Day 2 of restoration 11/13/2010

Well after talking with some people I decided to pull the inner fender to either replace it or to find a shop that can repair the damage. I also removed the blower motor housing and the heater core box. To get access to some of the bolts to the heater core box I had to drop the interior air controls in the cab. This was a fairly easy job, but the years of dust and dirt was pretty nasty. I pulled the blower motor housing off and the amount of leaves and garbage in there was crazy. I vacuumed the mess up and took the parts to work to be cleaned and painted.
I started to work on the inner fender and figured out that the outer fender had to come off at the same tie so I started woking on that as well. All of this took a greater part of my time and I ran out of time before I could get them off.

Day 1 of restoration cont'd

Day 1 of restoration 11/7/2010

Since most of my work is going to be under the hood at first I decided to take off the hood to get better access to everything.
I decided to work from right to left under the hood. I am an aircraft mechanic by trade so in all of my refrences to positions it will be looking from the rear of the vehicle forward as I would on an aircraft. There is a lot of surface rust that needs to be cleaned out and treated. I plan on putting on all new hardware on anything I work on. It is probably not needed but it is the little things like that that will make the job look great in the long run.
I was shocked,well not really, to see a big hole under where a makeshift battery tray was. The battery cvable looked a little scary as well. This all will have to be fixed.
Next was to take off the right hood bracket. The bracket will be cleaned up and freshly painted.
I pulled the blower motor next. If it is salvagable I will clean it and paint it. If not then I will search for a new one. Good thing I did pull it as there was a wasps nest inside. No wasps were present though thank goodness.
The routing of the under hood light made it look like it was just thrown in there. I am sure this is not how it came from the factory so it will be rerouted and put in wire loom as it should be.
Next I pulled the heater hose. These will be replaced with new hoses. The clamps used here were either too big or just plain junk. These will be replaced with the right clamps. It looks like there was a seal that has deteriorated that will have to be replaced as well. As I was pulling these hoses off antifreeze started coming out.This is a great thing because when I looked in the radiator I didn't see any antifreeze.
Next I pulled the solenoid and moved it out of the way, and that is when I ran out of time for the night.

The dawning of a new project.

I had just took my last project to the scrapyard. It was a 1979 Jeep Cherokee Chief that I only paid $200 for. I wanted to restore it but it was just too far gone. I ended up parting some of it out. I sold the radio (am/fm/cb combo) for $175,the windshield for $50,the brushguard for $125, and some other parts that added up to a few dollars. I sent the remains to the scrapyard and got $430 for it. It wasn't very long (maybe 24 hours) when I felt I wanted another Jeep project. I looked on Craigslist for CJ-7's at first cause that is my ultimate goal. I then started looking at Cherokee's again and found this 1978 Cherokee S listed for $700 on Friday October 29th. I told my wife Kim about it and she said you don't need another project but I know you will probably call next week. Well that Monday morning I did call and set up a time to look at it. I was very suprised at how good of condition the Jeep was in compared to the last Jeep I had and this one was a year older. I worked with him and got the Jeep on November 4th for $650.
This Jeep is a 1978 Jeep Cherokee Chief S with a 360 4 barrel carb and a Levi's interior. The Levi's interior has seen better days and will have to be replaced. The body has 1 dent on the right rear quarter but will be very easy to fix. It also only has very minor surface rust that I will put rust reformer on and fix up. I found out that the Jeep hasn't run in 10 years but it was garage kept mostly so I am going to throw some new tune up parts at it and hope for the best.
I am in the process of buying parts to tune it up and restore it now and will document everything done to it here in this blog. I hope I have not bored you to death with this long post but I wanted to show how I got to this point. All other posts will be fairly short and to the point (we all hope anyway).