So I finished stripping the oval today, the doors didn't want to come off, half of the bolts came out with a little persuasion from the rattle gun, but the rest had to be drilled out. the keeper plates will have to be cleaned up and re-tapped before refitting. Fortunately, door hinge screws seem to be something I have an excess of.
With everything off of the car I had a good nose around and was pleased to see that the shell is a solid as expected, with the only rust present in the rear footwells - probably from sitting in water from the missing rear window.
The front valence, hood and offside wing have sufferend from a shunt at some point in the distant past, the wheel well panel needs to be replaced, and ideally the outer panel does too, but i will have a go at beating it out before resorting to a complete new clip. The rear valence has suffered a similar fate although not as bad, my guess is that someone levered the body up over the engine with a bit of 2x4" when it was removed.
Next plans are to roll the pan out, replace the pan halves, and fit the IRS. Then the front beam can be swapped out. I got a price from classic vee dub for a 2" narrowed beam with adjusters fitted, 2" dropped link pin spindles and a wide 5 disc brake kit at $1200 - not too bad in my books. The beam needs to be fitted up with the trailing arms and springs from the existing beam, and the tie rods need to be shortened + there's all of the small items like new seals to consider, but at least it will provide a good solid front end. They also offer a rear disc conversion for IRS in wide 5 pattern too at $770. Whilst this is all relatively cheap - it all ends up adding up, so I might buy the end plates and adjusters and cut and shut the beam myself, it's not a big job and will probably save $400-500. The front brake kit with dropped spindles is $700 on it's own.
I was offered a rebuilt late IRS pan - which is tempting, but seems a little sacrilegeous as it feels like cheating - it does however save some dollah's. and I will consider this as an option (please feel free to talk me out of this / encourage me to do this).
So - next stage is to go buy some more axle stands as the four I have are holding the Ghia up, and get the body off of the pan. Also need to decide on what i want to do with the pan / brakes / suspsnsion etc then go and either buy the late pan or buy the stuff to fix this one.
I need to source a boot hinge as the offside one had broken off of the hood and unfortunately isnt with the car - so if anyone can help me out - shoot me a message.
There's some more images in the gallery that I've uploaded. - you can view them here - http://www.vdubber.com/photo/gallery_tag/vdubber