jft69z

Hell no! What would be the point?

I almost spit out my lunch, lol. I'm certainly not the exercise type, that's for sure. More like potato chips and cookies. That extra fat on the a&& helps when tugging on the bumper.

That should be interesting.

Did you try the frame to body bolts yet?

For bodywork & the thinner metals involved, it's nicer to have a machine with both variable voltage and wire feed, vs something with a stepped switch for settings.

Jimmy Hoffa.... now the car's a crime scene.

Maybe the poolboy....after you're gone

Thanks Willie! They do great work over there at Denny's. Lol You'd be amazed how much you would use a good MIG machine around the shop & house. It would pay for itself in no time. Get one that uses shielding gas instead of flux core wire, worth it in the long run. I'm partial to Lincoln machines, but there's plenty of good stuff out there. Just a note, the Lincoln machines you'll find at Home Depot, don't appear to be the same as on the actual Lincoln site. Probably some type of 'contracted' version of the real ones, like Sears used to do with all their stuff years ago. May or may not be able to easily get replacement parts if ever needed. That being said, the smaller MIG I got around 1990, has never needed anything except tips & spools of welding wire. Dead reliable. I saw first hand what the weld shops at DuPont & here at the power plant put the Lincoln equipment through every day, very heavy duty industrial applications with no issues.

Thanks! What you see on the floors & part of the frame is already wire wheeled for the most part, and a little bodywork where the prior owner did something near the accelerator pedal, still can't quite figure out what he was thinking there, lol. Needed to pull the subframe to clean up that last bit of floor pan to move forward. Brake fluid leaked on the frame and made a mess there, plus overspray from when I painted the car years ago. Had to do a little surgery on the bottom where it was pushed in a bit from using a floor jack in the center to lift the car up. No easy way to fix it, so I cut it out, straightened it up with a port-a-power and hammer & welded it back up. No pics of that process on the cell phone camera, but it came out pretty good.

A little more progress. Powered up the ECM, updated the firmware, it seems to be pretty good enough for now until I get it all back together. Measured the bellhousing runout, required for Tremec to honor warranty of the TKX transmission. Worked out to .0005", well within the .005 max limit. Removed the old roller pilot bearing & put a new one back in. Picked up the driveshaft from Denny's. Can't say enough about the excellent quality and customer service there. Next step, pull the engine and subframe to prep for paint of those, plus the underside floors.

Was that for one bumper, or both Jerry? It looks like both from your earlier response, in which case $700 each isn't too terrible. I paid more than that to have my rear bumper done in Erie, Pa, but that involved filling a few holes in as well.

I hate working on cars. I just don't like paying someone else to do it, then have to go over & re-do it anyways...

Yes, as stated earlier, adjust the bumper to the best position allowed by the available range of all the mounting bracket bolt holes, then if the ends/corners look a little off, give them a tug if necessary. Sometimes they were pushed in too close to the body, or whacked while someone backed into something so that the vertical leading edge isn't parallel to the quarter panel body line, as in your earlier pictures. Adjust first, bend second if needed.

I just tugged on the rear corners by hand, it bent pretty easy.

I went thru 3 AMD bumpers a couple of years ago from Summit. Seems like each replacement was worse that the one before it. Wavy, deep disc grinder marks, and crappy chrome was the reason for the returns. Ended up re-chroming the original GM bumper.

That's good news, hope you have a speedy recovery.

It doesn't have NY as a search option unfortunately. There is a good site for the western new york area that lists each month, and also the weekly recurring cruise nights. Some of the weekly places are starting today. Still too much salt on the roads, but it's raining pretty good out there right now. https://www.showandcruisenews.com/events https://www.showandcruisenews.com/cruise-nights

Aren't you funny.... They must be left over from when we had to live there a couple of years ago during the covid lockdown. 'Sysco' restaurant supply dropped us off pallets of food/supplies twice a week.

Those corner end pieces can be moved around a little by yanking on them, if you run out of adjustments with the mounting bolt holes. Seems a lot of times someone bumped into something along the way & bent them in, etc. Don't be alarmed if you need to give it a pull to get the final straightening, they move around pretty easy.

But.....they offer free shipping on it! 🤣. Which means, if they do ever get it in stock by some small miracle, you'll still never see it....

My current job at the power plant doesn't make use of most of that experience though. I used to go thru the prints sometimes if the generators wouldn't start, etc, but that didn't last too long, lol. They pay other people to do that, why waste my time when there's better things to do, like poke around here countless hours instead 😁

Oh yeah, I forgot about the issue you had with it turning over.

That 454 will find a home in the Chevelle...my vote.

Tilted Kilt....went to one when I was in Vegas years ago. I liked it...a lot 🤪

Thanks Willie! Thank you as well! I would be glad to help anytime you need it Dennis, no hesitation. Keep in mind, most of my adult life was involved with electronics, electrical, instrument & control, piping systems, etc. That involved using wiring diagrams, schematics, blueprints, loop diagrams, piping diagrams, etc. to install, program, troubleshoot, repair, & calibrate all types of equipment across the entire plant sites. Involved with a lot of new equipment installations and large scale projects that sometimes involved hundreds or thousands of different things to make work properly. Most of that basically crosses over to the automotive side as far as planning out wiring, keeping things straight, and troubleshooting strategies to find problems.