Pulling Parts Sunday lasted longer than I had envisioned due to one of two things:
1. The back of my truck isn’t as big as I thought, or
2. Galaxie parts are larger than I thought.
Pick one and either way, I had to make two trips (and enlist Buddy the Jeep) to get all the parts home.
On the plus side, I have figured out how Detroit kept all those people working in the middle of the 20th Century (hint: 38 pieces of interior trim).
Total parts retrieved count: 4 doors w/glass, all actuators and handles, and interior panels, the two rear curved windows, rear door glass (door itself was more cancerous than the one we have), both bench seats, mohair dash pad, mohair roof liner, and 38 pieces of interior trim. Total cost: Equivalent to 1000 rounds of 7.62 M80 ball ammo. It’s the wife’s savings, so it never would have been used to purchase ammo, but I did tell her that that is what I’d have used the money for.
I’ll be picking up the custom disc brake conversion, including spindles, rotors, calipers and booster/reservoir, next weekend. If he has time, he’ll also be pulling the heater blower and the air intake sheet metal.
So now the dude’s car looks like this
Beware Ford Windstar owners. This is all the damage you can do in a head on collision at a combined speed of 50mph to a car made of real steel. If you look carefully, you’ll notice that the passenger side turn light lens isn’t even cracked. Yes, I pulled those too.
Sadly, the rest of the front end, including the driver’s side fender, is tweaked in one way or the other, and the front foot of the frame is bent in three different directions. Fixable, though expensively so. Amazingly, there is not even a scratch to either of the passenger side doors.
The built 390 and C4 were pulled and dropped into dude’s 1960 F100, and the Ford 9in axle is going into one of his dueces. During this week he’ll be cutting the rear 3ft of the car off to convert it into a wall mounted couch. And then his wagon of eight years will be scrapped.
And one more 1963 Ford Country Sedan bites the dust. But it’s parts live on to help another one drive into the second decade of the 21st century.