It's been pretty much all body work for the last two years. You can tell the body work is beginning to wind down because now I am working on hinges. Hood hinges, door hinges, and trunk hinges. I need to do these so I can put the hood, doors, and trunk lid back on the car. So today I spent all day working on the door hinges.

I found out from someone in a Ford forum that I can find new hinge pins in the HELP section of my local parts store. So I bought enough for all four of my hinges and sure enough, they look like they will work. First I pressed the hinge pin out of each hinge with a press. Then I separated the two main parts of each hinge. The bottom hinge has a spring loaded part that is held on with two large screws. Since the plating looked good on those parts, I cleaned them in kerosene and then removed them from the hinges. Then, using a punch I drove out the old bushings and using a screwdriver I pushed out the rubber bumper from each hinge. The rubber was soft and pliable in three of the hinges, but in the last one, it was hard and brittle, and it broke when I tried to remove it. I got a decent one from one of my parts cars to replace it, but I am going to look online to see if I can find new ones to replace them all.

Once everything was taken apart, I sandblasted the two main sections of each hinge and acid washed them. That took most of the day, so I will have to post the assembled and painted hinges when I get to that point... most likely in a few weeks.