1.30.21 WELDING DAY TOMORROW

It's been just over two months since I began this renovation with a promise to myself that I'd put in at least an hour a day.  I've done far more than that so far and tomorrow, we hopefully get a step close to reassembly.

I've bee making initial cuts on the cross member and hope to have it sectioned by EOD tomorrow. 

The other big job is to get the front fender tubs roughed in,  Lastly, the firewall fils need to be made. My fabricator arrives at 11AM and we'll likely put in close to a full day. 

I've been working on making cuts to the cross-member with cutting discs and an air tool. 

After installing a 3/8" threaded rod with bolts between the upper A-Arm supports as a precaution in the highly unlikely event that the cross-member tries to twist or distort in shape when we remove 1.5" from the center section, I begin cutting a dotted line all around the cut marked out line just as my fabricator had begun to do on the reverse side last weekend. 

I also removed all paint from both sides of the metal that we removed for the mini tubbed front inner fenders. In essence, I've been doing all the prep work so that we can concentrate on removing the section from the cross-member and get the inner fender tubs welded in. 

A really successful day tomorrow will have me set to do all the finishing work next week, which would get us over the hump and have me in detailing and reassembly mode.

If we don't manage to get that all done, we'll probably have to do it next weekend. Either way, I look forward to rounding the corner from blowing things apart, to putting them back together.

Granted, there's still a lot of deep cleaning to do on the front suspension while it's apart and detailing of the front brakes, calipers and running brake and fuel lines, etc.

Not to mention priming, prepping and painting the frame, firewall, the inner fenders, and the radiator support. 

But the point is, I'll have my fabrication work done and be back to prepping and assembling. There's still plenty of small stuff to do, but it's all stuff I should be able to handle on my own except for getting the front suspension reassembled.

Here are a few shots of the prepped pieces for tomorrow. 

I've got the area where the factory welds were made cleaned up for smoothing with All Metal and all the hols have clean sheet-metal surrounding them. 

Backlit shot shows how I cut along the dotted line with cutting discs and an air tool.