Undressing Bessie Part 1

Hello again.

Now we have finally begun the disassembly of Bessie. First thing we did was lifting her on jack stands and took off her wheels.

What came off first were the larger pieces of the body. Trunk lid, hood, doors, front fenders etc. There were no major issues in this part of the disassembly. Obviously, Bessie being almost 60 years old, some of the bolts had to be cut with an angle grinder and some were sheared when opened, but nothing too bad.

We also found a small beehive in the driver side door, no bees in it though.

The beehive

The passenger side door hinge turned out to be a bit of a nuisance.

Both doors off. One stubborn door hinge still on.

We also decided to cut the windshield seal in order to get the window out in one piece. It wouldn't have made any sense to use old windshield seal anyway when all other weather stripping would be new.

He actually got the screw out he was working on. Pretty good for a three-year-old :) 

All of the bigger parts were lifted on to hooks on our garage walls to wait their turn. Soda blasting will be the next step for them but it will have to wait until summer.

 Trunk lid and both doors hanging on the wall.

Right front fender off.

Both front fenders and passenger side inner fender off.

Rear bumber off.

We finally got the stubborn passenger side door hinge off. All it took was pneumatic impact wrench and ridiculous amount of time working with useless tools that didn't do anything.

No door hinge! Hurrah!

Now that the big parts are off, we have to disassemble the parts themselves as well. But that's something we'll get back to in the next post.