Engine and Transmission

I don't have too much to blog about. That doesn't mean Mike hasn't been busy, just means I have been slacking on taking pictures. So the last blog post I was typing up as Mike was hooking the transmission and engine together. I actually got to help with it a little bit. anyways I didn't get that many pictures of the process but here they are.

I failed to get a picture of the finished project...but I am sure there will be pictures as it is being dropped into the car.

As for getting the car back from being painted... things keep popping up. Lots of problems slowing things down. Today it was the wind keeping the car from being painted. So hopefully the weather is more cooperative tomorrow so it can get done. We really need to get the car back and really start getting things going on it if we are going to have it done in time for Tuacahn. So everyone keep your fingers crossed!

We Went to Visit the Car

We went to visit the car today at Gary's house. It is exciting seeing what he has painted on the car now. Tomorrow is the day he is planning on painting the exterior of the car. Monday he will spend buffing it and whatever else he has to do. So that means Tuesday the car should be back.

Gary is an incredibly nice guy. He is also very talented at doing body work and paint. It has taken awhile to get the car done, but body work and paint is something he does on the side. It is not his full time job. He has taken many days of work to be able to work on this car. He has done a lot of body work and prep work building up to painting it. He has done an incredible job. I fully trust him and know how good he is at what he does. I knew when restoring this car that I wanted him to do the paint. So even though I could have had the paint done much quicker by going through a paint shop, I wouldn't get the quality work that I know Gary does. So I know it's worth the wait! 

This is the engine bay nicely painted black. It blows my mind looking at it remembering the rusted out spots. You can't even tell that it was all rusty. I love that in the radiator support no one would have any clue that it once had a piece cut out of it for aftermarket AC. 

 This is the dashboard all painted. We couldn't find a paint code for the '67 dashboard so they were able to match the paint from the ash tray. I think it looks great and seems like it should match everything we have for the interior.

 The exterior of the car that is all primed and pretty much ready to be painted.

 This is the best picture I could get of the underside of the car. I pretty much just had to hold the camera under the car and hope I was aiming it right. The underside is red oxide paint.

 The best part was seeing the doors. I love them!  I could sit and stare at them all night! I was nervous to see what candy Apple Red looks like. I had seen it at car shows but I couldn't remember the shade it was. I am very happy with the color. The doors still need to be cut and polished, which means sanded with 2,000 grit sand paper and buffed.

 The back side of the doors still need to be painted the interior color. I really do love how the doors have turned out. I was trying to imagine the entire car painted like that but I just can't grasp it.

 This whole restoration has been incredible to witness. It blows my mind seeing all of the car parts cleaned up and repainted. The rear axle, for example, I clearly remember how gross, greasy, and caked with red sand it was. So it is crazy seeing it looking like a brand new part. This entire car is going to look brand new. I am excited!

So I setup a nice little place in the garage for me to hang out. You can't tell but the black blob by me is my dog Molly. Nothing is better than to be able to be out here supporting Mike while he works on car stuff but still get to be all comfy and cuddled up with the dog. When I start to get really tired, I might just take a little nap while Mike works. Who knows! Either way I don't mind hanging out in the garage when I can be this comfortable.

While I am sitting here all comfy cozy with a blanket and the dog... Mike is working on connecting the engine and transmission. I have been taking pictures which I will do in a new post probably tomorrow or the next day. So there is more to come!

We Still Might Be In The Race

We took a financial hit with Mikes accident... which really is making things difficult with finishing the car... but I don't think we are ready to fully give up on the car. We are so close, that it sucks to give up... or even put the car on hold. So I think we are going to try our hardest to do what we can with the car. Even if it requires me to work overtime (which I despise). It is the least I can do since Mike has been slaving away on the car. I need to contribute in some way, so I am going to try to commit to working as much overtime that I can from now until the show. Hopefully that will help ease the financial burden and we will be able to finally cross that elusive finish line!

Tripping at the Finish Line

So the car restoration is being put on hold. We have been trying to get it done by April 23rd, but we have hit a financial roadblock. It is frustrating being so close to having it done. Its like sprinting down the straight away and tripping right before the finish line. We aren't giving up though, but planning on limping our way across the finish line.  So the car will eventually get done.... now just isn't the time.

Mike was involved in an auto accident yesterday on his way to work. His SUV is totaled. So we have that new financial strain associated with the accident to worry about. As it was the car was already going to be $4,000 over budget, so we decided that we just can't worry about the car right now. We need to worry about other financial obligations first. Plus the car is not done being painted yet and we are running out of time. Mike was going insane spending countless nights in the garage working late hours trying to get stuff done. It was a huge strain on him and making life difficult. I would rather have my husband back and enjoy my time with him than to have him constantly so focused on the car.

I am ok with this though. It killed me seeing Mike so stressed about the car and working so hard to get it done. I hated knowing that I was putting him through that. I would rather have my happy-go-lucky husband back than try to get this car finished in time for Tuacahn. There are other shows I can take it to. This isn't the end of the world by any means. I know that the car will one day be finished and we will be able to enjoy it. I just refuse to let it be at the cost of my husbands sanity!

So Tuacahn is out... and the restoration is slowing way down.... but we will cross the finish line sooner or later... and probably in a better mental state.

I Lied

I said in a previous post that it doesn't get more redneck than car parts hanging from the chandelier.... but then Mike had to prove me wrong. It gets much more redneck than that. We now have wheels on our dinning room table. Never thought my dinning room table would ever have tires sitting on it one day. I guess its just part of this whole project.

Mike is repainting the charcoal colored spots on the wheels. This is one of the wheels that he wrapped and masked off. It is just sitting in here drying.

It looks like a giant donut. Infact, I was tempted to draw sprinkles on the top of it but wasn't sure Mike would find the humor in that. He is kind of on one tonight. I don't blame him. He has been working on car stuff non stop for the past month. It didn't help that he managed to hit his hand into the door frame while carrying the big donut in to dry. The door took a chunk of skin from his finger. His hands are so beat up. Lots of cuts. Who would have thought a car restoration could be so brutal!

We had to buy a new radiator. The one that was in my car had been modified for the aftermarket AC.  Although when looking at the radiator that was in my car, it almost appears to have had a V6 radiator in it. So somewhere along the line it must have been replaced with the V6 radiator. I imagine the car ran pretty hot when it was being driven back in the day.

I am a little late on getting this picture on here, but Mike put the leaf springs onto the rear axle. So the hope is that they will be able to jack it up and bolt is directly to the car.

 Mike has been super busy on all this car stuff. I am not getting near the pictures of this restoration as I should. So much is going on that it's hard to keep up.  We are hoping to get the car back in a few days so we can get going on putting it all together. We have to have it done by a month from today. That way we will have the weekend to test out the car before having to drive it all the way to St. George.

Display Sign

I have been playing around with ideas for my display sign to go with my car at car shows. I downloaded a trial version of Photoshop and thought I would try my luck at making  rusty sign. Photoshop was not easy to learn to use. I spent countless hours reading tutorial and the help section.  So I finally got the sign how I wanted it and printed a poster size at Costco's for $10. I wanted to see what it looked like before I spent the money having it printed on aluminum.  The Costco's one turned out great so we framed it and will hang it in the garage.

Since I was satisfied with it I submitted an online order for Kinkos. They didn't have the size I had originally made the picture in so I figured they could just crop it. They called a little while later and said that if they cropped it, I would lose the writing or some of the pictures. So I went down and they showed me the options. Cropping wouldn't work so they stretched it to fit but that distorted the car pictures. So I decided I would just have to start from scratch in Photoshop making it the exact size they could do. So I just spent the last few hours working on this. Since it is so late, I will just send it to Kinkos tomorrow and have it printed, but I wanted to post a version of it on here. I am hoping the writing turns out big enough since I had to shrink it down a bit more than I wanted. So I am keeping my fingers crossed that this actually works out!

Drive Shaft, Carburetor, and other Misc. things

Mike has been super busy on all kinds of car things. These pictures are not necessarily in the order in which they were completed, but here it goes.

Mike cleaned up the drive shaft.

 Under all the grease, grime, and rust there were three colored rings on it. Green, pink and white. Mike said they all had meaning when the drive shaft was manufactured. 

He then painted the drive shaft black.

 The U Joint was really lose so we had to take it in to have that replaced and have the drive shaft balanced.  Note that I had to go out to the garage to ask Mike why we took the drive shaft to a shop. I then stood there and tried to memorize what he said long enough to come back inside and add it to my blog. I may very well have messed that up. At least I tried to sound like I actually understand this car stuff.

Mike got the carburetor (probably spelled that wrong) cleaned up and ready to go. This is a picture of it soaking in carburetor cleaner. I do believe we failed to get a picture of it all put together and done. You will just have to believe me when I say it turned out good.   

 Mike also got the transmission cleaned up and ready to go. this is the before picture.

 This is a during picture.... there is a noticeable amount of grease and grime removed by this point.

The transmission had obviously been rebuilt at one point and painted blue. It needed to be natural so Mike painted it with some engine paint that makes it look natural. It looks very nice!

 Mike was super excited to pick up a bucket of miscellaneous nuts and bolts his dad had. He spent a decent amount of time digging through it. I am sure it will continue to come in handy through the rest of the restoration. there are also some other parts laid on the ground that he got cleaned up, clear coated and painted. I have no clue what they are and frankly I don't have any desire to make any more trips to the garage to ask Mike what they are. This blog post has already taken me a half hour to get this far due to the frequent trips to ask questions. So hopefully no one will lose sleep wondering what those parts are and where they go.

 Last but not least... I got this picture of Mike stripping the black paint off of the gas tank. This is not the original gas tank that goes with my car. Unfortunately someone thought it would be a great idea to paint it black so Mike has to strip the paint. So that is what he is currently doing while I do this blog post.

So that's some of the projects Mike has been working on. I am sure there is a lot more that I haven't managed to get pictures of or blog about. It is really getting crunch time so there are tons of things going on. I haven't been able to keep up with it all! We are hoping to get the car back from being painted this weekend. That's when things will get even crazier than they are now... which is really hard to imagine it getting crazier than now. So let the fun begin!

Engine Assembly - Take Two

As you will recall in my previous post, we had the engine rebuilt. We got it back from the shop and Mike spent the next couple of nights putting everything together on the engine. He had it all painted and everything on it ready so he could just drop it into the car once the car was back. One little phone call Mike received yesterday changed all of that.

The engine shop called to let us know they put the wrong pistons in my engine. They had been working on another 289 engine at the same time as mine and put the pistons from that engine into my engine. So they needed us to bring it back so they could fix it. So that meant the entire engine had to be torn apart again.

Mike's dad came over and they both got the engine torn down and were able to drop it off at the engine shop again. The shop went right to work and had to engine done in 3 hours. So we picked it up again and Mike spent the night reassembling the engine. He was able to get it all back together again.

It was beyond stressful having something like this happen when we are so close to our deadline. I am glad it was able to be rectified so quickly although it did set us back a day... which every day counts at this point. Plus is was frustrating the way the engine shop went about it. We didn't get any apologies and the guy wasn't very nice when we picked up the engine. He did refund $100 but that hardly seems like much considering the trouble it caused. I wish they would have been a bit nicer about it as well. At least we know that we won't be going back to that place again.

Mike has gotten a lot of things done. I will do another blog post with pictures of his progress as soon as I can find the camera. Hopefully I will be posting pictures of a nicely painted car soon as well. We should have it back hopefully in the next few days.   Exciting stuff happening! Too bad it is all accompanied by so much stress. I will be relieved when this car is done.

Getting More and More Redneck Everyday!

It's interesting how a car restoration can turn redneck real fast. It just makes me laugh how redneck our house currently looks. I know I had previously posted pictures of our computer room full of car parts... as well as our back porch, dinning room table and coffee table loaded with car parts. Well I just had to laugh that the it has spread to the dinning room light. Mike has been hanging parts to dry on it.

 Notice we still have tons of car parts on our table... but not as many as we had.

 I of course had to throw in a picture of the engine. It is coming together nicely. I am still totally in love with the color and really think it is a gorgeous engine!

 Mike also got the chrome trim on the front seats. They look great!

Time is winding down for getting the car done. It really stressed me out when I think about it. I was to the point of wanting to just throw in the towel the other day. It just gets hard seeing so much money going into it and knowing that we are quickly running out of time to get it completed. It has been majorly stressful for all involved. I really just can't wait for it to be finished and for everyone to be able to relax and breath again! Oh and of course I also want it done so we can enjoy the car!

The Seats, The Engine, The Excitement!

So we were not originally planning on having the engine rebuilt, but when Mike tore into it there was massive amounts of sludge. It was apparent that the engine really did need to be rebuilt. It sucked having that extra cost, but it will be worth it.

The engine came back from the rebuild shop today and it is gorgeous. I never though I would think an engine gorgeous but its so clean and shiny and blue... my favorite color!  So I of course had to post lots of pictures of all angles of this beauty. These pictures can speak for themselves.  This is the long block only, so once he gets the entire engine reassembled... I will have to post more pictures.

 We also got the seats back from being upholstered. I was so incredibly excited to see the seats and they are incredible! The seats we used are not the original seats from the car. The original seats are in too bad of shape. We held on the the original seats so we had to get a picture of the new seats next to the old ones. Pretty sad!

 This is the back seat. So pretty!

 We couldn't take a picture of the front seats without the console between them. The console is not original to the car and is only for comfort when we are driving the car. It will come out for car shows.

 I was super excited to test out the seats. I told Mike he couldn't test them until I had. I figure it's my car so I should be the first to test them. I figured the steering wheel would finish the photo nicely.

 I finally agreed to let Mike test the seat. Technically he will be in the drivers seat a lot more than I will. I do plan on driving the car some times but he will be the main driver. I trust his driving skills much more than I trust my own skills. I think I am going to be incredibly paranoid of taking the car out. I don't want it to get hurt. Maybe it it didn't have the sentimental value to it since it was my dad's first car... then it would be a different story and I don't think I could care quite as much.

I do love Mikes face in this picture. He always makes the best faces.

It was an exciting night. This is all really happening. It has been almost 4 years in the making but there is an end in sight. This car should be completed in a month and a half. It just seems so crazy it is all coming together. I am so excited! 

The car should be back from being painted in a couple of weeks and that is when the madness will really begin. As it is I feel like I don't see much of my husband but I know it is only going to get worse in the coming weeks. I know it will be short lived and soon I will get to spend plenty of time with him at car shows or taking drives in the car. I cant wait!

More Misc Things Done

Mike really has gotten a lot of little things done. His goal is to get as much done as possible before the car gets here so that it will be smoother sailing reassembling the car. This is the differential that Gary painted and got back to us. Mike went ahead and started assembling things on it.

The rear brakes assembled on it

 He also was able to get the front disk brake pieces ready and awaiting assembly

 This is the back side of front spindle with brakes attached.

The front view

He used some high temperature coating on the Brake Calipers

The Exhaust Manifolds also got a high temperature coating.

Car in Primer, and Other Random Progress

I am really behind in blogging. Life has been busy which is unfortunate because a lot has been happening with the car. I should have documented things better. So now it will just be an abbreviated entry with lots of pictures.

The car is in primer and is actually getting to the point of being painted. Its exciting stuff! There was a lot of body work that had to be done before it could be painted. We went up to Hooper a couple weeks ago to drop some more stuff off and got a picture of the car.

 There are the splash shields before Mike did anything to them.

 This is what they looked like after he sand blasted them and repainted them. He had a fun time making little staples to reattach the rubber pieces. They turned out incredibly nice!

 Mike also was able to clean up the heater box. I don't have a before picture but it is looking nice.

 He also painted the Air Cleaner, Oil Pan and Valve Covers. Unfortunately the Valve Covers had the paint wrinkle on them so he has to sand blast them and will be repainting them soon.

 I love the color blue that is used on the engine parts. These parts turned out so good! It blows me mind how things can go back to looking brand new again. He also painted the brake power booster black.

There is plenty more he has gotten done. He has spent every evening working on the car in some way or another. He has gone through and sand blasted nuts and bolts and all kinds of car parts. Our house is constantly smelling like paint due to parts being clear coated or painted black and then brought in the house to dry. It is a very common occurrence right now... but I don't mind it because it means progress.