I've made some good progress

No pictures yet, but I made some good progress this weekend with more to go.

My friend Mike came over to help me get the rear axle and springs out, which we did.  My camera batteries were dead, so no pictures but they are charging now.  I'll get pics as I reassemble.

We opened the rear end while we had it out.  It was surprisingly clean inside with no apparent wear on the gears or bearings.   The carrier assembly was gooped in with liquid gasket instead of a proper paper gasket, so I suspect that the previous owner may have done some updates or repairs, which is why it looked so good.  We reassembled with a proper gasket, and scraped off about 30 pounds of road grime.  I took a wire wheel in my drill to it last night to clean up the grime, and in the process took off some of the original finish.  So for now, I sprayed flat black Rustoleum on it just to protect the bare metal.  Sometime later I will take the entire axle to be refinished, but for now I just want to get the car on its feet and on the road.

We counted gear teeth, and found 44 teeth on the ring and 16 on the pinion, which means a 2.75 gear ratio.  I have no idea what the car came with, but I will be putting lower gears in it.  I'm guessing 3.5 or 3.73, somewhere around there, but have some time to do some research.

It's colder than hell, at least for Texas, but I'm going to work on it some more this afternoon with the goal of getting the new rear springs attached and the unit back in the car.

I'll post more later.