My second load of parts arrived on Saturday, and it included new lift struts so I installed those on the doors and the trunk. I didn't do the louvre struts because I need to remove them, do a minor repair on a small crack, and re-paint them, but that project isn't real high on the priority list at the moment.
The cold weater has continued to limit my time in the garage, but I did get a few more things done. I finished pulling the fuel tank out the car. This is not a job that I had done before so I was struggling to get it out, so I emailed Dave at DMC Midwest inquiring about what the trick was to get the tank out. Dave told me to remove 
the hanger at the back of the car holding the coolant lines in place. That made a huge difference! I had it out in a couple of minutes once I could move those coolant lines around a bit more. The picture to the left shows the tank out. You can see some of the leaves and debris that needed to get cleaned out. I used my shop-vac to suck most of the junk out and ended up filling almost an entire garbage bag full of leaves and junk. You can also see a bit of the frame in this image -- very nice! No rust what so ever, just a bit of dirt, so I will just scrub this area down before replacing the tank and it will look like new. With the amount of time this car spent outside in the elements I am amazed at how well everything underneath looks.
the hanger at the back of the car holding the coolant lines in place. That made a huge difference! I had it out in a couple of minutes once I could move those coolant lines around a bit more. The picture to the left shows the tank out. You can see some of the leaves and debris that needed to get cleaned out. I used my shop-vac to suck most of the junk out and ended up filling almost an entire garbage bag full of leaves and junk. You can also see a bit of the frame in this image -- very nice! No rust what so ever, just a bit of dirt, so I will just scrub this area down before replacing the tank and it will look like new. With the amount of time this car spent outside in the elements I am amazed at how well everything underneath looks.I had already removed the alternator because it was completely seized up, and the new alternator came in the latest load of parts, so I also remounted that which will allow me to do some more work on the electrical system of the car. In one of my previous posts I showed a picture of the wires powering the fuel pump. I followed those wires today to figure out what the previous mechanic had done. One of the wires went down to one of the fuel tank closing plate bolts as a ground and the other ran all the way back into the engine compartment and was hacked into the harness there. I'm sure it probably worked, and my guess is that he did this because he did not know what to do to troubleshoot the reason the fuel pump was not getting power in the first place.
With the fuel tank out of the car I could easily crawl under the car and stick my head up into the space where the tank used to be and do an inspection of the front wiring harness. I had feared that it had been crewed to bits by an animal, but it I found no problems with it what so ever.I will need to test to see if there is power at the plug for the pump next, maybe I'll get lucky and the problem was a bumped inertia switch, if not, I'll have to investigate further.
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