Front End teardown

Removing the front end sheetmetal and associated hardware is well documented on the web and there are lots of videos and such that show how to get down to a bare front frame. It's a good thing, too, because looking back now I see that I took very few pictures along the way. This was clearly a case of 'go-fever', where it was easier to take the next part off rather than take the time to photograph and note what was happening.

I did, however, have a plan. After researching online the best way to do this, and reading through the shop manual, I made a list of the order of disassembly:

0. remove hood. I list it as zero because it's not required, but I was going to have to do it anyway.
1. remove front valance panel
2. remove front bumper
3. remove grill trim
4. remove grill (left the fog lights and lite-up horse corral in place)
5. remove stone guard
6. remove bumper-to-frame braces
7. lots of brackets and clips around the grill
8. remove rear splash shield hardware
9. and finally, all those bolts that you can see in the engine bay holding fender in place
9a. ...and the bolts you can't see that are still holding the fender down - two on the bottom at the rocker panel, one from inside the car down behind the kick panel, and finally the one at the top rear of the fender that you can reach only once the door is open.

I'm slow and this took me about an hour and a half. But NEXT TIME I'll go slower and take more pics. I'm positive I'll pay for rushing this step later.

 Pulling the hood - we used 3 people, two to hold, one to unbolt. I carefully drilled pilot holes through the hinge and the hood (carefully!) for registration marks for reassembly. We placed towels at the gap between the cowl and hood to keep any movement to a minimum.

Any monkey can take it apart....

The valance panel came off first, but that might be a bad idea, as I scratched it on the bumper guards on the way out.

 Front bumper and hardware. There are brackets at the ends that were pretty tricky to get off. In the end, lots of Liquid Wrench saved the day.

 Grill trim and hardware. Go easy - all of this is easily bent and scratched.

 Grill and fog lights. Don't ya just love that light-up grill?

 Bumper guards. Also very hard to get out. But surprisingly enough, no broken bolts in the whole process.

 Stone deflector. I have to remember to take all these pieces to the body shop when we get it painted, so I've started putting PAINT THIS on the boxes when I pack this stuff up.

 And now it look like this.

 I was going to leave these bumper brackets on for alignment purposes, but I ended up taking them off after repeatedly whacking my shins on them. I made some measurements of the brackets on the frame before pulling them off in case there's a lot of slop in the mounting bolts.

 The offending bumper supports and brackets, no longer able to eat any human flesh that wanders by at shin-height.

 Fenders are off and strapped up to the wall. The headlight buckets and front fender guards are still on there. Notice the 'Hi-Po 289' fender badges on there. They're not standard issue in 1967.

There's a good deal of rust hiding under the driver-side bumper bracket, which means I probably have more metal to patch later. 

Next up, the exhaust system has to come off so we can get the rear end out.