From the pasture; The valiant story of my '66 Valiant
Up top, our aforementioned Taiwanese filler neck, coupled with all the appropriate (and new) gaskets slides on in like new money. And its shiny! Shiny is always good, right? Dunno.
About that time, a "hoodlum" buddy of mine showed up in his more door Chevrolet. I don’t think he was impressed by my lil Plymouth, but he appreciates my efforts in automotive tomfoolery.
After he "chebbied" his way out, I decided to move on to the next project, pulling the interior. I have known the floors will need repair, as a couple decades in the Oklahoma mud are not conducive to solidity. So with my fuel tank situation in and plumbed, I started removing stuff inside, slowly and well documentedly (I don’t think that’s a word).
So, seats out. Everything unbolted and came apart nice. Rubber floors aren’t bad, I dunno if Ill go back with those eventually or if I will buy carpet. Time will tell. For now I just wanna see what rust I have and what its gonna take to get right. Fearing the worst, I continue to dig in.
Now the rears aren’t so bad. They have minor holes that I can patch, once I clean and POR-15 the whole thing. Not worried about those in the least.
The fronts on the other hand, BOY HOWDY. Remember me crowing around how the car had barely any rust, and "Look at Me, I Is Rust Free"? Yeah. About that, all the rust that wasn’t in the rockers or other places decided to run and hide under my mats. Knock knock, who's there? Rust. Rust who? RUST ALL UP IN YO FLO.
Great.
If we were using a highly complex, highly scientific scale, my front floors would go to Nigel Tufnel's 11.
(Ill wait for a couple of you to google that. You back? Good. Lets continue.)
At least this venture did help me track down some of the Valiant's lineage, as this has to be Fred Flinstone's car, as this one, and the one he so famously is seen leaving work in, have similar floors.
*insert large sigh*
At least the invasive, cancerous, floor eating rust avoided the accelerator pedal mount, so theres that.
So there are several things in life I'm good at. Making people laugh. Eating French fries. Finding and adopting derelict cars, and forgiving (yeah, mostly) mine enemies to name a few. Two of the NUMEROUS things I suck at include repairing and floor pans. I haven’t the foggiest Idea how to weld in floors. BUT because this car is a survivor and won't ever be a show winner, I feel like this is a good one to learn/practice on with only ALLLLLLL of you to see. So, at some point, you will be able to watch me trim all those floors out, cut up some new metal, and botch the sh*t out of welding it back. So be it. So now that I reached a stopping point, I vacuumed out all the debris, and made a mental note to order floors from ABS when I got to work the next day.
(Little did Kirk realize, he had inadvertently given himself a sinus infection working in a car with crap floating around without his respirator on. After this day, he would be incredibly sick and miss two days of work, and still have the cough and sneezies for three weeks)
Flooring out, seats stored, last thing I wanted to do that day was pull my radiator so I can have it rebuilt. I found a localish guy who rebuilds radiators for classic cars, and for about the same money as buying a new shiny one, I can have the original repainted and recored. It seems true radiator shops around me are a dying art, so Im hopeful. Removing it was no issue, other than the long petrified coolant hoses that required damn near a hacksaw to remove. Also, the thermostat housing is horribly chewed up, but a quick glance at RockAuto shows they have them fairly inexpensively with the thermostat and seal. Im certain that’s how Ill go.
Up top, our aforementioned Taiwanese filler neck, coupled with all the appropriate (and new) gaskets slides on in like new money. And its shiny! Shiny is always good, right? Dunno.
About that time, a "hoodlum" buddy of mine showed up in his more door Chevrolet. I don’t think he was impressed by my lil Plymouth, but he appreciates my efforts in automotive tomfoolery.
After he "chebbied" his way out, I decided to move on to the next project, pulling the interior. I have known the floors will need repair, as a couple decades in the Oklahoma mud are not conducive to solidity. So with my fuel tank situation in and plumbed, I started removing stuff inside, slowly and well documentedly (I don’t think that’s a word).
So, seats out. Everything unbolted and came apart nice. Rubber floors aren’t bad, I dunno if Ill go back with those eventually or if I will buy carpet. Time will tell. For now I just wanna see what rust I have and what its gonna take to get right. Fearing the worst, I continue to dig in.
Now the rears aren’t so bad. They have minor holes that I can patch, once I clean and POR-15 the whole thing. Not worried about those in the least.
The fronts on the other hand, BOY HOWDY. Remember me crowing around how the car had barely any rust, and "Look at Me, I Is Rust Free"? Yeah. About that, all the rust that wasn’t in the rockers or other places decided to run and hide under my mats. Knock knock, who's there? Rust. Rust who? RUST ALL UP IN YO FLO.
Great.
If we were using a highly complex, highly scientific scale, my front floors would go to Nigel Tufnel's 11.
(Ill wait for a couple of you to google that. You back? Good. Lets continue.)
At least this venture did help me track down some of the Valiant's lineage, as this has to be Fred Flinstone's car, as this one, and the one he so famously is seen leaving work in, have similar floors.
*insert large sigh*
At least the invasive, cancerous, floor eating rust avoided the accelerator pedal mount, so theres that.
So there are several things in life I'm good at. Making people laugh. Eating French fries. Finding and adopting derelict cars, and forgiving (yeah, mostly) mine enemies to name a few. Two of the NUMEROUS things I suck at include repairing and floor pans. I haven’t the foggiest Idea how to weld in floors. BUT because this car is a survivor and won't ever be a show winner, I feel like this is a good one to learn/practice on with only ALLLLLLL of you to see. So, at some point, you will be able to watch me trim all those floors out, cut up some new metal, and botch the sh*t out of welding it back. So be it. So now that I reached a stopping point, I vacuumed out all the debris, and made a mental note to order floors from ABS when I got to work the next day.
(Little did Kirk realize, he had inadvertently given himself a sinus infection working in a car with crap floating around without his respirator on. After this day, he would be incredibly sick and miss two days of work, and still have the cough and sneezies for three weeks)
Flooring out, seats stored, last thing I wanted to do that day was pull my radiator so I can have it rebuilt. I found a localish guy who rebuilds radiators for classic cars, and for about the same money as buying a new shiny one, I can have the original repainted and recored. It seems true radiator shops around me are a dying art, so Im hopeful. Removing it was no issue, other than the long petrified coolant hoses that required damn near a hacksaw to remove. Also, the thermostat housing is horribly chewed up, but a quick glance at RockAuto shows they have them fairly inexpensively with the thermostat and seal. Im certain that’s how Ill go.
