When we left off we were finishing up the installation of the front bumper. We had to do a number of things to be able to get the bumper installed, like freshening up the stud brackets so they will accept nuts as well as straightening out the damaged inner bumper so it will sit straight when it was mounted. New carriage bolts were installed to replace those that were cut off during the disassembly of the two piece front bumper. The last thing to do was install the rubber strip that goes across the outer bumper to cover the carriage bolts that hold the two bumper sections together. This rubber strip has integrated studs that normally accepted cap nuts but can accept 1/4" nuts. Since I used most of the cap nuts installing the grille moldings, I needed to use 1/4" nuts to cover the rest of the studs. On the very end of the right side of the rubber strip a couple of the studs were pulled free so a good foot long section of the end was free flapping. To remedy this in a bootleg sort of way, I drilled two holes in the rubber where the studs would've been then installed carriage bolts in the holes. Finishing things up with nuts, the carriage bolts will at least sit flush enough to not be too noticeable. If I paint over the bolt heads with some flat paint, it'll make them that much less noticeable, at least until I can replace the rubber strip with a fresh piece.... Next I turned my attention to installing the tailgate. This is probably one of the easier parts of the operation due to the idea that the hinges only take three bolts to hold each end on. There were two thread plates installed to accommodate the bolts for each side but just like with the other threaded components on this car, they too were rusty. Even after trying to cut the threads with WD40 and a grade 8 bolt, I ended up snapping one thread plate free. Luckily the bed had access panels right in front of where the thread plates go. These were held in with small sheet metal screws that came out easily except for one on each side. This still allowed me to tip the panel out of the way in order to get my hand inside the fender. I ended up taking a hammer and screwdriver and knocking out the other thread plate. I had the bolts for the tailgate hinges already, these were large Phillips bolts that were of 3/8" thread. Since any kind of Phillips or flathead bolts are easily stripped, I had to ensure that they were screwed into clean threads, hence new nuts instead of the dirty thread plates. With the access panels removed, it made it easy to get my hand inside to install the nuts on the bolts. With a little help holding the tailgate, I got the six bolts in place and tightened up. The tailgate does close properly but the latch is boogered up where I have to pull on the linkage going to the left latch in order to release the tailgate for opening. I'll have to remove the access panel on the tailgate itself to examine the linkages and the lever itself to see what may need replacing. Hopefully it'll just need a latch and the linkages are intact enough to just be reconnected to the new latch. With that little bit of business taken care of, the next task on this car is installing the new used crossmember. While I'm at it I'll remove the remnants of the old exhaust system and the fuel tank if its still there.
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