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Thats great Kev.

They'll appreciate all your hard work when they're being chauffered to the church & getting out of the back of old "Rusty" on their Wedding days.

Well an odd 24hrs have gone my. First someone rolled into the back of my truck while sitting in bumper to bumper traffic and put a ding in the rear bumper on my truck. So I will have to get that taken care of as the chrome is cracked when he hit me.

The this morning I went into into the garage to start working on the Clipper front bumper. I was going to start with media blasting the bumper hardware, but as I took the first lot of hardware over to the media blasted, and noticed that the front of the usually dusty media blasted had runs down the front of it light it had gotten wet some how.....WTF? The media blasted is up against a window in the garage that faces the street, and the windows is covered with a tint, and a set of mini-blinds. One of the small panes in the window was missing. The water must have come from the yard sprinkler. So walked around to the outside of the garage were the window is to discover the the screen slit, and all the moulding around that pane was removed, and the pane of glass was sitting on the ground. Looks like someone of the last couple of days tried to break in, and removed the pane hoping to reach in and unlatch the window. I guess they didnt know that I had screwed that window shut when i first moved in. So they didn't get anywhere. Police report filed, and someone about a block away had something similar happen to them.

So I got side tracked this morning fixing that damage. Since that window is never used, and is basically covered, I was planning on sealing off the window anyway, so this just forced my hand. We just cover the outside of the window inside the jam with plywood and painted in to match the house. Then put screen back on. From the street you cant even tell that there is no window there anymore because of the screen. Or it looks like a faux window frame like some of the house have here. I also sheeted the inside of the window with another piece of plywood, so now it just disappears into the wall inside the garage.

Once all that was taken car of it was back to work on the car.

I first cleaned all the grime and dirt of of the bumper with some simple green. I had two major items to fix. One was a couple visible dings right in the middle of the bumper, and next was a sizable dent along the bottom of the bumper probably from a bumper jack.

So I first removed the dings with a pick body hammer, and the went to work on the jack dent. This required some serious pounding. Removing dents from a bumper requires a lot more force than a body panel do to the nature of the steel. By this point, the 100f+ heat drove me out of the garage for the day. More to come.

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Kev,

i got my gun loaded...i'll be over to watch over the place shortly.

damn thieving jerks!

Some additional progress today. Got all the bumper back together and back on the car. I straightened the bumper the best I could, and then painted the backside for the bumper with some black paint. All the brackets and hardware were also painted. I reassembled all the bracketry on the bumper and then attached the bumper to the car. Then the bumperettes were installed and the guard cross-rail was installed. I cleaned up and painted the license plate bracket, and reinstalled it.

Then with a Mother's Power-Cone in my cordless drill, I went over all the bumper and grille with some chrome polish. Most of it polished up pretty well for tired old chrome. The guard-cross rail really has no chrome left on it. So not much I can do there for right now.

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Any more progress Kev?

Well since you ask yes. I actually drove the car around the block today. So far it goes in reverse and forward. Did not have it up to any higher than about 25 miles per hour as it was a residential area.

Also the brakes are a bit soft, so I was keeping the speed down. Not sure if this means I need to rebleed them, or that is just how manual brakes are. The steering is pretty hard at low speed, really takes some serious effort to turn the wheel.

Car still needs some Carb adjustment and I still need to readjust the throttle and kick-down linkage as well. The car idles nicely once warmed up, but is a bit rough and smokes a bit until it does.

While the car was out of the garage, swept up the entire floor and degreased when the car had been sitting for years. Also put the car back in the garage head first, so I can work on the rear of the car.

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Congratulations Kev, on a big step forward in your project. bet you are really pumped up and ready to continue. I had a very similar experience today.

Congrats! Going around the block sure feels good, but then being able to stop is even better! Sound like you need to get used to the brakes. Mine had a lot of petal play and take longer to stop than cars you might be used to.

My congratulations too Kev, another significant milestone and great to be behind the wheel.

Very cool BigKev. She is coming along very nicely and I'm sure you are getting very anxious!