Hello,

Been a while since I've posted. I am starting on a '66 galaxie 500 XL. It was hit and a donor frame and body are going to be used. The question I would like to pose is even though the frame is tweak-a-lated in the back and front is it worth trying to sell or give away as it is a south western frame and relatively free of corrosion?

Or is it just best to slice it up and scrap it?

Here are the pictures for consideration.

Poor thing was pounded pretty hard in the back.

Did a number on the body as well.

Rippled the quarter panel and sail panel.

The whole body on the passenger side is pushed and twisted up. This body jig is accurate to 1/16" of an inch.

The whole trunk floor is pushed up on this side.

The chassis was stripped today as I need the coil springs (selected for the weight of the XL interior, FE, C6 and factory air con), heavy duty (large bearing) 9 inch and FE mounts. Everything else is just spares.

It looks like the rear damage was confined to this area in the back.

The front damage looks like a side impact as the radiator support and bumper frame extrusions are bent to the drivers side slightly.

What do you think worth selling, giving it away or just scrap it?

I took the winter off from it to work on my Caprice Classic convertible. That was loads of work fitting a brand new axle, correcting bad GM pinion angles and fabricating all new rear control arms as well as replace all the hard fuel and brake lines with stainless and install 4 wheel disc brakes (bragging rights really, not really necessary). I also refreshed the Turbo 400 transmission. That was 4 solid months worth of work.

I've started back on the '66 LTD. Hit a bit of a snag with the roof. I knew it had rust under the vinyl top, but it was worse than I thought. Kind of zapped my motivation for a bit. Then I got tired of looking at all the cars sitting untouched outside. Plus tripping over parts that are in the way. So I decided to start on my better half's car and start using up the parts (totes upon totes of brand new parts) just sitting taking up space on the shelves. As well as a bunch of used parts to be determined if I need to keep or toss based upon reassembling the cars.

In the end all we want are 3 old Fords and one spare rolling '66 2 dr hard top body just in case. The only ones we want are the 1966 4 door hard top LTD, the 1966 galaxie 500 XL 2 door hardtop and the 1968 XL 2 door hardtop.

Plus been busy fixing a few things around the house. I made a big steel wall between the 3 car shed and the hanger to block the hellacious wind that rips through there. It's 12 feet wide and 8 feet tall and skinned with a similar paneling to the gray shed.

A few weeks ago a good friend and I traversed to Colorado to pick up a small garden tractor as I really needed a better way to mow the big lot here other than a push mower (not getting any younger) but I wanted an older well built tractor. So I found an old early 80's Wheel Horse C175 with a rear discharge deck.

I don't wish to get too far off track, but until a few weeks ago I didn't even know of Wheel Horse. Tis a little tank and mostly old school USA overkill well built craftsmanship. I love it. Has a rather large 2 cylinder old industrial Kohler engine that doesn't rev, just has a rather large amount of low end grunt for its size.

It's hydrostatic drive with an hydraulic lower attachment arm for the accessories you can buy for it, like a snow plow, snow thrower, rear mount rototiller, disc, plow, and some others I forgot. We tried using a tow rope to it to move some cars around and it had no problems pulling them and at idle. Didn't even phase that 2 cylinder.

So now I'll be working on both the '66's as it will use up parts in my way, plus the wrecked '66 galaxie 500 XL body will donate some steel to finish up the '66 LTD to make my life easier.

Yuppers the car was until we bought it always an El Paso car. It's a shame it was hit as bad as it was as the under side of the body is really free of corrosion and so is the frame. Had a peek inside the drain holes of the frame and it looks really good.

That was my thought too, it's a whole lot easier and cheaper to untweak a frame than to cut and weld rusted sections. I fixed the rust damage on the '66 LTD frame and it was a solid grueling 8 hours of work just to replace the lower outer frame rails.

Seems a shame to waste this frame and thought well if anyone is interested I'd be happy to give it away if they want to come and take it as I know in the midwest solid 3rd gen frames are few and far in between. I just don't need it cluttering up the yard, plus I still have one good spare frame in storage anyway so I do not need it. As the bar maid said, you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.

I know these 3rd gen frames love to rot and a short while on a frame rack would put this back to rights and you'd have a solid straight frame again. Hate to see it go to waste.

Cheers.

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UPDATE June 2021 : The frame in this story is cut up and disposed. I couldn't even give it away for free but then as soon as others found out the cost of shipping, even free wasn't cheap enough.