BOSS 429 Project: Shop setup

I want to let everyone know what’s happening with the Boss 429 Project and the plan going forward.

I purchased this project car in the middle of setting up a new garage shop. Some background: My wife and I bought an investment property that serves three purposes for us… 1) we rent out the house, 2) I keep the garage out building and use for my projects and 3) I can store our ‘stuff’ like car hauler, 5^th wheel RV and boat there. We negotiated a really good price and started the process. First, a fence went up to separate the house/yard from the part of the property I’ll maintain and use. Then, we cleaned out the garage, degreased and pressure washed the concrete floor several times and epoxy coated the floor… we went with a light green/gray color…. Dark enough to not show every smug/stain but light enough to reflect light, which is really great for a shop (i.e., helps eliminate the dark shadows, can see under the car better when on jack stands and you can find the small items when you drop them).

So, in the middle of starting all this, I buy the ’70 Fastback. So I’m doing some car project work and shop setup work at the same time. As you saw in the other posts, the drivetrain and engine are all removed. But I have to complete the shop to make room to do this project properly. My problem is parts and equipment coming in and are stacking up on each other.

Here's the Roto 2000 rotisserie, box of Flowmaster 3" ss exhaust pipe and welding supplies

To top this all off, living in Florida, the hot and humid summer is fast approaching. I have to get other projects done for the shop before the heat hits and you just can’t work, at least not wimpy me. After all, this is a project, not my “day job”, boating and vacation season in view, I do have a life and wife… so my project car will take a back seat in the hot summer months. I will dabble and keep the Boss 9 Project site current…. It just won’t be major undertakings until late summer early fall.

For the past few weeks here’s some updates:

Car Project: Not much other than ordering lots of parts and removing the front suspension steering and brakes.

Here's all the front suspension and brakes removed

In the coming weeks, I’ll be removing everything on the car to get to a bare shell, e.g., complete interior, all glass, doors, trunk lid, front fenders, grill, lights, all wires, and bumpers. Then start to focus on the rust fixes like new floor pans. When it comes to doors and fenders, I’ll replace them with new steel. My glass looks good and I’ll reuse… just need to be careful not to break on the removal.

not my car, but my goal... car striped and on the rotisserie in the coming weeks

Shop: I really want a car lift and a rotisserie. Problem with a lift in the garage… it takes up too much space and limits what can be done in the garage. The garage is 20’ x 24’. So I decided to pour some concrete around the garage, add a slab for a car lift and put a car port style roof over it. It won’t be waterproof, but will minimize rain and give some shade from the sun. Another shop item I had to deal with was electric for the shop. The electric was supplied from the house pole/meter…. Problem is I’m renting the house and didn’t want to deal with who used what electric/kWs….. so I installed a new service/meter box, disconnected the house electric feed to the garage and installed a new feed to the service elec panel in the garage. I added some new circuits for the welders, car lift, large air compressor and power and water to the boat/trailer parking area (after all, you need to flush the engines, wash and trickle charge the batteries!!)