A Little Work

The last few months have been crazy with traveling, people coming by, and others, but I have gotten back to some work on the car. Most of the work has been getting back to good metal on the right front side. Here are some pictures of the work I have been doing. I did not want to take the rest of the car apart on the inner rocker panel, so I cut the worst of the rusted section off


A friend of mine made me a new piece at his shop. It looks great and should fit just right. I had him make it long so that I could massage it back in place. There isn't much strength coming from here, its more to hold the torque box in place.

Here is a shot of the swiss cheese I had to make to get all of the parts out. It is a lot of work with a drill and pneumatic chisel. The old metal is kind of soft, so I have to be careful. I'm glad I started where a panel will cover and carpet will never show some of my learning. Other parts of the car when I get to them will require my A game.
Here is an under belly shot of the RH side. I got the old floor support out without too much hassle, and was able to keep the tunnel support in good shape.
My next steps are to clean up the area good / blast it in the necessary places, and get some primer and PUR15 rust paint on before I close it all up. Primer and paint won't get in here once I close it up. I have also found that a big wire wheel in the grinder is the best for dealing with the under coating. Trying chemicals, gas, paint stripper, thinner, etc just makes that junk like putty.

In between the major metal work, I have been working on getting parts blasted and primed. Here is a shot of the fender apron braces. They had some rust pitting, but cleaned up pretty good. The picture below is of the parts sprayed with an acid etching primer. Most people say that is the best for this type of stuff. I am going to sand them down good and shoot them the engine bay black later on. Right now I want to get as many parts cleaned and primer as possible. I am having a lot of problems with humidity. My sand blast gun was shooting straight water one day, so I have added extra filters to my compressor, but even that is not enough. I can get maybe 30-45 mins of blasting in before the gun clogs from the media being wet. It's been near 100 degrees each day and almost that for humidty the last few weeks. Maybe that will back down some, or I will have to wait on fall.

Update

Another crazy month has went by, and in addition to it being freezing cold outside, I had another Germany trip, so production is not what I would like, but I have been doing a little work. Below is a shot of the RH Torque box and the RH Front Frame rail before I pulled them out. We knew about all of the rust in the rail, but as I started cutting, I found more. The RH rocker rail is chewed up on the end, but I think I can fix it and paint with the special anti-rust paint I have.


The frame rail and torque box are out except the back plate of the torque box. It has about 20 spot welds to the firewall that I am cutting from the floorboard. I am going really slow with this so I don't dent the floorboard.



One other thing I got done, was to pull the gas tank. It is in really good shape. Just a little clean up and new gaskets will get the job done here. The rear trunk area in in good shape except for the outside wheel wells, which I knew were in bad shape from the beginning. I am not going to go in here until I get the front completely fixed. I had to pull the gas tank to keep from blowing up the joint when I was welding. I'm glad I didn't go far when I cranked it up when I got it here, because I got about half a gallon out of the tank !!

I had the transmission hot tanked and it got all of the grease and grime off, but there is still aluminum oxidation on the outside of the housing. I have tried to wire brush it off, but it is not real successful compared to the amount of work. After talking to some people around on coatings and such, I am going to mask off all of the machined sections and lightly blast it.


I got to a point where I really needed a blast cabinet. I had been waiting until they were on sale at Harbor Frieght, and finally hit it and had a 20% off coupon. This one works pretty well. With the Shop-Vac hooked up, a light inside, and the air compressor running wide open, it works pretty good.

This cabinet has pretty good room in it. I have the fan blade in there laying down right now.

I was able to get the fan pulley and most of the fan blasted today. It was just warm enough to paint the fan pulley, so it is done. The fan will be ready for paint soon as well. I have to be patient when blasting because it doesn't take long to run down the pressure on my compressor.

Progress!!

I hadn't posted in a long time, but work has been going on slowly.

After I brought the engine home, I started to cut and grind out the right front frame rail of the body. It took a bunch of spot weld cutting, but I got it loose.

Since my plan is to keep a mechanical and body project going on at the same time, I also started to tear down the transmission. Here is a pic from the start.

The first step was to knock the gunk off. I then used a wire brush to try and clean some of the suface oxides. This worked ok, but I will need more work later.


I didn't take any pictures with is all apart, but it is done. None of the parts are damaged, just some wear on it. It was rebuild years ago, and looked in real good shape. The fluid was clean and no chips or anything in the pan. The rebuild kit I got for it should be ok. I took the parts to be hot tanked before I start re-assembly.



I will put up some pics of all of the parts before I start re-assembly. Hopefully the build is as easy as the tear down, the Ford service manual was really helpful.

Motor Is Home

Brought home the motor this weekend. I've started putting parts on it to seal up all of the holes. So far, I have the fuel pump, distributor, spark plugs, and temp sender in. I'm going to do more tonight.

I finished the distributor all but a small e-clip that I broke. The pertronix system I put in was real easy.

Distributor Rebuild

Since the engine is ready, I have started to put in the solid state ignition system. Before that however, I am pulling the shaft out to check the bearings and give everything a good cleaning. An old oil leak really has this thing gunked up. The input gear looks good.

Engine is Back Together !

Here is a picture of the current state of the motor. All assembled and Ford Blue. It is a huge difference from how it started. All new parts and ready to go. I stayed with the 2 barrel intake and carb, so I need to go thru a rebuild kit for the carb. We put plenty of engine assembly lube on everything because it will sit for a while.


Fresh tins. We blasted the covers and there was still some pits in the valve covers. The oil pan is perfect, to bad it is under the car !! I chemical stripped everything and painted with Ford Blue hi temp engine paint.
Brass freeze plugs and the heads are ready to go on.
All new pistons and rings.

Sheet Metal Starts

Pulled the RH Front apron off today. I wanted to start on a bad panel to get used to the spot weld cutter and chisel. Worked pretty good. Next is to keep cutting the RH loose until I get the frame rail out. I attached some pictures of the front frame of the car. It has a bad spot at the bottom. I am going to blast it and hopefully have metal.

I also finally got a good look at the cowl vents. They are rusted, so I have to pull the front cap off that section. I am not looking forward to that since ther are about 50 spot welds to get the cap off. The work is going to get worse before it gets better!!