The split...

The next step was to split the body and frame from one another. The acutal time to separate them really didn't take as long as I expected. The effort that went into the rotisserie was time well spent and I was able to use one of the stands to connect to the rear section of the car. However, I had to attach the stand to the trunk floor due to the fact the body mounts were rusted as well as the structure in that area. I left the front of the car on the 4x4 so that I could finish the work on the floor and toe boards.

Here's the view from the rear of the car sitting on the stand

Here you can see the frame and entire suspension.  Notice they took the original frame and moved the rear rails inward to compensate for the larger tires, ladder bars and coil overs?  The one good thing they did was they didn't cut up the original rearend.  They took the ralley wheels and had extensions welded in so the offset was inward instead of outward.

Next step is to start working on the removal of the rocker panels and quarter panels.

The rotisserie project

I took a short detour while working on the car to help make things easier.  I spent the better part of the month of August and September 2008 building my first rotisserie for the body.   I found the design online and proceed to cut and weld the parts together.  This is the first major welding I've done in 15+ years so I was a bit rusty but most of it came back.  At some point in the future a large mig/tig welder is going to be on the wish list to help with the larger projects.  

Here's an update to the rotisserie stand from July 2010.  I had to modify the stands to enable the body to rotate completely.  As you can see I've added a hydraulic jack to the stand.  This gives me a very flexible height adjustment to make it easier to load and unload the body as well as the ability to extend the height to rotate the body 90 degrees with plenty of height to spare.  As it turns out the design worked out quite well to help support the weight and allow the rotisserie to work correctly.

Beauty is only skin deep



View from the drivers door looking into the front seat



This is where the problem started.  The first thing I did to prepare for the new interior is of course remove the old.  Upon doing so I realized the driveshaft had gone through the floor at least twice.  Then looking further at the inner rocker panels noticed there was quite a bit of rust just below the firewall.

So the idea was to remove the floor and replace it.  The only problem is that the more I uncovered the more I saw that I didn't like and unfortunately the idea of putting it back together incomplete didn't sit well.

After spending some time thinking about the situation I then talked Wendy into restoring the car as a "project" to help give us something to do since we left our house in Geogia which we spent 4 years working on :)

View from the passenger door looking to the rear seat

Once the decision was made I dove in with my Sawzall and cut the floor out from the toe board to the rear floor cross member. 

Passenger rocker panel

After the floor was cut out the next step was to clean up the edges, or so I thought.  I started with a drill and began to drill the first of hundreds of spot welds out.  After drilling I used a chisel and hammer to break th welds.  I spent the first few days using this approach and finally decided it was time to get more power.

Here's the result ... POWER!  I added the compressor and plenty of airtools which have made the job much easier.

The next step was to separate the body from the frame which actually went much faster than I thought.  Since I was going to have to replace most of the bottom of the car I was able to use the airchisel and sawzall to simply cut large sections apart until I had the car separated.  Overall the disassembly took course over 2 weekends.  It's always much eaiser to tear it appart than to put it back together.