I found a lot of rust on hardware. Nearly all of the small hardware was very rusty.



To get the bumper off I need to drill out some of the stud while laying on the ground. I needed to do this twice.





This was a good a sit got. By the time it was finished, it went crooked.

One bolt that broke was broken when the lousy body work was done 20+ years ago.



I drilled and tapped it too. It also was a bit off in the end.



I have many more to do....




The hubs are rusted to the rotors and I need new seals and bearings.



I found some more lousy work on the front fender. Sheet metal screws instead of fixing or replacing a bracket that had broken studs because of rust.



Plus, I busted the studs for the oil cooler mounting brackets because of rust. Some of this busted bolts would have been better had I soaked parts longer and had more patience.

 

A few de rusting and painting pics.

 

The lower stay ended up being more difficult to do than expected. The engineers at some point changed the design to save some money and assembly time. It looks like originally the lower stays were held in with a bolt. It was then switched to a weld. Then at some point the bracket was made smaller. I thought that I could use the bolt holes existing in the frame rail and the stay to make alignment perfect. When the stay arrived the top part was smaller.

I did drill holes into the frame. I will need to drill holes in the bracket to fully mount the part. The last picture shows approximate alignment. I put the bumper on and adjusted it. I will do some measuring and hope for the best.

 

in my head i want like two blocks of wood i can put on that lower baffle, and then have through bolts so i can like press it back into the right shape

 

Thanks for the pointers on metal work. Sadly, the picture shows what it looked like after trying to flatten it in a bench vise.

I did so measurements and the spot that I chose first by feel was the closest that I will get to being correct. It needs to be a bit lower possibly too. It does seem rather close though. With so little lower stay attached to the frame rail, this will bend very easily. This will probably get modified again later. It will be ugly but it will be functional.

 

The front sub frame fresh off the car and after cleaning, light sanding, rust conversion, primer and paint.

 

I have been doing a lot of cleaning and work in the engine bay. I am getting more familiar with hose connections and routing. I needed to de clutter the driver frame rail due to some rust and paint loss. During the last stretch that I was able to drive the car, the clutch that was bad 30,000 miles prior was really getting bad. I was nearly stranded getting out of work one day. I managed to get to a parts store to buy a self bleeder kit and some brake fluid. I did get the clutch to work better however, I didn't buy a funnel. I spilled a lot of fluid on the paint. Now it is time to do the cleanup. There is so very little rust anywhere beside hardware and the air conditioning baffle. The driver frame rail is the worst part of the car. I will start painting this next. The bottom and side of the frame rail will be the appliance paint the rest of the underside of the car car was painted with. Parts of the wheel well and frame rail will be the stock color... maroon. One day when the engine gets replaced, I will revisit the engine bay. I am seriously considering dumping the power steering for electric steering and a bigger alternator, ditching the air conditioning. Cleaning up the whole side of the engine bay in the process. There aren't many things that I dislike about this car but the steering always felt way to easy to turn.

Also, I flushed the heater core after flushing the engine of antifreeze and the radiator. I used tap water when I flushed and refilled it last. It was so incredibly rusty in there. I haven't noticed any smoke so... fingers crossed. I need to get hardware ordered and some more parts.

 

This project has been moving along for just over a year now. Minus the cold months here, anyway. The front end work is a bit slower than I had anticipated. It really isn't a huge deal, if something needs done, it needs done. I have ordered parts along the way however, I need to get better at planning. I feel a bit like Arnie some days :



I really need to post more, it is easier to keep track of things.

 

Time to finally post the last front brake rebuild. I forgot to bake the pots when i did the caliper. I needed to wait until I had more parts to bake with it.





This is not as good as the last one but I take it. I do not have pictures of the before state. The two that I used were from my parts pile. These were in better shape than the ones on the car.





The first picture is of the one caliper that is in really rough shape. When I finally get a proper restoration, I will send both off to be professionally repair and painted. The second one, I finally got the two stuck pots out. Out of all of the pots in all calipers, I almost had as many bad ones as good ones.

The picture below shows a caliper after half soaking in Evap o Rust. The pads for the fronts are semi metallic for OEM. I was still generally shocked how much of the dirt was caused by steel dust.



Time will tell if my work was a complete success.

 

I posted a thread about acquiring a heat shield for the A\C radiator. This is the follow up for that. I would normally put all rusty metal in evap-o-rust or put it through electrolysis. This piece and another that I have, was so rusty that it probably not make it through the processes without falling apart. A forum member suggested that it would be ok to treat and paint. There was one available to buy but I suggested that another forum member buy it since i have two, albeit rusty.

After cleaning:






One side with the Rust Fix:




This stuff is great after you scrape the surface bare as possible. It sprays on clear and then turns the rust black.

One side with Rust Kutter:




This stuff is extra good with surface rust, it just eats the rust away to bare metal. On heavy rust it still works well and turns the surface black. The manufacturer prefers the surface not to be over cleaned as it works better. This side is over sprayed, I added way to much. Usually you can scrub off the extra, this piece was very weak so, I didn't try super hard to clean off the extra.

All done and painted:

 

I have been really excited and waiting to get the front wheel well cleaned, treated and painted. There really isn't any rust to speak of for the most part.







I treaded this area with Rust Kutter and washed the acid off after one day. I then primed with galvanizing paint and then the aliance paint with two coats.

 

This wasn't a great paint job, mostly bcause of the minimal prep work. I just cleand and treaded or removed rust. Yhere are tiny peices of tar stuck to the paint. some of this will get some truck bed lining later.

 

There is still plenty of engine bay work to do and I cleaned all connectors that I could reach by soaking them in cleaning vinegar. It cleans corrosion really well but also strips of protective coatings to. I added no-ox to as many treated connectors as possible. The frame rail on the top side was pretty chewed up. Unfortunately, I do not have picture of the before shots for the top. I decided to just paint the top and bottom side, instead of just the bottom.

I was seriously concerned about over spray so, I decided to paint on the primer. I used some Rustolium rusty metal primer. I used a lousy brush and did a terrible job keeping it clean of brush strokes. Those picture were not taken either. Perhaps i was just a bit frustrated with the process to think about taking pictures.

Now what really is upsetting, I ended up spraying on on the bottom paint and did fine with over spray. The top, was terribly done with a shop brush and color matched paint. It is pretty rough looking on top but at leas most of it is hidden and my rails won't rust out as fast.

Before sanding, treating and cleaning. You can see the areas where the brake fluid overflowed.






In the third picture you can clearly see the damage done in the wreck the first owner had. The tube part of the frame is slightly bent. It chipped the paint and it rusted away because paint was never added. This will take a lot of work to fix correctly. I will have to over look this for now.

After I was finished:

 

The top side really looks quite bad:



You can see non matching paint even after a polish, paint that didn't stick very well and brush strokes. The rest was very difficult to take a picture of.

 

I worked a lot on parts, painting and otherwise. The parts in gey were painted with brake paint and baked. I am hoping for the best with durability.

 

This was replaced with a new one and painted.

 

I am capable of doing some fab. I finally fixed the bumper brackets. I drilled, tapped and used some JB weld to secure the new studs in place.








You can see the screw is countersunk. It just isn't done well.

 

I cleaned and painted to pully.

 

I cleaned a lot of plastic parts. I was seriously impressed by the process i stumbled into. I first washed the parts in soapy water and let dry. I then took a paper towel soaked in wax and grease remover and cleaned some more. This got parts way more black than I expected already. Just a word of caution.... anything that wax and grease remover touches will change the way it looks forever, especially paint. Be extremely careful with over spray.

I then soaked the parts in back To Black by Meguires overnight. I have many before and after shots. none are better than the inner fender liner. Also, this process works best on non shiny plastic. Shiny plastic looks a bit greasy afterwards.

Before:




After:

 

There is bad news. I really suck at body work. I have started and then stopped working on the fender and the bumper. I will regroup later.







Also, despite my best efforts, I managed to cross thread one of my connections on the oil metering pump after a full rebuild. I am waiting on a used one in the mail now.

 

I took apart the front end as well. I forgot to take the before shots. I was really excited to get this started and finished. in the process of starting the re installation process, I worked on the harness. I removed nearly all of the tape and replaced what I could in the front section. I am nearly complete with the driver side section now.





You can really see the difference. If you want to do this, take your time and do not remove to much at once. Add it back on there as soon as possible.

I redid the front section separately. There are a some factory splices. They must have needed to make changes and didn't want to scrap the ones in inventory. There was a random solider blob in there.

 

I did more clean up on the engine bay. I had no idea that the blackened paint could be polished off.

 

And some more reassembly. I was very surprise how well the front bracket stiffened up when bolted to the other parts. I feel better about trusting such a small connection point.







I did not replace the power steering hoses. I an considering am electric system in the future. I will take my chances.

 

This is a good example of Rust Fix. This back was just rust. I sprayed on rust fix and coated in clear coat.




The pully got painted. It's not done well but at leas its done. I will be replacing the engine later so I didn't want to get to involved yet. An air pum will get a rebuild at that time as well.

 

Well, I kind of forgot where I am at here..... ......

I have been doing a lot of engine bay work. One Saturday, I put in the new oil metering pump, mounted the oil cooler with brackets that I fabricated and installed the water pump housing and water pump. Two of those needed taken apart and redone. Let me explain...

I ordered some 1" steel L bracket to make hangers for the oil cooler. With my measurements and test fitting, I thought that it was good, it was not. I realized that the bracket need to be 1" by 2". I ordered 2" by 2" and started to fab these brackets again.





I cut them to length and started to drill holes. I managed to find some insulators to add to the brackets. I mounted those to the oil cooler and then I test fit and drilled the holes. The side that attached to the car got studs and the other one got the insulators.





I then test fit the oil cooler and it seemed to fit just fine. However, I did not test fit it with the oil cooler lines attached. That was a gigantic mistake... The lines did not fit correctly. So... time to move the brackets around and have them facing in different directions and move the stud location. Although the symmetry was lost, the bracket were able to be shrunk down some.






This fits much better, it might need lowered some so new brackets might need made. Funny thing, I found an aluminum L bracket in my scrap pile after all this work with a cutoff wheel and extra money.....