Update June 26, 2011
A lot of work went on this weekend. The car is now ready for the road. I will likely give it some shakedown runs next weekend. I repainted the hood because it had fallen over and dented it up. That took a lot of work to patch with some filler and repaint. I had to learn the hard way to make sure my panels are secure when they are leaning against the wall. I also put my nice west coast nice fender and bumper back on and replaced the inner fender with the salvage yard one because it's not rotted out like the original one was. I also took apart and repainted the front bumper filler panel, and replaced the headlight bezels with my eBay sourced ones. I also pulled the transmission pan, cleaned the sediment out, and changed the screen. GM automatic transmissions must be built different as I was only able to pump about four quarts of fluid out by pulling the cooler line. When I did that with my wife's Mercury Cougar, it's transmission pumped the whole 13 quarts out.
Repainting the Hood
As I mentioned above, the hood fell over and got a few dents in it when it hit a 20 lb LP tank that was sitting in the garage. I filled the dents with some light filler. I figured while I had to work on it I would go ahead and repaint the underside black which is the factory color.
As you can see my replacement hood had rusted quite a bit on the underside from sitting for years. It looks much better after using a wire brush on my angle grinder, then sanding it with a 120 grit disc on a 5in dual action sander.
Hit it with a quick coat of rattle can primer, then painted it black with a Rust-Oleum rattle can. The new Rust-Oleum cans have a different nozzle with works quite nicely if you're like me and don't have easy access to an air compressor.
Painting the Bumper
There was a lot of rust scale behind that pretty chrome. A little bit of work with my angle grinder cleaned that right up, then I hit it with some black paint to keep it from rusting so bad again in the near future.
That looks a lot better painted black. I also went ahead and repainted the bumper filler panel and the front license plate bracket, as they were both rusty too.
Here we go! It's starting to look like a respectable car again. It now has all the repainted pieces installed and my nice headlight bezels attached. Once I give it a bath I'll get better pics up.
Two major bits of bodywork remain. One is replacing the passenger side front fender with one I picked up at a swap meet, and the other is drilling the holes to attach the chrome trim to the front of the hood.
I serviced the transmission, I still have to change the engine oil and the air filter to be ready for the road. I'll have those done next weekend. Then I can finally put plates on it and take it for a drive. Well I do need to change the rear differential fluid, but the muffler is in the way and will have to be removed first. I'm not ready to cough up the money on a new exhaust yet, but it is in the works as I want to run dual chrome tips out the back instead of the stock side exit single pipe.
Check back within the next couple of weeks and I will have better pictures of the car clean and give some details of how it drives.