Progress Thread LILCBRA's 87 GT vert project (now prepping to replace the left floor pan)

Spent some time in the garage last night - started getting the wiring out of the car, raised the top, stripped the door panel from the driver door, removed the wiper arms and cowl cover, and removed the driver's fender and windshield washer reservoir. I also found a Lojack device in the trunk.

Been doing some brainstorming the last few days about the damaged left rear quarter. I think I may weld in some new flares in place of the stock lip. I'm not looking to get too extreme - I'm thinking something like these:







I did some quick measurements on the car, it looks like these are a little taller overall than they need to be, but the width would only be about 1/2" wider than the stock flare. And they show these as having a small lip on them whereas some others I've seen are basically a sharp edge. I'm nowhere near ready to do anything like this yet, but it seems like it would kill 2 birds when I get to it. I wouldn't necessarily need to replace the quarter or section a piece in since the damage is only on the original flare, so I could cut that out following the stock body line, then weld these in and fab the wheel well to match up. So damage will be fixed and it'll give a little wider look without going over the top. Seems like a win-win! They'll of course need to be modified to work right, but what else is new....

LILCBRA said:

This come up in my Facebook memories today. Apparently it was 4 years ago today that I bought the convertible. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, you can see the left rear window is down.....

I mentioned in my first post that that picture is the first one I had of it. Apparently I was wrong, this one must be. You can see the chrome wheel well lip that the PO used to cover the small damaged area of the rear quarter.

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Just remembered - I've officially had this car for 10 years....

Made a little progress tonight - got the steering column and pedal assembly out as well as the firewall insulation. Nothing too exciting, but one step closer. I'm going to try to enlist some help this weekend to get the top removed from the car, then assess where I need to go from there. I believe I'll need to drop the axle to have access to the rear torque boxes in order to remove that added rocker brace.



I've also been doing a bit of research on how to remove the sound deadener and it seems that dry ice is the way to go. Does anyone have any other suggestions or ideas? Or what's your experience with it?

Blackhawkxx said:

As cold as it's been, just put it outside.

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I wish it would be that easy!

Got some more done on the vert. Started on the easy stuff and removed the interior windshield trim and found that the visors aren't original to the car.



Then I removed the top frame and the driver side seat belts and all of the brackets and stuff from in front of it. It looks like the added reinforcement and seat pan need attention too.



I'm fairly sure that I'll need to remove the rear torque boxes to be able to get that rocker brace out without cutting it all up. I looked over that Corral reference thread and some other pics, from what I can tell, they had the outer rocker off and spot welded the bottom of that reinforcement from the outer rocker side. So, my plan is to use my air hammer with a spot weld breaker from under the car and see if I can't get both the floor pan and that reinforcement in one shot without damaging that brace too much. Then, when I go to reinstall it, I'm thinking of cutting some access windows to stick my gun through to weld the spotwelds, then re-weld the windows back into place. We'll see how that goes. So, since I'm planning on using the air hammer like that, I needed a clear shot at that seam, that required me to drill all of the rivets and remove the pinch weld brace. Here are a few new shots from under the car to see what I'm dealing with. I'm starting with the driver side and will need to repeat the process on the passenger side, but figure doing one side at a time would be the smartest path to travel....



If you look close enough at this next pic, you can see where some jackass tried to use a floor jack on the floor.... I guess they took the term "floor jack" literally.




The other thing I did (before I removed the pinch weld brace) was I welded in a few supports. I was planning on welding the subframe connectors, but once I got started laying them out I found that they'd interfere with the torque boxes. If I have to go down that path, I don't want to have to do it twice, so I held off on those for now. I'm planning on welding in a few more, mainly a pair that run from the fore-aft pieces down to the transmission tunnel. But I need to get that sound deadener out of there first, so all of that is still on hold for now.

Blackhawkxx said:

Man that looks like a big project. I give props to anyone that would take on such a restoration to save another old Ford.

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(.For the record, I'm.)
(....questioning my....)
(...sanity right now....)



I figure it'll be good practice for when I attempt to tackle my 55 Chevy wagon. I'm pretty sure that the only good metal on it is the firewall and roof - and I'm questioning my sanity over that one too. But there's some sentimental value there....