Disassembly Continued

Aside from the dipstick all this ended up in the bin as well.

Here's a question for the galaxie 500 connoisseur, did later model '66 gals have that style PS pump (fill port) or is that strictly a '67 and up style?

Next up was removing the interior.

Once the interior was out, I wanted to be sure to see just how bad the body was before I condemned it. So I mounted the body to my jig I made that precisely locates the body mounts. My jig is accurate to 1/16" of an inch on level ground.

Plus you can see the creases in the sail panel and rear quarter from the body being bent.

You can see how tweaked the impact side is. Now this body could be fixed. I am sure for a few thousand dollars on a rack it could be straightened and the creases removed, although the latter half of the rear quarter would need to be replaced.

However I already had two 1966 galaxie 500 2 door fastbacks not doing anything. So it made sense to use one of them as a body donor.

I plopped the body back on the rolling frame and proceeded to remove anything of value. The parts specifically relate to the identity of this car as well as all the steel bits that make it an XL as well as factory air con.

The front floor pan braces are unique to XL and 7 Litre because of the bucket seats. So those came out to go into the donor body which just had a bench seat.

I also saved part of the roof, the floor pans, rear quarters and parts and most of the outer wheel houses. The trunk floor was bent and had some rust so I didn't bother. Also the cowl was saved.

I thought this was interesting. This is a genuine XL car and apparently Ford or this factory couldn't be bothered with blanking a hole for the floor shift. So it looks like a line worked just blazed a hole with a torch for one.

Not exactly a Zenith television now is it.

More in the next bit.

Onto the frame. As you can see the back is crinkled.

The front flanges on the frame were a little splayed as well. But aside from some very light surface rust there was not serious corrosion inside or out on this one. This is the frame I offered up for free. I figured for around 500 dollars this could be placed on a frame rack and straightened. This would have made a really good frame for someone in the midwest. But alas no one was really interested and I hated to cut it up but alas tis gone. Now I kept all the suspension parts mostly as spares. The rear axle I would use on the new build as it's the heavy duty (large bearing) 9" and these only came on the 1966 full size with a 390 or bigger engine. The donor cars were 352 and 289 and all three had the light duty (small bearing) Ford 9 inch axle.

I also used the engine perches and the coil springs for the new build since they are calibrated for the weight of the XL package plus accessories.

Everything cleared of the frame, tagged and stowed. So at this point what was left of the body and frame have been taken to the dump only after saving the key pieces.

On the next post I'll cover the transmission.