Ripinator
Old Man with a Hat
Beautiful weather on Tuesday. Took management for a ride.
Disassembled and de-rusted hood number 2 for project “Pile of Rusty Metal”.
View attachment 618120View attachment 618121View attachment 618122View attachment 618123View attachment 618124
Yeah, second time was easier than the first. It’s all of 20 spot welds and it splits like a clam. Currently it’s in rust converter black, once it goes back together I will paint it body color.Jeeze. . . I didn't know you could even get a hood apart like that. Way-ta-go! Is that the final color, or are you going to paint it body-color?
Well this kind of blew up in my face... Naturally, I wanted to see if I could find the remainder of this sheet and maybe others, so I started to remove more of the carpet and pulled the rear seats. It was bad, real bad. On both sides, the floor near the rear seat belt mount is shot to bits. Poking at it with a screwdriver yielded a massive hole.
Replaced right rear wheel bearing and race on the 64 New Yorker. It failed because of moisture siting for many years that got past the outer bearing seal and caused corrosion at the bottom of the race resulting in a growl from the bearing.
I suspect the other side is also due. But apparently somebody wanted that drum off for brake service and didn't have a drum/hub remover. It looks like a hammer was used in some fashion to get the drum/hub of. I got the drum /hub off with my proper drum/hub remover, but probably can't get the axle shaft out with the race bearing and seal because the threads on that side are in such bad shape now from the hammer damage. I did clean/flush out the bearing and then got ample amounts of grease in it with a syringe. Then I just put it back together and welded the axle nut on for now.
It now needs another axle shaft. But another rear from a later model with a 3.23 or 3.55 gear will show up first.
Looks pretty dang good to me!I wanted to install seat belts in the rear seat of my 300L. Gotta have them for the grandkids.
I pulled the seat bottom and discovered the foam had hardened and turned to dust... So that meant a bit more work.
Rear floor covered in foam dust.
View attachment 621718
A tag shows this is a Legendary cover made in 1997!
View attachment 621719
Foam was so dry it crumbled.
View attachment 621720
And interesting that it had a Forward Look logo.
View attachment 621721
Burlap was bad too.
View attachment 621722
New burlap with the metal stays inserted. That was a PITA.
View attachment 621723
I forgot to take a pic of the new foam. I used some 1" 44lb high density foam I got from Amazon.
I like to do this when it's warm out, but 55 degrees was the best it's going to get for a while. With the cold and a used cover, it was really tough to get the bottom of the cover down far enough to clip it with the hog rings. I can't remember where I saw this trick, but it works nice... You use zip-ties to pull everything down and stretch the cover. Push and tighten until the cover is in place and you can use the hog rings to secure it.
View attachment 621724
Finished... Came out OK.. I think if the cover was new, and stretched easier, I could have done a little better, but it's good. Still have to do the seat belts!
View attachment 621725