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

Davedacarpainter · Jun 12, 2018

Btw, got the satin finish on the hood.

Davedacarpainter · Jun 12, 2018

Last picture of the hood for a long time. Scoop setting on, not mounted.

Davedacarpainter · Jun 12, 2018

Ok, I lied earlier. I'll show you a couple more pictures of the hood. I brought it home today and thought i'd like to see how it looked back on the car, it's been awhile. The hood is now in its comfortable storage upstairs.

Davedacarpainter · Jun 12, 2018

Back to the things I'm doing about town.

I got this pile here

From this pile here

A preview of new panels to come!

I haven't pulled the brake booster yet, that's tomorrow night. I'm going to pull the rest of the wiring harness and yank out the old automatic pedal assembly. That brings up a good point, anyone got a manual pedal assembly they're willing to part with?

Then I'll scrub the engine bay down. It's almost emptied out. And then comes the hacking and welding!

Davedacarpainter · Jun 14, 2018

I got the woman back from the hospital today at about 4:30, so I had to go work on Booger to make her happy........y'all thought I was doing this for me?

Anywho......I didn't think I was going to be able to work on him, so I left half my tools at work.

Not to be daunted by such hum-drummery as no correct tool on hand I went after the wiring harness first. It's out of there! No more old wiring for Booger! That shelf has pretty much all of the leftovers of the interior. Those springs are from the IRS, don't start.......

Not only did I pull out the harness, I cleaned up the interior. Well......sort of. I still found more change, maybe $2-3. It's been buried under the factory matting. I vacuumed out the loose rust, leaves, rat crap, a couple jihadists, you know, the usual.

I was going to take out the four simple to get to nuts holding the booster on. Yep, that's what I was going to do alright.

I could get to the lower left, easy peasy, lemon squeezy. The other three, on the other hand, need about a 12" extension to reach them. Guess what's not at home?

So tomorrow I'll pull the booster.

I did clean up most of the butyl tape around the windshield too and vacuumed out the the cowel. It was chock full of stuff. Ain't no more.

Here's a few pictures of the floor pan, lovely eh?

Remember that really cool plasma cutter I bought and have been practicing with? The outlets in my garage keep blowing when I use it.

Tomorrow after I get the booster out I will finally scrub the engine bay and make my eb drawing and measure the crap out of things in preparation for the frame rail.

So, maybe this weekend I'll be doing some serious cutting! Yay! All I want for Father's Day is someone to fetch the beer for me and enough argon for my welder to keep going.

Davedacarpainter · Jun 15, 2018

I've tried posting a couple times and kept getting held up, so, here goes.

It was a very hot day today and I sweated buckets full. So I'm kind of pooped and wasn't wanting to sit out in the heat to do a lot. Though I got some things done.

First off, I brought my tools home! It took all of about 60 seconds to get the booster off.

Here's a picture of the new frame rail sitting on the passenger side.

This is a look down the driver's side interior frame rail. Look how pretty and clean it is!

This is the passenger side. The picture doesn't really show the piles of flaked rusted frame rail. It's terrible! It gets worse as you get closer to the shock tower. I'll have to do some repair of the shock tower as well.

There it is, ready for a scrubbing. It's better that i wait till the morning anyhow to do this part. I don't want the Gunk drying before I rinse it off.

So, tomorrow morning while my garage floor dries I'll do the drawing with measurements of the engine bay.

Then I'll clean off the remains of the old radiator support and start cutting up a crapload of spot welds. I'm not sure how far i'll get tomorrow, let's wait and see!

Davedacarpainter · Jun 16, 2018

So begins the scrubbing.

Davedacarpainter · Jun 16, 2018

K, first wave of scrubbing is finished. It's degreased.

Next scrub will be with this stuff. It's a gritty soapy paste that i'll use on a scotchbrite and give the whole eb a good scrub-down, this stuff is great to prep a clean panel for paint using a grey scotchbrite, btw. Just remember to scrub the hell out of the panel.

I don't have any scotchbrite pads like I thought i did, so off to the store. I needed to pick up some spot weld cutters anyhow.

Davedacarpainter · Jun 16, 2018

Off I went to get the spot weld cutter bits because every store has them, right? No, that's not true.

I didn't want to go to HF because that's about six miles from my house, so I went to another four stores closer to my house to try to find them, driving about fifteen miles in the process..... Then I went to HF and bought some.

I did get about an hour in my nice air conditioned truck.

Anyhow, got back home and scrubbed the entire bay, its real clean right now. I would say pretty clean, but it's not going to be pretty for awhile yet.

I'm going to go do the measurements next. I got to make a little drawing first. If my printer worked I would just blow up this picture and write the measurements on it.

Davedacarpainter · Jun 16, 2018

I’m getting some of it cut out now, I just need to work on the spot welds on the backside.

Davedacarpainter · Jun 16, 2018

Here’s a spot weld to piss a person off, it’s behind the bracket!

Davedacarpainter · Jun 16, 2018

This side is loose now. A bit of rust, but not as bad as some I’ve seen.

Davedacarpainter · Jun 16, 2018

Where to start.......

How about the end and work my way back a little. Here's a picture or two with the rail out.

For those wanting to do this, be patient and work slowly through it. I cut 52 spot welds doing it this way.

The shock tower was interesting to me, the bottom is folded under and becomes the base for the crush tubes. It also has two tabs on the sides that are folded and pinch welded twice on the front and back of the tower. The factory crush tubes are welded to the shock tower, not on the bottom or top. I don't know because of the rust there if the bottom was welded to the frame rail or not. The pitting was too deep to tell. It may have been bonded by the rust. One way or the other I had to cut the bottom off the shock tower to get the rail out.

Speaking of the shock tower, it has a little rot issue.

I'll need to cut off about four inches of the bottom and replace it with new metal. That'll have to be the next thing I do. I can't put the new frame rail on until that's fixed, obviously.

The crush tubes weren't terrible, hard to believe though. Here's the pile of rust that came from around the shock tower area. Amazing how much there is. That's mainly ex-shock tower metal I guess.

Only five pictures to a post, so I'll make another one.

Davedacarpainter · Jun 16, 2018

Here's the old frame rail in it's current state.

Here's a shot down the subframe as it goes underneath the floorpan. It's actually plugged with dirt. I'll vacuum that out tomorrow.

I removed the rest of the old radiator support from the left side while I was there. It'll need a little loving to look good again. It has a tear on the side that needs to be welded up plus it's just kind of beat up.

And the last for the day. Here's my two spot weld cutters from HF. I'm thrilled to death they made it through all of the welds. They're done cutting and are resting in the trash can right now.

Davedacarpainter · Jun 17, 2018

Got another spot weld cutter and my shock tower repair kit, lol. The tower is 16 gauge for those wanting to know. Frame rail is 14.

Davedacarpainter · Jun 17, 2018

Got a piece measured and cut out. I cut out the rusted area. I just need to shape it now and get it welded in.

Davedacarpainter · Jun 17, 2018

stanglx2002 said:
I am very interested in how you are going to make that 90 degree bend....

Bwaahaahaahaa! How am I going to get that bend in the 16 gauge steel? Mostly through whining like a baby and continuous hammering with a mini anvil and a baby sledge.

No, I'm serious. This made me very tired by the time I had it shaped.

So I tacked it in and welded it. I wish I would have taken a picture of my welds, they're not @Hoytster perfect yet, but much better. Especially considering it's been a while since I used my welder. I need to buy some of the consumables for it.

I had to grind down all the welds (believe me, I hate grinding) because the frame rail has to slide on over this part of the shock tower. Also the new lower panel with the new crush tubes has to slip down into the new frame rail, that's hard to do with a welding bead in this area, no matter how pretty. I welded both sides because I'm paranoid. The shock tower will hold the front end's weight when I'm done (coilovers). I wanted to make sure it was strong.

Whatever, the shock tower has received all of the attention it's going to get until I smooth it.

Davedacarpainter · Jun 19, 2018

I made it up to the yard, it's been a while since I've been there. He keeps filling in spaces with fun new (read old) cars.

The vehicle I got the pedal assembly from was an '88 convertible shell he got for $100! Admittedly, this is just a shell, but the structure is beautiful. I wish I had a salvage yard now, oh well, bucket list, lol.

There was no instrument panel in the car so it took maybe fifteen minutes to take the pedal assembly out.

Here's my manual pedal assembly sitting on Booger's floor. I'll take it to work and disassemble it. I think it's going to go the trim grey. Booger green would look silly I think.

He will still give me a tilt steering column. I'll pick that up from him sometime soon. I'm going to remove the original SWC assembly anyhow to get the floorpan in, what the heck, might as well get a tilt column.

Again, 30 bucks!

Davedacarpainter · Jun 23, 2018

Short break. The front cap of the rail has a small section that needs to be trimmed to match the old rails.

That had me looking at the left side, which led me into thinking that I really needed to finish drilling out the old radiator support on that side. Which led me into thinking that while I’m there I might as well pull out the majority of the inner panel too.

So I’m about to go back to the frame rail again now that the squirrel is taken care of.

Davedacarpainter · Jun 23, 2018

So I took a break and went to the store to get some food, water, Gatorade and the such. This let a couple of my batteries charge while I farted around at Wally World.

Got back and started drilling the holes for my spot welds. 51 holds in 14 guage steel is tiring.

After my holy time, I welded in the front bumper bracket inside the frame rail, and then welded the crush tubes to their lower plate and welded that into the frame rail.

Here’s that top rail cover that I trimmed earlier, it fit up real nice.

I cleaned up all of the old spot welds I removed and vacuumed out the down tube on the subframe again ( sht collects in there really quick).

Then I ran a bit of 3/4” tape over the spot weld areas and coated the inside of the frame rail and various places on the strut tower with POR15.

After I start welding all of the pieces together tomorrow I’ll follow up with as best coverage as I can for the inside of the rail. I’ll go back and spray this frame rail coating crap I got after it’s all assembled.

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

Chicks can make things hard if they’re inspired...

Chicks can make things hard if they’re inspired...

Chicks can make things hard if they’re inspired...

Chicks can make things hard if they’re inspired...

Chicks can make things hard if they’re inspired...

Chicks can make things hard if they’re inspired...

Chicks can make things hard if they’re inspired...

Chicks can make things hard if they’re inspired...

Chicks can make things hard if they’re inspired...

Chicks can make things hard if they’re inspired...

Chicks can make things hard if they’re inspired...

Chicks can make things hard if they’re inspired...

Chicks can make things hard if they’re inspired...

Chicks can make things hard if they’re inspired...

Chicks can make things hard if they’re inspired...

Chicks can make things hard if they’re inspired...

Chicks can make things hard if they’re inspired...

Chicks can make things hard if they’re inspired...

Chicks can make things hard if they’re inspired...

Chicks can make things hard if they’re inspired...

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