A couple of days had passed now. One day without filming, during which the pastel yellow mouse woman Michelle Frelang made sure she had everything ready to continue shooting footage of the disassembling of the 1972 Chevrolet Chevelle she was doing a mini video series on for her Youtube channel. Both doors had already been relieved of their inner door cards, door handles and window cranks, windows, window regulators, locking mechanisms, a speaker which had been installed in there by a previous owner and the hinges, with the bolts screwed loosely back into their holes in the doors. The decklid had seen the same treatment, getting relieved of its lock and locking mechanism, the "Chevelle by Chevrolet" badge on the lower right corner, and the hinges, with those bolts also loosely screwed back into their holes.
The vanilla-colored mousette had done a thorough check on the body of the car to make sure everything was taken off and out of that as well. The brake master cylinder and booster was removed from the firewall along with the windshield wiper motor, the wiring harness plugs and grommets were taken out, the large plastic housing holding the blower motor came off, and on the inside, out came the steering column, the entire dashboard, the pedal assembly, glove box liner, heater core, wiring harness, the HVAC grates, the aftermarket radio and all the knobs and switches. All in all, it had only taken a couple of hours, and fortunately, there had been no unexpected surprises hidden away behind all that. Some more time had been taken to inventorize and label everything, make a list of needed replacement parts, put in a few more orders, make a phonecall to Up Yours, the strangely-named upholstery shop in town, and strip the front bucket seats and the seat and back of the backseat down to their bare springs and frames. A customer pulling in with a 1956 Opel Olympia Rekord suffering from electrical problems due to, as it turned out after some diagnosing and probing with a multi-meter, a broken voltage regulator, provided a bit of a break from the work on the Chevelle, and after the old German 2-door had been repaired and sent on its way, the break continued as Missy set all the footage she had shot so far to transfer to the external hard drives of her editing laptop while she herself scrounged around on the internet for a while and made some more phonecalls.
And the next day, it was already Friday. Amazing how quick the days went by without even being noticed. Bright and early at her garage, the vanilla-hued mousette took care of the most important task of feeding and petting Salmon, the fluffy feral Maine Coon cat she had adopted as her garage mascot after finding it living in one of the storage buildings, set up her cameras and lights in the disassembly hall again after rolling the frame of the car between the posts of the car lift and looked into the main camera sideways from the side from very close by as if to check it was running.
"Alright, we live? We-e-e're live. Hey ho all you wonderful people out there in Youtube land! Missy here from Mousie Motorworks, with yet another exciting episode! We're getting right back into yanking apart that poor seventy-two Chevelle! As you can see behind me, the body is now gone, and the frame is back on the lift. And look over there in those racks; I've already fully taken apart the doors and stripped everything off the trunk lid and the body, so that's all done now and they're ready for media-blasting. We'll get to that, but first, there's still this frame to take apart! And now you can see why I left the engine and transmission in place when I took the body off the car, because look how easy I can reach everything now! No need to stand under the car and reach up above my head to pull the driveshaft and trans, no need to do a silly dance with an engine hoist to pull the engine out of the engine bay, I can just sit on top of that frame and take everything off from there. So we will be doing just that, right here at Mousie Motorworks!" A calm count to three to give herself an editing point, and then Missy moved the cameras in position and turned to the frame of the car. "This should be simple enough right here; we're almost done! Driveshaft needs to come out, transmission, then we can pluck the motor and put it on a stand, and all that's left is all the brake and fuel lines, the rear axle and all the suspension bits and pieces. I don't even have to be all too careful with yanking those off, because I will be replacing pretty much all of it with upgraded parts. So let's get started! Cue the timelapse!"
Turning the radio back on without needing to worry about copyright strikes as the music would not be heard in a timelapse anyway, Missy rolled near a tool chest and got to work. She set a few drip pans in place on the floor, used an impact ratchet to unscrew the U-joints at the rear of the driveshaft, pulled the driveshaft out of the transmission snout and lay it in one of the racks. A flat cart was rolled close as well, the starter motor was removed, and after unscrewing the bolts in the transmission bellhousing, Missy gave a few firm yanks on the transmission to separate it from the engine. Standing up, the light yellow mousette picked up the transmission and set it down on the low cart with a clang, after which she actually took a little time to bolt the shift lever back into place on the top of the transmission and turned to the main camera with a playful grin.
"I can appreciate someone taking the time to make a car their own, but seriously, what's with this kind of crap?" she grinned, pointing at the short chrome-plated shift lever of which the shift knob was a chrome skull. "Why would anyone feel comfy grabbing a dead-head to shift gears? And what's the appeal? No one except the driver and a possible passenger will see it because it's inside the car. Bleep-bloop it down in the comments, folks; what's the appeal of this kind of stuff? Do you like it? Would you put it in your classic car? And why?" She let go a light chortle. "And I can hear you typing now; Missy Missy! Why do you even waste time putting that shift lever back on there? Well, that's easy; I'm not gonna use this transmission for this car. You may remember that I mentioned in the introduction video I will most likely be putting a modern five- or six-speed manual transmission in this car, and besides, I'm a short mousie, I need a much longer shift lever than this to even be able to reach it. So this lever can stay right with this transmission. I won't scrap it, it's a good Muncie four-speed so I'll put it on the shelf, but this transmission is not going back in this car."
She rolled the cart with the transmission on it over to the shelving racks. Walking back to the frame of the car, she took one of the smaller cameras from the tripod and turned to the frame.
"Now, while we're here, let's have a look at what's here. The front frame horns are still alright, thank goodness those didn't get bent when that core support caved in. Motor mounts are good, crossmembers are good, and check this out; full aftermarket exhaust system. Stainless steel, and those are Flowmaster Forty Series mufflers. I don't know if Patrick Stewardson, who gave me this car, put those on there, or if the fellow he bought it from put those on there, but either way it's a nice bonus. Judging by how they look, and the state of the hardware, this whole system can't be any older than five years. We'll definitely keep that on the shelf, and I may even put it back on this car. And all the way here at the back, your standard Chevy twelve-bolt rear axle with drum rear brakes. I have in fact already ordered a full new twelve-bolt rear axle with eleven-inch disc rear brakes from American Powertrain for this car, so that will be a nice bolt-in upgrade I won't have to do any fabrication for; it comes complete with brake hardlines, hubs, rotors, calipers, Moser thirty-spline alloy axles that bolt in so no fussing about with C-clips, and heavy duty bearings. It's a very nice package really, and they're willing to make it a rush order for me, too. Now, what else do we see... standard leaf springs, I'll be upgrading to coils, and some pretty typical rust. Patrick said he used this car to play around on the B-roads, so this car has seen plenty of gravel and dirt; you can tell because the shackle mounts are rusted out. Since I'll be upgrading to coil springs, I won't need those mounts so I can just plate that off to get rid of the rust." She set the smaller camera back on the tripod and smiled at it. "Well, enough yapping, let's go pluck that motor!"
The cameras were repositioned, an engine hoist was rolled near, and within a few minutes Missy had removed the air filter and carburetor from the engine and bolted a lift plate in place of the carburetor. Sitting on the frame, she unbolted and removed the clutch pack and the flywheel, unbolted the exhaust pipes from the headers that had been installed on the engine and unbolted the motor mounts. After a last check to see if all the lines and hoses going to the engine had been removed or at least loosened as well, the vanilla-colored mousette hooked the engine hoist to the lift plate and started lifting the engine off the frame of the car. She only needed to lift it a little bit, just enough to have the damaged oil pan clear the frame rails, before pulling the hoist back and turning it a bit. The engine was lifted up higher, until Missy could bolt it to the arms of an engine stand, remove the lift plate and roll the engine out of the way.
A little less than an hour was taken to remove all the metal brake lines and fuel line from the frame as well as the exhaust piping and mufflers which were slipped into one of the racks while the metal lines got folded up and dropped in the trash can for metals. Lifting the frame up into the air on the car lift, Missy proceeded to remove the wheels, and from there the front disc brake calipers, the inner wheel bearing, the brake rotor with attached wheel hub and inner wheel bearing, the tie rod ends and inner tie rods, the bent center link and the steering box. The bent front sway bar was removed by cutting the end links as the bolts were too rusted to remove them, the grinder also took care of the rusted bolts holding in the front shock absorbers, and those went straight into the trash can for metals as they were severely rusted as well.
"Wow, those looked like the original shocks," the vanilla-hued mousette commented to the main camera. "You'd think they would have replaced those after dropping in a different motor, it's such an easy job and new shocks are quite cheap as well. But anyways! We're almost done here, and we're at the most dangerous part; the springs. These things are full of potential energy, so always take a lot of care when you remove these. I could crack the ball joints loose and drop the lower control arm so I can wriggle the spring out of there with a pry bar, but come on folks, that's dangerous. If you need to do this yourself, please invest in a spring compressor. Those tools only run between twenty and fifty bucks, so it's no skin off your nose to get one, and heckity, you could even rent one for a few bucks from O'Reilly's or Halfords if you don't want to buy one. But always use one, okay? I've seen even experienced mechanics take a spring to the face because they were in a hurry and didn't use a compressor, and it's not a pretty sight." She took a small plastic case and opened it. "This is your standard spring compressing tool. Two rods and four clamps, couple of bolts and several pins. Take one of the rods, take one of these clamps and check if it's one without threads, slide it on the rod all the way to the end, take one of the clamps that does have threads on the inside and screw it onto the other end of the rod, just a few threads. Put it up against the spring, like so, rest this upper clamp on one of the coils near the top, and use one of these pins to secure it in place. Now thread the other clamp further onto the rod until it reaches one of the coils at the lower end of the spring, make sure it's firmly up against the coil, and secure it in place with another pin, then screw on the bolt. Rinse and repeat for the other rod and two clamps, you do the exact same things, and make sure to place it directly opposite the one you already attached to the spring."
Missy did all the steps she mentioned, calmly and clearly to show how it should be done as she attached the clamps to the threaded rods and put them in place on the front left spring of the car. Looking up at the camera when she was done, the light yellow mousette raised a finger.
"Now, don't be lazy! Do not use a power ratchet to start tightening these, use a regular ratchet or wrench, otherwise you'll put way too much stress on these rods way too fast. This is a job you should do slowly, folks, so take your time. Heckity, use it as an excuse to slow down if you want. Now, this kit comes with a fitting ratcheting wrench, but you can use any wrench you may have in your toolbox so long as it's the proper size. Start tightening this bolt you put on the end here, and make sure to make consistent strokes, plus; count them! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, there, that's how many I do in one go. Now go to the other one and do the same; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. And back to the first one again, back and forth, always doing the same amount of turns so you compress both sides of the spring evenly. Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve... and there we go, that's enough, twenty-four turns each side, this spring is ready to come out, and I don't even need to do a lot of effort, it comes right out, see? And of course, now we need to take these clamps off, and the same counts for that; be very careful, make slow and small turns, and do less in one go while alternating between this one and that one. One, two, three, four, five, six, enough, other one, one, two, three, four, five, six, enough, back to the first one, back and forth like this until the spring is relaxed again and you can take the clamps off. There! A-a-and of course, now we move to the other side of the car and repeat this whole procedure because there's a spring on that side as well. But to get to that spring, I first have to take off all the other stuff I just took off from this side, so let's go!"
She did just that, repositioning the cameras and lights a bit again and moving over to the passenger side of the frame so she could take off the wheel, brake caliper, brake line, outer wheel bearing, brake rotor with attached wheel hub and the inner wheel bearing, before using the compressor tool to remove the spring from between the control arms. With the ball joints already cracked loose for that procedure, it was an easy next step to remove the lower control arms, which also allowed the spindle to slide out of the upper control arm. After removing that arm, it was on to the rest of the frame.
Someplace in the middle, a bit towards the front, the transmission crossmember was unbolted and removed with the help of a deadblow hammer, after which the bolts were loosely screwed back into their holes. The leaf springs in the rear were unbolted from their shackles and taken out, the rusted front shackles were cut off, and after removing the wheels and the drums of the rear brakes, Missy drained the oil out of the differential and took off the cover, with the help of a pry bar as the gasket turned out to be glued into place with room-temperature vulcanization cream - the dreaded red variety. It was a little fiddly to remove the C-clips that held the rear axles in place inside the differential, but once they were out the rear axles were easily slid out of their tubes. Then she unbolted the backing plate of each rear brake so she could remove them with all the brake components still attached to them, which saved a lot of time. Leaving the center section and the pinion gear of the differential in place, Missy removed the rear shocks and put a transmission jack under the rear axle housing before unbolting it and pulling it off the frame.
Once the rear axle housing was set in one of the racks as well, the light yellow mousette wiped her paws with a rag while turning back to the main camera.
"And there we go! The whole frame stripped down, and it's not even lunchtime! Am I great or what?" She held a paw cupped behind one of her large ears and chortled. "Ah yes, I can hear you now; yes Missy, you're awesome! Whooooo! I thought so! Thank you so much, folks! Hee! Now, it's forklift time, because this frame needs to get over to the media blasting room so I can clean it up. And I hear you again; Missy Missy! Why start cleaning up the frame, you still have the whole engine to take apart! Why yes, yes I do indeed. But blasting this frame will only take about an hour or two, and then I can see what state it's in, weld in some patches if needed - like where those leaf spring shackles were - and then I can send it off to be powdercoated while I concentrate on the engine. That way it'll be done by the time I'm done with that motor, and less time is wasted waiting for thing. Delegate, people, delegate! So give me a moment or two; I'll bring this frame over to the blasting room, I'll have some lunch, slip into something way more uncomfortable, and I'll meet y'all in the blasting room in a bit!"
She counted to three silently and shut off the cameras. Using her smaller forklift, Missy moved the frame of the car from the first large building to the second one behind it, setting it down on four axle stands. After also bringing her tripods, cameras and lights into the large hall in the second building, the vanilla-colored mousette walked back into the garage and went up to the mezzanine over the toilet and office with a bottle of fruit juice from the display refrigerator, unzipping and taking off her full-body light yellow coveralls and sinking down on the old sofa in her bare butt to relax for a bit. Calmly sipping from the bottle of juice, she petted the fluffy feral cat Salmon who snuggled up in her lap and checked some messages on her phone. When she had finished the juice, she got up and stepped over to the small kitchenette she'd put together on the end of the mezzanine, using the microwave, the electric kettle and the small under-counter refrigerator to make herself a simple lunch of a sandwich or two with a cup of instant soup and a cup of tea.
As spring was already well underway, Missy made sure to take plenty of time for her lunch break, to ensure she would not over-exert herself and to already start getting used to when the tropic's schedule would go into effect during the summer months. But being as active a mouse as she was, after an hour and a half of lunch break Missy could no longer sit still. She was energized, she was on a roll, she was in a pleasant constant work flow so she wanted to keep going.
She put on one of her thin, disposable full-body paint suits and walked into the large second building where she had put the car's frame on jackstands in the media blasting booth. The lights and cameras were set up, checked and adjusted, the large blasting machine was checked, the air compressor regulated and activated, the hopper was filled with fine plastic beads and the extraction system was activated. Also putting on the full safety helmet with face shield, hearing protection and air supply over the hood of the paint suit and strapping on the belt to which the hose of the blasting machine attached, Missy switched on the machine and proceeded to blast all the rust, dirt and old undercoating off the frame. She worked calmly and methodically, quietly smiling to herself behind the face shield at how the frame changed color from a mix of dirty black and rust to a dull silvery metal color. It was always such a nice sight, and such a feeling of accomplishment to see something transforming like that under one's hands.
It did reveal a few spots where rust had damaged the frame, from areas covered in pitting to a spot or two where small holes had been chewed through the metal. But that was exactly what the procedure was for. Once the frame was completely cleaned up, Missy put everything back where it should go, emptied the blaster's hopper, blew the machine out with compressed air and used the same air hose and nozzle to blow all the remnants and dust off the car frame and out of all the nooks, crannies and holes. The smaller forklift was again utilized to bring the frame back into the frontmost hall of the front building and placed on the arms of the car lift.
With the paint suit switched for the pair of light yellow coveralls and the lights and cameras set back up in the first building again, Missy lifted the frame up into the air a bit and took one of the smaller cameras to pan along it as she checked over the frame.
"Well, here we are, all cleaned up! And as you can see, those pockets where the leaf spring shackles were have some damage, the rot's gone all the way through the frame. Same here by this rear crossmember; that's pretty typical areas for rust to form, dirt and mud and everything collects there and traps moisture there, and before you know it, the rust monster is nomming on your precious metal. But for what it is and what it's been through, this frame is in pretty good condition. I need to cover where those shackles were anyway, and these spots here are only small, that's easily patched. So put on your sunglasses, folks; we're going to throw some sparks!"
She took a grinder with a small cutting disk, put on a pair of large ear protectors and a pair of safety glasses that looked like steampunk goggles. The affected areas were cut out of the frame, some paper was used to make templates which in turn were used to cut some patches out of a sheet of steel, and after cutting and grinding them to fit as perfectly as she could manage and holding them in place with triangular welding magnets, the vanilla-hued mousette pulled near an MIG welder to weld the patches into the holes she had cut in the frame.
Once the welds had cooled off, Missy ground them smooth, lifted the goggles to her forehead and turned to the main camera again.
"And there were are! All patched up, this frame is ready to go. I'll take a moment or two to take those old tires off the rims and clean up the rims a bit as well, and then I'll bring it all over to the powdercoater's here in town so they can do their magic while I work on tearing down that motor. But that is for next time! So keep your eyes out for the next episode, thank you all so much for following along, and we'll see you again next week to have a look inside that motor and see what damage might be in there, right here at Mousie Motorworks! Tata now, see ya!"
She silently counted to three again and shut off the cameras. As the smaller forklift was still parked in the building, Missy used it to take the frame off the car lift and put it on the deck of her rollback truck. She also brought the four wheels into the main garage building and over to the tire machine so she could take the old tires off. The tires went into the dumpster for rubber, the rims were given a once-over with a wire brush and strapped to the deck of the rollback truck together with the car's frame, and the whole caboodle was driven over to the South Plains industrial district. There was a large powdercoating company there Missy had used several times before - enough times for them to have powder in the pastel yellow color that Missy called Mousie Motorworks Yellow as it was a color she had mixed herself. She specified that the rims were to be coated in that color, and the frame was to be coated in Ancona blue, which was an old Volkswagen color and the dark blue color Missy used for the contrasting details in her company colors, as it went very nice with the pastel yellow. It was perhaps a bit unusual to have a car frame coated in that dark blue color, as car frames were usually coated in semi-gloss or matt black, but heck, there was nothing wrong with doing things a little different from time to time. At least it would certainly make the car even more unique once it was done.
Having driven the rollback truck back to her garage and parked it in the back behind the second large building, Missy set all the footage she had shot to transfer to the external hard drives of her editing laptop again and let them sit overnight. A quick round to check everything, make sure all the lights were turned off and everything was locked, and the light yellow mousette got into her yellow 1975 Mini to drive into town so she could have dinner at The Patty Place, and go home afterwards.
That was enough for one day! Plenty of progress, and she'd soon be into the work she truly excelled at; the bodywork. The next day, Saturday, would be for disassembling the engine, Sunday to edit the footage of the introduction video so she could set that to upload to her Youtube channel, Monday to go to the gym with Fanni, and by next Tuesday, the real fun work would finally begin! Exciting!
