task; from hammering, to measuring, to cutting, to welding, to grinding, to sitting back and looking at the finished product. Even with the Frankenstein stitches Rusty looks much much healthier. I feel better about the foundation of the window now that these pieces are locked in. I only have a couple burns to show for the welding and grinding. I can still hear the grinder scream in my ears!!!! (I know, wear the headphones...)