Build Thread '83 T-top Coupe - Cliff Notes Edition

Tonight's dishes

Much better

Hey @95BlueStallion . Got them, thanks again Nick.

Those are my "new" t-top trim pieces. Way better than the old ones.

I tore down the blower motor this morning. Notice the new foam seal laying next to the old one. This kit I got for them from Classic Auto Air is really complete.

Here's the two flapper doors that have foam on them. They're very yucky. I should say they were yucky. I scraped off the old foam and cleaned them up. One is metal and was heavily rusted. I sanded it all off and put some rust converter over the whole thing just to be sure it's gone.
Here's a picture with their new foam seals. The seals are an exact fit. I'm pleased.
The rods holding them in the box were pretty skanky too. I treated them the same as the metal door. They're fine now.
I have two more sections of the box to wash tonight, then I can start reassembling them. I have to get a new fan for it. I was going to use the one from Doby, but '86-'93 use a different fan than the '79-'85 models. Oh well, they're about $45. Not too much.

Ok, small victory time. I started cleaning the fan tonight. Mind you, just the fan. After the initial scrubbing the water was so dirty you couldn't see the fan anymore. I'm not kidding. Yuck!

The problem i was having was getting the blades completely clean. I started with a rag, then I tried an old toothbrush (I'll put it back before she needs it). A big scrub brush. All of my little ones that would fit between those blades are at work. Tried a cue tip, it fell apart and didn't really get much.

So I go out to the garage to see if i had any out there. I thought about the little ones that i use for my beer making equipment, then slapped myself for thinking something so horrendous.

That's when I spotted a 2.5" paintbrush...what the hell, I'll give it a try.

The lesson is, when cleaning this style of fan blade, don't use any of those other things I tried. The paint brush is perfect for this. It got every nook and cranny.

I was so pleased with how well it did I will show a before and after picture.


That concludes this evenings lecture on the proper cleaning of your fox body heater fan. Thank you, thank you very much.

Ok, I know your aren't going to believe this, but I'm not showing you everything that I'm doing to the cabin's HVAC.

There's a lot of tedious stuff with this part, and craploads of plastic ducting that needs to be stripped down and washed and bleached (I stopped with the dishwasher because some of the thinner plastic I don't think would handle the heat). What i do with each section is to simply wash it with hot water and dawn, i dump the dirty water and refill with a cup of bleach and dawn to go after the details. Then rinse, check for any remaining slime and dry.

The last pictures I'll show you will be of the upper plenum and the defrost ducting. Ford used staples to hold several of the plastic parts together. They're a little bit of a pita to take out. I didn't take the ones out of the ducting that lead to the vents on the far right and left of the dash. My arm fit into those without too much scraping of skin from my hands and arms. They just got a thorough scrubbing and bleaching to disinfect them.
Upper Plenum assembled.
Starting the tear down.
Blend door out with foam removed. I'll get rid of the glue with laquer thinner.
Defrost vent tore down. I had to tear this down since the inner ducting is so complex.
All clean.
This is the stuff I cleaned this weekend.
LMR doesn't have any heater fans in stock, so I went to Oreilly's. They had to order one out of OKC, it'll be here on tuesday. I'm not sure if it'll fit so I'll take the section the holds the fan down there tuesday evening to see if it fits. Hopefully it does, it's only $33 from Oreilly's instead of $45 from LMR (and LMR is the cheapest I found on the web, though I haven't checked Rockauto yet).

So what this all adds up to is that the entire box and ducting is super clean and disinfected now. I'll start to reassemble it tomorrow. I do have a new heater core, a/c condenser, fan resistor, seal kit and will have a new fan soon. That fan is at the rear of the box, I wouldn't care if the old one worked (it doesn't), I would replace it anyhow. The box has to come out to replace it. I don't want to take it out again......

The parts look new, and with the important stuff for the inside, it essentially will be new. I do need to take my little vacuum pump with me to work tomorrow just to check the various actuators. What should be the effective vacuum be? I need to look that up in my service manuals.

BTW, here's my son Andy with his new to him Mustang. It's a 2009 V6 and the monthly insurance payments are almost what my wife says she'll be paying for monthly payments.
You can see my wife's new Audi A4 in the background, she totaled the pathfinder. Pretty soon we'll all have new vehicles, sure, mine will be a little older, but I'll have T-tops!

This little red car is for me as a sign from God that I don't have to rush anymore on the blue car. SSA, slow, steady and anal. New theme for Robby.

So, I went snooping for high density foam......jeez, you'd think I was looking for a unicorn.

I was in Lowe's when it struck me that my tool box liners are HDF. I looked in the toolbox section, no luck. I also remembered that i've used that stuff for drawer liners at home. So off I went to the shelving section and sure enough, they had this.
It's half the thickness of what I need, but God invented glue for a reason.

Then the search began for thicker HDF. Why? Do you know that gasket that sits between the heaterbox and the firewall? The one the heater core and a/c condenser go through into the engine bay.
No joy at all here. When I was in Lowe's i went by the door matte area, that made me think of my mixing room at work, we have some HDF connecting mattes in there to make our feet feel ever so comfortable while mixing paint. I could cut those pieces into a new gasket, if I wanted a yellow and red gasket. What I did instead was to look for them at Lowe's. They had them for $20 for a pack of four squares that are 2'x2'. It came to me that Harbor Freight had these too. Who would be cheaper, Lowe's or Harbor Freight? Harbor Freight had the same ones with a different label for $7.50. FTW. They are the same density as the original gasket material.
So I cut out three layers of them to replace the gasket. The gasket is two parts glued together. The larger piece is thinner and happened to have the exact same thickness as the matte, easy peasy. The smaller piece is thicker by about 1/2. So I took two of the layers and glued them together. Then I rough shaped them and took some 40grit sandpaper and started to thin the two layer sandwich down to match the thicker gasket piece. I used a round wood rasp to shape the holes for the a/c evaporator and heater core to fit through. They're not quite finished, but real close.

Well................Uhm..............back down to mere mortal level now. It's almost laughable what i'm about to talk about. I'll start with a picture.
This is my original fan motor. After looking at that other thread I realize that I'm the poor white trash that you hear about periodically.

So, I went to Oreilly's to check out the motor they ordered from OKC. It was very wrong. So this evening I brought the above pictured motor to them. They cross referenced their database and said this was the motor for an '86. Uhhhh....whatever, can you get it for me? Yes, yes they can. Due to current "budget restraints", I declined till next payday (yes, the next payday that I'll be purchasing this hood and scoop)
Figures, its closer to Kona Blue and not beat to hell.......anyhow.

So, if I have till next wednesday, why not try tearing the motor down and seeing if I can make it work? It isn't seized, just m o v i n g really s l o w. Whatever, I'll tear it down tomorrow and see what I can do.

So, I won't be the super man of fox bodies these other guys are. And they DO deserve the recognition! Their rides are spectacular! I'll be known as the junk man, that's MISTER Sanford to you all! Do you hear that Martha?!....I'm coming Martha......

Maybe I'll polish the housing in respect to these guys we have been talking about. God knows I feel like polishing something after looking at their mustangs.

I'll post tomorrow if this works out.

BTW, what do you freaking think of that GT hood?! Big, badass score on my part! Woohoo!

BTW....80 bucks! That's right $80 for the hood and scoop!

jrichker said:

Hood with bubble scoop... extra clearance for a carb or maybe a 351...Humm...

Click to expand...

That's what I'm thinking Joe, 351 clearance. Someday. Right now? Just to pretend i'm breaking bad.

Well, I got the fan motor working, the bushing at the bottom end of the armature was seized up on the armature shaft.

So, it's all clean and nice now. I hooked it up to my jumper battery and it ran, but was making a squalling noise. Not real loud, but the noise was there.

What does that mean? I need a new fan......

Win some, lose some.

100 pages and I don't have the car in my garage.

Anyhow, I got the heater box mostly put back together today finally.

I had to strip the rust off the rods for the blend doors and I coated them with a black self etching paint.

That seal kit didn't include some things like the new foam for between the blower/fresh air/recirc air section and the main box. I just used some packing foam. I had to glue two strips together for part of it.

I reassembled the section that directs air to the side vents or defroster. Replacing the staples was fun.

I had to make the hd foam covers for the blend door in the defrost/side vent section. Got them glued on.

So, the box has a new a/c condenser, heater core, fan resistor, blend door actuator, it will have a new fan motor tomorrow and I replaced most of the clips, and of course the seals. AND it's sparkling clean on the inside!
Including that bitc*in' new heater box to firewall seal made from floor mattes!


I'm still waiting on some of the clips that have to be special ordered now.These clips used to be a regular part of bodyshop hardware shelves.......damn......i'm getting old. Ah well, so is my mustang. It also needs some new vacuum lines, this is the time to do it, I really don't wish to be this deep into the heater box again for a long time.

So, maybe tomorrow the heater box will be going into storage, maybe not.

I've got time, so I stripped the t-top ends. I'll mask them and shoot them in just a little bit.

Here's one of them, trim grey. These are the last pieces of exterior trim, btw. Woohoo!
I still need to dig the seals out of the boxes in waiting. Also I'll need to get the t-top lock cylinder rekeyed to my new lock set.

Unmasked, one in the sun and one not. Hard to see the difference in the pictures. They're just beautiful to me.

I was going to pick up my "new" hood tonight. But God decided to send a storm instead. The storm does have hail! We in the bodyshop industry really, really need a hail storm right about now.

So, tomorrow night I'll pick up the hood.

Finishing the day out I reassembled the dash with it's metal frame. I decided not to paint the frame and just sand off the worst of the rust instead. Why? I'm too paranoid about the grounds that are in that frame. I don't understand the grounds well enough in the dash to be sure I'd provide the appropriate bare metal connections between the wires, frame and to the body. Bare metal was good enough for Ford, it'll be good enough for me. BTW, I thank God that I took pictures during the disassembly process!

I got the hood scoop this morning, yes, I know I was supposed to get a hood with it. The hood had a rot hole under the scoop. The hood wasn't the type that came with the hole from the factory, so I just got the scoop.

I still payed the guy $80 for it and I'm happy with that.

It's been painted a few times. I'll strip it, primer and block it, then paint.

I'll be two sided taping it to my hood. I'll need to build up the edge with some PBA to give the tape a "shelf" to stick to since the edge is just to small to offer solid adhesion. @95BlueStallion , were you going to do something like that with yours?

It's stripped

So that's the end of page 100. I forget how much i've done at times!

In primer, tomorrow I'll modify it to be able to use two sided tape.