Cleaning It Up
My Station Wagon sat in a field for about 2 years before I bought it. In that two years it somehow collected untold amounts of junk inside it. And before that it had been used to drive around on the mountain, and was drive what must have been some amazing mud holes. Looking around it there was dried mud and grease everywhere. Between the framerail and the body was packed solid with it, the engine, tranny, and transfer case were covered, it really needed some cleaning.
Being in a field it seemed to somehow collect mice. Things like the seat and the underseat toolboxes were turned into mice nests. In fact when I was taking the passenger side seat out there was a mouse inside of it! It kept poking it's head out so I kept trying to smack it with a wrench.. never did succeed though. After I noticed that there were obviously mice in the vehicle I decided to proceed with caution because some mice have that disease that will kill you if you inhale dust from their nests. So I used a shop vac to suck the majority of vehicle clean before I did anything else. This took a couple hours.. or basically a whole saturday.
The rest of the interior cleaning consisted of cleaning out the numerous beer cans, chunks of wood, etc. I discovered that the floor under the drivers and passengers feet was not in good shape as I thought it was, on the driver's side was a printing press plate and on the passenger side some sheet metal screwed in. I kept the plate as it looks like it might be very very old. It's made of bronze, about 1/4 inch think and has words and pictures etched into the one side of it. From what I can tell the pictures look Christmas related, but I haven't cleaned it up as I don't know the correct way to do that without hurting it. If you know something about antique things like that I'd like to know more about what it may be worth, if anything, so email me.