Step one in the process is to size up and cut the proper length of replacement wire. Here you have a bit of freedom to make changes. Make a wire longer if you want to route it differently or need additional slack, shorter if it's slopping all over the engine bay and you want to clean things up. Once you've stripped a quarter inch of insulation off, mate the clean end of one wire to the clean end of the other, I like to mesh the two together in line. At this point, grab your nice hot soldering iron (you are a lazy bastard if you use the twist and tape method) and begin heating the joint. If you are adding your heat shrink already, make sure it's at least six inches away from the joint - heat conduction through the wire may shrink the tubing in a place you don't want it to (guess how I know that). When the wire is hot enough, the solder will flow into the joint, advance the solder as it melts until you are happy with the amount solder in the joint (it should look all silvery). I'm thorough, so I flip the joint over and work the same way from the back. Let the joint cool for a moment and test it by pulling from both ends. If it fails, you suck, try again. When the joint has cooled to the touch, slide the heat shrink over the joint and you can use the hot soldering iron to shrink the covering in place. Of course if you're doing a lot of tubing, it's a easier to just use your heat gun.

Now for connectors. Just crimping them on is not a great way to do things, they inevitably fall off or the wire corrodes and the electrical connection fails. That doesn't mean the store bought connectors can't be used. Make sure you've got your heat shrink precut and slipped onto the wire, then go ahead and crimp you connector of choice onto the wire, but when you're done there, cut that nasty hard plastic cover off. Now you've got a nice place to solder the mechanical connection together and provide some insurance. Heat the connector and capillary action will pull the solder pool into the joint, cool. Perform the magical heat shrink tubing trick again. With all the wires repaired, I decided to go with a temporary wire management solution. I bemoaned using spiral wrap last time, but since I wasn't able to figure out what the brown mystery wire leads to, spiral wrap was used in the interest of easily taking things apart later.

While I was in there I decided to rework the hard line into the carb. The lazy bums that put the Holley on got a hard line designed for fuel delivery from the back of the engine. Great except the fuel comes from the front on this car. As a result the hose ran in a big loop from the fuel pump over the passenger side valve cover, around to the firewall and then forward to the hard line. To fix this, I took the line, packed it with sand, capped both ends and bent it by hand to fit in a forward facing orientation. Happily as a result of this change I was able to remove about two feet of excess fuel line (throttle lag? naaah). For no apparent reason, the ignition vacuum advance was 6 inches longer than it needed to be, so that got clipped too. A much cleaned up engine bay now greets me every time I walk into the garage.

Before hooking everything up, go over all the poles with a brass wire brush to make sure there is a good contact, then commence reassembly. Get a friend to watch over things as you turn on the ignition. Smoke = bad. Your friend should let you know if that occurs. If no smoke happens, go ahead and crank it over. If it starts you win, if it doesn't you forgot something (fired right up btw). And that concludes todays lesson.

After removing that big old Holley and putting it to the side, I decided the loom that runs along the top of the right bank would be the best place to start my adventure. Lots of heat in there, a hacked together wire cover, lots of electrical tape... it all pointed to a good old time. Remember kids, whenever you do work on the electrical system, don't forget to unplug the battery, bad things could happen if you don't. With that word of caution, let's take a look at what was found.
First thing to notice is the main ground cable. Let's make that two main ground cables because the original was chopped off right under the radiator overflow tank. Why? Who knows, perhaps it was cut in jest. Maybe they were just lazy, that bolt is hard to get at and takes at least a minute with a box end wrench to remove... why not just hack the cable off and put a new one on the lower intake retaining bolts? There, that's much easier (wankers).

After stripping off the split cover it was quite apparent that the last guys that got into this harness weren't too fond of doing wiring correctly. Lets start with the oil pressure sensor. There were at least four places where the wire had cracked or broken and had been twisted back together and held in place with electrical tape. Ignition coil lead? Well, the insulation is only a little burned in this one spot; just wrap that up in electrical tape. There, all better now. It didn't take much digging before mystery wires starting popping up. I was able to determine that this red and blue wire needed to go to the temperature sensor on top of the intake manifold - who needs to have that functional? There's also a gray wire that I haven't got a clue on.
The amusing part about all of this is how most of it could have been avoided. From the condition of existing cotton and tar harness insulation, it's a fair bet that the the stuff started falling apart along this section of the engine, virtually inevitable with that stuff. The fix should have been some form of heat wrap that protects the wires as well as holds them together. Instead the old standby of the el-cheapo split wrap was put in place, thus ensuring heat damage and nice brittle wires. The plan of attack will be to save the harness ends and solder in replacement wire as close as possible to the wire color code. A lot of the connectors are getting tired, so those will get replaced while we're at it and the whole mix will be wrapped in heat shrink where it makes sense. The problem right now is how to prevent a repeat of fried wire syndrome. We'll just have to see what the auto parts store has to offer when it comes to heat protection. Any suggestions?

Though it's a simple substance, the two part epoxy we all know and love is often the bane of inherited project cars. Too many fall prey to its siren song of cheap and fast repair, and thus end up filling cavernous dents with the stuff. Fortunately, in this case, the repair area is not too bad, from a depth perspective. However, the damage is over a long distance, probably almost a foot... and on a car with strictly straight front to back lines... and on one of the few curved surfaces... and right over the prominently visible drivers door. Given that, this presents some unique challenges.

For those of you unfamiliar, get ready for a primer (ha!) on the art of Bondo. There are several levels of knowledge here, I am by no means a master, but I've picked up some tricks over the years. First and foremost, make sure the area of repair is clean and free of paint, rust, grease, cheeseburgers, primer, and dust. Feel free to get to that point in whatever creative or low budget way you like. When mixing, use some type of surface that is portable and will forever be dedicated to Bondo mixing. I've got a nice piece of plastic set aside for this. Lay down the gray filler in the middle of the surface and then squeeze setting agent out next to it. The proper amount of setting agent to add is determined by black magic, but it's almost impossible to do it completely wrong. Here is a good time to put your latex gloves on. Use your Bondo paddle(s) to quickly mix the two elements together to an even color.

Now get to work laying it down, move quickly because you've got about five minutes before things get sticky. Select a Bondo paddle appropriate for the size of the defect. With firm, even pressure push the Bondo into the valleys of the repair area. If you're paddle can bridge the valley, stand it on end while applying the Bondo so as to mimic the original profile. My personal rule is to never lay down more than an eighth of an inch of Bondo at a time, and never more than a quarter of an inch in total. If it looks like it will take more, that's why man invented body hammers. I like to take my time with Bondo, rushing it just gives you a crappy end result. Even though the can says you can start sanding within an hour, it usually results in Bondo clogged sandpaper. Give it a couple of hours to set up, there are plenty of other things to fix in the mean time.
Sanding is the yin to the applications' yang. Whereas applying is a hectic race against chemical reactions, sanding is about gradually reaching the zen state of surface perfection. As illustrated, I like to sand in the dark. Why? Well, who knows what evil lies in the peaks and dips of Bondo? The shadows know. Using a strategically placed light source allows you to see what your hands can feel. This greatly increases the efficiency of your efforts. Unless you are a glutton for punishment and wish to hand finish things, grab an orbital sander with about an 80 grit sandpaper. Again, take your time working things out, find the high spots and work until the surface is uniformly as smooth as you can get it.

With an area this big, you'll probably have to reevaluate things now. Use your spotlight to look at different angles of the repair. I like to have a pencil handy here to make notes on the surface. If you see a peak, draw its outline and a rough map of it's topography (I use plusses and minuses, bigger plusses mean higher peaks, smaller minuses mean shallower valleys, and vice versa). This will give you a map of where to sand next or where to apply your next skim coat. Another tip: For bigger jobs like this, I like to use the two different colors of setting agent, blue and red. It provides contrast to the different layers, indicates where things have been worked already, and shows you how the repair has evolved.

When you've got what seems to be a nice smooth surface to the hand, mask off a generaous area to prevent unwanted overspray and lay down a couple of thin coats of high build primer. I garantee you won't be finished after that unless you're some kind of bodywork Michelangelo. The primer layer usually does a great job at showing off defects for you to go after. Repeat as necessary.
The process can be tedious, and a pain the ass, but you can't go around gangster style with a dented sled now can ya?

Obviously the right way to do it is to source the all new lines, which run as one piece from the wheel well to the fuel tank. This would be obscenely expensive for a $2,000 car. A quick trip to Murrays and $12 worth of brake line and compression fittings and the repair was underway. First step is to clear out the underbody tar from the area in question, unbolt the retaining clips and pop the lines out of the flex hoses that make the connection from the wheel well to the engine bay. Next, with the help of a measuring tape and Mr. Pipecutter, the rusted lines are trimmed well past the corrosion point but with a little to spare on the new pipes. A word of caution for you cheapskates looking to make this same fix, if you have parallel fuel lines being replaced, make sure that you offset the cut point on the fuel lines. If you don't, the compression fittings will be sitting next to each other, and there is no way you will be able to get the retaining clips to do their job properly again.

Next we prep the brake/fuel lines, again, a pipecutter and reamer are most useful here. With those expensive fittings and flanges now removed (fittings are now acting as weights for the light fixture pulls), we move on to bending things to fit. When bending, take things slow, especially if you have the cheap ass one sided pipe bender. The key here is to make bends gradually, and keep the bending action controlled to a point within the die. If you bend the pipe outside the die it will kink and render your tube useless. See, look how nice the replacement looks here.

That bending is pretty much the hardest part of the whole process. After that, it's a matter of putting the compression fittings on the old lines, fitting the new lines to their home and tightening everything down. Make sure to run the fuel pump and start the car at this stage in order to confirm that you did indeed fix the problem. This car of course has a mechanical fuel pump, and combined with the 7.0-liter V8, the old battery died before getting fuel to it. After a charge, the fix was confirmed when the beast roared to life. Things were buttoned up and panels returned to place. I'll have you all note this represents the first new parts for car while under my custody. I am considering it a milestone.

Putting a car back together from buckets of bolts and a trunk and cabin full of parts can be gently described as a mixture of mild sport and rectal violation. I think it can be generally agreed that the first step in any project car is to see what the hell it is you've got. The shortest path to accomplishing that task is obsessive cleaning and best-guess reassembly. The second step in that task is then tearing everything apart to see what you don't have.

Entering the garage on "the day after" without a plan of attack is a bad idea. This is how automotive ADD kicks in. "Ooh, that's shiny and interesting, let's figure out where that goes. Hmmm, there's some grime. WD-40 to the rescue. What is this thing? Oh, that goes here. Wow, I didn't see that dent before. Let's clean this bolt. Shoot, why doesn't that work? Where did that leak come from? Wanna go ride bikes?" And so on, and so forth.

At the end of day one, the following tasks had been completed:

1) All interior and exterior parts put in their respective places. This means all that cool brightwork along the top of the fenders, the bumper reinstalled, all the interior chrome trim put up, the random engine bits that had been removed, and the tail lights, hubcaps, etc.

2) Declaration of destruction for parts that cannot be salvaged, which include the following: Lens for rear tail light, fender cap trim on rear passenger side fender, drivers side lower body trim between front wheel well, and bumper, fore/aft drive cable for front power seat.

With the work of assembly and cleaning completed to an acceptable level, it was time to tear things apart. The plan was to remove the inner fenders to take a look up her skirt. Then remove the carpets and either run them through a cleaner or make a decision to toss them. Inner fenders on the Continental don't work like those on a modern car. Instead of cosmetic felt and plastic panels Christmas tree'd in place, these are heavy, tar-covered plates designed to protect important things like vacuum hoses, fuel, and brake lines. They are also apparently designed as an excellent place for various critters to store used nutshells. Whereas the passenger side was in pristine shape, the drivers' side revealed a mix of acorns, walnuts, and moist muck behind the inner fender panel. Great. After I hoovered out a solid five pounds of sick and let it air dry, I put the panel back hoped for the best. This would later prove to be a mistake.

Now we move on to the interior. Taking a carpet out can sometimes be a horror show of a struggle. This car is equipped with a two piece carpet that's matted beyond belief and stinky. You can imagine how heartbroken I was when I pulled it out and found gnarly stains and more grossness than even anticipated. That got thrown in a box for burning after the new carpet arrives. I'm thinking of going from the stock cut pile to a looped carpet that was standard on previous models.

With the carpet out the pain was about to begin. An ominous discoloration on the fiberglass floor insulation was staring me in the face. I couldn't help but pull back layers of fiberglass and tar sound deadening until a spot of garage floor was winking at me. Cue cursing. Apparently one of the Ford designers thought it would be cool to locate a floor drain hole right over one of the main chassis rails. As a result, that hole was plugged, and the rest is history. Fortunately, this is far from a death knell. The rust is fairly well contained, with some cutting wheel action, a little elbow grease, a nicely shaped steel plate, and some welding, this one will be easy to repair.

Another item, added to a rapidly expanding list.

Last week saw a fury of intro pieces from our newest contributors Eric Tingwall and Laura Burstein, as well as the clarification that Murilee Martin is in fact a hairy, greasy dude. I was very tempted to pen my own intro, since I never actually got around to it last January when I hopped into this little blue-gray wagon. So here are 117 words of background: I'm 26, came from a long line of farmers, graduated with a Mechanical Engineering degree in 2004 from Kettering University (GMI for you old timers) in lovely Flint, Michigan and now live eight blocks from Ray Wert in Royal Oak. I've been passed around like a $2 corporate whore, I've worked in various facilities within the Blue Oval, Visteon, and now I've gone to the dark side and I'm a program management consultant. I'm currently doing work launching a new engine line at Detroit Diesel. My daily drivers are a 1999 Audi A4 2.8V6 (5 speed, Quattro, silver) and a thoroughly modified, fire engine red, 1978 Kawasaki KZ750B3 set up in the café style.

Now back to how I came to own this piece of automotive enormulance - basically, Craigslist and low opportunity cost. Like drug fiends looking for the next fix, so many of us trawl the "cars & trucks" section of the list, hoping for that once in a lifetime buy that is too good to pass on. It's almost a bloodsport, waiting for that '63 Split Window in some old ladies garage, and then pouncing before your competition. This car originally posted way back in August, I went an took a look just to get a feel for what was out there. The old boy was up on jack stands in a spacious, well lit garage, hood, wheels and trunklid in the corner - the owner was looking for $3500. Those two dents, the so-so interior with no headliner, rust in the rear fenders, all the trim taken off, tail lights off, bumpers off and a bucket of unlabeled nuts and bolts... it was a bit too much for me, so I passed, with regret. A month went buy, and the seller was getting nervous, he was looking at a move south and couldn't afford to take both the car and his wife, so he had to make a sacrifice. He gave me a call and asked me to reconsider with a healthy discount. Twenty crisp Benjamins changed hands and the deal was done, the title was mine.

A title to what though? This Continental is huron blue with teal blue interior, 430ci MEL V8 good for 320hp hooked up to a three speed slushbox. At seventeen and a half feet long, with a 126" wheel base, 79" track and weighing in over 5050 lbs, this is no clown car. A solid axle and leaf spring suspension handle things in the rear while a double wishbone suspension and anti roll bar up front absorbs any kind of road imperfection (and road feedback). Enormous drum brakes do stopping duties on all four corners and steering is eventually done with a steering box and drag links, everything from the wipers to the doors locks is vacuum powered - this is definitely old school.

Moving such a car is no small feat. While the car was driveable, no cop worth his taser spikes would have let me through his precinct without hassle, so external assistance was needed. Funny thing here, if you have a pickup truck capable of towing it, no autodolly will accommodate the car and apparently there aren't any rental locations that will lend out a flatbed trailer that can carry 5000 lbs unless you have a semi. The solution came with a call to my ever resourceful brother. He pulled some of his redneck strings and matched a nineteen foot trailer to his 600 hp Dodge 2500 (Cummins power). Now with that problem solved, I turned to finding the beast a home. See, part of my sickness is making decisions that are not only foolhearty, but irrational. I don't really have a garage. After a few calls and some begging, I secured the unused garage of one of my extremely intelligent, generous, drop dead gorgeous friends, we'll call her Julia. Okay, that's not entirely true; she was very influential in the purchase, threatening me with bodily harm if I passed on the car for lack of garage. I'm sure I will be paying off the debt for quite some time.

When the day came for the move, there was very little in the way of drama, the car actually made the move without any problems at all. My brothers truck, beast that it is, pulled it as if it were as light as a feather, and the load and unload process didn't take but five minutes on each side. It took longer to load all of the loose parts (not a good sign). As I pulled it into the garage where the transformation will occur, I felt a deep sense of satisfaction in making this decision. There is was in its too small home with those smooth luxurious sides, the knife edge fenders, the gorgeous tumblehome, eight-body trunk and those suicidal doors. There will be sweat and blood and surprises, but that's kind of what it's about. I've come to see this less as a race to next August's Dream Cruise, and more as a journey, for both this car, and for myself.

Next: Fitting the puzzle pieces back together.