First order of business was to see if the screwdriver would get the trunk open. No dice... so I sprayed about half a can of liquid wrench into the key hole... waited a day and the screwdriver popped it right open. BOOYAH! There was much rejoicing. Then I took the trunk lid off. There's some rust damage around the corners of it that I'll need to address before final paint, but that's a ways down the road. It's structurally fine and ready to just be cleaned up for now and then stored.
Sawzall time... with proper eye protection, I cut away the exhaust pipe so I was able to pull out the exhaust manifolds.
With the manifolds and exhaust pipe out of the way, it was easy to pull the starter... and with it the positive battery cable. Here they are sitting in the newly-opened trunk alongside the screwdriver that got the trunk open.
Meanwhile in the trunk... here's the passenger's side by the wheel well. My brother had repaired this with a bondo-ish compound along with the structural foam so I'll get to scrape and pull all of that out of there before I do the metal repair over there.
On the driver's side, there was no repair work done... plus it's more rusted out anyway. Lovely.
Some shot of the engine bay with the exhaust out.
Some more stuff done this weekend:
Swept out the trunk, cleaned a lot out of the trunk lid weatherstripping area (sitting under a willow tree for a decade or so will accumulate a good amount of... 'stuff'...)
Removed the bellhousing bolts (four of them, right?) They weren't very tight... I don't know if that should worry me. I was thinking all I have to disconnect now was the motor mounts and I'm good to pull the engine, but then I remembered the flywheel/torque converter bolts... oops. I need to take the flywheel cover off, there's a little door in it right in the front which is odd to me because that's like a perfect scoop to pick up gravel while you drive down the road, I would think. I'll post a picture when I take one. Plan to get a replacement cover that doesn't have the window eventually...
Speaking of the transmission, it occurred to me that maybe the reason the car doesn't seem to go into gear is because the shift mechanism levers are mounted to my disintegrated frame rail at one point so maybe the shifting isn't pushing the lever at the tranny all the way. It would be nice to not have to have the transmission repaired or replaced. I'll check another time... once the engine's out, I want to pull the transmission and driveshaft and take them to a coin-op car wash to degrease the hell out of them. The trans in particular is coated with oil and dirt (thank you, rear main seal leak...)
Removed the fuel filter and the line from the fuel pump to the carb (used my new wrenches).
Removed the mounting dish things that hold the driver's side headlights. I need them out so I can get to the bolts holding the platform that the dishes mount on so I can get to the bolts that hold the fender on. Ugh... hip bone's connected to the leg bone...
Tried to cut off a bolt holding some more metal in place, but I had settled for a grinding disk rather than a real cutting disk because I couldn't find the right attachment at Menards.... it didn't work so well. The grinding disk did work well to grind down the tabs and rivets that held the trim in place, though... I ground most of those down on the driver's side.
Used a nylon spinning brush drill attachment to attack a lot of the rust on the driver's side, sprayed some rust converter on the quarter and b-pillar sections just to put the brakes on the rusting. I need to get a circular sander and 80-grit pads for when I really want to go to town on that area, but that's probably not going to happen until after I get the frame sorted out.
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