Whoa, it's been a while.

So... winter.  It was cold and long this year in MN, I really had no desire to spend any time in the garage from about Thanksgiving till Easter.  I know, I know... excuses.  At one point, I rolled the car out of the garage and turned it around so I could give some attention to the rear end.  I removed the tail-lights and bumper (the bumper nuts came off pretty easily) and gave a lot of the exposed sheet metal some attention with my drill/wire brushes.  I also pried out the epoxy repair stuff that my brother had used on the passenger's side of the trunk, so that's all opened up now and exposed.

I removed the gas tank... what a joy that was.  The tank straps are held in place by these bolts that are like four inches long with a nut on them to unscrew... on my back, under the car, arms wrapped up in there, headlamp angled up there to shine on the nut... awkward.  I think it took four sessions of me wrenching on those nuts to get them all out.  Anyway, the straps are out, the tank is out... then I started cleaning it up.  It looks 'okay'... I'm going to sand/scrape off the surface rust, spray it with the rust converter, prime and paint it (have the paint and all already) and get the POR-15 kit to clean and seal the interior (about 70 bucks). I just got the sending unit out of it this week.

I still  haven't been able to get the actual bumper off of the bumper braces... impact doesn't move them, I'm probably going to have to cut those bolts off.  The chrome bumper itself has some rust-through... I'm not sure where I'm going to go there.  They need to be repaired at least and rechromed if I want to do that... or I could paint them the body color, too.... which would mean I could use filler to smooth them, I suppose.  Stuff to think about.

Through all of this I noticed that the frame is getting worse and worse... probably from moving it around, I guess.  It's to the point where the frame rail HAS to be repaired, so I turned the car back around (so the front-end is pointing out) and got serious... I removed the driver's door and the driver's fender and took the wheel and hub off.  I need some new sockets and/or wrenches to take the rest of the steering knuckle and suspension apart, the goal being at this point to get the k-member out and all of the suspension so I can repair the frame and clean everything up... not to mention cleaning and repairing the k-member.  I still can't get the torsion bars out though because the adjusting bolt in the front end will NOT move.  More work.  :-(

While I was at it, I took the crank and pistons out of the block.  Crank looks generally fine, but the bearings looked pretty bad... more evidence of running low on oil, I suppose.  Buddy of mine gave me a wooden cranshaft crate/cradle to store it in.  Also, one of the cylinders had a groove dug into the cylinder wall (longitudinal)... prolly from a chunk of bearing material stuck in the rings?  I think it's guaranteed the cylinders will need to be bored as well as honed.  I've researched some pistons... my buddy insists that I get hypereutectic pistons, but that's at least another 100 bucks on my budget... we'll see.  I'm looking for pistons with a higher than stock pin height to increase the compression ratio (along with a thin head gasket)... there are cast aluminums available that with a thin head gasket would give me 9.5:1 CR with everything else stock... could be good.  We'll see, I'm not rebuilding the motor until I have someplace to put it... in other words, AFTER the frame and front end are fixed and back together and the engine compartment is clean, repaired and painted.  I'm hoping to rebuild the motor next winter-ish... shooting for getting the car running in spring '15.