Lifting the Body

This is the big day. It took me a little while to coordinate all the hands I needed for this project, so the last several weeks were a bit slow. I finished disconnecting all the items connecting the body and the chassis, and I progressed on cleanup and prep. The body is pretty much ready to go to the body shop. I've wire brushed all the rust spots to expose the extent of the damage. I brushed the floor pans to see in what state they are (passenger side needs replacing), and I removed pretty much every piece imaginable from the body. All that's left is the gas overflow container, covering some wires, and doing some POR-15 rust treatment on non-exposed parts.

On to the fun part. Here's the bug in place for the body removal:

photo by Skory

The plan is to clean out the garage to have good standing room, then with one guy at each corner, lift the car a bit and have a fifth guy tighten the straps. We'll then have a look to make sure there's nothing connecting the body and the chassis. My landlord was pretty cool and cut a few wood pieces to help support the car at the rear side windows, because there's a thin piece of metal that will get bent if we bear directly on it. Turns out that they weren't that useful because they split apart under load. We went for cardboard and duct tape in the end. Still, before we changed strategies, we made a few more pieces to replace the split ones. Here's a photo of Matt working on that. Why? 'Cause he looks damn cool, that's why.

Photo by Skory

Well, there are no photos of the actual lifting because the photographer was lifting too. It turns out it wasn't as light as I wanted it to be, though with four people it was manageable. I want a few more on the way back down so we have a bit more control.

When we started lifting we had to work the engine seal a bit to let it loose, but the rest of it went easily. Here it is at one of the intermediate steps:

Photos by Skory

There's already good news: the heater channels are in great shape. And it doesn't seem like I forgot to disconnect anything. We have a small delay as I go to Home Depot for a few more hooks for the rafters. A couple more straps are going to help us out, not only with stability but with more efficient lifting because the two that are installed now are at too much of an angle. While I'm gone the guys find out that we still haven't disconnected the hoses to the charcoal vapor recovery unit. Whoops.

The rest of the lifting went perfectly. Here's the car at the end of this process:

Photos by Skory

Then, after a brief moment of "well, NOW what do we do?"

Photo by Skory

we got down to business getting the floor pan out. Heat gun and scraper to remove all the existing seam sealer:

Photo by Skory

Some grinding to find the spot welds (that are about 4 mm apart or so) then taking out the spot welds with a 3/8" cobalt bit (couldn't find a spot weld cutter), and out comes the floor pan:

That perfectly polished edge is product of Nekarda's Midwestern work ethic.

A successful day, my friends. A successful day. Thanks to Matt, Matt, Kid Nebraska, and Skory.