Pictures, Pictures

About a week after dropping of the car, I started getting pictures of the progress.  It's amazing how quickly they were able to fix the fender.

When I got the car the right fender was really damaged and scraped really good along the length of it.   They have been mending the tears and fixing all of the cracks.   

The car looks like Frankenstein, with all of the stitches. 

A few weeks later I received pictures of the car with primer.    It is going to be great when it's finished.

Off to the Body Shop

We are off to the body shop  -  Bundled up and ready to go. 

It's 12 miles to the body shop and since there is no top, I had to bundle up like I was going to the North Pole.    Gloves, hat, scarf, hood from coat, blanket on my legs.  It was quite a site.   I am sure people were thinking that I was nuts.   

Every time we stopped at a light, I tried to warm my face a little.  It seemed like it took forever, even though we made really good time. 


When we pulled in, I started removing some of my outerwear since I was not going to need it for the ride home.    We did the final walk around the car and headed back. 


When the guy went to shake my hand, it was still freezing.    But, the car is ready for it's face lift.

Getting Ready for the Body Shop

We decided to take off as much as we could, before taking the Bearcat to the body shop.    Since there was so many rusted pieces, we were hoping we could save some money by removing some of the larger pieces. 

With screwdrivers and pliers in hand, we started working on the car.    Some of the parts came off without a lot of trouble but others, well they just wouldn't budge. 

Joe had to help me with some of the screws on the luggage rack.  They were rusted and I just could not get them started.   Some of the other bolts were so rusted, it took both of us to get them out. 

The headlights would not come off.  We are going to ask the body shop to cut them off.   There were a couple of other pieces we had them to remove too. 

We took off the parts that were glued on, which we are going to replace.  The running boards left a little residue but with a little sanding that came off.  


Well - 4 hours later, we had a lot of pieces off.  

New Brakes and Transmission Leak

The brakes were spongy and I wanted to be able to stop.   So - we took the car in and had the brakes replacement.   Since it's an older car, it took a couple of days to get it back. 

When we were at the brake shop, we discovered a transmission leak.  

After the brake shop, we headed over to the transmission shop.   We got an estimate of under $100 so, we left the car. 

The next day we got a call that it wasn't as easy as they first thought.   Since it was a custom frame, it was difficult to get to the leak.   They had to drop the frame to work on the car.   Out $100 estimate turned into $1500. 


$1800 later - The Bearcat had new brakes and one of the leaks fixed.