So I started the day of with replacing my garbage disposal. Yay, the new one is so much quieter than the old. Anyhow, we're not her for plumbing problems, am I right?
Today is subframe connectors day.
I moved my jack stands, swept the floor and laid down to take a look at my subframe rails. They were filthy dirty, I'm shocked!
The left side looked like a tar truck made a deposit. So I spent about an hour cleaning. The trans mounts were particularly gummed up. I had to use my knife to scrape the goo off before I could clean them out. Bright side is that Booger is just a little more clean now.
I ground off most of the paint I'll need to for welding and probably even more.
So for the beginning of pictures, and for were I am now.
First picture, this is the beer I'm drinking while I type.
Here's the right side connector, isn't it pretty? MM has nice stuff. This side looks to be a breeze. It's just being held up there by the middle supports. It should weld up pretty quick.
Now for the little problem child. The left side. Look toward the rear of the car, the gap is so big you may not even think it's a gap and just not on there properly. It's going to take a little tweaking. Really nbd though.
Here's just a gratuitous view of the floor area with both sfc's.
More to come.
I know what you mean, I was at Lowe’s earlier and Halloween stuff was everywhere.
I got the right side welded on, here’s to hoping I can make prettier welds on the left side.
It’s super easy with the floorpan out, I recommend that to everyone, lol.
Alright, I got both welded in now.
Then I dressed my nasty welds and cleaned up the garage.
Here's me standing on the sfc's. It's amazing how more solid the car feels with them in there! No bouncy feeling even in this state.
Tomorrow I mess with the floorpan.
So far I’ve drilled out the sixty spot welds on the perimeter. Thirty per side.
I need to trim off almost exactly an inch on the front of the pan, but I won’t do that till it’s noon here (noisy stuff there!).
In the mean time I’m going to clean up the bodyside for the welds and drill the spot weld holes in my patch panel.
I still need to drill the welding holes for the front subframe area as well. I can’t do that until I can fit the panel in to mark where the holes need to go. There’s a crapload of them in that area though.
Little break. Yes, that is the dog that ate my steering wheel emblem in the background.
So far I cleaned up in side the cabin and got any holes I needed drilled and ground down to metal wherever i'll be welding. Then I sprayed weld through primer over those areas.
Then I trimmed off the inch of floorpan I needed to.
Then I slid the floorpan in and am about ready to do the final fitting and draw out the shape of the frame rails on the underneath side so I can drill out the other fourty million holes I'll need to weld. Plus the holes on the front of the floorpan too.
I might be welding it in today, I really want to. I'll see how easy it is to finish the fitment.
So I crawled under and used a marker to mark the outline of the frame rails onto the floorpan.
Then I marked all of the spot welds for them and drilled them out. Another 112 spot welds added to the floorpan. That makes for a grand total of 204 spot welds required for the pan.
You would think by the time I’m done welding it in I’d be pretty good at spot welding, wouldn’t you.
Before I throw the pan back in I got to do the emergency brake modification. I got to run to Lowe’s real quick now.
I cleaned up all of those holes I drilled and measured and drilled holes for the eb handle.
You'll notice the slight slice in the front of the trans tunnel. The left side of the new part doesn't have the same shape as the firewall attaching area. It'll only take a minor bit of modification. I'll do that while I'm welding in the pan, hopefully tomorrow night.
Ok, I got the eb handle “mod” done. That’s green etch primer. Same as the grey I’ve been using, just green, pretty cool coincidence, huh?
Proof that the eb handle fits, notice the pan is inside the car for keepers this time. My welding holes line up reasonably well too.
I also need to go ahead and get these puppies up under there before I go nuts welding.
I did do the seat mounts next.
I was going to start spot welding the pan in, but I forgot to clean the weld thru primer off of the welding areas. So tomorrow I'll start the "Spot Weld Odyssey ". I'll shift the floor panel around so I can do a quick grinding of the weld area, I've got a nifty handle in the middle of the pan to help me out now .Shoot, it's only a couple hundred areas to clean up.
If anyone is interested in hearing my diatribe about weld thru primer, just let me know. Obviously I use it, but why?
By wednesday I want to start the ladder bar system. It won't seem to exciting at first though. I'll be grinding my free 1x1 tubing to get them back to being pretty shiny metal.
All I have standing in my way is 204 little spot welds......
51 one down and the passenger footwell area is solid!
Some of those spotwelds may look a little large, the holes weren’t as favorably lined up as the driver’s side and may have required a small bit of extra drilling.
So, this is as far as I got tonight. Both subframe rails have been welded to the new floor. A little of the firewall and a small portion of the driver's rear corner. Total of 114 spot welds for tonight. 90 to go........Then there's the seat brace
Sorry I haven’t welded anything in the past couple of days guys, I ran out of consumables. Got that taken care of, I’ll be back after it in a few minutes.
I started welding the right rear since I new it would be a little bit of a pita. The original rear floor pan metal had pitting in it there.
That went better than expected, so I went down the right rocker too. It was nice toward the end since I can now crawl onto the floor to weld. The right side took longer than the left side. The inner rocker metal was very wavey. The pan comes up 3/4" from the bottom of the pinch weld, so about every three welds I'd measure, beat the metal flat against the rocker, measure again and weld.
I had to take a break at that stage because I'm sweating so profusely. I had to come in and put a dry shirt on. I'm going to attempt to get the trans tunnel ends welded up next, if the god of argon grants me about another twenty spot welds, that is.
I finished it! Albeit with a few dirty welds since the argon gave out.
The rear of trans tunnel required a little persuading, but it's done. While I was there, there was a small 1.5" crack at the top of the rear floorpan, so I welded it up.
Then began the front trans tunnel/firewall match up section. The new pan bulged on the left side, I don't know if it's due to a difference in '87^ mustang's trans tunnel or because this pan was pressed in china. It was about a 10" section. There was no beating this into shape. At first I took my die grinder with a cut off wheel and made a small slice in the upper and lower areas where the bulge started. That wasn't enough. I took my grinder and widened the gap a bit. That worked. I welded in the center of the cut area and then ground a little more off each end of the cut area so the ends would matchup when pressed together. So, yack, yack, yack, pictures. Notice how dirty, porous and ugly the welds are here. Those last four were a challenge, especially since I had to use one hand to hold the metal down while welding with the other.
Then I welded up my slices and dressed them since they were so ugly and dirty looking they were offending me by their mere presence. Look at all that brown around the weld at the top of the tunnel.
Here's the next small project, the front seat brace. It really fits pretty nicely considering it's of oriental persuasion!
Tomorrow I'll smooth the welds in the immediate area the brace goes and a few others. Drill the welding holes in the brace itself. Then I'll clean up the pan and POR15 it prior to the brace. I'll even get the underside as well.
If there's any time left over I'll grind down the 1x1 tubing to get ready for the ladder system.