Dateline - Jun 20th - 21st - Had a pretty busy weekend and was not able to spend a lot of time on the car. This weekend concentrated on getting the passenger front and driver back doors unlocked. This required pulling the door panels off. A little harder to do when the door would not open, but was able to get the panels off.
The reasons the doors would not unlock was corrosion. I spent some time with WD-40 and got the locks to work correctly. Both back door windows were working slowly also, so I pulled out the power windows and cleaned them up. Now they work fine. I also inspected the inside of the doors and found them surprisingly clean of rust. I was really worried that there would be a lot of hidden rot here, but the drain holes stayed clean so just some surface rust.
I did get the steering wheel installed and then started pulling out more of the old interior panels. I have a lot of rust on the floorboards, especially on the passenger side. As I was cleaning up the rust, I managed to push the screwdriver through the floorboard! Yup! rotted right through! Fortunately, there are floor panels available for this car, so now I need to make the choice of getting new panels and welding them in. or making some of my own. I have other rust issues that I am going to need to deal with this winter, so I'm going to hold off doing anything until I know more about the condition of the body. Until then, Duct Tape will keep the exhaust out! (Yes, that is a radio antenna in the picture! I'm taking care of that next week!)
Note the picture of a pile of interior stuff! A lot of rotten fabric, vinyl and carpet!
