Rear shocks

A new set of reproduction rear shock absorbers were ordered and prepped for paint.

These were scuffed and painted battleship gray to match the originals.

The original Delco rear shocks were replaced at some point along the way, but these look the part and should work fine.

This industrial paint takes a LONG time to cure, so these will live out in the sun for the rest of the week at least before they are tucked away for later. The slight solvent pop can be smoothed out with a little elbow grease.

Another day at the beach

After a day of sandblasting parts, there is sand everywhere.

The exhaust manifolds and the heat riser were all blasted and coated in POR-15 manifold paint. They all look great.

The bracket that locates the gear shift lever and mechanism was also sandblasted, primed and painted.

Once this cures, this will be bolted to the frame.

Shaking hands with danger again

Compressing these coil springs and getting them in line with the lower A-arms took a bit of engineering and what was probably too much trust in an Amazon spring compressor, but it's all back together again.

A new set of shock absorbers was ordered, but just to get a set of rears and to rob the bushings from the front set.

The restored original set of front shocks are now bolted in with new rubber bushings and restored hardware.

It looks great.

Half shafts

The half shafts were sandblasted and treated for rust in preparation for some light body work to fill rust pitting and then paint. There are a few gouges in one of them, but all of it will clean up and look good with a little elbow grease.

Struggle

The tool required to install new A-arm bushings came in, which allowed the A-arms to be assembled and hung onto the frame.

It took some trial and error with the tool before it became clear how the tool needed to be modified to install the lower bushings as intended, but in the end it finally got done. Like most things, by the time this process was figured out, it was all done.

The struggle caused a fair amount of paint to be chipped away from the A-arms, but that was touched up and looks good again.

Tired from working on this and a few other project, it will be another day before the front springs are installed and all of this is assembled.

Nice copy

Among some parts that came in today were the sway bar links, which are a seemingly perfect copy of the originals.

More bolts

These bolts, which connect the half shafts to the rear hubs, were restored along with a few other bolts associated with the rear trailing arms.

Parts have not come in to allow for more to be done this weekend, but it was nice to get this done at least.