The last few weeks have seen an influx of parts into many rooms in my house. I've also been doing a lot of cleaning of parts. Here is the latest round of preparation for the chassis build up.



It turns out that the ORIGINAL fuel pumps from AC Delco are slightly different than the reproduction parts. In fact, MANY of the reproduction parts currently available are different in appearance than the originals. So, I'm going through and cleaning up and reusing as many original parts a I can to maintain as many judging points as possible.

Here is a picture of what I started with on my original fuel pump. This sits down low on the passenger's side of the engine block, towards the front of the motor. It was a little greasy......



And here's what it looked like after a few hours of scraping and cleaning. Not bad, eh?



The next set of parts that arrived were the tail lights. Here's one of my originals next to the reproduction. This part is actually pretty close in appearance, and obviously MUCH better in terms of condition.



Here's my original air cleaner cover, with the partially disintegrated HP sticker.



And here's what it looked like after an hour or so of cleaning. This one didn't clean up as completely as I had hoped, so I purchased a reproduction cover to use during judging. It was nice to get the original cleaned up though. I'll probably hang it on my garage wall as a discussion piece.



Next came time to clean up the radiator surge tank cap. Here's the original.



Once again, the 3M Metal polish and restorer comes to the rescue.



The next step was to clean up and paint the wheels, mount some tires, and get the whole thing ready to support the chassis. As you've seen from my previous pictures, the chassis is still on jack stands. So, here is a picture of the back side of my newly painted 43 year old wheels. Not to shabby, eh?



I also had to paint the shocks. Since I'm going for the utmost in judging points, the original shocks were grey. All of the reproduction shocks are black. So, I had to take the stickers off, scuff up the shocks and paint them. Once I'm happy with the paint job, I'll apply the appropriate stickers that came from the factory.



Finally, here is the ignition shielding main cover before I got started on it.



And here she is after an hour or so of cleaning.



We're still working towards building up front and rear suspension. My goal is to have the car completely done and ready for judging here in August. I think I can make it, but it is going to be a tight squeeze. Thanks again for following along.