Interior Removal Finished

Things are starting to come together in anticipation of beginning the major work on the structural problems with the chassis. The MIG welder, floor pans and longitudinal sheetmetal, and air cutting and grinding tools have all arrived. As I said earlier, the chinese-sourced air tools are reasonable quality. The other tools (body hammer/dolly set, impact socket set) are total crap. The paint on these parts is still sticky! They were cheap, and they should be serviceable, but it does back up the argument for buying quality hand tools.

I finished stripping out the interior over the holidays, and there is plenty of rust. Plenty. I attacked the rust around the perimeter of the floor pan where it meets the interior longitudinals and central tunnel to clean up the metal there, and I'll definitely be having to replace some of that metal. Good thing I ordered the angle-iron perimeter kit along with the other parts. I also ground some on the rust that was under the rear seats. No perforation, thank God, but definitely they are in pretty rough shape. I'm going to do some more grinding on there, but I don't think I'll be able to remove all the rust, it appears to have penetrated pretty deeply. These sections of the body are not available as aftermarket pieces. Because they still feel strong, and I haven't been able to put an awl through the metal, I will probably clean with Oxy-solv, and then overcoat with ZeroRust, and leave it at that. Not concours, just strong and good looking, remember?

I also removed the dash top, which is total trash. At least, it is so rusty and perforated on the edges that it appears that way. However, this is another piece of sheetmetal that isn't available aftermarket. I saw someone selling a used one in good condition for $250! I'm not sure I'm ready to pay that much for it, especially when it is covered up in vinyl and is non-structural. I may end up using it as a lesson in bending and forming sheet metal. I.e. cutting off the ends, and reforming 20-22 gauge metal into something that fits the general contours, and then welding it on. It is going to be covered anyway so it doesn't have to be perfect.

More news on other parts of the car besides the body. The engine is not original, not even close actually. It's a 1959 1600 normal-type engine from a 356 A. I don't know when or why the original engine was replaced, I assume it was blown up at some point in the distant past. I'll try to get information from the PO, but it may be lost in the sands of time. This is kind of disappointing because the 1959 engine is not a good starting point for performance improvement work, and that was one thing I was hoping to tinker with. I even bought a set of forged big bore racing pistons, cylinders, and connecting rods (on eBay, yeah, shoot me) but that was before I thoroughly examined the engine and found out it wasn't a 1965 "C". So they won't fit properly. Crud. I'll either end of re-selling them, or mothballing them until I get to the point of doing an engine swap, and that might be awhile. The engine seems to run strong, and while I haven't yet run a compression test on it, I think it is sound, and since so much other work needs to be done, messing with the engine will come later. Engine swap or not, though, the engine does need to be removed simply to clean/degrease it and renew some of the gaskets where oil seems to be leaking. The smell when the heating system is in use is from caked up grease grime inside the heater flapper boxes. It is unbearable.