As promised there will be more pictures today with a little closer inspection of the car and it's overall condition.
First, a couple of other items. I am officially the cars second owner. The guy I bought it from made an offer to the widow of the original owner, bought the car, got it running (sort of) and then flipped it. It's sort of nice to know that the car has not been through a lot of hands and abuse before coming to me. It was also, at some time in the past, a Southern California car, there is a sticker in the engine compartment from a now long defunct repair shop in the San Fernando valley.
But I digress, on to the details!
Front
Sorry about the quality, this was late in the afternoon a couple of weeks ago, before the heat wave hit us here in So Cal. The front grill will need to be completely reconditioned or replaced. You can see the different tones of yellow on the car. It looks like the paint just wore off over time and use of the car and someone just grabbed a can of yellow at the local hardware store to cover it back up.
Here's a closer look at the passenger side front fender. It has a ding in the area just in back of the headlight, it funny how no one seemed to care about the missing paint here. Depending on how this fender looks after the paint is off and how much it will cost to straighten it out, I may spring for a new fender to replace this one.
Another view of the ding in the fender and a look at the hood, more later on the hood. The cost to fix this ding and the dings around the wheel arch may put the repair cost over the cost of a new one from TRF.
Oh, and another added bonus is the front chin spoiler!
You have to love the way this is held on to the car on the passenger side, a bungee cord! Something else to add to the list.
Hood
Yes, that's a bit of bondo that has flaked off of the hood from a previous repair that looks like it was done by a 5 year old. Just sort of slapped on, no smoothing or feathering at the edges. It's hard to figure out what happened here unless something was dropped on the hood and caused the dent.
You can see under the front lip of the hood there is some rust and uneven surfaces.
This shows where the top skin of the hood has pulled away from or the frame has been pushed down on the side with the filler repair. Compared to the other side that is.
Look at the left front corner of the support frame in this shot versus what the right side looks like. A rather large gap there and it would be very hard to repair this cost effectively, so I'm in the market for a new or used hood in decent shape.
Driver's Side
OK, the front fender on the driver's side looks to be in really good condition and an inspection underneath confirms that it' in really good condition, a keeper.
The driver's side door, you can see the spray patch up towards the top of the door. The previous owner had driven with his arm hanging out the door and rubbed the paint through to the primer. What can't be seen here are the little dings in the door from the parking lot wars. Lots of little places where someone used this car as their door stop for their car door, not surprising. Also of some concern is the door gaps, they seem a little large at the front and back, or it could just be an illusion, there's no door seal on the inside so the door is loose and flops around a little.
There are just a few spots here where you can see some surface rust developing in the seams between the fenders and the main body shell. Close ups to follow.
This is right behind the door, notice the crack in the paint? Just something to keep an eye on as, could there be rust in the seam here?
Sorry this is a little out of focus, but this is just a little further back on the driver's side as well. I took a screwdriver to this little bubble area and it was just a surface blemish.
Again, just a little further back on the driver's side and another little surface blemish.
Again, the driver's side of the car jst at the junction of the fender, body shell and trunk area. All of these blemishes, as I call them, were all surface rust areas and some tapping and digging with a pointed awl did not cause any breakthrough. Pretty good so far.
Passenger Side
The passenger side is in very good condition for a car that's almost 40 years old, with the exception of the previously noted front fender. The these couple of pictures are mostly to document the door gap on this side to compare it to the door gaps on the driver's side. Notice the gap is a little more narrow here, again it could be an illusion, this side has the door seals in place and the door is snug when it's closed.
Looks pretty good here as well compared to the other side.
Rear
The back of the car is in good condition, the only issue, and it's not really an issue, is the paint worn off the trunk lid. Not a big deal really and not much else to report from here. The exhaust is in really good condition.
Trunk
OK, move along, nothing to see here folks! The trunk area is in great condition! No rust, and yes, that little thing in one of the above pictures is the original leather hold down for the original tool pack. I haven't really played around with it, don't want to tear it up.
Some other things of note.
So far this is the worst spot on the car a far as rust goes. On the other side of this is the drain area for the fresh air inlet to the car, it looks like the drain may have clogged and there's been sitting water here. This will need to be addressed.
Yes, I pulled the car seats out and the carpeting to look at the floorboards. Here's what I found on the driver's side, cracked floorboards where the seat mounts bolt through the floor. Not rust through, just cracks that will need to get fixed, probably will weld them up, grind the weld down and put something on the back side to double this area up and spread the load over a wider area.
So, there you have it. I took quite a few more pictures then what I have posted up here, including pictures of the underside of the car. Just don't want to get carried away with this aspect, I will probably be adding them to one of the picture web sites. Not sure which one just yet, but when I decide I will post the link for this that really want to see all of the details.
I will post again in a couple of days, I have a number of posts in the queue. One of those will be concerning the dilemma I am currently dealing with in my head.
See ya!
