So let's see. Time flies when you aren't looking. So I'm on 914 number 3. Number 1 is still with me in the garage. It's still a rust bucket. I look at it as my testbed. Number 2 was an LE that I just couldn't bear to cut up into a suby conversion so it's in TX now getting restored like a good LE should. The new owner looks like he's doing a hell of a job on the car and I'm sure he'll be proud as can be when it is finished.

That brings me to number 3. The keeper. An original black 73 that I picked up here in Charlotte from a fellow board member. Raby 2056, SS heat exchangers, generally in pretty good shape. I picked this car up in April of 2008 and spent most of the time driving it and getting to know the car. It's got some items that need to be taken care of, but all things that can be taken care of over time. I already put new shocks and springs in the rear end as they were a bit worn out. I've got to lower the front end a bit, but that's certainly an easy one. I may go ahead and replace the bushings on it as the rears are getting a bit squeaky.

There are a couple of rust spots that I'm trying to take care of before they get out of hand. Today I started on the driver's side pillar. This car has vinyl around the windshield as it was one of the 1st 1,000 in 73. There was a pretty good rust bubble just above the cowl, and I didn't want it to get out of hand (well and really find out how bad it was). So today I bit the bullet and went to it.

Started off by cutting and then pealing back the vinyl. I'm going to attempt to reglue this down at least in the short term, so I didn't want to chew it all up. We'll see how well this plan works out....



A nice close-up of the carnage...



The tool of choice. Picked these up at Harbor Freight and they seem to be working great. Better than a wire wheel and seem to last pretty good. I'm also working on cleaning out and repairing some spots on the front lid channel and these things work great for getting in the little spaces as they are nice and thin.



Cleaned off the area..... uh oh.... pin hole and some really deep pitting in the metal, so going to have to cut this section out and replace. Figured that would be the case from the get-go. Now just a question of how bad is it underneath?



Busted out the dremmel tool. Side note, seems that dremmel has finally come to their senses and started packaging things that people actually use and at a fairly reasonable price. I picked up a whole "cutting kit" for $12 and it contains nothing but 96 cutting wheels. Normally I would have to pick up their everything under the sun pack for $20 in order to be semi cost effective. Good job dremmel. Anyway, back to the action. So a couple of cuts later and it's opened up.



Things look pretty good inside which I'm really happy to see. On the flip side of the piece that I cut out the metal looks pretty clean and only the small pin hole made it through.



Now to get a patch made up and burn it in.

Mike