For the first couple of hours, I worked on the dash, removing all the little bits like the captive nylon nuts and other trim pieces. When the bulkhead has to be completely stripped in order to be dipped and galvanized, there are a lot of little piecies to take off! Even though I had worked consistently for about two hours, you still could not tell I had done anything from outside so I removed the left wing and core support.
NOW, we were getting somewhere! the 109 looked like it was so much closer to being back on the road! (Ha!). I had thought the core support was in really good shape, but now that it was out, I could see about five spots on the bottom edge that were thick with rust. If you look closely in the attached picture, or enlarge it, you can see these areas on the bottom edge.
The next step was to remove the pedal towers and disconnect the throttle linkage. Fortunately, none of the bolts on either the clutch or brake pedal tower were frozen and they, along with both brake pipes and the clutch pipe, came off easily. All of those parts went in their own labelled bags and boxes. We disconnected the throttle linkage and removed the previous owners' brackets in the engine compartment.
Thinking that I could not get to the windsheild/roof bolts with the headliner in place, I removed it and found out that all four corners of the headliner bracket were thoroughly rusted. They literally crumbled at my touch. Other than that, the headliner is in pretty good condition. As is the horsehair insulation blanket that was still stuck to the roof. The windsheild hinge bolts had to be coaxed out with a propane torch--not to cut them, just to heat them up and break them lose.
The front floorboards had already been removed along with the tunnel cover, revealing the oily reconditioned gearbox from Paddocks that had been installed sometime in mid 2002. Also visible in the following picture is one of the mounting brackets for the side steps Paul Koch built for us. They are attached using 3/4 bolts.
With Gord'ns help, I got the steering column, steering box, bracket and linkage removed. This was a bit tricky because the arm between the steering box and the steering relay ran underneath the battery tray (which reminds me, the new galvanized chassis does not have a battery tray in the engine compartment so our battery will be relocated under the passenger seat).
Next came removing the side steps in order to get access to the sill panels. The steps came off easily--having only been installed a year earlier. The sill panel bolts, on the other hand, were nicely encrusted in mud and rust and they took a bit more work to remove.
Now were were down to just four bolts holding the bulkhead in place. It was 5pm on Halloween and both of us were supposed to be at parties within 30 minutes. The nuts on the main bulkhead bolts came off with surprising ease. Very little corrosion.
Then it got hard. While one main bolt slid out easily, the other was stuck fast. As for the other two smaller bolts, they had just fused into the bulkhead completely. So, Gord'n fired up the acetylene torch and cut though both small bolts and the one frozen main bolt. A minute later and the bulkhead was laying on the shop floor. However, by this time, both of us were officially late for our parties so I only got a couple of quick shots before putting all the tools away and racing home to clean up and go trick or treating with the kids.
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