Ol' Blue - The Story of a 1977 Ranchero GT

Days are getting shorter and shorter from week to week. Having not one free day in the last few weeks the progress on ol blue has come to a halt. I will bring her in the next weeks to her winterquarter and continue with body and paintwork next year. Its way to cold to paint now.
Only thing i could do is to repair and restore some parts. One Sidemarker was a total mess, so i cleaned an glued it back together. After some fine sanding and polishing its ready to gack to its place.





Next was a quickfix on the steeringwheel.





simply cleaned the crack and filled it with black hot glue.

 

Your progress is amazing! looks great! What did you use to polish the red lens to make it look like new?

 

First i sanded it wet with 2000 grain. Then i used a special paste to remove scratches from cellphone displays or acrylic glas. Works great on old plastic lenses. I also used this on my gauges.

 

Every little part gets you closer to that end product!!!! Every part you touch turns to like brand new.

 

A known problem restoring a Ranchero is that there are no reproduction body mounts. My body mounts are not the best, too but for the moment i will not touch them. Other with the radiotorsupportmounts.



Those are so bad that my front hangs down and so the doors hit the front fender at the lower section. I used the information i found here in the forum and ordered two types of mounts:



First to be said, i think both will work. To use the F-150/Bronco mounts i would have to grind the hole in the frame wider, so i used the Chevelle mounts this time. Therefore only some cuttig on the upper rubber part is needed. Quite satisfying result:

 

Here is the body mount conclusion I came up with for all 72-79 intermediates.

http://forum.grantorinosport.org/1972-1979-body-insulator-bushings-updateupdate_topic4285.html

 

What are body mounts?

 

http://www.energysuspension.com/products/body-mounts.html

 

Looking at your avitar....you don't have any. lol
It's a 72-79 thing

 

Not part of the "body mounts club"

 

The new fusebox is installed



Think this will be ways more reliable than the old corodet one.

Next tiny little part will be the emergency/park brake. Cannot leave it in this shape

 

Nice progress.

 

What are the backspace on your 15x10 rear wheels?

 

BSM, referring to the website i bought them, is 3,75"

 

Winters in Bavaria are cold, dark and awesome long . . . .
But finally the snow is gone and it was time to go back to work on ol blue. So i returned her home from the winter residence to my garage. Work will start in the next days.





was fun seeing here all the way home in the rear view mirror

 

Awesome! Glad to see she is back!

 

Paint job looks great!

 

Can't wait to see this one finished!

 

I like the color, Cant wait to follow your progress.