This is finally the start of the restoration project of the RED 1969 Galaxie 500 convertable I have owned since 1994. I drove the car for years as my daily driver, then unfortunately wrecked the rear bumper/tailight area of the car, so I parked it. It has sat for a few years and I finally have decided its time to restore it.

I bought this RED Galaxie (my second car I ever bought) for $550.00 in 1994 pretty much as you see it on the green grass photos. A steal for the time. I have done very little to the car other than wear and tear items such as brakes, ball joints, shocks, springs. I did have the frame straightened as it had been wrecked before I bought the car and reassembled without straightening the frame. This cost me $300.00. When they straightened the frame, I don't think it was done right, and now, 12 years later, several welds have cracks and overall, the frame is in poor condition. This is one reason I am doing the complete frame off restoration, as I now have a solid straight frame. These are the only pictures I have of the RED car soon after I purchased it. It no longer looks as good as these photos, but will look better when I am done.

My first car was a 1970 Galaxie 500 sportsroof, which I wrecked in 1994 and my dad had it hauled off to the junkyard. I wish I would have fixed it, but didn't have the knowhow or the money at the time. My dad did let me strip off a bunch of parts, which I still have today. Pics Of it can be seen Here: 1970 GALAXIE

I Have NEVER done a frame off restoration, but I feel I am capable, and hope I can do as good a job as I hope. On the mechanical side of things, I feel fine, and I have my brother, Darren to thank for teaching me everything I know. Thanks Pal. The only area I may really need help on is the bodywork end. I have done plenty of bondo-ing in my day, (not that I was great at it) but I am going to attempt to weld new panels in anywhere needed. If it gets too hairy for me, I may take to someone to have it done professionally, but I would rather try to learn the RIGHT way to do bodywork. Either way, This car WILL be done right. No more bondo falling out after a couple of years, as you will see on my 1966 Mercury Comet Convertable. I will be posting it on Cardomain in the next couple of weeks.

A few months ago I bought the parts car you see below. I bought the car for $200.00 on Ebay. My Dad, Mike( my future brother-in-law), and myself went to pick up in Raliegh. Its in rougher shape than I thought, but fortunately the parts I really need are good. (Frame, Front fenders, Rear Bumper) I am going to strip everything off down to the frame then Sandblast and paint the frame and then move my body, engine and tranny on to this frame. Wish me luck!

__________________________________PARTS CAR____________________________________

MARCH 2006
Here are the photos of Mike and I removing the body off of the frame on the 1969 Galaxie parts car. It was a little shaky, and scary, but we did it. We had to get it about 4 feet in the air to get the frame out to clear the upper control arms, and we had to flatten the tires on the frame. We then backed a flat bed trailer undeneath, with the trailer tires flattened and hooked up to Mike's Low rider truck to get it low enough. Thank you Mike and Dad for your help in getting the car from Raliegh, and there help in getting the frame out yesterday.

I am using the Frame from the white car to use on my red galaxie. The red galaxie's frame has way too many issues- wrecked years age, welds breaking loose, big rust chunks falling off etc, ect.... So, I am taking the good solid North Carolina Frame and putting it under the red car. I plan on blasting the frame and painting it with a product called Zero Rust. I don't know how good it is, but there are guys restoring cars worth far more than my galaxie ever will with it so I thought I would give it a shot. Then I plan on running new Brake and Fuel lines. I am going to rebuilt the entire front end, with new ball joints, bushings, tie rods, ect. I may install air bags in place of the springs, with help from My buddies Ken and Dave. Haven't totally decided yet. But it would be cool. So this is the first phase, and after Im done with all that, It will be time for the other body swap.

As you can see, I removed the front clip and removed or cut all the body to frame bolts. We then jacked up the rear and got 6x6's under the body. We didn't have enough blocks to do this effeciently, so our backs were pretty tired by the end of the day moving the blocks and jack back and fourth to each side of the car little by little.

I started to wash down the frame and have been pleasantly suprized that much of the rusted looking areas is nothing more than dirt.

I started wire brushing what I thought was rust and started seeing black paint. I couldn't believe what excellent shape the frame was in. So instead of wire brushing, I washed the frame with a scrub brush. A lot of paint is gone, but the rust that is there is superficial. Here you can see a before and half washed shot of part of the frame.

Needless to say much less work will need to be done on this frame than I expected. I basically washed it down, then wire brushed every inch of the frame. The hardest part were the grease built up areas under the engine and the rear end. (Very hard to clean all the nooks and cranies free of grease. I am breaking it into sections, to make my progress seem like I am getting somewhere. First I did the rear, and painted with Zero Rust...

Next, I broke down the front suspension, And set it aside for rebuilding, with all new joints rods and bushings. I Wire weeled the front and degreased, then painted with Zero Rust.

Check out the frame now that is has been wire wheeled. Check out that clean steel!!! NICE!!! Its amazing how well the underside of a car stays in North Carolina. I am used to Pittsburgh cars. This thing has all the original fuel and brake lines. The Clips that hold the brake lines still have factory green paint on them.

I have to give another big thank you to my wife, Kim, for putting up with my car hobby's and all the parts everywhere, and not only putting up with it, but saving her hard earned money and giving me $700.00 toward the transmission rebuild and parts for my birthday. Thanks Honey!

JUNE 2006
Well I started to Prep the control arms for new bushings and ball joints. They were factory installed ball joints, which needed the rivets grinded off. After grinding the rivets, I ended up breaking one upper and one lower control arm as seen in the photo below. The crack are marked by arrows. The one still has a ball joint in it, so I think it was already cracked.
I had to then start breaking down the red cars suspension to use its control arms. I ended up cracking one more upper control arm. These things were NOT easy to get out. I tried to be easy on them, but you had to whack them a good many times to get them out. I don't know if they are pressed in and Riveted, but thats what it seemed like. I have done Ball joints before, but never had this hard of a time!!!

Check out the mess I made. I ended up getting 2 good upper and 3 good lower arms out of the deal and 2 broken uppers and 1 broken lower. Good thing i have the parts car!!!

Hopefully soon I will get the brake/fuel lines run and get the front end back together. I also need to drop my tranny off at the tranny shop for a rebuild. Then it will be time to pull the 390 engine from the red galaxie and drop it and the tranny on this frame. Then going through the pain-in-the-butt body swap (putting the red body on the new frame)

SEPEMBER 2006
Well after taking way too much time off from the project I am back on track. I took the remaining control arms to a local shop, Outer Banks Automotive, and Jerry was nice enough to take the time to press the control arm bushings out. He had a hard time with the lower one, which he tried heating to get it out, then finally had to use the cutting torch to cut the bushing in half. He spent about a half an hour on them and did it on the spot. A nice guy, with great knowledge and reasonable prices. He is restoring a pickup with his son. Has done an awsome job so far. Many thanks to Jerry for helping me out.

Here are some photos of the control arms after being wire brushed and being painted with Zero Rust. I let my 3 year old son Ryan help out with the painting. I brushed it on, and would have looked better if I had sprayed it, but I am not as concerned with looks on the undercarrage as I am protection from the elements.

Here's a some shots of my good helper, Ryan, he always likes helping, especially when there's painting involved!

Here's the control arms after the new bushings and ball joints have been installed and are ready to go.

Next, I broke down the hubs, rotors, and brakes. I degreased them an discarded the calipers and rotors. I will be painting the knuckle and dust shields soon.

OCTOBER 2006

I have gotten a lot accomplished in the past 2 weeks. I have installed the upper and lower control arms, springs and shocks, installed rear shocks and springs, and painted lots of parts. I am finally making some progress and should have a rolling rebuilt chassis by mid October 2006.

I had a tough time getting the springs installed. My "Made in China" spring compressor just shredded the end of the bolt due to the shear fact there is about 2000 lbs of pressure on a compressed spring. So I got the drivers side installed with it, but the bolt head was to badly damaged to do the passenger side. Due to the fact there is no engine on the frame, simply jacking up the lower A arm to compress the spring doesn't work because there is no weight in the car. I ran into this once before working on a friends car, and we chained the car down to the garage floor, as he had built in hooks in the concrete. I however didn't have that option, so I improvised. I pulled my Tahoe next to the frame and laid an 8x8 over the frame, and under the towing hook on my Tahoe. (I couldn't simply get close enough to put the back bumper over the frame due to lack of room and a piling holding up my deck in the way.) At first, the 8x8 dug into the sand, so laid a 1x6 under the end to prevent it digging into the sand. Then as I almost got the lower A arm high enough to get the nut on the lower ball joint, the frame started slipping sideways up the 8x8. So I let the frame back down and nailed a 2x6 block to the 8x8 to prevent the frame from slipping, and WaLa, I got it.

Next I got the rear shocks installed, and painted the front of the differential red as it originally was. I will drain and replace the gear oil, and I have decided to replace the pinion seal as I am sure it must be leaking, from the fact it took me a hell of a long time to clean the grease off of the differential. Put it this way, I had no idea the differential was originally red as it was caked with about an inch or grease. But since I had cleaned it several weeks ago, and it was beginning to get some surface rust, I wire brushed it again and painted it before putting the new seal in. I can always clean it up or retouch up the paint.

Then I was working on getting the tie rods and steering components painted and installed, when I discovered a chocolate milk-like substance spurting from the cut power steering hoses. I figure this parts car has sat out in the elements for a good long time without a hood, and rain water has made its way into the cut power steering hoses. So I pulled the steering box and disasembled it. Pretty neat inside. Surpisingly, the water hadn't done any damage that I could see. Still pretty clean with no rust. I want to use this box, as it is right here easily accessable to me, and I know the one on the red car has issues, and this one didn't appear to have any leaks, as it looks just like it did from the factory with no visible leakage. I will clean this one up and get it reinstalled on the frame along with the pitman arm, tie rods, idler arm, and center link.

January 2007

With the winter I have not gotten much done on the project. I have gotten the Steering box installed on the frame and hooked up the pitman arm, tie rods, center link and idler arm installed. I had to change the passengers side steering knuckle because there was one with a different thread pattern on the spindle, so I swapped it out, to have matching knuckles.

March 2007

Again, not much progress, due to the winter weather, but I did spend about 3-4 hours degreasing the C-6 transmission. I then decided to paint the transmission with aluminum colored paint. I still have to have it rebuilt, but I figured I did all that work of degreasing every nook and cranny, I would paint it, and can give it a second coat after it comes back from the rebuild. I did not prime it, which I am a little worried about, but I have searched many forums where people talk about whether you should or should not prime, and its about an even split. I hope it holds up over time and the heat.

May 2007

I hummed and hawed a lot on how to pull the engine, but I finally just did it. I have never done it before, and was quite worried about how exactly to do it. After all was said and done, It was remarkably easy. I hoisted it up, my wife pushed the Galaxie back into the garage, and I lowered the engine to the ground.

Heres the Big Block Ford 390 4 barrel resting on its temporary home.

February 2008

I have Finally come to the point of transfering the RED body on to its New frame. Its only taken 2 years. Thats sad I know. I can't believe its been that long myself. Realizing that it has been that long has put a flame under my butt to get moving on this thing a little faster.

Now that the body I want to keep is with the frame I want to keep, I then chopped up th old rusted, junk frame, and Took what my brother-in-law Mike didn't want to the dump. I kept the rear end, front spindles and all the nuts, bolts, and clips I saw.

PAGE 2: Cutting up Parts Car Body
PAGE 3: WELDING BODY WORK
Page 4: TRUNK PAN Replacement