Day 3 - Attacking the front end

Got a jump start without John and pulled up the rest of the underlay inside the car. Didn't look too bad underneath, the floor pan plugs are destroyed, but the floor pans look great. The only thing concerning is the seat platforms which look like they weren't replaced when the floor pans were, hopefully they don't need to be replaced, but if they do I guess I'm learning to weld! (also, sorry, forgot to take a picture!)

After that I figured I'd try and take the doors off. My plan is to leave them fully assembled and then disassemble them separately. The first thing I did was use my pads to put under the door so that I wouldn't drop it on the floor when I took it off:

Then I simply removed the 5 bolts from the hinges to the door.

Note: The doors are heavy. This is really a 2 person job...

So after getting the driver's side door off and placing it upstairs John showed up. We decided to try and get the passenger side off but one of the bolts had been replaced with a bolt that had nuts on both sides and it was free spinning. We decided to remove the hinges from the body instead, but in order to get to them you have to remove the fender and really to get to the fender you want to start with the front end. So that led into the true beginning of the night.

1. Head Light Assembly x2:

We started with the headlight assembly because it looked easy... Not the best reason, but it worked out ok. We wanted to get behind them to see the bolts/buts for the fenders. To remove you have to remove the headlight screws, then the assembly screws, then the adjuster spring:

The entire back part of the assembly is bolted to the grille so it can all come out in one piece. We left it at that for now so that we could work from the bottom up.

2. The Front Bumper:

Now for the fun. Basically the bumper is bolted in 6 places, you have 4 bolts up front to the bumper mounts and 2 on the sides to the fenders. The 4 up front have nuts, the 2 on the side have clips. Basically all of our nuts were rusted on and both clips broke and were spinning. It took a lot of patience, a lot of WD-40, and the two of us alternating who held the clips with the pliers and who turned the socket wrench:

3. Bumper Guards

To remove the bumper guards there's a bolt above the guard and below, you MUST have the bumper off first to try and get to them. The above bolt you need to get underneath the car to get at, but you MUST have someone above holding the clip.

4. Valence

We started to disconnect the valance but the turn signal lights need to be disconnected from their wiring harness and we got tired. Gonna continue tonight!