[The Boss]

Originally Posted by muscle_collector

bob I am amazed at your handi work and progress. are you retired? if not how do you find the time to get so much done on it?

Gary - I'll tell you his trick but you can't tell anybody about it.

Bob has a special watch that gives him 28 hours in a day - that gives him more than one extra day in the week. That's how he does it.

[Bentwheelbob]

Originally Posted by muscle_collector

bob I am amazed at your handi work and progress. are you retired? if not how do you find the time to get so much done on it?

Har, har, har...I wish that was the case, although my boss and wife might disagree and say that I might as well retire to the garage. I don't need much sleep and am pretty good at planning and making sure I have what's needed to keep moving forward. My Pal Dave is a big help and keeps me from getting lazy, and I've also got several more projects lined up that I can't wait to start and that's always a great incentive. So much to do and so little time...

Originally Posted by 78 TA KID

Bob your doing an awesome job !!!! Seen a lot of people with restoration thread no buddy restores them correctly until your thread job well done Bob do you plan to bring this car to the Trans Am Nats you will kick a$$

Thanks for your kind comments. I'll probably bring it to the Nat's if I can figure out a good way to get two cars there. I don't think, however, the Gold Car would do that well at that venue. The Nat's is mainly a beauty contest and this old girl is no beauty. She's more like a 37 year old divorcee that has a few wrinkles, a little gray hair, and some blemishes and bumps, but deep down inside that experience counts for something. Pop her hood, and get on her, and she'll give a ride that you won't forget. Sometimes the beauty queens think just showing up and looking good is enough.

Originally Posted by The Boss

Gary - I'll tell you his trick but you can't tell anybody about it.

Bob has a special watch that gives him 28 hours in a day - that gives him more than one extra day in the week. That's how he does it.

Actually it's the bourbon that makes time expand, but a time machine watch would be a nice addition. We get something like that starting next weekend when the time changes and we get an extra hour of daylight.

[Bentwheelbob]

It's been kind of a slow week around here, but a couple things got done. Mainly the EGR and backpressure valve got disassembled, cleaned up and put back together. I believe this is the original piece and I am tickled with how well it cleaned up. The gold plating is still fairly fresh looking and the inked part numbers are still visible. I just gently cleaned and clear coated the gold cad parts, but the metal bases were cleaned on the wire wheel and then painted with POR 15 manifold paint. Both this assembly and an extra one that was on the spare intake I bought had a blue striped vacuum line which I replaced. MPD has gotten his hands on some metal gasket material and we'll use it to cut a new gasket where it connects to the manifold. Here's a few pictures including a pretty cool picture of the garage. We had a big snow yesterday and that combined with the nearly full moon made a nice photo. The elevated walkway connects the house to the apartment over the garage.

[Bentwheelbob]

Kind of a slow weekend, but a few things got done. The main thing was getting the original radiator shroud cleaned up, primed and painted. It is finished and looks really good. It had been shot with some type of gloss clear that made things difficult. Ultimately, it all had to be sanded to get it off. I then primed with SEM high build and duplicolor high build primer, sanded it with 320 grit, and then primed it again and sanded with 600 grit. I used used Krylon Plastic Fusion in flat black to paint it and generally applied three coats. I am happy with the results.

I also got a lot of the intake manifold stuff sorted and in process. I got several things prepped to send off for gold cad plating and got the brake booster and carb to vapor canister hard lines cleaned up, cleared and ready. The choke heat tube is also mostly cleaned up and ready for some manifold paint, the radiator is ready for paint, and I plated two more batches of bolts.

Here's a few pictures.