Rising tide

After using the tool made from the dryer vent brush, the inside of the frame was flushed with water to remove all of the dirt and mouse house. It made quite a mess.

The battery box body work also continued today. By day's end, this was getting really close to being ready for primer.

This part of the body is nearly always painted with a bit of body color since the body was originally painted off the frame in the factory so this area was open to overspray. That overspray look will be duplicated and then some black paint will be applied to black out areas around the box to make it look as it did from the factory.

Good idea

Needing a way to clean out the boxed frame of the car, an automotive restoration specialist used a dryer vent cleaning drill attachment to clean out the inside of a Corvette frame. It was such a good idea that it had to be copied and used on this car.

Instead of a soft-bristle brush, a bit of light chain was used instead and it seemed to work well.

Though this is very small, there are only a couple of places where this can be inserted into the frame, but once inside and spun with a drill, it worked very well to collect all the mouse-house and knock loose all of the dirt and rust inside the frame.

Tomorrow, this will get flushed with water and allowed to dry.

Good match

A rattle can of flat metallic paint is a dead match for raw steel and should work well for the handful of parts that were left unpainted like the driveshaft.

Access

The repair that was made to the battery box can now be completed with the car's body separated from the frame and up on the lift.

100 miles

There was a time that the idea of having the frame sandblasted by another person or company instead of doing it in-house. As tidy as that would have been, it's always preferred to do as much as possible here privately than having it done by someone else.

For that reason, a sandblasting pot was purchased from Harbor Freight. It took a bit of driving (100 miles to be more accurate) to finally find a store that actually had the tool instead of just saying that it did, but it's here and it seems to work well.

A suitable media will have to be figured out, but that won't be too hard.

Until media is purchased, the drive shaft was blasted in the blast cabinet just to find a place to start. It was a relief to find that even though the shaft seemed pitted, it cleaned up really nicely and should finish out well with a coat of paint.

Speaking of paint, a quart or so of urethane paint needs to be purchased to paint a host of parts that are meant to look like raw steel. This part is one of those and would look good in a flat, gun metal paint.

Bomb squad

The front suspension has been removed from the frame, leaving it finally bare and ready for sandblasting.

With the help of a modified spring compressor, the coil springs were compressed allowing the upper ball joints to be separated and the springs removed from between the A arms.

Seeing the springs out and safely on the shop floor is like looking at a diffused bomb as they can be dangerous to remove and have been known to hurt people and property as the suspension is taken apart. It's nice to have been able to find a safe way to do this and know how the can be safely installed when the time comes.

Stripped down

Save for the front coil springs and A arms, the frame is stripped down. Once the coil springs are removed  — and this is one of the difficult parts of this restoration — the frame can be blasted to bare metal.

There is a stamping on the frame beneath the left doorsill of the VIN of the car that is now visible. Not surprised to find that it matches the VIN of the car.

There were several mentions of this on the frame, but it was unclear exactly where it was located. Even with all of the surface rust, the numbers are very easy to read after a bit of work with a wire wheel cup.