Now Complete Restoration / Pulling my 1969 'Bee down for strip and paint

[birdsandbees]

 

[birdsandbees]

Another productive day!   Braced to the K frame bolt on the drivers side, but since the frame needs to be repaired on the rear passenger side K frame bolt location I pegged a bolt into an existing hole to brace that side.

[birdsandbees]

  Was always pissed the last body shop in '89 never fixed that "wow" above the rear bumper on the passenger side before paint.   When you work alone for over 20 years you get pretty good at "helping hands"! 

[birdsandbees]

Me trying to get some "fresh air"!

Trunk gutter hidden VIN. Wish my 'Bird's had of been this easy to find.

Factory trunk seal (unfortunately has lived it's life). Thought some might like the "survivor" part number.

Shows factory didn't center the seal overlap.

[birdsandbees]

Upper ball joints were fun!

More "survivor" factory clip on frame rail area.

Factory wiring, speedo clips on frame rail and inner wheel.

Air box out and on floor. Didn't know it was three pieces..

[birdsandbees]

Scoops off.

Front seat out.

Dash shot.

I can't go back to B5.. just can't do it. Maybe something between it and my current blue. 

[birdsandbees]

I think I'm doing pretty good. Have had zero help and as of now I have 29 hours into total tear down. Still need to get the front windshield out, dash out, carpet and headliner pulled. Wife's Birthday tomorrow, so that leaves me 4 days next week to accomplish it. Gone for two weeks as of Friday and Resto shop wants the car Feb 1st.

[polywideblock]

coming along great        no help on the colour as b5 is fine with me   

[Patronus]

Great looking project!
I too can't fault the color... It looks so good.
I'm sorry if I missed it, is it originally b5?

[birdsandbees]

Thanks, yes and no. Yes it's an original B5 / B5 / X9 car. No, I repainted it in '89 a bit darker.

Now that I have the windshield out, here's a great comparison in the two colours. Think I'm going to shoot for something in between.

[6spd68]

25 year old paint held up rather well IMO 

[birdsandbees]

25 year old paint held up rather well IMO 

It did, except for all the places that have bubbled and / or totally lost adhesion.

[6spd68]

PS, if interested in selling those seats...    (I'm also in Ontario)

[birdsandbees]

Sorry, not a chance.

When I was young and foolish (1979) I took the front seat out and put buckets in it. Then my bench seat disappeared, along with my magnum 500 wheels, from my mothers garage sometime over the next decade. It took me a long time to find the correct bench seat to put it back original.. almost a year between '88 and '89. I found one in a Coronet 500, 3 cars down in a pile and they wouldn't unstack the cars for me at Tracy's in Barrie. I had to cut a hole in the car roof below to get at the seat bolts above. Totally reupholstered in '89, front and back seats. Wasn't done from a "kit" either, was all done by hand from pictures.

[6spd68]

Ha!  All good, I know that feel 

[birdsandbees]

Was ever so careful and managed to get the entire headliner out without ripping or deforming and she would have gone right back in.. WELL... if it wasn't for finding where all the mice I could never track had been going for years.

Headliner looks absolutely perfect underneath, not so much on top!  

Panic mode now, resto shop called me at 5:20 and wants to pick the car up on Thursday morning instead of Feb 1st. That's really gonna cut into bikini shopping with the wife tomorrow!  

Think I can do it, all I have left is the entire dash assembly, heater/defroster box, master cylinder and windshield wiper system.

[Troy]

Nothing like a moving deadline to help get you motivated! I'm fast at taking stuff apart. Getting it back together is a whole different matter.

Troy

[skip68]

Call me paranoid but I'd put a solid bar connecting the front and back on both sides.  Just being careful is all.  You can make it where a bolt or pin just holds it in place so it's easily removed when needed.  Just pop out the pin and swing it out of the way or remove it when not moving the car around.   
Probably not necessary, just a safety thought.   

[birdsandbees]

Thanks Skip... it's going straight from the hoist bay into the back of an enclosed on Thursday and then they have another contraption once at the resto shop to lift it up to blast the underside. This is what they wanted for hand rolling in their shop and what I built is pretty much identical to what the 6 Daytona thread shows under their cars, although I have better and larger diameter caster wheels. 

[skip68]

 

[birdsandbees]

Wow, what a day. 3 hours plowing snow, as many hours getting the wife looking smoke'in for the beach in Curacao and I managed to get the rest of the car stripped out before calling it a night.   Tomorrow I can pull my old bumpers off the brackets so they can blast, prime and paint those and get everything else ready for pick up on Thursday. Then we're off for two weeks and I should come back to a stripped, blasted and primed shell to discuss what needs to be fixed up before repaint.

Amazed at how good the firewall insulation still is and I expected to find a mouse nest in the heater box or cowl. Both spotless with not even a piece of mouse poo. Cowl I expected to be rusty.. no such deal.

[birdsandbees]

 

[skip68]

Wow.   Looks like the sea container is a great way to preserve a car.       

[birdsandbees]

Good thing my wife let me work all day on her Birthday, Sunday! Get a call at 2pm, "coming to get your car, as I can't do it tomorrow, I'll be there in about an hour"!    Considering it takes over 1.5 hours to plow my 1200' laneway and shop area it was a good thing he didn't get here for 2 hours. We had a foot of snow fall overnight and I wasn't going to plow until tomorrow morning.

She's gone and will be stripped, glass media blasted on all sides and zinc epoxy primed by the time I get back on the 29th. Then we'll see what the metal looks like and decide what needs to be replaced in the rear frame rail / trunk pan and I think we'll do that drivers floor pan to make it all pretty. Torn down this far no point skimping now. 

I sure wish the paint looked as good as it does in the picture of her in the trailer! 

[birdsandbees]

Some days you just ask yourself, why the hell did I start this??!! Easy to forget all the back yard patching as teenagers, improperly overlapped seams on quarter panel installs, bondo filled dents and such some 35 years later hidden under some shiny paint. But have no fear, full stripping and media blasting brought it back to reality really quickly for me today! Everything shiny in epoxy stays, the rest goes. New inner fenders, upper cowl, full floor pan, torsion bar crossmember, trunk pan, rear leaf spring shackle mounts, rear bumper bulkhead, both rear inner and outer wheel wheels, passenger frame rail, new door skins, etc. There goes the first 10K (cdn) in parts and probably 3 weeks work for the metal man. Better start cleaning up Leah's 'Vette to sell so I can pay for this!