When I took the body off I didn't have the engine or the transmission on the frame, so when I jacked the car down I had a these two things to deal with. First I had a 4X4 post under the firewall that would not allow me to get low enough to re-block the post. So I said the heck with the transmission and took it back off the frame. This allow me two things, one was the ability to jack the body down to where the 4X4 post would sit on the frame. The second and most important was that I didn't really want to be driving this with a 2 speed, so I bought a TH350 and will install it after I have gone through it and a shift kit installed.
When I started to jack the body down I had both of my sons (my oldest son Derek was home on Spring Break), watch the car so that it came down evenly. I did the same jacking process as I did when I jacked the car up, alternating from the front to the back. Once I got the body down to where the 4X4 post sat on the frame, I then took the pair of floor jacks and placed them in the middle of the drive shaft tunnel area. I placed a 2 1/2 ft wide piece of 3X4 oak on each of the jacks and raised the body just high enough the slide the post out. The boys then moved the frame to get the body mounts line up. It really went much smoother that I thought it was going to and I had the body on the frame and all the mounts installed in less than 4 hours.
Once I got the body back down on the frame I started to work on filling the seams in the trunk. Maybe I spent a little too much time with the seams, but I wanted to make the trunk invisable to being replaced. Once I got the body putty to where I liked it I moved onto the front fenders.
What I decided to do here was use fiberglass to repair any of the areas that had been rusted out or had areas that were starting to rust. Like everything else on this car, it was my first time at doing whatever need to be done. I was quite pleased on how it turned out and question if anyone can tell where I have used it.
I have decided that I am going to go as far as my ablilities will allow on doing the body work and then I will have a more experienced body person finish the block sanding and do the painting.
Started to strip the paint off the week of August 4th. I need to have the car stripped and ready for paint by August 18th. What a nasty job it is to strip the paint using sanding disks. I went through about $70.00 worth of sand paper removing the paint. The lacquer paint really gums up the sand paper.
I got the front and rear windows out of the car and used a ro-loc to get down to bare metal. I have new clips and screws to put back on for the window modlings.
