Progress Thread My 79 Coupe Is Alive.

Today I worked on the front bumper some more. I'm using a fiberglass support from a newer fox, so had to modify the mounts and make allowances for the marker lights. I used the later mounts, but modified them to drop the support down an inch to be at the right height. I had to also drill them for the through bolts since the newer style use the front flange mounting. Once the bumper was in the correct position, I put the nose back on and marked the location of the marker lights on the bumper. After removing the nose once again, I cut out the fiberglass to let the market lenses fit in. I still need to make up some brackets to actually mount them.

Old verses new bumper bracket.


I did a bit more trimming after I took this picture so the lens can be slipped in from the back after it's all together.

Latest progress was getting the front fender extensions modified to match the modified fenders. Since I had chosen to use the newer 91-93 front fenders, I had to not only shorten the extensions, but change the angle at the back edge to match the newer fender opening angle. I started by cutting the extensions in half, because of the angle change I went from the lower edge where the cut would intersect the radius of the lower corner. Then I fitted the halves in place so they overlapped and scribed the next cut. With just a minor bit of additional trimming and sanding I had the two halves ready to be rejoined.

I started with a layer of fiberglass cloth and resin on the back side to rejoin the pieces. Once that cured, I ground out the seam and laid in a fiberglass repair epoxy to finish the joint. I still need to do some filling and final sanding to smooth out the seams.

I've been working on getting the body pieces fitting properly lately. I had to do a bit of work on the hood hinges to get it to line up right. Seems the combination of the hydraulic support kit and the aftermarket hood tolerances would not let it fit right. I had to elongate the hinge holes by 1/4" to get it to close up the gap at the rear properly. Not a big deal, I just used my milling machine to do the job in quickly and cleanly.

I also had to open up the mounting hole on one side of the trunk lid to let it fit right too.

Today I found a package sitting on my front step which was the AeroCatch hood pins I ordered yesterday. Talk about fast service. Since the hood was now correctly aligned, I figured I might as well go ahead and install them.

I had to fabricate some mounting brackets for the pins to mount into. The latches needed to be positioned such the the stock hood bumper locations would not work unless I cut away a lot of the hood bracing structure. That was not a good option, so brackets it was. A quick search of the scrap metal bin turned up some sturdy angle iron that would do nicely.





The brackets are bolted at the top to the rad support, and its a bit hard to see in the photos, but there is another brace below bolted in as well. The two pieces are just welded together.







At this time I just have the stock safety catch installed without the main hood latch. I haven't decided if there is any value to having the original hood latch in place as well or not. Anyone know what the common wisdom is on this? These pins are quite secure when latched.

Did a bit more research on the latch-no latch question. Most racing people delete the original latch and use hood pins solely to hold down the hood as it makes for easier access and the latch is not really adding any holding power any more anyway. Street car guys like to keep the latch to keep curious hands and eyes out of the engine compartment (and that is only a deterrent to the idly curious, not the determined ones). I won't really ever be parking this car anywhere unattended or unsecured, so that is not a factor for me. I'm much closer to the race car side with this, so the latch seems to be of little purpose and that is kind of where I'm leaning at this point. The one thing that many note is that without a latch, forgetting to pop in a hood pin can be disastrous; the upside to these catches is that they are very obvious when not latched unlike a traditional hood pin.

If I decide differently, it will still be pretty simple to install the original latch.

Worked on building the brake ducting for the front. I could not find suitable sized adapters to fit to the openings in the PC air dam so I made my own. I thought about different methods to build them and decided to have a go at making them out of plastic and chose to use Sintra which is a foam core PVC board. I bought a sheet of 3mm to use for this and to sheet in the underside of the airdam back to the rad support.

I read up on the various ways to work with this material and opted to have a go at thermoforming it. I made a template of the basic shape I needed and from that built a forming buck out of wood. I planned to make the ducts in two halves and then bond them together, so I made the buck reversable so I could make the upper and lower halves as opposites.





Since I don't have a vacuum forming unit to use, I made an outer form to help press the plastic sheet into shape. The first piece took a bit of experimenting, but I figured out that 250 degrees worked to soften the material sufficiently to work it. There was not a lot of time to spare from pulling the sheet from the oven, getting it laid on the buck and forming it, but after the first one, each successive one went easily. After forming them, I trimmed the excess material of and glued the halves together with PVC cement. I left them to fully cure for 24 hours, then did the finishing work of trimming them and getting the outlets formed. I used a PVC plumbing collar to add rigidity to the outlets gluing them inside the formed neck and clamping with hose clamps until cured.





After final trimming, I made up some metal strips to fasten them to the airdam. The strips are pop riveted to the duct and attach to the airdam with sheet metal screws.






On the wheel end I had all ready built ducts and welded them to the tin disc shields. Now I just need to connect them up with hose. I have some silicone 3" ducting on order for that. I'll probably need to build some supports or hangers to secure it. I used some cheap dryer flex ducting to do some test fitting to ensure the ducts would work.

90sickfox said:

Just to let you know man....I've been researching making vacuum molds for abs. I need to custom make some car parts and you started this madness. Thanks a lot [emoji106]

Click to expand...

You're welcome

I got lucky and found a three piece spoiler from a hatchback for not too much cash. It was a bit beat up, so I figured it was not too blasphemous to hack it up and try to make it fit my coupe. I cut apart the end caps and fiberglass repaired them to work on the coupe, then epoxy bonded them to the middle piec to make the whole thing into on piece from three.

I also did a bit of cutting on the Pace Car hood scoop to open up the louvers for heat extraction.

It would seem summer and its distractions - motorcycles, fishing, camping - is over. Cool wet weather this week is letting me spend some time in the workshop again.

I needed to finish up a few things on the front end so I pulled the nose off again yesterday to start on those items. I needed to finish up the mounting of the front marker lights in the fiberglass bumper, I'd made the brackets some time ago but needed to do a bit more trimming to get the positioning right. It's much easier to get them with the nose off.





Next item while the nose was off was to make the aluminum pieces to channel the air flow from the grill and air dam openings into the rad. I also blocked in the back side of the bumper support to help keep the air flow from spilling out the sides.





I also made a piece to close in the top gap between the rad support and header panel.



The next task was to pull the fenders off to finish welding them where I had elongated the openings for the forward offset wheels and to weld in all the extra holes that I didn't need since they are the 91-93 fenders and I am keeping the original trim.

With those tasks done, it all went back together and I finished up the aluminum pieces to channel the air flow. with a piece at the bottom. I had all ready made a panel to skirt in the underside of the air dam and got that in place, though it will still need some more fasteners to secure it.

The fenders just needed a bit of welding to finish them up, didn't actually take too much time to do, but they will still need a bit of finish work to clean them up for paint. I'll be doing the car in 2011 Mustang racing Red with black trim and accents. I want to keep a hint of the original silver on the pace car hood scoop and outline it with the red/yellow/orange original pinstiping.

Tail lights will be original 79 style ones, I only had the right one from the car as the left was broken when i get it. I sourced a few a while ago and so now have two sets from which I was able to make one really good pair to use and a couple less perfect ones as spares.

I haven't made up my mind on the fasteners for the air dam panel. My original plan was bolts into captive nuts, but I got thinking push pins might do fine too.