Details... Part 1

Busy and productive day...... got rearend primed,

steering column harness connector reassembled, ignition key cylinders removed from old and replacement columns, steering shaft marked and indexing flat cut,

backing plates painted with POR15 clear and base coat of silver caliper paint applied,

oil pan sandblasted,

rear lower control arms primed inside and boxing caps cut and lastly,

bushing cups pressed out of the rear upper control arms for cleaning, replating yellow chromate and installation of the new Energy Suspensions polyurethane bushings.

Love days when things go smoothly as planned.... could really spoil a guy!!

More to come.....

ZEBRA 3 OUT

Minor update

Well after having my gallbladder removed last Saturday, I had a lite day today and got a few things done.....

bushings installed in the rear sway bar, blasted a few brackets I came across that needed cleaned up, prepped the backing plates so I can POR15 them next weekend, first coat of self-etching primer on the rear end and.....

dug out my tilt column so I can put the wiring connector back together, change out the key cylinder to my actual lock and get the steering shaft prepped to install my later model steering wheel.

Really felt good to have the first item ready to be REINSTALLED on the car. Looking forward to having more subassemblies ready to put back on the car as reassembly begins!!

Until next time....

ZEBRA 3 OUT

Blasting.... part 7

Another long holiday weekend with SOME progress but nothing to really brag about. On Thursday I went out to the garage to work on breaking down the control arms so I could remove the bushings. When I got out there I spent a couple hours vacuuming the floor and straightening up the mowers and lawn equipment before turning my attention to the control arms.... Looks like come Spring I need to have a garage sale and a dumpster dropped off to get the rest of the junk outta there!

With cleaning out of the way, I went to work on the control arms, but that didn't go well at all.... seems the nuts on the control arm hardware are locknuts and I couldn't get good leverage on them to get them broken loose, so I put them in the car to take back over to the dealership and strip them of their hardware so I can tackle the bushings. One nice aspect about working out in the garage when it's in the thirties.... you don't break out in a sweat and your beer stays NICE AND COLD!

Well on Friday, I stopped and picked up sand at Tractor Supply, then went to the dealership to work some on the Tomato. First thing on the agenda was to dump out to old sand (man, it had turned to POWDER!) and put in the new. I then broke down the hardware on the control arms. With those done, I put a couple things in the cabinet to blast and got ready to go...... CRAP! Seems I bought medium sand rather than fine and the siphon tube was too small to draw it in without clogging, so I dumped the 100 lbs out into a couple 5 gallon pails and set it aside for later use in the hopper and headed for the barn. I ran back by Tractor Supply and picked up 100 lbs of fine sand and once home, I drilled out one set of the upper rear control arm bushings before my wife got home from work, so I called it a day...

































Saturday was a bit more productive, finished blasting the front spindles and got headlight buckets, front bumper frame mounts, jack, jack base, jack handle, power steering cooler, spare hold down bolt, a few interior brackets and hood hinges cleaned up. Also hit the rear lower control arms again to scuff up the inner reinforcements that the team at F3 welded in for me. I THINK that should be about all the smaller stuff cleaned up and once the car is reassembled and outta the blast booth, I'll need to address the bumper reinforcements.















































































































Hopefully the temperature will be warm enough next weekend to paint a few things!!

Stay tuned.....

ZEBRA 3 OUT

Blasting.... part 6

Well was a long holiday weekend but not a lot of progress. Friday I got the front spindles broken down, dropped off the rear control arms to have the inner reinforcements welded in, returned the original Monroe Gas-Magnum Severe Duty 550011 CVPI shocks and MOOG CC803 rear springs I had ordered and picked up the replacement MOOG CC811 rear springs for a '77-'79 LTD II wagon and Monroe 34656 Gas-Magnum shocks for an '01 F150 Litening. Then went home and spent the rest of the day cleaned up the hard brake lines for the Torino on the wire wheel.

On Saturday, I dug thru my parts cache and pulled out a bunch of stuff that needed to be blasted, then had a go at breaking down one of the front  lower control arms. REAL PITA!!! With one down and half my work day gone, I jumped in to do a bit of blasting. Got the spindles, battery tray, horns, rear license plate bracket, tail light fillers, coolant lines, AC hot water control valve, spare tire wing nut and the lower control arm all cleaned up.....

Another long weekend ahead, let's hope for more progress!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

ZEBRA 3 OUT

Blasting.... part 5

Since it seems I am NEVER going to get finished blasting, I have gone back and renamed a few of my posts to better reflect the blog subject, because I was beginning to run outta part subsections! LOL...

Again more blasting this weekend of the front suspension parts....

I also started grinding off the heads of the ball joint rivets so they can all be removed....

I also traced my package tray so I can have a pattern should I need to remake one and got my lower rear control arms packaged up to drop off at F3 so they can weld in the inner braces.

Another long weekend ahead so here's hoping for a bit of REAL progress next time I get to play!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

ZEBRA 3 OUT

Blasting..... part 4

Short weekend (went car shopping for the wife a new ride on Saturday) but I was able to get a few more parts blasted.....
























































I also got all my speaker openings measured and found the bumper shim I was able to salvage so I can get it drawn up for duplication.

Really looking forward to the paint filling the air!

Until next time....

ZEBRA 3 OUT

Blasting.... part 3

Busy Saturday but not a lot of progress..... picked up the parts from being cleaned and got them all unwrapped and staged. They turned out pretty good... a few that will need a bit of attention but all in all saved me lots of time cleaning them up. After staging them, I spent over an hour policing the area and vacuuming up all the paper confetti they had packed the parts in....they must have thought I was shipping raw eggs to China!! LOL...

I addressed a couple things on the Tomato, then went thru all my pulled parts to get out the ones that will need sandblasted and got them staged. I figured I would get everything blasted and ready for paint so when I did start spraying, I could knock out all the smaller stuff along with the chassis and rearend.

Next weekend will involve more sandblasting and a couple little incidental areas to address under the Tomato and perhaps some paint will begin to fly!!

Stay tuned.

ZEBRA 3 OUT