Progress!

Today, the old girl is getting pushed into the shop! (Was supposed to be yesterday, but with the cold weather out, and the weight of these old cars, they shop guys needed more muscle to get it in than was available. Harrumph.)

They'll be taking the gas tank out, and having it taken to a shop in Denver to have the rust cleaned out, and a protective coating applied on the inside to prevent further rust.

I hemmed and hawed on the coating bit for a day or so. Reading some posts on the Ponton group on Yahoo, I heard some horror stories about these coatings getting eaten away by the ethanol in today's fuel supplies, and gooing up the fuel system. But my mechanic assures me that the stuff they use these days isn't as vulnerable to such failures. Plus, even after they clean the inside of the tank out of rust, apparently there's no 100% guarantee it's not going to come back. So I'm going to go ahead and have the coating done.

While the tank is off, it's also a fine time to look at replacing a rubber boot on the rear axle, as it's far more accessable without the tank in the way. I'm having my mechanic look at that boot, to see if it needs to go. The split boot replacement kits are under $40 and if I need one, I figure I can get one shipped to me fairly quickly - I've found two sources for'em so far.

The last bit is the carburetor rebuild. I don't know if this will happen while the tank is out or not. Regardless, my mechanic told me the other day he expected the car to be good to go (barring unforeseen issues) by this next Wednesday. That target may slip - he told me at that point he planned to pull the tank out on Thursday (yesterday). So we'll see. A day or two more won't make any difference, after five weeks. :/