Ok, we’re getting closer.  I spent some time with the needle scaler today and got the rest of the undercoating (among other things) off the bottom of the luggage shelf.  It’s starting to look nice and clean under there.   🙂  The other day I pulled some plastic shielding and really thin aluminum wrap off of the heater tubes (you can see them installed in the pictures of my previous post).  I took a picture of them today.  I’m thinking these were original to the car, but I don’t think they can be purchased anymore (I may be wrong though).  It seems most people take then off anyway.    Mine were very brittle, damaged, and pretty much crumbled in my hand.  I removed them too.  I’m guessing they were used for insulation?

One of the reasons I wanted to remove the body from the chassis was to allow for easy access to under the rear luggage shelf.  I don’t think it’s ever been cleaned under there (see images), thus it’s extremely dirty.  It’s covered with 45 years of road grime,  grease, and oil.   Today I started by degreasing it with some Gunk brand Engine Degreaser.  What a messy job, especially when you’re underneath there working above your head.  It’s all dripping down on ya.  As you can see in the pictures, there is some undercoating on there as well.  The next step will be to get out my Needle Scraper 🙂 and remove all that too.  Then I’ll probably take out the steel wheel brush and clean things up further.  Finally, I’ll use the Master Series Mastercoat Silver rust preventative primer and AG111 top coat (just like I’ll do to the underside of the chassis/pan).   It’s a very hostile environment under here (gas fumes, road grime, etc.), so I think the ag111 top coat will be better than actually painting it with the body paint.  They paint bridges with this stuff!  It should do a great job of preserving this part of the vehicle in the long run.  Here are some pics (can’t wait to see it all shiny black down here):

You can see I cleaned a little bit already (bottom left of pictures)
prior to taking these first pictures:

Here are the “after” pics:

I removed the body from the chassis today.  Here’s a short video showing the process: