The picture below was taken at about the four month mark.  At that point I had removed the body and put it on blocks under a tarp on the driveway.  The chassis was stripped down, new floor pans, front cross member, frame head bottom plate welded in. Using the itsy bitsy red sandblaster in the picture I had the chassis down to bare metal. This required about 50 hours of blasting and about 300 pounds of Black Beauty slag grit.

The picture above was taken in the afternoon.  It would have been taken in the morning, except I had a little mishap. Here's what happened: Having finished sandblasting the pan, I applied PPG 579 "Metal Cleaner",which contains phosphoric acid, and the whole thing immediately rusted before my eyes.  It looked like I sprayed it with red oxide paint. Luckily the rust only lightly dusted the surface.  I broke out the sandblaster and six hours later it was clean again, cleaner than before the "Cleaner" was applied. I don't know what, if anything, I did wrong when using this stuff.

Shortly thereafter I shot PPG epoxy primer and PPG DAR9000 enamel onto it.  It came out pretty good.  I reassembled using all new tie rods, rebuilt torsion arms, CB Performance dropped spindles and disk brakes in front new stock drums in back, a Sway-Away front anti-sway bar.  KYB gas adjust shocks and urethane everywhere should make for a pretty stiff ride. I had to pay $75 to a local garage to press the bushings into the torsion arms--said it took him an hour and a half. Also lowered the back end about 2.5 inches.

That's my two year old son Zack, below, winding up to kick the tire. His momma, my wife Claudia, is off-camera encouraging him. For kicks I painted the axle shafts with about 18 coats of white Rust-O-Leum.   I also degreased and sanblasted the transaxle, then shined it up with a Scotch Brite pad, then Mother's Mag polish. I am leaving the guts of the transaxle intact, having not the tools or gumption to rebuild it.  If it doesn't work, I'll deal with it then, won't I.