Preservative! Now that's a good term for it Ed. The whole underside is very well "preserved" indeed!
Thanks for all the info, I'll come back with some proper pics as soon as I get it over to the car wash. The next item I want to tackle is figuring out the motor castings. For all intents and purposes I think I'm going to stick with the "near original" drive train components. I'm hoping that as well equipped as she is that someone took the time to find a 261 to put in there.
Fingers crossed!
