Re: 51Packard's....51 Packard

Posted by Charles On 2010/9/23 20:38:04

9-23-10

Got about an hour to mess with the car today. Since I really can't test the trans with the tires I have, I'm going to move on. I can move the car around now which was my goal anyway.

The more I dig around in the car, the more I realize how bad the rust was. This is leading me to cut back a little on my restoration expectations and how accurate I'm going to be. Originally, I was going to get a new, correct wire harness. That being too expensive, I was going to make my own dressing up the exposed wires with correct ones. I'm going to abandon that and just replace the wiring with modern wires as close to the wire color scheme I can. Tracer lines on the wires will be a problem, but I'm not going to worry about that anymore. I'm also not going to worry about getting the right engine paint and will just get something close. I can always dress it up later with the right paint if the car turns out better than I expect.

I'm realizing that I'm getting to the end of "restoration season". My concern is getting far on something and not being able to paint it because of the cold. So my short term plan is to get the front end derusted and paint the engine and accessories. When it gets too cold to paint, I'll try to tackle some of the rust patching with my welder.