 Finally
I got to this point! I was able to put the body back on with my wife,
and
it went out quite easily (only the kids couldn't use the swing for the
whole day).
The only drawback was the fact that my winch didn't fit between the car's roof and the swing beam, so I got a "bright" idea, and used two ratchet tiedowns to lift the body. Like you see, OK this far. But when I rolled the chassis under the body, and started lowering, I discovered that you cannot lower the body GRADUALLY with the tiedowns, but the whole strap reel came loose all at once, and the body made a half-meter free fall on the chassis. Not much harm done, except that it slammed down and warped the clutch pedal, and the rear fenders bent slightly. Oh well, such is life... |
 So
here it finally is! I can harldly express my feelings at this
point
:)
I won't torque the body bolts (24 pcs) until I have installed doors, to see if there's a need to use shims to make the doors fit the aperture. I had to get some new rubber body pads from Bob's Automobilia |
| This whole operation took me a lot of preparation, since I wanted the chassis to be as complete as possible, before putting the body back on. I routed a stainless fuel line, air lines for airbags, and the rear brake line. Then I installed dual 2.5" exhaust pipes with Apple Racing mufflers. I had the stainless pipes bent by Euro Stainless, according to the templates I fabricated. Needless to say, they didn't fit. So I had to do some cutting and welding to make them fit. However when I dropped the body on, I discovered both pipes rubbed against the underbody! I decided to leave this subject until next summer. BTW: I chose Apple mufflers because they sound great. Back in 1995 when I was helping the Finnish V8-Magazine conduct a muffler test, I found the Apple and Edelbrock mufflers sounded best. If I remember correct, the Apple mufflers gave most power, too. |
 |
| I was able to find a driveshaft of correct length at a boneyard, South-West Trade, but even the seller didn't know its origin, other than it's a from a GM passenger car. I also found a TH-400 32-spline yoke from a Corvette, which fits the Super T-10 tranny. Just needed a crossover universal joint. |
| There's some work left on the underbody, like figuring out how to build emergency brake mechanism, finalizing the exhaust piping, installing a fuel tank, painting the inner wheelwells, etc. This will be left for next summer. Now I'm going to concentrate on the fun stuff for a while - installing all the bits and parts around the firewall. I haven't found a garage for the winter, so it may be that nothing much gets done over the next few months. See ya! |