Paul Masson's 71 Grabber

This is my 1971 Grabber that I purchased in the early fall of 2012.

It has 20,000 miles on it and I plan on keeping it as true to original/stock as possible. After getting the car home and driving it for a bit, I noticed that I had some cowl issues.

I started to disassemble the car in February 2013 to fix the cowl and anything else I found along the way.






The first thing I did was remove the windshield, as I also had some bubbling happening under the vinyl roof.



Next, the interior came out. The floor pans are in great shape, but I'm glad I'm fixing this cowl issue NOW, rather than later.



I removed the heater box and dash. I will treat and paint the whole inside of the interior to prevent any further damage in the future.




This is the passenger side cowl area. My heater box has been taking on water for some time. The dampers are rusted shut.

 

Wow, that sucks. It's amazing that it's such low mileage and it's that rusted..but then again, I figure my project 73 only has 46000 on it, and it was worse.

 

Great work so far Paul, keep it up!! subscribed to this thread to watch the progress

 

I would not have thought about checking the cowl on a car that sweet...

 

Keep at it or it will be 5, 7, 10 or more years in the "future" before you get done.

 

I recently read a thread about a guy restoring a Chevy that had rust under the vinyl top. He didn't want to go the acid route so he taped off the car and covered it with plastic all but the roof and removed the scale. Then cut cloth to cover the roof and for a week he kept it wet with vinegar in the garage spraying every few hours. Turned out good. Sealed it and reinstalled a new vinyl top.

 

Interesting. If you find the link, maybe you could post it here.

 

I think this was it:

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=702426&highlight=roof+vinegar

I've got the fenders off of mine and getting ready replace the windshield, dash pad and heater core. I'm going to inspect the under side of my cowl and pray it looks ok (fingers crossed-no leaks so far). Mine has 47,000 miles but was covered up or garaged most of the time. If it all looks good I'm going to treat the inner cowl with Eastwood inner frame coating to protect it.

 

I already know I'm taking the top cowl off, but my uncle is coming down to my place tomorrow night and we're going to break-in his new boroscope. I think it has an SD card slot, so if it does, I'll post the video on Youtube and throw the link up here.

 

I went the vinegar route on my son's Maverick. We soaked it overnight.

I also used it on my daughter's Ranger. Both came out great.

 

WOW! That did turn out great! So a vinegar-soaked rag over night, then rinse and DA sander after?

 

Great looking car, Paul. Did the car sit an extended period of time outside in the weather for the cowl and roof to get in the condition it is? Your cowls look like mine did and, even though it is a lot of work, I am glad I removed my cowl top and repaired them

 

Thanks, Bob! I really don't know how long it sat outside, but I was under the impression that the car was garaged since the P.O. purchased it in 1997. It had 18,000 miles on it then. When I bought it last fall, it had 19,345 when it arrived in my driveway. There was evidence of furry-friend activity in several spots of the car. All I know is that it's going to get fixed, and fixed right, because I don't want to ever do this again.

The car sits in a heated garage 24/7. I haven't driven it in the rain, and I'v only washed it with water twice since I owned it. If I fix everything and continue this regime of care and storage, it should last forever

 

I feel you pain on the low mileage car with cowl leakage..... It's possible mine might be leaking a little from there too..... I am going to check mine in the next few weeks, right now i need to get the frame connectors in and off for the cage it will go.....

Keep at it and as you said and repair it properly once, hopefully.....

 

Thanks Frank! My motto is "It can always be worse". i look at what some others have to work with, and I've still got it pretty good. Cowl rust seems to be indepenent of mileage and more a function of storage/environment. Someone mentioned to me that if it was stored in an unheated garage that the cowl and other "boxed-up" areas may have had lots of condensation in them and never got a chance to dry out.

Hopefully, the museum was humidity controlled.