A week later back in Des Plaines the POD arrived and I thought I had given myself a couple days to unload the car. But upon further review the POD was supposed to be emptied, cleaned and ready for pick up the next day. I went on line and tried to change the pick up date but the website would not cooperate with my antique computer. I tried calling PODS but after 30 minutes on hold I decided to just go out in the scorching heat and move the
car out myself. After all, Gary Anderson had gotten the car in there by himself, how hard could it be. Well har-de-har-har!
Most of the swamp water had drained out of the car during its trip in the POD from Cape Cod. But there was a cloud of humidity inside the box and it was 90 something degrees with the sun beating down so this was not going to be fun. I took the tie down straps off and started jacking up one corner at a time. The wheels/tires that came with the car were beyond junk. Several had holes rusted through them. The others were as they say, only flat on the bottom. I brought out a spare set of wheels with tires to see if anything would roll. It would not. Locked up solid. So I grabbed a couple of furniture dollies and placed them under the four corners of the car. This left the suspension hanging and actually partially touching the ground. I pushed and tugged and grunted a lot and finally slowly, reluctantly and with much, much effort the car began to roll out of the POD. That is until the front two furniture dollies rolled off the edge of the floor of the POD and the suspension wedged itself between the concrete and the car. Did I tell you it was hot out?
So I have the front end out of the POD and the car wedged pretty good so I thought how hard could it be to get the brakes freed up? Well har-de-har-har! I first attacked the left front. It was a solid mess of rust but I managed to get the two 5/8” bolts off that hold the caliper to the upright. But now the pads and caliper was rusted solid to the brake disc. I went into the garage and got a pry bar and a hammer. 10 minutes later I went back into the garage and got out my sledge hammer. Did I tell you it was hot out? It took about 10 good swings with the sledge to disassociate the brake caliper from the disc and then finally, finally I was able to spin the hub. Whew! I placed the spare wheel/tire on the hub and repeated the process on the other corners. In all it took me about 4 hours to extricate the Relic from the POD and push it under my porch. Now look at the freaking mess on the floor of the POD! It took me another 40 minutes to clean out the rust, leaves, mud, mung, muffler & exhaust remnants and various other ugly things to make the POD presentable for the morning pick up. Did I tell you it was hot out?
The next day I spent the morning with my trusty shop vac sucking out the water and the interior. Now when I say I sucked out the interior, I do not mean that I merely sucked out the dirt and leaves and varmint cadavers. No, the remains of the carpeting came out in chunks into the shop vac. I had to empty the vac out into the garbage can three times!
The car had a real stench to it. Not animal stench and not rain water stench but just a real yucky smell to it. Now I noticed that the top of the gas tank was rusted out and mostly not there. There was a gas/rust soup in that tank that was putting out enough stench to make an undertaker heave. So I crawled under the car and snapped off the 3 little 1/4-28 nuts holding the gas tank in place, sawed off the rubber filler hose and yanked out the tank. Now normally I try to be as environmentally correct as I can be. I recycle everything and make sure all fluids get disposed of properly. Sorry! This rank tank is going straight into the garbage can. But as I carried it to the can I heard a clanking sound. I looked into the top of the tank and saw the remains of the tail lights. They had apparently been stored in the trunk and over the years and the tank rusted out they had been sitting on top of the tank decades ago and once the tank rusted out they had fallen into the tank! I grabbed my foot long needle nose pliers and fished them out. Plastic was not bad and the chrome is salvageable. And these lights are as some say made out of un-obtainium.
I had put an old boat cover over the car to try and keep any new rain, leaves and critters from having a party in the car. And of course as soon as I put the cover on the car we had a week of monsoon weather where I would look out the basement window in the morning and see that the boat cover had been blown off again and there was more rain water in the car. Oh well, at least it’s getting a good rinse. Time to get the shop vac out again.
So this has got to be it right? No more projects right? There can’t be any more out there right? Well, better tune in next month to find out. Shirley you must be joking!
