Ok, I'm gonna have to peck on the stupid iPad to do this update. This morning, I updated my iPhone to iOS 9, and it locked my phone into recovery mode. Getting it out of recovery mode requires that iTunes be installed on my computer. My computer has a Win 10 os, and QuickTime doesn't support win 10 Quicktime is part of ITunes, so,...no worky.
Bottom line, no iPhone as of yet. Pics are in this iPad consequently, and there is no photobucket uploader app for iPad, so I'll upload the pics directly from this stupid thing, and deal with the autocorrect.
In between offending people, and me standing on my soap box, I have actually been working on the monster. On my last update, I had to go 40 miles to get a hood from a salvage yard that was ran by Beakie Buzzard. On Tuesday I went up there to get the thing. When I got there I found that it wasn't a salvage yard, but a yard full of salvage cars.
Dudes private property was comprised of 20 acres of cars he " aquired" over the course of 15 years.
When I get there, the first words out of his mouth were "You look familiar".
Turns out, after the rudimentary small talk, he remembered one of the cars I use to run at the local drag strip. I guess that says a lot, considering the car he remembered me for was last ran in 1993. Despite my fame though, it didn't affect the price of the hood one thin dime.....still 100.00.
He walks me through the jungle to get to the fairmont in question, and there it sat: A bucket seat, factory V8 Futura, that for whatever reason, was now rotting away in the woods. There are graphics on the car.........Futura 2002. I kinda laugh at that, but dude swears that that was a factory option. After coming off of my last toe stepping, I chose not to challenge the old guy, but I'm here to tell you,......there ain't no damn such thing as a dealer optioned Futura 2002.
Now if you'll Google that, you'll find that there is in fact one.
A Falcon Futura 2002.............in Australia.
Anyway, I buy the hood, get it back home, and proceed to start stripping the paint off of it.
The hood is pretty rough. Living for countless years in a junkyard has not been nice to my Futura 2002 hood. It has deep scratches all over it. A myriad of small dings and dents, and the stinkin center rib has two dent in it.
It takes me days to even get the thing close to priming.
After thinking about it, I decide to reintegrate the hood scoops back onto the hood. Only this time instead of welding them on, I modify them so they could be bolted on. See, one of the things that bugged me about having an open front scoop welded onto the top of the hood was the fact that there would be un- paintable sheet metal covered by the scoops exposed to water and air. Only a matter of time before that unpainted surface turned to rust, and that wasn't gonna fly. So I decided to change that.
First, I had to get the damn scoops to fit right.
What I ended up doing was removing the welded grille out of the front so that I could " shave" the scoops so that they evened out. What I ended up with were two scoops that were fully 3/8" shorter than they were before, and w/ noticible damage to the sides where the three bolts were welded along the inside edge.
But they fit, and they're the same.
They'll get their appointment w/ Dr Bondo as well.
As pointed out be
@84Ttop, there is a good chance that I actually don't even need the clearance above the skin, so the fact that the scoops only stand 1" off the hood is a moot point now. As for the rear Gvents, I believe that I'll pass on cutting them back in. Whether or not I actually cut a hole to either let cold air in, or hot air out under the scoops is still YTD.
What to do with the air that comes off the rear mounted radiators came next. Originally, I planned to just dump it on top of the rear end through a slot cut in the floor, but I thought better of that. It seemed to me that the air would just languish around under the car, and compete with the hot assed air that would come off the road,.........so I'm gonna change that. ( Actually, I already have)
The grille in the rear 2/3rds of the trunk measures 13 x 8. Two 6" flex hoses will go to a plate that is bolted to to bottom side of the trunk by 16 through bolts that sandwich the top plate to the trunk deck. Those two hoses will serve as a exhaust for the G gills that are in front of the rear tires. Two 6" inlets, two 6" outlets coming off fan driven radiators will hopefully augment any air that might get rammed into the G gills on its own.
What about all the water that's gonna go down those holes Mike?
Glad you asked. Those hoses attach to two 6" pieces of exhaust tubing that fits inside the flex pipe at the top of the trunk, and the other end goes into a female sleeve that is welded to the radiator support structure. The old vent will get covered, and become a " gutter" of sorts for the water to drain on top of the rear end housing.
Genius! It's freaking genius I tell you!
Lastly, there is the doors.
In the previous update, I raved about how perfect the doors were after they came back from the soda blaster.
That wasn't exactly accurate.
One door, ( the passenger door) was perfect. The Drivers door?........
Looked like hell.
I swear,.....grandma lived next to a curb, and that crotchety old bag smacked the bottom edge every time she opened the door. She smacked the door into every other blue hairs car that was at church, and they in turn smacked into her. Typically it's the passenger side that gets this banged up, but for whatever bizarro world reason, the drivers side door had all kinds of dings, creases, and dents from the front to the back, from top to bottom. Even the handle recess was bent inward at the front ( stupid old goat,...... I'd trip her at the Sunday ice cream social if she wasn't already dead)
Wait,........Is that inconsiderate of me to talk about a dead person that I don't even know, or to speak in a negative light towards the elderly in general?...
I'm sorry.
At least it worked for this guy.
Any way,........after a few more hours,....I get that side straight enough to prime as well.
And now both sides are vastly superior to the final finish that the red car had.
One last thing had to be done,.....the two front fenders are still raw.
They will get integrated into the front bumper like the back. That required that I hack the ends off the bumper so I can start that process.
Damn green dust is everywhere. The bondo turns green when it's mixed, and the dust goes everywhere despite the fact that I'm sanding all this junk outside. After a couple of days, it coats everything, and I just go to the front of the garage w/ a leaf blower, and blow all that junk out at 300 mph. Looks like a sand storm coming out of my garage.......the neighbor loves me