Steve’s ’73 Restoration Thread – It starts with a little crack, While I'm in There Options

[Gudhjem]

Here's my story so far.

Last summer I noticed this creeping up my driver’s side long:




So I decided I had to fix that, and then noticed this a little flaking of the tar under the driver’s seat:



A little poking around and cleaning revealed this:



And while I’m fixing those, the PO’s repair of the passenger suspension console looked a little suspect:



and I should probably figure out why I occasionally smell gasoline, and While I’m in There ™ ……

so these things go, until I arrive here:
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/confused24.gif)

I discovered enough rust and other issues that I’ve decided to strip her down to the bare tub, and do everything right. I’ve been at it since July 2010, and figured I’d make a progress thread since all the cool kids are doing it. Besides, I rely on this site a lot, and it will be easier to explain what I’m asking when I come up with lame questions (and there will be many of those).


About the car: It’s a 1973 2.0 that’s pretty much stock except for the FG flares a PO put on and the unusual 4-bolt wheels.


As far as I can tell it’s straight and never been in an accident, unless you count a dent in the bottom of the front trunk. It started out as a Florida car, but as far as I can tell from the title it came to California in the 70’s. I’ve owned it since 1996. I rebuilt the engine from the bottom up in 1998 (back when there were sites like the 2-trunk tribune and roadglue was big).

continued...

[Gudhjem]

A little progress this past weekend:

I was able to remove the wiring harness. Not an easy task, but not as hard as I feared either. Getting the snorkel through the firewall and tunnel was the trickiest part.

As in so many things, lube helped:


I Managed to ease it through the tunnel with no tearing beyond what was already there:


Anyone know of a source for these snorkels?

Guiding through the rest of the harness, from both trucks, so everything sat in the driver’s foot well.



Looks like a serious mess. Hopefully I’ll be able to sort it out when it goes back in:


I also removed the factory front and rear sway bars. The front bar was confusing until I learned (from this site) the rubber bushing is split:


Pulling the bushing bracket over the bushing was pretty easy with lots of lube and a gear puller.

While I had the car upside down, I took a closer look at the driver’s side long where the jacking hole sits. I knew it was rusted and have the replacements pieces ready to go, so I cut a hole in it to see how bad it was on the inside:


After a little poking:


It’s hard to see, but the first layer of metal is mostly rusted away behind the jack support, and the second layer is pretty thin in the worst spot. Looks like I’ll have a little more metal work to do here than I originally thought.

I still haven’t figured out how to replace those brackets without removing a part of the fender. All the build threads I’ve read involve cutting away the fender, which I’d of course prefer to avoid.
I’m not actual digging into that or cutting away any more metal though until I have the car upright and the supports installed to set the gap dimensions.

Next up is finishing the floorboard tar removal (about ¾ done with that) and removing a few odds and ends like brake lines. I’m getting very close to a milestone: finally fixing things and putting things on the car, instead of taking things off…