It was another scorcher today! 96 degrees, and too hot to work too long. I woke up early today while it was still cool and decided to finish removing the rear spare tire panel/ rear floor panel. The screws were amazingly easy to get out and the panel came out in one piece. The spare tire was still in place, however a rat or mouse had built a nest with clumps of seat foam and padding from the fallen headliner. It had long been abandoned but was quite the mess to clean up.
The well was also filled with dirt, chunks of moss and of course flakes of rust. I had cleaned alot of it up, but there was still plenty to get. Bob, this Ranch Wagons “Godfather” stopped by to lend a hand. He climbed in the back and pulled each of the headliner bows down and handed them to me. I pulled all the tattered remains of old headliner cloth and insulation off of them and tossed them into a waiting trash bag. After that, Bob used a shopvac to vacuum up the rest of the crap in the spare tire well. He would occasionally toss a big clump of rusty flaky metal into the scrap bag. When all the cleaning out was done, we discovered that not only had be vacuumed up the the dirt & dust, but we were staring straight through the wheel well floor,through the top of the gas tank, and through the bottom of the gas tank and seeing the ground beneath the car. Did I mention this wagon was rusty?
Here is a picture of the newly cleaned up interior roof:
Bob has presented a few ideas as how to deal with the recently revealed rusted spare tire well & gas tank dilemma.
1. Patch in a new spare tire well and find a good tank
2. Cut out the rusty tire well and find a gas tank that will fit in its place and do away with the spare tire well.
These are interesting ideas. Both of them good. I guess I have to ask myself, “How far do you want to go in staying original with this very rusty Ranch Wagon?”
I wish they had a cure for Wagon Fever. These questions would be so much easier to make if I didn’t suffer from this debilitating illness!
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