maybe sabotage?

 

I'm going to guess it was stored with an empty tank during winters or something. Possibly with a loose gas cap to "let it breathe". Those rusting patterns looks more like water droplets/condensation build up rather than if it was submerged in water.

Not suggesting the OP did this just commenting on the RUST.

 

I have no idea. I bought the car like this to fix up as a fun restoration project car. Looks like it was sitting around for a long time. Found a small dead wasp nest in the spare wheel area and another one in the air duct.




Here's some pictures of the shift lever..

 

Thank you for the update! Glad the issue was resolved. Maybe T-ing a fuel presaure gauge in the future would be helpful to spot an issue like that. At idle it should have pretty much dead even pressure

 

Are you sure the car doesn’t have a flood damage history?

 

Exactly what I was thinking as I looked through the last few pictures. (Cool thread otherwise!)

 

Now that you mentioned it, it sure does look like it.

 

Yep, those shifter pics definitely look like from flood damage. There's no way it could look like that without a bunch of water sitting in it. They probably drained the gas tank but didn't take it off the car to get all the water out/dry out thus the condensation/rust in the gas tank.

Since you're doing basic maintenance on the thing, maybe you might want to buy some cheap(er) fluids and replacing it on a more frequent basis. Every 1000 miles or every month depending on how often you drive the thing. Engine, Trans, diff. Basically try to flush as much out as you can. I dunno, how do you "fix" something like what happened to the shifter in the trans/diff?

Brake caliper rebuild or replacement is probably a good idea as well sometime down the line.