I needed to get the Nomad to Forrestville so Mark and the Security Service Center team could get the engine and gearbox out. After finding a pallet that they could put it on once it was out of the car, I called a towing company to have it dumped on a flatbed and hauled there. Now common sense should have prevailed: I used Mona Vale’s Bakker Towing to get it from Mascot and had nice results, but for some silly reason that even I couldn’t explain, I decided to get a couple of competitive quotes. Another local mob came a bit cheaper which saved me the price of a Corona beer at the local so I went with them.

You know the story. Pick up at ten in the morning. Phone call at half past ten saying we’re a little late, should be there in fifteen minutes. At ten minutes to twelve I call them to tell me that the trailer is stuck in Palm Beach. Another twenty minutes pass and finally another truck arrives. We got to Forrestville three hours late and I’ve missed the whole day for the price of a beer. I don’t know how many times I’ve chosen the price and then in hindsight wonder what I was thinking. In the future I will call Bakker Towing because I know they won’t bother me.

Anyway, my stupidity aside, the Security Service Center team pulled the engine and gearbox out with no problem and when I got to the front the next day it was sitting on the pallet waiting to be picked up by the successful bidder from eBay. Mark was kind enough to let me keep the engine there overnight as we needed his engine lift to load it onto a trailer the next day. The Nomad now seemed a few inches taller in the front, as he was sitting with no engine and looking a little sad.

With the engine off, it was time to move on to deconstruction. First on the list was the trim and chrome and to make it easier for me I decided to have two separate stacks: one for the chrome parts and one for all the trim. One of the things I love about old cars is the shiny stuff. If you look at modern cars, quite a few don’t have any brilliant work done on them. A 57 Chevy Nomad has a lot, but it wasn’t until I was taking it off that I started to realize how much there was. You may need to take out a second mortgage on the house just to get these cutting pieces looking like new again and the respective stacks to keep growing as the pieces come off.

As usual, some were fully cooperative and almost fell out of my hands when I touched them. Then there were the pieces that, despite my best efforts and all forms of persuasion, were going nowhere. You could be a bit more aggressive with the chrome stuff, particularly the bumpers, as the rugged nature of these parts could be supported a bit more. The trims are very thin and made of alloy, they dent very easily and it was definitely worth taking the time to remove them without having to eat them.

In the western suburbs of Sydney there is a company called Molding Repairs and Polishing who are craftsmen and will restore your mouldings, hubcaps and trim to like new. My intention is that once all the pieces are removed, I’ll take them to Kingswood and have Allan McCoy and his team work their magic on them. They don’t chrome so the chrome stuff will be shipped elsewhere. The piles grew larger, covering the workbench, half the floor, and the tops of some boxes in the garage. After two days, I had all the excerpts I could read in the garage. The only pieces left were the tailgate button that I needed intact so I could release the tailgate and all the chrome trim around the curved windows that I didn’t know how to remove and decided to leave for the experts.

An interesting sidebar of doing all of this yourself is that you gain an appreciation of what happened in the past. Clearly someone had removed the bumpers before and instead of getting a bumper bolt replacement kit they had searched for any bolts and nuts that would fit and fit through the holes and tossed them out. Three screws were the same, I suspect originals and the rest were breakfast for dogs. Some had completely rusted away, others had burrs, two of them couldn’t be completely fixed because the threads disappeared in a mess of rust and crushed metal. Didn’t bode well for what else I might find during deconstruction… Next up are the panels, what’s left of the interior, and ancillary parts in the engine bay that won’t be needed in the future. Look at this space.