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In the last update, we covered the discovery and destruction of a very old and very hacked up wiring harness. In this edition of "how Ben spends his free time" we'll look at how to resurrect that rats nest. I'm not a master electrician, as such I don't have many spools of delightfully colorful wire with which to properly copy the wire color code. Since Radio Shack is apparently now an iPod accessories retailer, I went to Murray's for their wide selection of well priced wire. We're not dealing with a ton of variation here, so red, white, black and gray were picked up in 16 gage sizing along with a selection of necessary connectors. All the other bits and pieces were already awaiting my return to the garage. More »
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Trips to Germany and that blasted Christmas holiday conspired to keep work from progressing, but believe it or not, the project still goes on. We all knew the engine bay wiring would be a horrendous train wreck. After all, it's a forty four year old car that's undergone at least one engine rebuild and who knows how many shade tree mechanics. With the mild weather we had last weekend, I decided it was time to dive in head first and find out how much pain to look forward to. More »
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When I bought the car, it was with the understanding that at some murky time in the recent past, the engine had been rebuilt to some unknown degree. I couldn't make up my mind as to whether this was a good or bad thing. I'd rather have an engine untouched than rebuilt by newbs (even though I consider myself a newb). Based on these pictures that turned up hidden in the rear seats, disorganized rednecks half-assedly took apart and reassembled the top end. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that this was also the point where the car lost its original Carter four barrel carb and gained the massive Holley that currently runs rich and has no electric choke. Sigh. More »
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This is just going to be a set of pictures with the trunk lid on. There are no pictures of the trunk-lid-putting-on process. There are no pictures of the process because it involved a Friday night, a case of Bud, me stubbing my toe on the trunk lid as it leaned against the wall, and me deciding to man up and put it on myself. The previous sissy version of the plan had been to ask a buddy for help, perhaps use rope or pulleys or something to ease it into place. With the insult of the stubbed toe, that was out of the question. The slightly angry, slightly intoxicated version that was executed was to lay a thick blanket across the rear deck in front of the window, heft the trunk to waist height vertically, step into the trunk while balancing the lid on my thigh, rest it on the deck while turning my back to it, hook the curve of the trunk on my shoulders, then use drunk strength to hover the lid over the mounting holes while threading the bolts in place. I think a pirouette may have been involved. Oh by the way, the trunk lid measures 5' by 5'5" and weighs about 120 lbs. How I managed to not destroy something I will never know. More »
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Using bondo is something nobody likes to have to do. The stuff is an admittance in your failure of metalsmithing mastery. Still, Bondo is no wussy taskmaster on it's own. It requires a steady hand and a sense of surface space, gradient approximation, and speed - or more appropriately, the sense of balance between speed and perfection. Maybe most critical is the ability to gauge available possibilities with the stuff, and what requires more drastic measures. The roof came to me dented, the result of a mix of garageless car, high wind, and trees with weak branches, so I knew it would be a bit of work to fix it. The last owner knocked the dent out from the inside as best as possible, then slapped down a skim of Bondo, and then took a nap, never to return with a sanding block. Now we finish the job. More »
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Sometimes, picking up a stupid, easy, completely unimportant element of the project and doing it for the fun of it helps keep the light at the end of the tunnel burning. Here are the pictures from the cleaning, priming, and painting of the original and still functional emergency jack. Looks pretty good all cleaned up, now if only I can figure out where the heck it's supposed to go... More »
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Nothing says I love you like a puddle of gasoline on the floor in the morning. A couple of days after fiddling with the inner fender business mentioned earlier, I walked into the garage to the overwhelming smell of dino juice emanating from a spot directly under the inner fender. That'll show me. Taking the panel back off as well as a secondary inner panel, revealed a sweaty, smelly, series of tubes rusting away. Among them were the fuel delivery line, fuel return line, and brake line. The brake line was perfectly fine, but the fuel lines were messy. Now, there is a right way to repair this and there is the quick-and-dirty way to do it. Obviously I chose the dirty way. Jalopnik in no way advocates what follows; though time-tested, this repair method may result in you randomly catching on fire, but it's cheap, reliable, and fast. More »
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It's been almost a month since the announcement of the '64 Lincoln Continental Personal Project Car. The madness of preparing for, traveling to, partaking of, and returning from the Tokyo Motor Show consumed all of our blogging powers and there have been exactly zero progress-update posts. This is not to say there has been no progress. Indeed, to the contrary, big, rusty things are happening. More »
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When Sir Murilee penned the PCH, Personal Dilemma Edition: 1964 Lincoln Continental post, I was certain that not only would the readership clamor to vote in the poll, but also attempt to deduce the J-lop mad enough to make such a poor decision. Surprisingly, Mad Science was the only commenter to venture at a guess of either Bumbeck or the venerable Murilee. Such is not the case. So it is with unsound mind and withering pocketbook that I announce that the unlucky owner of this most badass of luxo-barges is I, Ben Wojdyla; lackey contributor extraordinaire. Lets take a closer look at the who's, what's, where's, and most importantly, why's of this soul crushing endevour. More »
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There's a ring of hell under construction for Bondo misusers, where the doomed will cruise an infernal mall parking lot in perpetuity, awkwardly chatting up damned chicks and scoping out spots among the brimstones on which to do donuts. They'll serve their sentence in cars like this, with no sense of proportion, design or economy of form. Remember kids, there's no such thing as "Camaro Summer." – Ben Wojdyla More »
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