It's official, "The Duck" restoration has finally begun!
I got a nice surprise today as Andy (Blue71) came up to help and with his help we got a lot accomplished. With as well everything else came off the bronco, if you would have told me yesterday the front fenders would take hours to get off I would have said your crazy. All of the bolt clips that hold the grill on broke, so I sped things up by taking a cut off wheel and cut the grill shell lip off and then took the hot wrench and washed the rusted mess off. I thought to myself that all I read about getting the grill off and since I knew mine was toast, except it will be made into garage art in the future, that I made quick work of it. Then came the fenders.... Of coarse all of the bolts that were easy to get to came out, all others, not so much. The three bolts that run down behind the core support, the clips broke just as the grill did so out came the hot wrench and I melted the heads off. I had to do the same for the bolt at the windshield frame. The 3 big Phillips screws would not budge and my door posts appear to be in good shape and he suggested drilling the heads off then drill out the remainder. Just before I gave in, I tried one more thing, the fire wrench. Andy had tried heating them on other broncos with MAP gas but it never worked. My fire wrench got them blaze orange hot, we let them cool to where they were no longer glowing and tried the big screwdriver one more time with amazing success. I think someone in ETN will be adding a set of torches to his Christmas wish list. Lol.
Then we moved on to removing the steering column, wire harness and anything else that would let the dash come out. Long story short, the day went great and the old girl lost more weight. I have the engine coolant to drain, the heater box to remove and the pedals to take off and the body is ready to come off. Of coarse I have to get the body mount bolts out and my steel to brace the tub won't be here till Wednesday. Lots to do but I plan on pulling the tub next weekend and getting it ready to go to the media blaster. So much to do and by my budget and funds availability I am hoping to get this done and debut it at SC 2017. We will see how that goes.
My surprise help for the day:
A trick that we are using from our boat building days, you can see where we took measurements and I drew arrows at the measure point. I'm going to take a 1/8" drill bit and drill a hole at each measurement point so when I get it blasted, my reference points are still marked. Then when I'm done with panel replacement I can weld the holes shut and move on to finishing the body for paint. We measured from the front edge if the striker post to the center of the fender mounting holes.
And to think my bronco could be reduced to bins and ziplock bags...