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10/02/2020
You can tell a lot about where a car has been by looking underneath. Is there frame damage? Are the floors rusted? What is leaking oil and for how long? It is an overlooked area of cleaning and maintenance that can tell the story of a car's life. You can hide damaged panels with bodywork and good paint, but it's difficult to disguise repairs under a car. If you can't see it on close scrutiny, the job was most likely done right.
Ginger is no exception. When I looked for the first time, my first impression was age. This car has been around a long time, and she was showing her age. Part of the first issues was the build up of dirt and oil. That was easy to diagnose, since the original engine was covered in it. It had been leaking for a long time, and gunked up everything behind it. Once I clean that off, it should stay clean with a new engine leading the way. There is some old heat insulation that is coming apart that I will probably replace, just to make everything look cleaner. The exhaust is new and unused, so no rust problems there.
Let's explore what I know so far, starting from the front and working our way to the rear of the car.
Right
Right
You can see here one of the first issues is a missing piece of the fiberglass nose. When the car is on the ground it sits low so that this isn't noticeable, but the nose takes a beating over a lifetime of parking curbs and road hazards. I'm going to leave this alone, since it isn't an obvious flaw.
Left
Left
On the left side, everything is in place, though still bearing the scars of being in a vulnerable location. I'll be putting a polish wheel to the paint and chrome, eventually, which should improve things.
You notice the new black core support contrasting the old frame and bumper supports. In a perfect world, I would take the body off the frame and make everything beautiful, but I will most likely settle for a deep clean. The frame is in good shape, without rot, and is still supplying a good foundation to be enjoyed.
On the other side, the story is a bit different. Here we see a bit of the ugly rear it's head. If you look at the bumper bracket just in front of the tire, you will notice a hole. At first I thought it was rust, but upon closer inspection it looks like a hole was blown through with a torch at some time in it's life. I can only imagine it was to access a bolt or something. They make reproduction brackets, but I'll leave it be. Once you start chasing perfection, it's a never-ending rabbit hole. You have to decide where to stop. The reason I replaced the core support was because of some more serious rust holes, You can see a small hole on the crossmember below the new core support. Everything else is solid, save for that small bit, so I elected to leave well enough alone there, too.
This is directly behind the passenger front wheel. You can see that it has been peppered by road debris, but is in great shape. The frame here is looking good.
The other side looks good as well. I'll fix the inner fender so that dirt and debris will stay out of the engine bay.
Other than some oil and dirt, the right crossmember here is looking great! One benefit of oil-covered parts is their resistance to corrosion.
I see a dent in this crossmember, but nothing that is worrisome.
As we move to the rear suspension, we begin to see the beginnings of scale corrosion. It hasn't become a structural concern, but it is ugly.
Same on the driver's side. In fact, I suspect the shocks back here haven't been changed in a very long time! I'll definitely be taking care of that.
While replacing all the suspension bushings and ball joints, I decided to paint the control arms and crossmember. It was a lot easier to do with everything off the car, and makes the new parts look better.
A new front spring and shock complete the makeover. I'm not sure what the spring rate is on these, since they came with the parts the original owner bought, but I threw the dice and put the in anyway.
The rear suspension has been a difficult project. None of the components had been removed I don't believe since they were installed at the factory over 50 years ago. There were some stubborn holdouts that took a little convincing to be separated from Ginger, but I prevailed. Afterwards, I coated what rear frame I could reach with POR15 to stop any rusting and prepare everything for all the new parts. The replacement rear leaf spring is in the car, waiting for the mailman to deliver the rest of the suspension parts. She is going to handle better than new when it all comes together!
The rear calipers were leaking, so replacements will be fitted and attached to new brake lines.
I've replaced all of the main brake lines after finding some seepage at a junction. better safe than sorry!
As I disassembled the suspension, my plan was to reuse the calipers, pads, and rotors that were on the car. They were old, but appeared to be fairly serviceable. To my dismay, I discovered that all the calipers were leaking inside the pistons save one.
Despite having lots of pad left, on closer inspection several of the pads were split and soaked with brake fluid. After buying calipers, it didn't make sense to put new pads on worn out rotors, so I bit the bullet and installed all new components to go with the new brake lines already installed.
Here is where the spare tire carrier tub is located. The old one was falling apart, so I cut it in pieces and put it in my trash bin. I ordered a new one from Top Flight Automotive. It was expensive, but cleans up the look of the car from the rear and also protects the fuel pump and lines from road debris. I doubt it will ever carry a spare tire...
04/24/2022
The final result after all that work is an undercarriage uncluttered and ready for business. All parts of the frame and suspension that were accessible was coated with POR15 to protect it from further corrosion. The heat shielding helps to keep the floor cool from the oversized exhaust. The front suspension benefited from all new bushings, sway bar, shocks, springs, and paint. The rear suspension also has all new bushings, a new spring, control arms, and shocks. The hard brake lines have all been replaced, and complement the new soft lines at all four corners. The calipers, rotors and pads were also replaced.
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