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

It's out.

I welded the perimeters of the tubes. Got a little sloppy at the end because my HF light decided to stop working.

Whatever, I'm taking it to work tomorrow to do the dressing of the welds. That way those little metal shavings don't end up all over my garage floor just waiting for me to lay down.

I got the welds dressed this morning.

I’ll sand it all down and get it coated with POR15 today.

My football games don’t start till 2:30 tomorrow, so I’ll have time to get the seam sealing done on the floor pan in the morning.

The reason I’m going a bit overboard on the web supports is that the t-top bar doesn’t offer much structural strength. Hopefully the some day engine will be in the 500/500 power range. I’ll want a little strength.

I sanded it down, etched the bare metal and sprayed POR15 on it.

Today......Monday........what did I do?

I mean other than wake up and curse life for keeping me so dang good looking......

I got the cs painted green today. Yesterday I coated it with chip guard.

Did I take a picture? No......Tomorrow.

I got home from work, put away the fresh beer, and flopped down under Booger. I realized at this point that the passenger side wouldn't be as easy as the driver's side.

Apparently, the great land orca that used to own this mustang and destroyed it's original floorpan with their formidable tonnage didn't mind dragging the passenger side over every curb and speed bump along the way. I don't actually know the original owner, but I'm thinking their great big butt in this mustang may have been the original impetus for the cool look of a lowered mustang (Without lowering springs).

The pinch weld is FAR from straight, though much better than it originally was. I spent roughly an hour and a half just cleaning the metal. I spent all that time on the inside and outside of the pinch weld. It's not perfect yet, I will clean the edges better. The driver's side gave me fits when I welded the jr to it. I'm hoping this time it'll be nicer if I pay attention to cleanliness.

Just for kicks I ground into the lower front 1/4. I knew it had mud in it, I just wanted to get an idea how bad. I think I might order a lower patch from LMR. The area was fixed by drilling holes in it to pull the panel out. Then they filled the holes with mud. It doesn't go into the rocker though, that's a good thing.

Ok, truth be known, here's kind of what I was expecting from my first tig welding experience.

I was very close to that in real life, lol. I have a metal bench that I'm using for a welding bench as I learn to tig. It has a drawer in it that I was sure was empty. Well the neighbor across the street apparently decided to grill today without making sure I was okay with it. I smelled smoke and naturally I figured I lit the Murder House on fire, landlord isn't gonna like that.......

So I'm checking sht out, trying to find the source of the smell. I open the drawer and there's a nice full canister of butane I use for my mini-torches! It was right under where I was welding! Moral of the story, don't be a moron, moron's die in explosions like this.

I went to HF and got a cheap set of tig gloves, I tried with the mig gloves and couldn't manipulate the filler rod at all. $10 with a 20% off coupon. Much easier to work with.

Here's the results of my initial experience. The piece of metal with the holes blown in it was my learning experience that the pedal control completely overrides the amperage control on the welder. When you put your foot down on the pedal, you get full current running to the torch. Notice how long the hole is? That took maybe a millisecond to do, lol!

I dirtied up the tungsten electrode maybe about twelve times before I learned not to dip into the puddle. You see, I already knew not to do that, but I did it anyhow because I'm not your average stupid.

The second piece of metal is where I really just tried to start focusing on moving the torch smoothly and dabbing the filler material. I got better as I went along. Trying to separate what my left hand is doing from my right helped. I kept raising the angle that I dabbed the filler rod in almost like the slight (15*) angle of the torch as I went along, kind of hard to hit the puddle at that angle! lol! Though you can consistently hit the electrode. I think I like the foot pedal more than the finger switch at the torch. I like being able to control the amount of current in the weld.

Not terribly bad for my first try.

I'm going to practice more over the next couple weeks with different thickness of metal and different sized electrodes and filler rods. I like tig welding A WHOLE LOT MORE than mig. No sparks and mess like that.

I had to go to my storage unit to get my belt sander to clean up the dirty tungsten. While I was there I looked at Booger for awhile. The flared quarters may be out. I'm getting a little melvinized about keeping the original lines of the car now.

The right quarter still has the ugly bodywork issues though that will take work. I do still have the skin from the donor junk door. I can use pieces of it to section the damaged front lower part.

So, no Booger in the garage yet. I'm going to try to get this tig thingy down a bit more first.

Noobz347 said:

Have not seen an 83 T-Top Coupe in this thread in a long time

Click to expand...

Oh yeah! What's this then?

Here's the facts.

I have a 1983 GLX t-top coupe fox chassis coupe, and I can prove it, so just shut up, alright?!

The old Booger up on the trailer for the trip to the Murder House.

Sitting on the driveway at TMH.

Me sitting in Booger after maybe drinking "a few" Dirty Bastards with my brother.

Soooo, how does Booger fit into the tiny little Murder Garage? It's tight boy! I'll have to do some ciphering there......

Proof Booger fits with the door closed, lol.

Ok, doing some thinking tonight.

Here‘s a couple ideas I have.

One is replacing the cross bracing behind the rear seat with maybe rectangular tubing. Tubing size and type is in the air right now.

Why? I‘m going to remove the upper control arm mounts for the SRA and replace it with a tubing structure to provide the same side to side support it did, well, better really.

As you can see, I can add in a rear shock tower brace with the new X-brace.

This is speculation right now. I don’t want to put in a full roll cage or anything that will interfere with the t-tops. I DO want to make this car as solid as I can.

@Hoytster what do you think about tubing type and size?

Next weekend I’ll be welding in the chassis support, then I’ll build the upper control arm replacement bracing.

Just to show I’m really working on Booger.

The Murder Garage is going to take some getting use to. It’s a tiny little bastard.

I have the car in position so I can get the passenger side chassis support welded in. That’s the first priority.

That priority has a few steps involved before I can weld in the support.

Just like the other side, I need to seam seal first, then spray the rocker chip guard, then make it green.

I believed I could have that done before the weekend, and maybe still can.

This is the seam sealer i’m using for the bottom of the floor pan. I’ve used this through various tasks including the seam sealer on the doors when I was too stupid to have flowable seam sealer on hand. I only found this one half tube here at the house. I thought I had more, and probably do, just not real sure where.

This sealer is fantastic stuff, and expensive (if I had to pay for it, that is). Though it says heavy body, it’s quite fluid when it comes out of the mixing tip. It gets deep in the seam.

So, maybe tomorrow night I’ll seam seal the floor pan. It’s perfect weather here to use this and have it harden properly overnight.

In theory, tomorrow night I’ll seam seal. Then wednesday night I’ll spray the rocker chip guard. Color on thursday, and welding Saturday morning.

Once that’s done I will have to do the death defying act of getting Booger fully up on jack stands and drop that IRS.

After that I’m trying to decide if I should go ahead with the hard tail or welding up a bitchin’ X-brace for behind the rear seat.

Actually, next I’ll be cutting out the upper control arm brackets and making the new brace between the subframes. Then the X-brace, or hardtail. Maybe a hardnose (the front mounts of the IRS).