Build Thread 1978 Mercury Cyclone. The pig is in the pen.

Boosted92LX said:

Mike, if you are breaking taps, you CAN use a tap drill a few thousandths larger. It makes a world of difference. I wouldn't hesitate to oversize up to .010 for something like that. 4-40s are ridiculously small, anyway. I wouldn't chance it by sticking to a chart next time. Give yourself some leeway. It's not aerospace.. no sense in breaking a million taps. In mild steel one should do dozens of holes. find a good lube. Tapmagic is worth the money.

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I'm breaking taps because all I get is about 10-12 holes to one of them. One was purely my fault, the other three just decided to go probably because WD 40 isn't sufficient to lube it.. The holes are not that tight it's just that that tap is so damned little.

It seems that one decision to modify something on this car automatically forces another. Now that the dash was mounted the distance between the grille mesh, and the steering wheel horn adapter was way to short to consider using the stock plastic column surround that came on the car originally. Besides that, The one that did come on the car was just south of disintegration as a result of it's exposure to the Arizona sun. Those things, and the fact that there was once a column shifter sticking through that cover meant it wasn't gonna work on this car.

I coulda got one for a early fox Mustang, but again it needed to be so short, there'd only be two screws holding the thing so I had to improvise again.


See,.....stumpy.

I decided to use my preferred medium. Steel. The horn adapter measures in at 4.0", so I called Summit last week, and ordered a 3' stick of 16ga.,4" exhaust tubing.

25 bucks shipped. That became my budget for the column surround. I had the welders, and a small piece of leftover 1-5/8" exhaust tubing from when
I built the hotside, so all-in-all I'm set.

It takes all day. In my typical fashion, most of the time spent "building" the thing was wasted having to go back and weld holes back closed that were either incorrectly located, or moved during the mock-up.

But I finally get the thing close enough for these pics.


Three screws hold the thing on, it woulda been 4, but the one side was full of ignition wire sockets, and left no room.

No worries though, It works fine.



The fit is not perfect but it's pretty damn close, I still have to get after it with a sander, and it may take a spot weld here and there. But for the most part it's done.

One more chip......

95BlueStallion said:

Even taking all day, that is a one off piece that, again, just ties the whole custom job together. Too bad you are painting/wrapping in leather. It looks pretty damn cool as raw metal.

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I was thinking the same thing for the whole dash (including that new piece). I thought what if I just sanded everything real good, and just cleared all this s hit....

Then I woke up.

02 281 GT said:

Your first time driving it would be like this:

View: http://youtu.be/PCSNCs7bwCw?t=6m5s

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That was funny as hell, and you're right. That is exactly why I can't keep the dash raw steel.

95BlueStallion said:

I get that it will look much more finished with leather and paint, I just have an appreciation for metal work. Here in a month or two, you are going to have something else to laugh at me for. I plan to cut the nose off the ranger and hang it in the garage over my work bench, after transplanting the 351/4R70W into a new 4X4 project. There wont be much metal work, other than hauling whats left of the Ranger to the scrap heap, or making a trailer out of the bed like you see down in... Alabama.

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Let me just say in advance

95BlueStallion said:

When I bought it, it looked straight as an arrow. Well when I felt inside the fenders, I felt the in tact inner fender lining. Now that I have driven it through two winters, all the body work it has had is falling off. Needless to say, its rotting away and I cant justify putting any money into it. Plus, as you know, 4WD comes in handy in IA. All that being said, I love the front end of it, and thats why its gonna be garage art. The trailer thing, that was a joke. I'll be selling the 9" rear end and scrapping the rest, unless you want the tail lights for the GM????

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Iowa. The reason why small children still work in salt mines. So the department of roads can dump metric tons of it on the streets.

If I can get the pics uploaded, we'll talk about today's dilemma.

I've been diligently working on the driver side end cap. Since the passenger door is on, that side of the car constantly stares back at me (since I'm not looking out, into the garage.)

I thought to myself that before I put the final touches on the endcap, I might wanna mock up the door bar one more time to get a better idea of how the transition is gonna look.



I went one step further, and actually fabricated the mount structure to hold that bar in place. Since that bar is attached to the door, and it has to mesh w/ the bar on the dash, I had to make it all "adjustable" so that I could compensate for door alignment.

After I got the bottom two holes figured out, I turned my attention to the top mount, and that is when I looked more closely at the intersect point.



#1. The whole thing is a recipe for f'd up paint. The door bar will move far enough just by the simple act of opening and then closing the door. I was gonna have to come up w/ a solution where the two bars will have minimal contact w/ each other.
#2. This looks like ass. The intersect will be visible. You'll see that little stump that makes up the dash bar when you look through the windshield.

So, like I always do, I stopped and stared at the thing for a really long time. I'd move to the pass side of the car and look down at the stupid looking thing, then I'd move over to the driver's side, and get down on one knee and look at it some more. I must've walked back and forth between the two sides about a dozen times, all while asking myself "How was I gonna blend that transition to where it actually looked like a smooth bend, instead of some wonky attempt at a 3 point turn".

Did you ever read the Shining? ( You had to read it to get the inference here, I don't think the movie went over this that well). In the book, they talked about someone who "shines". (Basically it's having ESP) When that pain in the ass little kid was running from his drunk crazy assed dad, he mentally called the character played by Scatman Crothers to come and save them. The telepathed message was so strong, it was like it was screamed, it was so intense, it caused Scatman's nose to bleed.

So, now that that side note is set up,.......comes the rest of the story.

As I'm obsessing over how I'm gonna solve the problem with the the door/dash bar, a faint noise buzzes in my ear.

I ignore it.

A couple more switches between sides, and the noise, now definitely more of a voice, becomes more obvious. But,

I ignore it. There's nobody else in the garage but me.

I sit on my roll around thingy, and I roll between sides. Passenger side, ( I stand up) Driver side, (I kneel down. I kneel on the driver side to get a better view angle)

Then it hits me. HEY DUMB ASS! WHY DON'T YOU DO THIS?

The car is talking to me. Just like in the book, the message is so loud, I get b itch slapped off my rolly thing onto the garage floor.

It's an epiphany. I crawl to my feet, and stand with my mouth open while the car tells me that I'll have to weld the transition onto the top bar, and make a new cut at the middle of the turn. By welding the transition, I'll be able to blend the turn, I'll be able to create a butt joint where the door bar, and the dash bar will meet as opposed to the fish mouth that would just trash the paint. The butt joint could be gasket-ed, and I'd be able to cushion the bars to minimize any interference. I'll be able to make a domed cover to weld on top of the intersection that will look more like I planned it that way, Looking more like one bar instead of the two.

It's my typical SOP. Do it once, fix it twice.

Despite having a new path to follow, It's late, and I've been working on the junker for about 6 hours. I tell the car that it's late, and we'll deal with this tomorrow. No response.

Go figure.

Ok, lets resume from where I last left off.

Friday night I go out w/ the wife drinking. I always go out w/ the wife on Friday night. Drinking.

The couple that we were out with asked me how the Fairmont was coming along. I told him if he subscribed to my thread he'd know first hand. Since he didn't, I retold the last thread as it was written. When I got to the part where I "shined", and got blasted by my car, I decided for effect, I'd yell at the top of my lungs HEY DUMB ASS, WHY DON'T YOU TRY THIS!! Followed immediately by me clutching my ears, and falling out of the booth onto the sticky bar floor.

Let me tell you this didn't have the desired effect I was hoping for.

The entire bar got silent, and the waitress rushed over to see if I was having some sort of seizure. When she found out I was simply retelling a story, she got pissed.

I tell ya, some people have no sense of humor.

Now that we got that behind us........


In other, more car specific news, I spent yet another day doing little of nothing.

It's all my fault really. I can never leave well enough alone.

The door bar before:


If you look at it, you'll notice that the front arches. That bugged me.



The bottom bar more closely illustrates how I wanted the radius to go. The top bar was gonna have to be redone.


Consequently, It underwent an upper bar-en-dectomy.

It took some while for me to determine whether or not I wanted the bottom bar to finish the way it's pictured. It would after all be way easier to trim out, if I left it that way, but for me, it seems that easy is not to be.

I had to build this complex "S bar" that followed the upper.



When I tell you that this was a flaming pain in the ass to do, you can take me literally. It is what I had originally intended for the door bar. All of the bends were sectioned in, welded, then ground smooth. Having that many bends that had to be fit, and precisely welded was just too much to ask of me evidently. While the top bar is now at the proper angle, now the lower bar now angles downward at the front.

Will I leave it that way?


Nope.

Now that I look at it though, The simpler "straight" bar that is the lower may be the better choice. Thoughts?

95BlueStallion said:

I prefer the original straight lower bar. More simplistic.

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You cannot wait 3 days and offer an opinion. I have already decided to agree with you before you even formed the thought in your head.