Hello all, A few months ago I bought a 1966 442 for a new car project. I had one in High school so now 47 years later it was time to get another one. I found the car in Pa. flew up and drove it back to Texas. The car had 42,000 miles and was pretty clean and it made it all the way to Texas trouble free. I took my wife to our local cruize night the following week and had some fun, I got the car home and decided to clean it up a little. Suddenly the front end was off and all of the interior was out, things just seemed to start happening. I am taking lot's of picture of all of this, I decided to go ahead and lift the body off the frame and get everything nice. I'll try to do some regular updates.

 

...suddenly the front end was off.... LOL

looks like a nice project John looking forward to more updates

 

Great looking 66 John. I'm thinking this "Aint your first rodeo", or frame off.
Good luck with the build,
Mike

 

You are correct that this is not my first car project. My last big project was a '83 911 Porsche that I took down to the tub and rebuilt. It turned out nice but the 911 motor/trans. was challenging to rebuild. I also have a 1939 Packard that my father purchased new that is in an ongoing state of resto. My Olds had the usual rear window rust so I have cut out the rear deck panel and begun replacing that. I pulled the interior to check for floor rust and fortunately there was not any at all. That was very incouraging to proceed with the rest. I pulled the dash and sent it off for rechroming etc. and while doing so I found that one of the two main strut supports for the steering column wasn't bolted in to the firewall. I can't really see that there was ever a bolt there so maybe pulling the dash was a good thing.

 

It looks like a pretty nice car to start with. Is it going to stay pretty much stock?

 

Looks solid!. The bolt missing is a hoot, it was probably under the original carpet when it was replaced, the line worker was too tired to get another one, so one was enough. Certainly looks like you know what you're doing, and the speed shows "You don't mess around".
The Packard has a very cool history, unreal, your Dad bought it new, WOW.

Mike