I’m going to start with the difficult one first. If you remember the driver’s side on Doby, I had to contend with the curved frame rail. Same thing here. I’ll do it differently this time and take care of thst early on.
I’ll post more pictures of what I’ll do a little later.
I got the left side tack welded.
Then I dealt with the curvature of the frame rail. I did pretty much the same thing that I did with Doby. I tacked the ends of the frame rail, then took a cut off wheel and made a slice down the edge.
Then I clamped the vertical section to the frame.
And tack welded that part.
Then I ground the edge back to follow the contour of the frame rail and tacked that edge.
Tomorrow I'll finally weld that little firewall brace in. I'll reinforce the clutch cable hole as well.
I got to do something a little different tomorrow as well. The floor pan I got for Booger is for '87^ fox bodies. I'm going to need to modify the parking brake handle area. So I'm going to disconnect the parking brake and use my reciprocating saw to cut out that portion of the transmission tunnel.
The new pan is at work, I'll modify it there next week.
Then, THEN! I'm going to be slinging mud in the engine bay! Woohoo! I will start with the firewall and work my way forward. I can't imagine I'll get more than the firewall done.
Bright side? Maybe by next weekend I can start working on replacing the floorpan!
I welded in my reinforcement plate, then I cut out the emergency brake handle area out of the floor pan. I’ll take it to work with me tomorrow and do the modification on the new floor pan.
You can see in the picture that the eb mounting point is a little towards the right side for four I’d floorpans.
I spent the last couple of hours working on the firewall. I got kind of pooped, so I quit after I got the mudwork pretty well done.
I still have to finish the edges, straighten a couple lines and glaze it though. Since I didn't want to do that now I etch primered over the bondo' d areas. This will protect the bare metal underneath the bondo from rust for right now.
Those nice and clean bumper absorbers are in actuality, the devil.
I wasn't going to do anything tonight, nada, nothing......
I simply was going to slip them on to see how they looked when I got home....then in for a beer.....
Well, they both fit in nicely, so I thought I might put in the retaining bolts. Driver's side. Passenger side.
The holes in the new rail were too small for the bolt to go through. I say, "were" because I had my reamer at home.
All I had to do was start up the compressor and ream those holes out. So I did that, but since the compressor was running already and I literally had the reamer in my hand I figured I would go ahead and take care of those welds I couldn't reach with the grinder. That got me going along the right strut tower.
There are a bunch of factory spot welds in that area and the reamer would clean those out easily, so I did that.
That got me looking at the strut tower, it sure looked yucky........and my compressor was running.......out comes the 3" DA and some 80 grit sandpaper. I stripped the strut tower.
Now I see some knicks and cuts that I want gone. Out comes the die grinder with 3" 50 grit discs. Got it all cleaned up. Since the die grinder is in hand why not go ahead and go over the whole strut tower and the rear of the frame rail....right?
Now that I've done that, what do you know.......the panel is prepped for bondo........
So a little mixing of mud and I'm slinging.
Of course the best time to block bondo is before it completely hardens like a rock, out comes the 40 grit and a block to knock the edges, high spots and slag down. Shoot, that was easy, let's block with 80 grit now.......
God gave me a reprieve. He knew I wanted to do nothing tonight. So I forgot to bring home my clean up thinner can I took to work to get a refill. Wet bondo is a bit of a pain to clean up without thinner. That was enough for me to call it quits......almost......
So I have blocked bondo sitting there exposed to our unusually humid air. It needed a couple coats of primer to protect it, so out comes the etch primer.
To end this one, here are those offending bumper absorbers that started all this crap tonight.
So, maybe tomorrow night I'll spread another coat of bondo on the strut tower to finish it off, assuming of course my head isn't lodged in my ass and I remember my laquer thinner.
I spread a little more mud on the right strut tower, and on the panel between the firewall and strut tower. Some of the factory pinch welds are quite deep. I thought I would only need a quick wipe of mud to make them go away, not so much.
I started to mix up my glaze, but I didn't think how old it was........ It has thickened up too much to be used as a glaze. I guess I'll get a new tub of that tomorrow. So back in primer for the night.
That took a couple hours right there. I think I'm going to have to do like I did with Doby, get up early and work on the smoothing. Not tomorrow morning, but friday for sure.
I want to start cutting out the floorpan this weekend. Hopefully have it all out and cleaned up for the new pan by the end of the weekend.
So I got the floorpan cut out except for the edges tonight.
I cut it out in varying size chunks.
Here's a couple pictures of it cut out around the perimeter and along the subframe rails and trans crossmember mounts. Nicer than the flinstones car, if you ask me!
One with the new floorpan waiting to be installed.
Tomorrow morning I'll start drilling out the spot welds and removing the trimmings of the old floorpan. Then I'll start fitting the new pan and do the trimming it'll probably need.
While the pan is out I'll strip down the subframes and the inner rockers and yada yada.......
Today I’ll clean up the edges. I’m starting right here.
It was a little challenge finding all of the spot welds in that rotted area, but I got it.
I’m going to have to patch this area on the rear pan as well. That’s where the eb cable bracket is.
I got the rear area and the right rocker area cleaned of the old pan.
I’ll have to do a little straightening of the right inner rocker before the new pan goes in.
Ok, finished up the old floorpan removal.
So I have two repairs that I intend to tackle tomorrow. First the lip that is welded between the rear floorpan and the front floorpan.
I'll replace the front part of the rear floorpan where the eb bracket is too.
I'm going to make Booger feel good about this repair using original floorpan pieces.
Tomorrow Ill try to finish the dressing of all the spot welds I cut out (and btw, there's a sht ton load of them),