The headliner was a stained and rotting mess with more mouse holes. I found a dead mouse in the glove box and mouse whiz it seems is very corrosive. A mouse nest in the glove box did quite a bit of damage to the glove box door and metal below. Now that the seats were out, I noticed that my very nice looking door sill plates were actually corroded off at the carpet. I lifted the carpet and it fell apart in my hands, …dry rot. This was one of my biggest disappointments yet. Inside the trunk was what appeared to be an original 1960 whitewall tire, parts, and more parts. My “favorite” was a large bar of metal still bolted to the shattered engine balancer. Apparently a good whack with a sledge hammer was not enough to free the engine. This must be the proof that the engine was really frozen. I also found the flywheel cover so I suspect they tried turning it over via the transmission. The air cleaner had been a mouse house in the engine bay before it was left to fill up with water and rot out in the trunk. Subsequently, the carburetor was a mass of powdery corrosion. The distributor cap was hanging loose as well, and sure enough, the valve covers were also in the trunk All this and the owner told me the car probably just needed a battery! I was livid with the seller but was resigned to my fate. What was I going to do, return it c.o.d? This was only the first of what were to be literally hundreds of sleepless nights.

I began the clean up to find that 98% of everything missing was in the trunk, including the right wheel well moldings. Both looked flawless except for having been cut in two by the post that must have been dragged down the side of the car. A number of things I found looked nearly brand new, but there would always be some major flaw rendering the part useless. I put a battery in, and all the exterior lights functioned. Two power windows, the blower fan, electric seat, and electric antenna also worked. The dash lights were inoperable. I spent two weeks doing general cleanup, compounding and waxing the car made it much more presentable. I was quite surprised by how good the car’s body and chrome really were. Except for collision damage, I found the body to be very solid.

OF MICE AND FIN
It was Christmas 2002 when my father and I started stripping the engine compartment. We had never worked on a car with such low mileage. With a single crank of the socket, most of the parts came off easily. We took off the manifolds and the block was full of more mouse nest. Upon removing the distributor, I pulled out enough mouse nest to fill a shoe box. It amazed us just how far a mouse might go to seek accommodations. But even so, the engine was very clean with only light build-up on the valves and rockers. We did find light rust on the cylinder walls. It really looked like a 34,000-mile engine should. I then discovered pipe wrench cuts on the end of the crankshaft. Apparently, after the balancer broke off, someone tried using a pipe wrench to turn the motor. This certainly explains the oil that poured out of the front of the car. There was no way this car could have been started. The consensus seems to be that the previous owner just didn’t know anything about the car and had just stored it. He obviously never saw the shattered balancer buried in the trunk. The owner was so nice and friendly on the phone that I took him for his word. Even a novice should have been able to tell that this car was not going to run again. All you had to do was look at the carburetor. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to tell primer from Body filler either. The good news was that most everything was factory original due to preservation through neglect. The only thing that was ever changed was the radiator hoses, alternator, AC compressor, and exhaust system. I believe we would still be on the original tires if they hadn’t been changed to snow tires. The snow tires are from 1960 as well, judging by the age on them.

The clean up continued as I started on the RH side of the dash and began working my way across. I pulled the glove box and realized the mice had been everywhere. No wire damage, but just the dropping of that moisture-collecting jute had caused a bit of surface rust on everything. The jute had been dropped into the radio and had corroded the circuit board. I wrote that off. Both my speaker cones were rotted as well.

I found shattered glass in both the front AC ducts, as well as in the rear defroster. This supported the glass vandalism story. I would later find no glass in the doors and I believe that all of the side glass is original.

The disassembly started when I saw that the headliner was beyond saving. I soon found the source for most of the mouse nest material, the roof insulation.

Once the headliner was out I decided that I should take off the roof trim and paint the roof as there was some rust emerging from the edges of the trim. At this point I thought I was going to leave most of the car together. Two spots led to three larger spots of rusted out metal under the stainless panels, two at the front corners and one at the back. I thought when I started that I would just have to re-chrome the bumpers, overhaul the mechanical systems, and do some paint work on the damaged doors. Unexpectedly, the project mushroomed to the point that by April 2003, nearly the whole car had been disassembled.

(Notice the "LeBaron" shield on the lower roof pillar)

I noticed a spot where there was some body seam separation under the lead at the RH rear door, behind the large chrome “vent”. There were three more holes around the rear window, and a rusted out body bolt from the rear window leakage. All told, less than three square inches of open rust out on the whole car. Not as bad as it could have been but beyond just repainting the roof and putting the trim back on.

DR. MOPAR, or HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB
Despite the decision that I needed a new right front fender, I counted myself lucky after seeing much worse ’60 Imperials. At this point I still thought most of the paint was original. Upon cleaning off the duct tape around the rear window, and that which was holding the deck lid shut, I found that paint was lifting with the tape. The rust around the rear window had obviously been repaired once before. I also found a repaint over the rear bumper and stripped off the bodywork to find that the car had been hit over the rear bumper as well. The body filler in this area had me concerned, but I found that the two creases had been well pulled out and that the filler was less than 1/8” thick. I stripped the two right hand doors and found the same condition. I was relieved that it was not worse. I stripped off the crudely applied Bondo on the doors to reveal black paint below. When that paint started to lift I found another layer of Body filler, and then the original paint below that. It appeared that the car had been dragged down the same post twice!