Glad to see I've peeked some people's interest.
A little more background on the car to clear a few things up.
I purchased it from someone in Arizona. The vehicle history shows that it sat in a police impound lot for at least 2 month. With the damage to the trunk as it is, the car was not air tight while it sat there. So it seems that during that time it filled up with dirt and dust from all the dust storms they had this spring. And the story told to me was that it was stolen and painted so they could attempt to take it to Mexico. Something about newer cars not being allowed to be moved to Mexico and so they were attempting to make it look older. Oh and I paid about 7k for it and had to have my step father drive it from Arizona to Iowa where he put more miles on the car then it already had altogether.
The best part of it so far is that during his 1500 mile jaunt across the country he averaged 36mpg!! I'm getting around 25 in town. That's way better then I expected.
Ok so back to the project.
Needs more hooks and bolts welded to it to get the job done.
More?
Now we can get the dual winch action going!
Woooohweeeee that's a mess!
And while he's busy doing that, I was experimenting with different ways to possibly remove the spray paint and save the Torch Red.
The section with the paper towel was soaked with acetone and the white gob in the center of the hood is dishwashing soap. The acetone removed the spray paint but that little section took about 2 hours of soaking and resoaking. The dishwashing soap did nothing but previous experience showed us that it would need to be on there for 12+hours to soften up the paint and we only had about 6 hours. More on the paint later.
Sometimes 3 is better then 2. We are somewhat limited in the direction we can pull since we can't easily more the car or the tree. So a good tug and a whip of the log chain will pull out some of the crinkles.
And we finally get to a point where we can start shaping the metal with a hammer.
But don't forget about the grinding! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
It's looking a little better now. But still a long way to go.
Look for more in a bit.