Things are starting to come together. I kind of figured I would start at the front and work my way back putting things together that it needs to be able to start and drive around. Once I get most of the basic stuff put on and working then I can start on cleaning up the holes in it and making it more car like and not so much like a pile of junk parts welded together.
I managed to get all the body bolts back in it somehow or another, some of them are impossible to get to now with all the extra junk in the way. I ended up on a few of them putting some duct tape over the box end of a wrench with the nut held in place and fishing it up through a small hole and trying to hit the end of the bolt while the bolt was being turned with a ratchet. The front ones aren’t as bad as they used to be. There is a big hole cut all down the side of the body so that makes them simple to mount up now.
With the body mounted in place now It is time to start on the front end. I cut the lower part off the car and tried the radiator and it fits perfectly in the hole with no problems at all. I know there usually has to be something wrong but it actually bolted right up! The radiator took all of 15 minutes to get set in there so I figured I might as well go ahead and mount up the battery tray. I wanted it in the front passenger side under the headlight to try and get some more weight on the front end. I messed around trying to come up with a way to mount it solidly and decided on having two bars run across the front of the car and mount them back to the crossmember. It worked out great that way the back bar now protects the radiator from anything on the road and the front bar is a good place to make some brackets to mount the front body work to. I ran two other bars back to the crossmember and bolted them together in case it ever has to come back apart it should be able to I hope.
Tomorrow I hope to finish the front end up and start on the back end and hopefully have everything together and ready to start it up by Wednesday or so. Even if it doesn’t get started by then I should still be able to get it to the car show on sunday so everyone can finally see what has been done to it over the winter.
