Resto - What A Day That Was...

G'day.

Tonight I am tired? and stuff you daylight savings!!.... well I woke at 4.30am because of the daylight savings switching back which I normally start to stir around 5.30am, but yes 4.30am is a little early, so by 6.30 I was out and up and about the kitchen making a cuppa coffee and throwing some breaky together while the others had a sleep in and anyways Ray was coming out from Melbourne at half 8 to help me again with the rear tub install on ole Monty, and I had a few another things to do before he arrived like, check ebay, facebook, etc :)

To be honest I thought today was going to be a straight forward one in the shed..... lift tub on, tub off, tub on, tub off.... you get the picture, do this a few times and we will be all done by midday.. HOW BLOODY WRONG WAS I :(
It all started well, anticipation was running on overdrive and we were both fired up to get this done, and make Monty look like a vintage car again and then over the course of the next hour things started to turn a little pear shaped and one wrong thing lead to another, I would of thrown in the towel quickly to tell you the truth as I could see that alot of my work over the past few months was not "up to it" as I had thought it was but with Ray there leading the way and having all the ideas to sort everything out, we eventually got it done around 4pm..... but there were some trying hours in between of WTF are we doing here.

Basically today we removed all the 4 x doors and the centre post on the drivers side and half the front seat and we had to adjust and re-align everything, brackets, hinges, re-screw and re-drill holes... Why you ask?? because without the tub installed on the car when I hung the doors and centre posts months ago I was not able to follow the correct "line" where the rear tub would be going, and along the hood, cowl, doors, panels and tub there is a raised moulded 3/4" trim line that goes right around the car and this has to line up exactly to look correct......I was a little out, but all is fixed now,  thanks Ray great job done.

You can see in this photo the moulded line just above the door handles, well now it runs very true, they all line up spot on and it follows the body lines lovely... but earlier this morning it quickly came to our attention that it was not the case and needed a full days work of tweaking this and that...

And to my surprise when we had finished, cleaned up and packed away a few things, I realised that I didn't take one photo of the works while they were in progress, my mind was in another place all day and buzzing with how to fix it up...... Anyway to ease the stress of today and just before Ray was to head back to Melbourne, we opened the house gates, jumped in the front seat and pointed Monty towards to wide open road for a good drive around the block at a reliable 35mph, we completed 4 laps, 3.5miles in total and it ran just as expected, lovely and that soon put everything back into perspective as to why we are doing this..

So what's next I hear you asking??? well hopefully over this long weekend with it being Easter I will make a start on the new timber work that now has to be fitted around the inside of the tub but first I must carefully unpick all the old rusted nails and original timbers which I can then partially use as templates when measuring up the new pieces, slow but rewarding work.

Ray has more photos and also a detailed write-up of the bodywork on his blog
http://my28chev.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/monty-chev-gets-back-his-near-and-dear.html

We are getting closer to the day when I can drive it down the Princes Hwy towards the vehicle registration office..... Thanks and talk to you soon....