Month: February 2016

With the cross member and control arms done, I moved on to the front strut assemblies. I started with the drivers side. Which, as you can see, probably hadn’t been removed from the shock tower in quite a few years.

After I got it disassembled, I took the strut and brake sheild down to bare metal, rust proofed, then gave the individual pieces a coat of primer.

Next up was the spring…

Which, you guessed it, down to bare metal, rust proofed then a coat of primer and paint.

Here’s the completed assembly next to the unfinished passenger side. What a difference a little elbow grease and paint make. Although money was a little tight at this time so I didn’t replace the shocks when I reassembled the struts. I’ll have to go back and replace those in the future.

I did however replace the ball joints because the old ones were pretty far past it and not as large of an expense.

They were actually one of the first new items I bought for the car. Which I inadvertently placed on the bottom instead of the top of the control arm before I took this picture.

Once I completed the drivers side strut assembly, I moved on to the passengers side. Same process as before, so I’ll spare you the details.

Next up, wheel hubs and brakes.

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The idea is, that if I rebuild and refinish most of the original parts for the car, I’ll be able to drive it close to how it left the factory (without a severely rusted out frame) and save some money on not buying a ton of new parts right now.

And I know I’ll want to upgrade many things on the car eventually, but thought it would be nice to upgrade those things in the future starting from a clean slate so to speak.

So here I am, looking at a 43 year old control arm that I’ve removed from the cross member that looks like a hell of a lot of work to bring it back to its former glory.

And they were a lot of work. Using an assortment of wire wheels and a lot of patience, I was able to get the control arms down to bare metal.

Next up were the torsion bars. One just needed a good cleaning, while the other had some hackery going on in the form of washers for spacers. Which had rusted themselves to the torsion bar, but with a little persuasion, and an angle grinder, I got it where it needed to be.

Then came the cross member itself. After I cleaned most of the dirt and grease off, it wasn’t in nearly as bad of shape as the other bits.

Just like the control arms and torsion control bars, I took it down to bare metal with a wire wheel as well. Here’s the whole lot after they’ve been cleaned up. The factory welds on some of these components made me feel better about my welding prowess.

At this point you may be asking yourself…

But Jason, why aren’t you using the sand blast cabinet we’ve seen in the background of some of your pictures?

Well studious reader, this would have been a whole lot easier and taken considerably less time. However my sand blast cabinet was shit. It’s a Harbor Freight model I picked up for around a hundred bucks on sale and it performs like a hundred dollar Harbor Freight sand blast cabinet. That is, not very well at all.

On a side note, about a year later I got tired of all this wire wheeling and invested nearly $500 into that $100 sand blast cabinet to make it what it is today… a friggin’ beast. More on that later.

Back to the car, I applied a zinc rust proofing to all the parts I’d just taken down to bare metal, then gave them a couple coats of primer.

Once dry, I applied the same matte black I used for the engine bay, then bolted the whole assembly to the car.

As with the engine bay, I’ll have to remove these parts and give them a couple coats of automotive flat clear at some point.

Things were coming along though. Next up was the front strut assembly.

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As usual, I was working on things out of the order they should be done in. Like painting the engine bay. I had planned on painting it prior to applying the undercoating, swear… But I wanted a particular flat black that I was having a hard time finding. That, combined with impatience, meant I painted the engine bay last.

Here it is after the first light coat of flat black was applied.

The paint I ended up using was an aerosol flat that probably cost more than it should have, but went on really nicely, almost like using a paint gun. Dried super quickly too, only drawback was, it took several coats to cover properly.

Most importantly though, it turned out the way I wanted it to.

I still need to give it a coat of automotive flat clear, but I was happy with how it looked.

Now on to the fun part, rebuilding the suspension.

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Since I had gotten ahead of myself with the undercoating, I still needed to complete some fabrication on the front bumper and hood attachment locations on the inner fender. So I cut out the rusted portions and welded in new steel. I ended up having to do both sides.

First the passengers side…

Then the drivers side.

Once I had both sides taken care of, I needed to recreate the angled bumper support bracket as the original was beyond saving. I fabricated these out of 14 gauge and reused the nuts from the original bracket.

Then I welded them onto the inner wing and coated the entire lot in seam sealer. I get a little carried away with the seam sealer sometimes.

After that was all said and done, I painted on a couple layers of undercoating and was happy with the outcome. Even if it is a bit hard to see what’s going on in the picture below.

I’m aware that the car doesn’t have undercoating applied past the end of the front fender, where the headlight bucket starts. But for the sake of consistency, I decided to take it all the way to the nose of the car. Should’t hurt, and in my mind, it may help add another layer of rust prevention.

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I’m probably making more work than necessary for myself, but before I applied undercoating to the bottom of the car, I added a little body filler in a couple spots that my fabrication skills weren’t quite up to par.

After that had been sorted, I began mixing up some undercoating that was originally intended to be a truck bed liner and began to apply it to the underside of the car.

Here’s what I learned from this experience. One, you can apply it in much colder temperatures than the instructions claim and it’ll adhere just fine.

Two, it really does take two coats to get adequate coverage. And three, it turned out better than expected.

Oh and four, I can be a real impatient bastard. Wait, I already knew that. As you can tell I hadn’t finished all of the fabrication yet, because like I said, impatience.

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