Onto the grill refurb.

I polished the face of the inserts first, then washed, then painted and before the paint cured I took several paper towels damped in acetone and wiped the paint off the face and let the rest cure. Behind the insert is the cruddy grill surround with 50 years of grime and oxidation to be removed and buffed out.

Paint I used.

For the turn signal lamps I bought new lenses, gaskets and weather shields as well as new stainless screws. I had earlier replaced the lower two faux turn signal housing with housing that will allow a lamp. So all four lenses now will light up.

we bought 2 additional grills like this and an additional set of lamp buckets to help with the 4 lamp conversion as well as outfit one of the other galaxies with the regular stamped aluminum grill with the nicer cast one.

I needed to replace the original shields as well as add the lower ones. Plus powder coat the steel frame riveted on the aluminum original top lamp buckets.

I had a soft solid rivet baffle kit, so I used these to rivet the buckets and shields back together.

Lamp assemblies cleaned, powder coated and assembled.

Lower grill in place. Those cast grills really set off the looks of the front ends of these cars.

The other one ready for assembly, but first I have to figure out the oil cooler situation.

I have an engine oil cooler to fit on the drivers side and the transmission ancillary cooler to fit on the passenger side, both between the grill and the condenser.

Rant

A stumbling block was encountered with the '66 LTD in that I had planned on using the rear quarter skins I had sliced off a '66 parts car that was a southwest car. However I was ready to start stripping them down and I should have paid more attention, but someone sprayed undercoating on the inside of the boot/truck, basically the backside of these panels in an attempt to stop rust when in reality all they did was exacerbate it. What would have been extremely hard to find good rear quarter were paper thin with corrosion under that undercoat.

Had they treated the metal and just painted it rather than trap moisture on top of already corrosion they would have been fine.

As there are no good aftermarket rear quarters for the '66's, I've hit a stumbling block. The other somewhat depressing notion is what I uncovered when I removed the paint and loads of filler from the LTD's rear quarters to see how far I'd have to cut back.

It seems I have unearthed under all that flotsam of paint and filler previous badly done sheet metal work. The car had the typical rust around the wheel arch and all they did was push the rusted section in a bit and fill it all up with filler. Which is about the worst thing you can do, since water will get in from the rear soak into the filler and rust it out again even faster.

So all that needs to be cut out. Which still takes me back to the problem of where do I get panels. I bought those Sherman aftermarket rear quarters, the exact same ones on V8TV's posting of the restoration of the '66 7-litre. Now they reworked them.

Which sparked a notion in my otherwise thick cranium, well that kind of metal work talent is few and far in between, serious doubt I'd find anyone in ABQ who could do that. So I bought a DVD from across the pond on old time coach building by hand, with simple tools.

It's amazing what this fellow whom is featured in the DVD can do. He makes patch panels to entire quarter/fenders (wings) from scratch. WOW.... It's exactly what I was looking for. Now I need to source the hand tools he was using and have loads of practice here. Perhaps I too can learn how to reshape those otherwise crappy Sherman stamped panels or make new ones from scratch.

In the interim whist I'm trying to wrap my noodle around this skill, I've figured I had best finish up what's needed to finally bolt the body back on the chassis for good. I wanted to wait to do that until the rear quarters were at least welded, but I'll just have to do that on the chassis, I'll just have to cover it up well when I get to the point of welding/cutting.

Can't stop the train for one passenger sort of thing. So I've made the crankcase evacuation tubes and now just off to powder coat them, once those are done and installed I can lower the body on and start bolting it on and connecting the main items up.

end of my rant

Back onto the LTD,

These are the rear quarters I could not use because the previous owner sprayed undercoat over rust and it trapped moisture from the back side (boot/trunk area) and in some spots is paper thin now. Such a pity as these are so hard to come by.

Here's a before paint removal picture, it doesn't look bad, although this is typical of dodgy body work, it's just starting to blister through in tiny areas all round the wheel arch and just aft of the lower rear section.

I had started removing the paint on this side and there's loads of filler on here.

Hard to tell but there is a crease along the lower rear quarter that runs nearly the entire length. Sad part is even a monkey with a hammer and dolly and 5 minutes of watching instruction or reading the section of a body book could have worked that crease out in 20 minutes and saved loads of time by NOT applying copious amounts of filler instead...

There are sizeable rust holes that were just pushed in and filled over and the rest of the metal is paper thin as well.

This is why I'd be so leery on buying a "restored galaxie". If you notice on Ebay there are a couple with shiny new paint jobs and a price tags from 15-35K.

The big question is what's underneath that paint and if you shelled out 35K for a nice looking car and actually use it, will it develop bubbles in the paint in a few years down the line only to have spend many thousands more fixing that and hoping they did it properly rather than recover it up and have that viscous cycle keep repeating?.....

On this particular LTD I can't help but get the feeling the owners were bamboozled on this body work. The reason why I say this is that the interior is near enough pristine for a 50 year old car. Anyone who tries that hard to keep an interior as nice as they can also usually want's what best for the exterior of the car. No doubt these were proud people and tried to keep their car as good as they could.

I get the feeling some slimy-shady body shop took them on this.

As for this side......???? I couldn't fathom a guess what the hell happened here.

But back to my oil coolers. This is the used transmission stacked plate oil cooler I needed to make fit. I sliced off the existing mounting brackets for the mid 90's Chevrolet Police Caprice Interceptor or Impala SS (both cars came with this cooler) and made cardpaper templates.

It then turned into a near enough silly game of installing/uninstalling the grill loads of time to check the clearance between the transmission oil cooler and grills. It's hard to tell but the transmission oil cooler is sitting directly behind the lower left grill. You can see the bright aluminum brackets through the grill. This was the final check, now to paint the cooler and powder coat the brackets.

I had some 5000's series 0.090" thick aluminum plate so it was easy to cut, bend and weld whilst still being quite strong to hold the cooler in place. It's installed now I have to make the lines that connect the cooler to the bulkhead fittings in the radiator support piece.

The engine cooler I had also plucked from the same Police interceptor car as this cooler could not be used. I understand the mid 90's were a horrible time for the American car companies and quality was job zero. But on the same car, the trans coolers uses SAE/English 3/8" inverted flare fittings and the engine oil cooler uses metric pilot tube and O-ring air con fittings. Metric air con fittings!!!! That's really annoying, thank you GM... Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr <-- that was the PG version, what actually was said was more rated R.

Turns out by the time I adapt the 1/2" air con solid line to AN there's no room in the front grill for it. So I ended up buying a new same size oil cooler with AN fittings already on it. But I haven't finished the bracketry on that yet.

Since body work has taken a temporary hiatus I might as well finish up what I need to in order to bolt the body back down to the chassis for the last time. Since I plan on running crankcase evacuation through the exhaust (cars so old it's emission exempt), I needed to make the metal tubes that traverse the majority of the distance from the breather caps to the check valves.

Shown is the start of the tubing. I made the whole thing out of 304L stainless. Since the fittings at the check valves are 5/8" and the breathers are 5/8" it made sense to use 5/8" line. But I couldn't find a reasonable tubing bender for 5/8". So I chose 1/2" line and welded 5/8" tube with ends I swaged (flared) for hose retention.

Close up of the end. I just slid the 5/8" tube over the 1/2" tube and TIG'd with stainless 309 filler. I was out of 312.

Here's the final fitment check before powder coating. There's a line on the passenger side I made too in the background.

Here are the final pieces and my arty decco triangulated brackets. I had 304L stainless sheet as well so I made the brackets out of that. It's amazing how flimsy the sheet is by itself, but weld it in a triangulated shape and everything is really stiff and doesn't budge. Not to mention instead of using thick plate for the brackets these are really light weight.

Now all I need is some silicon 5/8" hose for the connections.

Now the body can be fitting back on the chassis.

One last momentous (for me) shot of the body off the chassis as now it's back on for the last time.

Today I'll probably spend connecting the steering, gear lever, parking and hydraulic brakes up, adjusting as necessary and probably tending to leaks in the all the new stainless lines. I love stainless, but sometimes one has to animal the connections as a last resort as the material is so hard the flare doesn't want to readily seat. Hopefully though it will not be too bad and if really lucky, there will be no leaks and no animalization needed at all!

Well I'm off to it..

Cheers!