Well, after a long winter work has begun again on the Vicky. Last year after the fiasco with the gas tank I put a brand new tank in. Thinking that would solve the problems I was having, I filled it up and took her out for a spin. A very, very smoky spin. After fiddling with it for about a month and consulting other hot rodders I ran a pressure test on the cylinders and found two of them were far below normal. The rings were shot.

Looking back at everything I should have seen that the junk in the gas tank had made its way into the motor and therefore fouled the rings. Had I taken the time to pull the tank when I first got the car I might have been able to prevent this from happening, but you know what they say about hindsight…

After this devastating discovery I didn’t work on the car. I avoided the car. I let it sit all winter, not really having the fortitude to get back on it. With the warming temperatures I have started feeling the familiar pull to get back to it. A couple weeks ago I went down started disassembling the front end. My plan for the car is now to tear it completely down and rebuild it from the ground up. This means separating the body and frame, pulling the engine and transmission (more on that soon), rebuilding the front end, completely redoing the interior, repairing the body and repainting it.

So far I have removed all of the front end sheet metal. The next step is to strip the interior. More to come!

 

New gas tank

Front end tear down