1973 Dart Sport
Had another crappy weekend last weekend. Drove down Thursday night excited to finally get the engine and rear end together. The trouble started with the wheel bearings, I was hoping they wouldn't be too difficult but I'm definitely going to need a bearing driver to get them in. I did a lot of work Friday to get the floor pans ready to be welded at the firewall but my welder bailed on me to pick some overtime. The pan wasn't really lining up with firewall very well so I had the bright idea to use sheet metal screws and a couple small plates to hold them together for the welding. The good news is he showed Monday up and got a lot done but I haven't been back to check on it yet.
Saturday morning came and the guy coming to help supervise the engine build couldn't make it because part of his house collapsed or something. No problem, we were going to reschedule for Sun but then my dad pointed out I had 4 groove valve keepers. My valves all have 2 grooves. No problem I'll go pick some up... nope not a single place carried them. One place said the closest store that had any was in Georgia and they had 5, it takes 32 to do a set of heads. I'm not sure how these plan to stay open, it's 2016 I don't need a store to order parts for me. This is twice now I could find a single place in the entire state that carrier a basic part for an engine build. They really should just stop calling themselves auto parts stores and just call themselves "Oil n things".
Anyways I shrug all this **** off and reschedule things to this weekend ... and we have a history making blizzard rolling into town the night I'm supposed to leave and lasting until the day I bought tickets to a hockey game. I'm tempted to just leave everything until the Spring when I'll have ample time, money and decent weather. It would be nice to have a few days in a row to devout to making good progress instead of these half-assed weekends.
I was able to (lightly) take a flap wheel to some of the rust on the body so I could prime it and get ready to touch everything up when it's warm. The hole in my rear quarter panel was about 5x as bad as it looked. Still hoping to put a screen behind it and use bondo as a short term fix.
Had another crappy weekend last weekend. Drove down Thursday night excited to finally get the engine and rear end together. The trouble started with the wheel bearings, I was hoping they wouldn't be too difficult but I'm definitely going to need a bearing driver to get them in. I did a lot of work Friday to get the floor pans ready to be welded at the firewall but my welder bailed on me to pick some overtime. The pan wasn't really lining up with firewall very well so I had the bright idea to use sheet metal screws and a couple small plates to hold them together for the welding. The good news is he showed Monday up and got a lot done but I haven't been back to check on it yet.
Saturday morning came and the guy coming to help supervise the engine build couldn't make it because part of his house collapsed or something. No problem, we were going to reschedule for Sun but then my dad pointed out I had 4 groove valve keepers. My valves all have 2 grooves. No problem I'll go pick some up... nope not a single place carried them. One place said the closest store that had any was in Georgia and they had 5, it takes 32 to do a set of heads. I'm not sure how these plan to stay open, it's 2016 I don't need a store to order parts for me. This is twice now I could find a single place in the entire state that carrier a basic part for an engine build. They really should just stop calling themselves auto parts stores and just call themselves "Oil n things".
Anyways I shrug all this **** off and reschedule things to this weekend ... and we have a history making blizzard rolling into town the night I'm supposed to leave and lasting until the day I bought tickets to a hockey game. I'm tempted to just leave everything until the Spring when I'll have ample time, money and decent weather. It would be nice to have a few days in a row to devout to making good progress instead of these half-assed weekends.
I was able to (lightly) take a flap wheel to some of the rust on the body so I could prime it and get ready to touch everything up when it's warm. The hole in my rear quarter panel was about 5x as bad as it looked. Still hoping to put a screen behind it and use bondo as a short term fix.
