Another shot of passanger side body mount No.3

Under side of body mount No.2 on drivers side

Here it the rust has now been cut out.

Another bit of rust to be dealt with!

Here now all the rust has been cut out

No.4 body mount holes in the body were torn to pieces,so I just cut out the damaged fiberglass,it will be repaired at a later date.

Inside the passanger rear wheel arch had a hole from possiably something that got cought with the wheel so I cut that out also.

This was when I was about to put the body onto the dolly to size it up.

The seat bolt braces were compleatly rotten through and will be removed.

Here I decided to give the the pillar a bit of a clean up to inspect it a bit better

Body now removed from frame.

Now that the body is off it can bee seen from the pic above the rust was so bad that it was only gravity keeping the body on : )

Here you can see No.2 the body mount bolt  which was rust seized into place.

Windsceern now removed to check out frame (all good).

Next job was to remove No.3 access panel for greater access,

Now that it is removed I have great access to the cage,

Here is a closer shot of what is left of the rail,

Not much metal here,mostly rust.

There was a load fo fine sand and dirt holding moisture in the No.3 mounts which would have been the main cause of such bad rust.

Here is the car on the quickly thrown together dolly I made (not finished yet).

I had removed the doors before I mounted the body on the dolly,

This gave greater access to the bird cage to check out other rust areas.

Once I had removed the fiberglass piece it exposed more rust on the No.2 body mount,

Here is a pic from the inside,I have a bit of work ahead of me here.

Here again the air tool with a cobalt bit comes in handy.

Here now we have the rust removed back as far as the good metal.

A close up

Here is more rust being cut out.

From under.

All rust removed.

Not much room to work at times between a tractor and baler,

A shot of the complete chassie without body.

Here on the passenger side No.3 body mount I used a air chisel

Here is a shot after cutting thr most of thr bad rust out.

Removing all nessary parts for body removal & body lift,

To start with the removal of parts for the body lift I have already disconnected all interior parts eg;e-brake cable,steering,shifter etc,

Next thing I decided to remove was the rear bumper,

I decided to remove the door locks and locking pins also,

The hood has been removed for ease of access to engine compartment,the front bumper was v-britle and fell apart while removing.

Now the bulky heavy light assemblys have been removed also to reduce weight for when lifting off the body.

Here is a pile of the parts removed for body lift,they look like they are thrown in a heap but they were actually placed carefully together.

The two light assemblys are in v-good shape,the a/c rad will not be going back into the car when re-assembling as here in ireland we do not have much need of air con.

After fitting the lifting straps in key locations,the car is ready for the body lift,

I decided to use another strap to support the nose of the car as when the body is lifted there is no further support to the front end only the bonding to the firewall.

Now nice and slowley I lifted the car from the frame using a 3T block and tacle attached to a overhead RSJ,

At this point I re-checked that there was no snags,

Now the body is clear from the frame,but as it can bee seen the body is not quite square to the frame as I mis-judged the centre location of my block and tacle,no harm done anyway.

Now we have a  levitating corvette .

Once the body was clear from the frame I got to see the true extent of how bad the body mounts all were,

I reckon the only thing keeping the body on the frame was gravity,

Once I had the body on its dolly I removed the windshield trim and wind sheild,there will be a new windshield fitted when the time comes as there was a crack from a stone chip on the drivers side.