Steering column

Just a simple clean-up of the steering column. I cleaned it off and put new paint on it. You can see where I forgot to peel the tape back for the chrome. I got it though in the end.

Fuel Line

Today's goal was to get the fuel line in. My cousin Larry was back at the helm working his bending magic to the 3/8th fuel line. He sure had fun trying to make all those bends to match the original path and line. "It isn't perfect" he would say, but I think it's pretty darn close once we were clipped and done. The one thing I forgot was a fuel filter, but that will simply be added later.

Larry sure got his butt kicked by the project today too. He had a piece of the original line break off and fall behind his glasses and right in his eye. He walked straight into his tool box drawer making a very loud SMASH. His comment was "Whoa, am I bleeding?" Needless to say after both of these incidents, and a minor tripping on his part, I was laughing all the way to the bank; which is where I had to go to get more money out to pay for this project. That was the part where he got to laugh at me....

The Tank part 2

Dad and I set out to get the gas tank mounted. After correcting the mistake from last time we took our time to get things right on this day, however there was another misplaced bolt hole I need to fill from the day. Using a jack to hold the tank in place we carefully measured things out. Since the original braces were gone, we had to fabricate our own out of some chrome strips of metal. After massaging the straps, they went up and we bolted them down. The new bolts will be seen in the trunk by us, but other people will not see them because the trunk mat and light assembly will be there to hide it. We also put some tar paper (roofing paper) in between the straps and the tank. I had to fight off a huge army of ants to get the paper, but it was all in good fun.

Attaching the Gas Tank

Getting the gas tank on became more of a problem than we initially thought. First we cleaned out the fuel sending pipe unit. We had some wire and a rag, soaked it with brake cleaner and pulled it through a few times. Once we were satisfied we went to the back of the car. The came the mistakes...
I wasn't paying enough attention to where I should cut the hole, so I cut it out in the wrong spot. I will have to fix this and that is just more time, which doesn't make me too happy. Then we went under the car and found that the spot where the gas tank straps bolt in is not there. It seems way back in the beginning I probably cut off the brace, which means I will have to make another piece and this will take even more time.

A couple interior things

My dad wired up the middle console along with some new dash lights. The dash lights will let me know when the car's fan system is on. We all know how these old cars like to heat up quickly. If the car doesn't turn the fan on when it's needed I can manually over ride it and turn it on myself.

The headliner again..

I was very very close to just having someone else complete the headliner. It had more waves then the Atlantic Ocean. I was frustrated, disappointed, and accepting failure. I decided to go onto YouTube and see if anyone had examples for me to follow. It actually had a 69 charger getting done, which was very helpful. I remember it saying that the headliner took a professional to get perfect was about 3 hours. This meant it was probably going to take me 3 weeks. Okay, maybe not that long, but still. These pictures is what I started with and then re-stretched two more times over the next week. I applied heat to get the wrinkles out. I am about 90% satisfied with my work. There are a couple wrinkles that are giving me trouble, but I'm working them out. My fingers get very sore after I stretch the liner. I'm happy to say I didn't give up and it looks pretty good.