Spring Cleaning

  Kind of funny how the last paragraph of the last post mentioned that I slow down during cold weather, and that was 3 months ago!

  Holidays, cold weather, some health problems in the family- they all slowed me down considerably over the Winter. But, there were things accomplished, so lets cover that.

  Thanksgiving. An odd series of events left us celebrating Thanksgiving at home by ourselves. 51Chick and 51Kid were in the house, cooking and cleaning the living room in anticipation of putting up the Christmas tree. Well, there would be fussing, weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth inside, so I hid out in the garage. Justin came over for a while, and we BS'ed and worked on the car.

Replaced the bottom of the rear inside panel on the drivers side

Then tacked in the new rear footwell.

  Putting in such a large piece of metal (the largest to date) was a big shot in the arm. The next weekend, 51Kid wanted to hang out in the garage with me. She wanted to practice some welding, which I readily agreed to. She started looking for some scraps, when I pointed her to where she'd be doing her practice for the day.

Of course, she was nervous about actually welding on the car. I had to remind her that even if she made a mistake, we could easily fix it. Once she'd dropped a couple of tacks on, she was INCREDIBLY full of herself for actually helping put the car back together.

   She even set in on fire during her welding. I congratulated her on this milestone, because "It ain't yours until you've set it on fire."

 

Sometimes difficult to do during cold months, but we hit it where we can.

  Shop time got real sporadic during December and January. A lot of the available time was spent welding up the floorpan, and planning the next steps to take. I quickly noticed that the floorpan wasn't set quite right at the front, so I ended up cutting it back apart, seating it better and rewelding it.

  Hard to see where it has moved, but it sits MUCH nicer now.

  Since then, there has been a lot of finish welding seams that were previously only tacked, planning the next steps, and even some Spring cleaning on the shop. I'm looking to have a very productive year in the shop. My goal is to complete all rust repair on the main body shell by next Winter.

  I'm also strongly thinking of supplementing this blog with a vlog. I'll keep you posted on when or if that happens.