The only way I'll ever upload anything topless >.> However given this context I'm sure Cassandra wouldn't mind. I'd see these more as open heart pictures and hopefully some of my more car savvy watchers will be able to notice and point things out to wanna help out.

So this week we managed to take the old rusty and crumbling hood off of Cassandra in my quest to restore and nurse her back to health. The intent was to take the hood off and see if her engine was still in operating condition by turning the one bolt a full revolution. That didn't happen because of the radiator shroud, but we did manage to get a lot of other things done. I cleared out a big nest of some kind of creature that in the early years called Cassandra home, my dad identified the engine as a small block 283 cubic inch 175 horsepower engine which was as reliable as a mountain, that she's factory duel exhaust, six bladed fan behind the radiator, finally discovered she IS indeed equipped with power steering, discovered the previous owner had filled her up with oil before parking her 20 years ago (sadly it's all no good), removed the spring on the hood latch, took that nasty deteriorating hood off, greased up the screws on the hood hinges and radiator shroud, put wires back on that had fallen off of the spark plugs (Thank GOD they were made to length so that was easy, inspected the front clip which looks a-okay, found the gas pedal which is still usable despite being buried outside of her in the field, discovered that some vacuum tubes on the vac advance are gone and the whole unit needs replaced, learned the firewall is good, found the wires for the battery, got the paint code, tore out that old ruined insulation on the hood, and started cleaning out the spiderwebs and dirt which were as thick as twine!! I've come to the conclusion I need to replace the ignition and all the locks because once again no one can find any records on her to want to get a new key or tell me when she was made specifically. I myself only found JUST ENOUGH information to provide so that the previous owner could get the title reprinted. Aside from that I can't prove that she didn't just drop out of the sky one day. We laid the hood back on without bolting it back on since it needs replaced and we're going to put in a simple bungee system to just pop it up for ease of working. It's tied down currently to keep the junk from blowing in there. The frame in the front from what we can see is a box frame and looks ready to go aside from surface rust. The springs look alright, might need new shocks, and we're going to plan a moving operation to pull her up out of the ground and bring her down here before the end of the year. So far it looks promising!