I've been watching for an OD for several years and have had no luck in my price range. Donnie Oxendine posted in the Trader section a 69 OD box with 55,000 miles for sale but did not want to ship. i watched for a while and after a couple of weeks the box was still available.

Contacted Donnie and we worked a deal. Donnie was kind enough to strap the box onto a pallet and arrange for shipping from IN to NC. Luck was with me and Donnie had a neighbor who worked for or owns Skyline Transportation "may be trucking"

The box left IN on Monday and arrive at my work on Wed all for less than $70.00. The trucker called on Tuesday to let me know he would be there on Wed so I could take the truck to work for the final delivery.

I was very pleased with the condition and had the bonus of a shifter and attachments supplied too.

Donnie was great to work with and the box looks great. I've cleaned it up a little at the car wash but will get down to brass tacks soon.

With this box in hand I'll pass my 4 speed on to another friend who has sync shot in his 73.

All is coming together. I just now need to get to work and make some progress on my sill replacement.

I had a free afternoon today so I worked on the B. I have not done a lot of work for the past months just because I'm sorry and did not make the time. A thread on the board about king pins motivated me to dig out some parts and check to see if they were any good. Turns out they are premium and will reduce the cost of a king pin replacement and re bush by $150.00 so I wanted to get my cores off the car.

The only problem I encountered was the removal of the the tie rod ends form the sterning arms. I attacked it anyway by removing the steering arms form the spindles and left them hanging.

I don't know what I would have done without my impact wrench and air hammer, the impact wrench made short work of a number of bolts and nus while the air hammer with a punch drove the trunion bolts out of the top of the king pin with little problem.

I'll pack up my cores and send them off with my king pins for the re bush and painting and while they are away I'll finish dropping the front cross member for a good cleaning and repaint. While the steering rack if off, I'm going to rebuild per, Jack Austins in the library so I'll convert to grease for the rack and not worry about any oil.

NO formal Resolution but a renewed energy in the restoration.

I was able to get my 73 up on 3 ton jack stands today,1/5/08, these beasts have a starting height of about 18" so they really get the car up off the floor.

This new altitude allowed me to work most of the day on completing the strip of the engine and its connections, leading to a pull at about 4:00. All told I had about 5.5 hours in the garage today.

The lump came out without a lot of drama, kind of got hung up with the front mounts, silly me I thought it would come out with just the 2 locating bolts released, vs taking the pads loose from the mounts.

I used the drilled transmission xmember method to remove the xmember form the rear mounts, worked real well and should go back together with little problem.

I had done a little planning ahead and purchased a 4 wheel furniture dolly to rest the lump on and at this point its rolled out of the way in the rear of the building, but we'll see where it goes from here.

I removed my steering column over the weekend at the first of the month and sent it to Gerry Masterman of GEM Enterprises for a rebuild. Gerry had a rebuilt unit on the shelf and sent it right out. What great service. Gerry has custom fabbed new upper and lower bushings to replace the old very worn units in the original column.

Great work and a great guy to deal with.

Well got a little more done on Sat 1/6/07, New Years resolution and all.

Got the building cleaned up a little, tried to hook up my new heater, but no joy, did not have the correct hose for the 20lb LP tank. But it was a nice day so I continued on.

Removed the front bumper, was very surprised with the ease of removal since none of the bolts were frozen or rusted into a single lump. The PO had painted the car so I guess he had the bar off.

Front valence and grill were removed also along with the front fenders. Like to never got all the interior bolts removed from under the dash area, I have the dash panel out but still my meat hooks and sore back limited me a little but, off they came. Had to drill out the small screws at the bottom of each front dog leg but over all not to bad.

Left wing is in pretty good shape, no serious rust and a solid fender, the right is another story with evidence of wreck repair, bondo worms coming through a bunch of holes in the front lower section. Looks like this wing is trashed and I'll need to source a replacement.

Crawled around for a while poking at the sills and was rewarded with a buck of rot and holes, the castle on the left side is shot with obvious voids in the middle of the door opening, the front of the sill on the right is well rusted through for having a regular bath form the open antenna hole at the top of the fender. An amazing amount of rust and dirt fell out from behind the fenders as they were removed, I'll follow JDW's advice and install washers to leave this area slightly open when the reinstall get done.

The balance of the tub looks pretty good in the front, no obvious rot in the trumpet sections or in the upper foot well area, floor boards are shot but what the heck I'll be going whole hog on this sooner or later.

All in all about 5 hours of wrenching around today and I felt pretty good about the progress made. We hopefully it won't be another six months before I take another whack at this.

June 25, 2006.

Well got a start today after church and lunch. Had to till the garden to keep ahead of the weeds and the rain, so I did not get started until about 2:00.

Attacked the balance of the dash removal, after reading up on MGE about heater knob removal I was quickly able to find the push pins and remove the knobs with very little problem.

I was able to remove the tach and speedometer without much difficulty except for the speedo reset knob, ran into a problem getting the metal trim off to be able the extract the reset for its bracket, but finally got it.. Finally got it all apart the clips off the back and light off and extracted through the front of the dash. I removed on of the dash bolts through the tach and speedo holes and could feel the last two but could not get the socket and extensions to lineup while sitting on the floor of the car. I recalled that folks on MGE had suggested going head first into the foot well and so I did. Having a little light on the bolts and being able to see made pretty quick work of the last two bolts.
Unwired the balance of the instruments and removed them form the dash, extracted the dash and set it aside awaiting a new cover.

With the dash removed I was able to unbolt the windshield bots with little trouble and the stay rod base from the cowl. A slight rocking and the windshield and its frame were removed form the care and set aside.

I then attacked the hood and had it off with little trouble, I started on the turn signals and market lights and removed the right side fender bolts before have to clean up to stop for the day. I feel pretty good about the progress and only hope I can continue to get a few hours a week on the project so I don’t lose to much steam. (3 hours)