LeMay Feature Car Restoration: June 27th- Catch up

Restoration is a very exhausting career choice! I really do love every minute, however when I get home I'd rather lay my head to rest than get on the computer. A lot has been going on in the past two weeks. The gauge cluster housing and glass is done. Both steering wheels are just in need of some rubbing compound after the paint has cured (in another week). A lot of pieces have been sand blasted and painted like the oil bath air cleaner (which also had a dent in the top), the oil pan, the engine side covers, and shocks. I also put a skim coat of icing on the fiberglass front nose of one of the Powell's. I worked on the three speedometers trying to get everything to move again, and to de-gunk the whole thing. All the speedo's move now except for one of the odometer gear shafts. For some reason it just won't budge.

I remember from Luke's drive train class that we made an electrolysis de-rusting device and it worked great! So I made one at the shop to de-rust some rear ends and now we have halves of gas tanks in there. It really works! We're not even using wash soda, we're just using some arm n' hammer laundry detergent.

Also, in the past two weeks, I sprayed one of the frames with DP again. We finally got the truck body back from the sand blaster so we're now doing some body work on that. The window channel was really rusty and amazingly enough it had angle iron beneath it and that wasn't completely rotted out yet so its salvageable. I grinded the bottom of the window channel off and and cleaned up the welds on the cowl.

These past few days have been really interesting! I went to a couple swap meets and yard sales and picked up some goodies like an army ammo box. Tom is letting me do all the work on the three gas tanks. we grinded the tops off and cleaned them out. I tack welded it on and we're leading it up tomorrow after I tack a few more spots.

Chuck is from the Powell registry and he's been helping us by answering all of our questions regarding the Powell's like what the tire size was, how they were wired, were they 6 volt, if he knew of any resources where we could find some gauge pieces etc. He sent me a Powell car package with a gauge cluster and temp gauge cable with the ether tube still on it and some fuel sending units!

It's been super duper interesting at the shop and I'm still working about ten hours a day, six days a week. It's pretty much what I'm living for at this point. Tom is like my automotive father and he's really good at what he does and a great problem solver, which makes him a great teacher. I've learned so much from him, and there are years worth of more knowledge to get, that I have to cram into the next two months.

Still think we'll get the Powell's done in time?