On the Ann front: 

She hasn’t gotten any better, but hasn’t gotten any worse. She still spends most of the day in bed. We believe that there’s a problem related to neck muscles, nerves, and upper vertebrae. Their interrelationship seems to be causing both the nausea and the pain in her head. She’s had several physical therapy appointments that have helped isolate the area that seems the root of the issue, but it could take quite a bit of therapy to loosen that area.

On the Rusty front:

A couple days ago I bought an NOS 0-9 1956-1957 speedometer face and engine on eBay. If for some reason I can’t get my speedometer fixed, I will go with this. And, if I do get it fixed, then I am sure I can easily sell this. You can see these are pretty close in style, even using the same pointer (which I wasn’t sure how I was going to find it).

0-9 that I just bought:

0-8 that I have:

While in Seattle the past few days I ran across a fantastic deal on a welder and blasting cabinet. I jumped on them and got both setup. The cabinet (a nothing-fancy Harbor Freight model) should work fine for cleaning parts.

Based on the reviews I found, this Clarke 130EN Mig welder should be good for repairs on the body. Apparently, anything thicker than a 1/4″ is too much for it, but I have an old-fashioned stick welder to tackle those issues. It came with everything you see, including a full bottle of Argon, an extra reel, two masks, cart, and other items.

On the Biscuit front:

I found this chevy scatter shield in Pasco a couple weeks ago. I took it with me to Seattle. It was by far the best price I’ve seen on one, primarily due to the holes in it. It was used by an old sand jeep dragger.

While I was in Seattle, I formed a cover plate for the hole that spans the bottom and bolts in place (plate not shown). I plan on patching the side with some 1/4″ steel. I’ve been waiting for quite some time to get a scatter shield. Now I can begin to reassemble it (with a few mods).

This story deserves a much longer telling, but let me cut straight to it. I’m in Seattle to work on Rusty. I dropped my iPhone in a bowl of Pho Soup. Not good. I rushed home and set it up to dry. Shortly afterward, I removed Rusty’s heater, only to find someone had built an expansive home inside the heater. This explains some of the missing cushion from the seats. As I was taking pics with the Nikon, the battery died. So, I turned to my computer, but the photos were much worse than I imagined. Not a great tech day.

On the bright side, I tested the heater fan and that works. Also, my phone seems to be drying out … finally.

As you can see below, the inside of the heater is almost entirely filled with stuff:

And this is how it looked after that stuff was removed (and after my iPhone started working a little better). I now need to remove debris from the fins and repair the lower tube.

I also disassembled my speedometer. The rod that powers the pointer had broken. I will see if there is any way to repair it. The part looks awfully like later speedometers, so there may be hope for replacing it, but I first have to disassemble the front plate from the mechanism. Based on what I’ve read, it might never work quite right. But hey, it doesn’t work quite right anyhow!