It's Home. Now What Do I Do With It?

Reminder: for a quick view, check out the video at the top of Page 2.

The morning after the car's arrival at its new home, I decided to first wash off the remaining dust/mud that the wet trip up Highway 99 had not swept away, partly to make it presentable, and partly to determine what I had actually bought.

Well, for starters, I had a white car. Or, whiter car, anyways. I also had a red stripe the length of the entire right rear quarter where the chrome strip had been removed. Obviously the car had been repaired at some point. I would later find out that the entire car had been repainted as well. Closer inspection revealed that in order to sufficiently cover the original red paint they had given the car a number of coats of white. (This little fact would come back to haunt me as the restoration progressed.) I also then noticed that I had a bit of extra chrome that ran the length of the car.

A look into the trunk confirmed my suspicion that the car had seen significant repair, at least to the right rear quarter. A number of holes had been drilled to accomodate the use of a slide hammer, and there were a lot of bondo worms that had been forced through the holes.

Further inspection of the trunk hinted at just how much of the car had seen flames. Smoke staining and rust had made the underside of the package panel a complete mess from underneath, and the trunk lid itself was going to require a bit of clean-up. In addition, the floor of the trunk had some rust-through that would require some fiberglass rebuilding.

Back to the "extra" chrome. In an apparent effort to hide some inconsistency in the repair of the lower body line that runs the length of this 17 1/2 foot-long car, chrome trim was installed along that line from behind the front wheels all the way back to the rear bumper. It's visible in the photo on the left along with the damage just behind the front wheel. (The break in the center of the grille is also visible.) It has been suggested to me that this extra chrome was either from a "Galaxie 300", or a dealer installed item. Regardless of its origin, it was coming off.

*NEWSFLASH*

I ran into the following auction on eBay May 26, 2008... in an auction where the seller actually included this description, quote: "...check em out...maybe you wanna build an old nascar replica fireball roberts race car?"

Excuse me? I wonder if he's ever chanced upon these CarDomain pages? Seriously.

It was relisted a couple times (4 times as of the last update of this page), but is no longer on eBay.

Anyway, one of the things that caught my eye was the pictures of this particular 64 Galaxie where you can clearly see that it once sported the same lower chrome moulding I had on my car. I borrowed a couple of the auction's pictures so you can see the moulding clips on the lower part of the fenders.

Guess I'm not the only one, huh?

An Inside Job

It was now time to take inventory on what was going to come out of the inside of the car. Taking inventory determined that everything was coming out of that interior!

Now that I had bright daylight I could see that the inside of the Galaxie looked a bit like a garbage bin. I knew the front door panels were in the trunk, but I could now see that there were no interior panels for the rear seat section. While I was there, I replaced the window rollers in the driver's door so I wouldn't encounter the Amazing Disappearing Window trick any longer.

Pulling the sheets off of the front seat revealed that the ol' Gal once sported custom white vinyl / purple velour upholstery, adding to the shame the car had to suffer. The dash had been torn up a bit where the radio once sat, leaving the smoked aluminum dash trim jagged and bent. The steering wheel was still slightly sticky with soot, and the gauges on the instrument panel had to be read through what amounted to yellow fog. The headlight switch operated okay (I did use the headlights while driving through the rain the day before), but there were no taillights and only one brake light.

I decided to clean out the interior, but leave the front seat in place so I could move the car when I needed to. Oddly, the interior floor had black carpeting that was not in bad shape, just curled at the edges and smelling like smoke. Removing the rear piece of carpet left me surprised as I found that the metal floor of the car looked relatively untouched by any flames. I mean, the rear seat belts were still intact. Dirty, but not burnt.

For some odd reason, I stopped mid-cleaning to call the former owner and get the skinny on what had actually caused the fire. It seems that the car was stolen, then set afire to cover up the crime. The car thieves tossed something flammable into the car. Then, demonstrating the usual level of intelligence I associate with creatures of their ilk, the bozos closed the door with all of the windows rolled up , effectively reducing the amount of oxygen needed to properly roast the car. So, lucky for me, what was intended to be a Car-B-Que simply resulted in that rare delicacy, Smoked Galaxie .

Hmmm... What's Under Here?

A look under the hood revealed... an engine. Well, that was kind of expected. After all, I just drove it 170 miles to its new home. But I somehow thought it might look a little better than what I had first found. I had to remind myself that fire and smoke are not polite; they go wherever there is an opening of any kind. Mind you, this picture on the left looks better than what I first came upon, since on there I had actually already cleaned off most of the smoked-on gunk and had already added the 2" carb riser and Cobra valve covers. Even then, it still 'tweren't purty. The pic on the right looks a bit nicer, I think.

Off With The Chrome!

Up to around 1962, most NASCAR racers sported much of their factory chrome. But it didn't take long for race car builders to figure that every piece of chrome that came off of the car meant a little less weight. Using the basic racer's calculation of that era (less weight = more speed), it was time to strip the Gal of much of her brightwork. The number one downside of this little task? Holes.

Lots and lots of holes.

Eventually, I would uncover 161 little holes that would need to be filled. Swiss cheese has fewer holes than what I would eventually have to deal with.

And, as hinted at earlier, I had lots of areas on the body that would require major sanding to try to smooth out the seams created by many coats of white paint that had been applied over the prior red color while the chrome had remained on the car. The problem with more than a few pieces of chrome I was removing was that they hadn't been masked carefully enough before painting, and now some of the white paint that had adhered to the chrome as a result was being peeled away as I removed it, exposing still more red that would require feathering out, if not outright grinding off.

Holes, Holes, And A New Hole!

One of the new flaws I discovered while working on the car was that the heat of the fire caused some of the lead in the C-pillars to sag. Filing down the lead on the passenger side pillar cleaned it up pretty good. Filing down the lead on the driver's side would cause my heart to sink.

A section of the lead broke through. A gentle tapping on the spot would continue to open up the hole until it was about the size of a silver dollar. And that was not good. It appeared that the lack of a headliner (and most of the foam it was designed to hide) had allowed condensation to form on the inside of the roof. After enough collected, gravity would then draw the moisture down the inside of the C-pillar, where the normal course of oxidation (rusting) would take its toll on the fire-damaged metal.

(Note to the younger car buffs: Auto manufacturers used to apply lead to a car body to fill in the seams where the roof was welded into the pillars, and in a few other spots along the way. Customizers in the 50s and 60s lived for the opportunity to craft cars utilizing the pliant metal, often a good-sized batch of it. Working with lead on a car is a lost art. Look up "Lead Sled" sometime to see what I mean.)

The next day I drove the car over to my dad's place where we used a torch to melt out all of the remaining lead, and then welded in a piece of sheet metal into the space. Some careful braising, grinding, and a layer of bondo, and I was back on my way home.

The Old Gal Loses Some Weight

Over the next couple weeks I pulled off the outside of the car just about anything that would unscrew or unbolt. Off came all of the chrome trim except around the front window. Then the grille came out, taillights, etc., etc.

The car was going to become more of a shell, but would remain a roller. Sure, it might have been nice to pull the body up off of the frame and put it on a rotisserie, bead blasted it, the whole nine yards. But, that could actually make the car look better than one a driver in the 60s might have raced. In many respects, this was really only intended to be a semi-restoration where the result might be akin to the efforts made to take a car from showroom to track, as was often done in the 60s.

Uh, this is how it was done, right?