A Busy Saturday

Today was a busy Saturday. The weather turned really nice, and I had some good quality time to spend with the car. First up was continuing to tear down the interior.

Removed the back seat, and this is the buried treasure that I found. All sorts of crap that had built up over the past several years.


After removing the rear seat, I removed the rear carpet. Found a little bit of surface rust, but not too bad. The floor boards were still solid.


Set the console brackets up to figure out where they needed to be welded at. Removed all the remnants of carpet glue and crap to prep for the welding. After this photo was taken, I shot the bare spots with some primer until I can get to the welding. The center console I got from an eBay auction.

Went up under the car and "sorta" installed the rear anti-sway bar. I installed the frame brackets, attached the bar, and mocked up where the spring pad brackets are to go. Those also need to be welded up. In this shot, you can also see the HD Police shocks that I installed a while back. The sway bar itself came from the junkyard, out of a 1981 Chrysler Imperial. The brackets for the spring perch I purchased off of a member of one of the forums that I frequent.

Here is a shot of the brackets installed on the frame.


Here is another shot of the anti-sway bar and the brackets installed on the frame.


Here is another angle of the anti-sway bar. You can see it snake it's way over the pumpkin in the rear end.

Trans linkage installed

Tonight I was able to take advantage of some of the extra daylight and worked on the car. I got the hole cut in the floor to allow the linkage to go through, and mounted up the linkage pivot to the floor pan. Next up; welding up the center console brackets, installing the floor shifter, connecting the shift linkage to the transmission, and disconnecting the column shifter from the trans.

Center Console Mock Up

On Saturday, the weather turned really nice so I decided to start with one of the projects, installing the center console (picked up from eBay) and converting the car from a column-shift to a console-shift. First, out came the front bucket seats and the console my dad made for me many years ago. Then, some of the interior trim came off to gain access to the carpet. With the carpet removed, I was able to get a view into the 30+ year old floor boards.



Being a daily driver for so long, and only sitting in the arid desert climate has been good to the Party Wagon. The floor boards are in great condition. I've seen some F-bodies where the carpet was the only thing holding the floor boards together. There is just a little bit of surface rust on the passenger side floorboard, but nothing major.





I put the console in for the first mock up . I realized that I'm going to have to pull the rear portion of the carpet too, which means more interior trim will have to come out and the rear lower seat cushion will also have to come out. I'll try and get to that tomorrow, if the weather cooperates. Supposed to be light showers tomorrow. Fingers crossed.