Build Thread '83 T-top Coupe - Welding Holes in My Rear

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Glad to see you're still at it Dave! Not sure why I didn't see you tag me on Sunday, but anyways...

I would stick to 1-1/2" stock if I were you. I prefer tubing (1-1/2" DOM .120 in this case) but I think you would be fine with square tubing as well. The reason I say nothing more than 1-1/2" stock is once you go over that, you risk having some interference issues with the upper control arm mounts on the IRS cradle depending on where you locate the lateral support.

In the pics below, I used 1-3/4 .120 DOM tubing for the lateral support between the frame rails. I have the tube pressed tight against rear floor plan and with the IRS installed, I have less than a 1/4" clearance between the upper control arm mounts and the bottom of the tube. With tubing, you can play with the positioning a little to gain more clearance, I just didn't think that far ahead and got really lucky on mine :). I didn't do any bracing like your planning to the frame rails, but I did weld the lateral support to 1/8 plates and added two triangulated gussets from the tube to the frame rail on each side to provide additional support and provide clearance around the upper control arm mount.

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Alright Chris, here’s some thoughts I’ve got going on.

First, i need to maintain the backing plate for the rear seat belts. I will remove the entire upper control arm bracket as a unit, then i will either need to trim off the plate that backs the seat belts, or possibly make a new one that I’ll want to weld to the cross beam.

Though a straight beam going from frame rail to frame rail is ideal for strength, i’m wondering if some sort of multi-angled support that allows me to get towards the curve of the rear floor pan could work? I’ll want to weld the seat belt reinforcement to it for the added strength.

Maybe I could think of a way that this under floor support could weld into the new x-brace? This would allow lateral forces to be directed straight to the subframe?
 
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Not sure why I didn't see you tag me on Sunday, but anyways...


Alerts have been 'buggy'. I've noticed it as well. The only trouble is that each test I've tried so far, has been successful. Still look at it occasionally to see if I can figure out what's doing it. At this point, I'm pretty sure it's an error in the forum core (read: Not something I can do anything about except hope they find and fix it next update).


:chin I don't think I've checked on alert expirations in a long time. Maybe an update has changed it.
:leaving:
 
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Wow! what a day! Sun is shining, it’s a beautiful 73* outside right now. Most excellent.

Im really just getting after things on Booger now. It was a wee bit too cold this morning for the paint. It’s perfect now though :nice: .

So I cleaned my bathroom, went grocery shopping (to include two beautiful racks of spare ribs from the butcher!) and some other general bs.

So I finally sanded the seam sealer and scuffed everything else real nice like with a red scotchbrite. Then I masked off the welding areas.
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I sprayed the two layers of rocker chip guard next.
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Thats it for about an hour, then I’ll go out there and spray the sealer, color and clear and be done till Sunday.
 
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Wow! what a day! Sun is shining, it’s a beautiful 73* outside right now. Most excellent.

Im really just getting after things on Booger now. It was a wee bit too cold this morning for the paint. It’s perfect now though :nice: .

So I cleaned my bathroom, went grocery shopping (to include two beautiful racks of spare ribs from the butcher!) and some other general bs.

So I finally sanded the seam sealer and scuffed everything else real nice like with a red scotchbrite. Then I masked off the welding areas.
B0F6A511-DBA7-486A-95C7-113469448825.jpeg

I sprayed the two layers of rocker chip guard next.
200C2B12-9B75-4F9E-B432-AE89B74D3882.jpeg

Thats it for about an hour, then I’ll go out there and spray the sealer, color and clear and be done till Sunday.
Sounds like a great day!

I was worried at first that there was too much gap between the frame rails and floor pan, but it looks about the same on mine as on yours.
 
Tomorrow between games I’m going to start to piece together the rear end cart.

If I can get everything cheap enough, I may go ahead and build the front end one as well.

I’m making two seperate carts because my garage is so stinking small and two separate carts will be easier to put in. Plus I’ll be able to crawl under the middle of the car still.

Help me out with any thing you can think of here.

I want two carts, 3’ ish wide by 18” ish long. I just want to make it about 6”s wider than the sfc’s. The car will rest on the sfc’s.

I‘m going to be using 4x4’s to build them. I want the height to be an 18” lift for Booger (well, 18” off the floor to the sfc’s that is).

I’ll probably connect the 4x4’s together with some sort of metal bracket. Tomorrow morning I’ll head to Lowe’s to see what they have.

So it’ll probably be two high on the width and one in the middle for the length.

Casters from HF, btw.

Any problems y’all see?
 
Question: where the seat pan meets the frame rail, wouldn't you want to seam seal that too? Looks like it just has a few stitch welds and gaps, or is it just me?
Nope. The only ingress into the interior there would be through any gaps in the welds. I’ll seam seal those from the interior.

You want the subframe to be able to drain any fluids that might pass through it. Water can come through the front of the front subframe rails. Though it is blocked some what in the downturn from the engine bay into the floor pan area.

You've got to see the subframe as exterior completely. In theory, if my welds are good enough, i wouldn’t even need seam sealer on them. Yet I’m realistic enough to understand I’m a painter and welding isn’t my forte like painting is (obviously when you look at the other welds).
 
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Now that I think of it, there wasn't any sealer on the floor supports when I removed the old floor from my '66. Wouldn't surprise me if that's the way it's been done since the beginning.
 

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I trust that you know what you are doing. And maybe it's just me, whenever I see two pieces of metal lapped and not welded or sealed in some way I see an invitation for crap to gather and rust to start. :shrug:
Here you go JR, this is before I cleaned up the subframe to weld the new pan in. No seam sealer.
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So I got out into the garage for a bit today.

I wanted to get all the rosette weld areas drilled along the pinch weld and clean up all areas to be welded. Those spot weld holes took me a little over an hour to drill out by themselves.
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I put the cs up there to mark where I need to clean the jacking rail for the rosette welds.
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I sprayed weld through primer over the bare metal areas and will do a final grinding of those areas to reveal enough clean bare metal for welding.

So tomorrow night after work I’ll at least spot weld a few areas to hold it in.

I’m going to use my TIG torch to maybe seal up those holes before adding filler. Hopefully to block out the crap that made the other rocker such a pita to deal with. I’m pretty interested in seeing what this will do. I’ll let you know.
 
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I gave a little thought about The cart/ Booger Dolly.

The drawing isn’t the greatest, but it’ll give you an idea of what I’m thinking about.
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Heres the metal brackets from Lowe’s, I’ll need eight of them.
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The casters from HF.
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Total cost of about $120 per cart.
 
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