Rear end removal

   The last couple of weeks have not been great for working on the car.  Life, the yard, and other things have managed to steal time away from the mustang.  I did manage to accomplish a couple of things so here they are.

   I managed to grind down the welds, fix a few pinholes (there weren't very many fortunately), and paint the toe board against the elements.  It was a pretty straight forward job, not really much to say.  I also managed to get out the old 8 inch rear and leaf springs.  That ended up being quite the task.

   The leaf spring bolts were extremely rusted, and after all the usual methods of bolt removal (heat, penetrating spray, breaker bar, and lots of grunting/yelling), I had only managed to loosen two of those blasted bolts.  That just means it was time to break out the old cutting wheel, and remove them the quick and destructive way.  I cut through the back bolts first as they were the easy ones.  The front ones under the floor were not so easy.  With my 4 1/2 inch grinder I was only able to cut through one side of the driver's side bolt.  The clearance was just to tight to get in there with the cutting wheel.

  As I sat and pondered the problem, I thought, how about a sawzall?  Fortunately, my father-in-law had one I could borrow.  Unfortunately, after I had started in on trying to cut through the bolts, I found out just how fast one of those blades will dull on hardened grade 8 bolts.  I made it a quarter of the way through the bolt.  After pricing out blades at the hardware store, I determined that it would probably cost me 40-50 dollars in blades just to get the 2 bolts out.  There has to be a better option.

   As I started walking out of the store, wondering how I was going to get these bolts out, I passed the grinding discs.  The 7 inch discs caught my eye and I stopped and took a look at it.  Holy crap!  It has a 7/8 inch arbor!  I can fit it on my grinder if I take the guard off!  I will have to be very careful with this as it is very dangerous to do what I was pondering.  The thing that finally sold me on trying it was the cost.  A measly 4 dollars.  Well, here goes.

  Got home, got it on the grinder, put on gloves, and face shield and proceeded to slowly and cautiously grind away.  After a few minutes of doing my best to keep the speed to a manageable level, and all my fingers where they were, the first bolt was cut to pieces and the spring dropped out of the pocket.  After a little more time on the other side, that one was free as well.  Whew!  Hopefully I won't need to do anything like that again.

   Pulled it out and examined the transition pan with close scrutiny for pretty much the first time.  It doesn't look to bad, I can probably get away with some minor patches.  Not too worried about it as I plan on upgrading to a four link sometime in the future.  Assuming I have the money for the system.  I also have a 9 inch that I plan on installing in as well, so there goes the rusted and beat on 8 inch.

Ground down, and fixed some minor stuff.

Painted a nice uniform color.  I may fill in the e-brake hole.  I am pondering using a Lokar hand brake like Mr. Pruett used in his boss.

Here is that blasted hunk of rusted metal. 

Here is my solution.  I'm very glad that it worked. 

Empty wheel wells!  Yes, yes, that quarter is on the list of repairs.  It has had at least one really bad attempted repair already.

Doesn't look too bad under here, most of the factory undercoating is still there.  The holes for the shocks were a little hammered.  I may end up filling them in if they aren't needed.  Won't know until I decide on a four link kit.  You can see the great big hole that is in the frame rail behind the torque box.  I was able to poke holes in the frame as far up as the middle of the arch.  It is the big replacement this summer.  Should be fun.

Here it is pulled from the car.  It's a mess.  I wonder if I can sell it?

All this rust and grit fell out of the rail as I was pounding and working on the springs.  Yikes!

Toe board

I started this installation about two weeks ago.  I didn't have much time to work on it last week, so I just cleaned some stuff up and fixed some welds I wasn't happy with.  This week it ended up being rainy and wet on the first day, so I didn't get anything done.  The next day wasn't to bad, just kind of cloudy and a little cold.  So I put on a couple of extra shirts and dug right into the patch.

I started by marking off where I wanted to get started and cut out the area.  Most of it was already gone, I just wanted to get rid of all the holes left from the rivets the PO used to attach his bad repair.  With that out of the way, I got looking at it and decided that I wanted to square things up a bit.  I wanted to save the area under the steering column hole and the brake cable hole as they are not reproduced very well on the panel (or not at all).

After I had it a little more square, it was just a matter of trimming and fitting the patch until I was happy with how it looked.  Prepped all the surfaces, clamped it in place, pounded a few places with the body hammer to ensure tight fit, and warmed up the welder.  After a little while, and lots of moving around the panel trying to keep it relatively cool, it was welded in.  I think it turned out rather well.  Everything lines up pretty much where it should and it looks so much better than the hole that used to be there.

You can see that it isn't welded up near the top in the left side.  I left it that way on purpose as I need to replace that upper portion of the firewall.  Before I do that though, I have to pull off the cowl and fix that damage there.  While I am in the area, I will need to take care of the side cowl panel as well.  Things for the future as I don't have the panel to repair the cowl yet.  I will leave it alone for now and come back later.  The plan is to head back and get started on the drivers side wheel well and the rear frame rail.  I am really not looking forward to this part of the repairs as it looks like it is going to be a pain in the butt.  Oh well, it has to be done sometime I suppose.

My initial cuts.  I wanted to see where I really wanted to start the actual patch.

Rivet holes and some metal gone.  To many angles for me though, don't think I want to do that much trimming of the patch panel.

Taped off a little more for removal.

That's better.  Shouldn't be as hard to duplicate on the patch now.

Fitted and located all the holes for the rosette welds.  You can see some extra holes next to each other in the middle.  I have to admit I screwed up and wasn't paying attention before drilling them.  Measure twice and drill/weld once.  I pulled out my copper heat sink and filled them in before the final prep on the panel.  Hopefully I learned my lesson.  It may not be so easy to fix in the future.

Ground off all the paint in the spots where the welds are going.

Drilled, painted the backside with weld through primer, and waiting for it to dry.  The two smaller holes are where the clecos are going.  I used them to make sure everything lined up in the same spot as I took the panel on and off.  I'll drill them out using my spot weld cutter later.  I am finding the tool to be rather versatile that way.  In fact I drilled out all the holes with it.  I started with a 1/8 bit and used the spot weld cutter to just drill out the panel.  I found it goes much faster this way than trying to step it. 

Welded in!  I ran out time this week and will have to finish grinding it down next time.  After some paint it should look pretty good.  The butt welding went very easy on this panel.  Good penetration and it doesn't look like there will be a lot of pinholes if any.  I was pleased with how it turned out.

Torque box part 2

     I wasn't able to get to it right away, but I did stick the fender and door on in order to check the gaps.  As the pictures show the gap at the back of the door is really tight, and up front it is a little wide.  If I had really spent some time adjusting everything I probably could have had everything lined up better.  I was really just looking for consistency and that the gaps were at least even on the sides and bottom.

Really tight back here, needs to go forward a bit.  I don't have it closed all the way.

Gap just looks bigger than it really is due to the angle.

See, it doesn't look to bad.

Lines are straight, looks good.

     I have now fitted the torque box several times while in the process of getting the rocker installed, so I am pretty sure that it is where it needs to be.  Quick check of the fitment, pull it off, and then scuff, clean and paint the back side with Zero Rust as it will be inaccessible for the duration of its life (I hope).  I also gave the inside of the box the same treatment.

Before paint.  Ugly!

Wet paint!

Scuff a little here, scuff a little there.

Cleaned and painted.  Looks good.  To bad it will never be seen again.

  I fit it, marked my holes, pulled it off, drilled them out, and reinstalled it.  Checked fitment one more time, clecoed and clamped it into its final resting place.  Now for those of you who are wondering, the box installs over the frame rail flange.  This is how the factory did it.  There is a great diagram in the assembly manual that shows this.  If you have an earlier car with out a torque box, and you're not replacing the toe board, you may want to do a one piece box as that would be easier.  That way you can slide it under the frame rail and just drill straight through the toe board for attachment.

Drilled and ready for hot, molten metal.

Clecoed tight!

I swear that the auto darkening helmet has improved my welds  significantly.  I can't believe I didn't get one to begin with.

   Ground down the welds, scuffed the whole thing up, cleaned it off with a white cloth and alcohol (that way I can see if I got all the crud) and proceeded to paint it with the Zero Rust.  I even did inside the frame rail at this point as I plan on doing the toe board next.  I felt good during this entire process.  I could feel the car stiffen up with this part of the metal work.

Painted!

   I didn't have a whole lot of time left in the day for the car, but I did want to get the process on the toe board started.  This is just a rough fit to check everything out, I have a lot of trimming of old metal and new before final fitment.  I started by cutting off that annoying flange that is on all of these replacement pieces.  Why is it there?  The answer is simple.  These parts are meant to fit a range of years.  The early cars did not have torque boxes and so the flange was necessary to hold it to the rocker.  You can check this out by looking at a 67 car on the passenger side because they only had a torque box on the drivers side.  The earlier cars didn't even have that.  It wasn't until 68 that they became standard to have them on both sides.  If you again check the assembly manual, it shows the straight line cut of the toe board against the torque box flange.

It really feels good to be able to fill this ugly hole with metal.  I have been staring at it for way to long.

Goodbye unnecessary piece of metal.

Spring is finally here! Oh, and rocker install.

Edit:
I had to remove some pictures as I submitted a replacement procedure for the rocker to CJ Pony Parts.  You can see them and my write up there. Complete Rocker Installation



  This has been a really good week for me.  I have had three full days of 50 and 60 degree weather with which to work on the car.  So out comes the tools, and back to work on the car.  Now for those of you who remember what it was I was working on, it was installing the new complete rocker assembly on the drivers side.  I had run into some fitment issues due to the fact that the replacement was a slightly different size than the original.

  The problem areas were the a-pillar where I had done a patch using the original rocker as a guide, and back on the b-pillar and quarter, where I also had done a patch.  After having three plus months to think about what needed to happen in order to get it to fit, I had come up with a solution.  It wasn't one I was really happy with due to the fact that it meant cutting out some of the work I had done and redoing it.  Problem was, I couldn't figure out a way of getting things to work properly without doing it that way.

  After pulling everything out and get the rocker fit up into the panels, I had confirmed that things needed to be redone.  Sigh.  So out comes the old whirling disk of metal destruction, and out comes part of the patch for the front a-pillar.  Suddenly that part of the rocker slid right into place.  All set there, now to head to the rear.  Now at the back, there are some tabs that stick out that were flush with the old rocker. they are on the inside of the b-pillar brace.  The original rocker was a little bit shorter than the reproduction piece.  The new piece had more metal in the area than the old one.  To solve that problem, I simply cut a couple of notches for the tabs to fit in.  Suddenly that bracing piece slid into place between the inner and outer pieces of the rocker right where it was on the original.

   Now onto the quarter fitment.  The problem with this was that I had welded in a new piece because the flange at the bottom had rusted away.  Somehow I had managed to weld it a little low towards the back end.  I had based my patch off of the piece I had cut out.  I didn't realize that the back side had been sloped down about 1/8 of an inch.  Every time I went to fit the rocker there was a gap at the front and it was flush at the back.  What was the solution?  Basically do a relief cut almost the whole way up the piece so that it would shift enough to get everything tight for the quarter/rocker gap.  Out comes the wheel again.  Cut is made, and everything now fits.  What is the lesson learned from this?  I should have replaced the rocker first, and then welded the patches in.  Hopefully I won't have to do this type of thing again.

  Now before I welded everything in, I grabbed the wire wheel and the wire brush and scrubbed out the areas that I wouldn't have access to again and then sprayed them with zero rust.  I fit everything and lined it up, donned my new auto darkening helmet from Harbor Freight (on sale, by the way), and started in on the welding.  Holy crap!  My welds magically improved, I wasn't blowing through as much, and I was welding a whole lot faster!  Why did I ever think that a regular helmet was ok, I will never know.  I will never go back to a using one of those things.  Little tip for anybody not already using an auto darkening helmet.  Go get one right now!  I still need to check the door alignment and grind down the welds, but it is in at last.

  My next post will hopefully cover the rest of the torque box, and getting the toe board in.  With any luck, my repairs will start to happen a lot faster as more of the structure is replaced with good metal.  On to the pictures!

Here you can see where I had to trim my patch back.  The welded metal  just wasn't flexible enough to reshape to the slightly different size of the new piece.  I'll have to put a new piece in.  There was also a little surface rust where I didn't get it properly protected before winter.  It came off easy enough with my wire wheel.

Getting it tight and flush.

The relief cut I had to make to get the rocker to line up all along the bottom of the flange. :(

Here is that cut again.  Notice how the gap is flush and tight.  All that gray is weld through primer.  I  ground down the e-coat and applied the primer.  I don't like to leave any untreated areas if I can help it.

You can just see the two little tabs that stick out on the brace that is slid in between the two pieces of the rocker.  I had to cut notches so that they would fit where they were supposed to be located.  I sandwiched it all together before pulling the weld trigger.  I love my high clamping force clecos.

Everything is fully welded in.  Time to get that brace out of there.

Finally an update!

This isn't going to be much of a post as it is still cold, wet and snowy.  Which means that I still cannot get back to the metal work on the car.  Instead I pulled out the old doors and pulled everything off of them that I could even possibly consider reusing.  I ended up being a little disappointed as a lot of stuff was missing.  You'll see how much in the pics.  At this point I might just replace everything for the doors since there was so little hardware there to begin with.  I used Alex's guide to taking the doors apart, it helped me find a couple of those fiddly little things.

Driver's side door latch, and various rods and the handles.

The window out of the driver's side.

Looking inside the passenger side door, you can see the bottom of the chrome for the window with broken glass inside of it.

Better shot of the remainder of the passenger window.

I had the vent window on the passenger side, but no vent window on the driver's side.  Of course I also have the driver's window, but no passenger window.  I guess it makes things even.

Vent window removed.

Passenger window hardware, didn't have a driver's side.

Empty window chrome.  At least I still have it.

Another piece of the window hardware.

On another note, I was on ebay (I search through those listing several times a week) when I ran across this fold down seat.  Now I didn't have one with the car and so I have always been a little worried about where I would find one, and I really didn't want to have to pay the repop prices.  Well, needless to say I won the auction for this 65 seat and now here it is sitting on my living room floor.  It cost me a fraction of the price for the repop, and after I refurbish it, it will still have cost me less.  What's that you say?  It's a 65?  Don't you have a 67?  Well the good news is, that I can modify the fold down seat to fit into my 67 pretty easily as all the rear seats from 65-70 are all the same dimensions.  Pretty cool, huh?  Maybe I'll work on this while the weather still sucks for me.  There is a great site about these seats, you can find it here http://www.folddownseat.com/

Top of seat.  Covers will be replaced.

Bottom of seat, that padding is looking pretty worn.  I think replacement is in order.

Seat back.

Other side of seat back.

Back part of the fold down portion.

From the back side.

Top part of fold down.

Other side.

All the pieces.

In the seated position.

In the fold down position, just imagine that the bottom part is under the  sections.