I honesty was starting to doubt if this day would ever come. I can’t believe that she is almost road-ready. I now have a lot of small things to hook up before she will be ready for the initial fire but I see that coming in the next month or so. I did have a flat tire which made the jack a little hard to remove but a little air in it did the trick and the jack slid out. Grace hasn’t been on all fours for a while and the stance is nothing less than awesome with the Aerostar springs. Once I got the engine and transmission sitting on their mounts I let the engine hoist down and removed the chains. It took a little finagling and a pair of jacks to get the body and frame at the correct angle for the engine and transmission to drop in place but they went in with no hassles. I then used the engine hoist to raise the assembly enough to get it over the front nose panel and slid into place. I wrapped an old towel around the tailshaft of the transmission to ensure I didn’t scratch the new paint under the hood and secured it with a bungee cord. The assembly was now ready to be installed in the car. It was a little heavy and took some patience but once I got them lined up the transmission slid into place easily and I installed the bellhousing to engine block bolts to secure them together (hopefully forever). The only thing left to do was to mate the transmission to the engine block. I also used Threadlocker on the bolts for the pressure plate…you don’t want those coming loose when you are driving! I cleaned up the surface with some brake parts cleaner and was ready for the clutch disc and pressure plate. I was sure to use some Threadlocker on the bolts that hold the flywheel to the crankshaft before torqueing them to 75 ft/lbs. It came together over a few days, first removing the engine from the stand before installing the harmonic balancer and flywheel. I started by making a cardboard template before transferring that to some 18 gauge sheetmetal, cutting it out, bending the 90 degree tabs, and tacking it into place. I believe these are reproduced but I figured I could easily make a patch for the rusty areas and since it is hidden behind a kick panel I was mostly focused on function. When I got Grace she had no battery, battery tray, or battery cables so who knows the last time the lights worked.Īnother evening project was to fix the passenger side air vent assembly since it was badly rusted. I have to be honest, it was pretty darn neat to see the interior dash lights. If not, I will solder the leads together so they are permanently on the brightest setting. The rheostat on the headlight switch is a little iffy so I may swap it out for another switch I have and see if that doesn’t help. The dash lights look awesome! I needed to replace a few bulbs but everything is working as it should. Next I fed the wiring through the firewall grommet and then connected the wires to their respective components using a wiring diagram as a guide.Įven though I haven’t installed the new pigtails for the headlights and the taillight wiring harness is still out of the car, I wanted to see signs of life so I hooked up the battery and pulled out the light switch and I saw signs of life. I bolted in the lower brackets and then reinstalled the sheetmetal screws on the leading edge near the windshield. It went in pretty easy with just a little persuasion needed to get the dash to slide between the door posts. With the vent assemblies removed I was now able to reinstall the dash assembly in Grace that I had rebuilt 15 months ago. I removed the rust scale with a wire brush and then used Eastwood Rust Converter to seal up the rusty areas. Thankfully the driver side assembly came out without falling to pieces unlike the passenger side assembly. Both the driver and passenger side vent assemblies stuck in the car with a bond of rust holding the parts together. I was able to grind away the last two stubborn machine screws that held in the driver side vent assembly to the inner cowl. This post will cover about two weeks of progress so I will try to be brief to get caught up to where I am at with the restoration on Grace. I have never been so busy at work as I have been the past few months which has really delayed my ability to spend time on the Tbird but each night I am still making small progress. Well, over the past few weeks I’ve worked to get Grace’s driveline reunited with her body and frame which is one giant step towards getting her ready for the road. When I think of the word “reunited” I think of reconnecting with a loved one or old friend.
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