Rust is here-kind of a whinish rant I guess

Well, not sure what to do with the car right now.

go to http://www.cardomain.com/ride/3811060/3
for pictures of the below.

I took the carpet up so I could get to the wiring going to the seat belt and the emergency brake handle. Found that there was a connector near the seat belt. That part was good.

Found out that the left rear (outer) driver's seat mounting hole area had rusted thru a bit. Not so good.

So I decided I had better totally remove the carpet. Then I see all the soundproofing(?) stuff stuck to the floor. Wanting to see how bad the rust was around the seat mounting area I start scaping it off. Wasn't too hard to do, so I decide to go ahead and do as much of the driver's side as I can. Found lots of rust up around the front of the floor pan. Including all along the subframe.

Not having had enough punishment for the night, I figure I should take a look at the passenger side(thinking that since all four seat mounting areas looked clean that there wouldn't be any rust). HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
There is more rusted out area on the passenger side than on the drivers side.

Putting thru the floor subframe connectors would be pretty easy right now. Problem is I am not sure how bad the subframes are. And I am 99% sure that there may be rust out in the frame rails themselves just under the firewall.

Now, as I am sure you all are already saying, Guess what Russ? The cowls must be shot too. Now that the carpet is out, I will get around to trying the pouring water in the cowls and see where it goes test. Hey, might as well make it official.

I haven't gotten the inside firewall pad off yet to see how far up the rust goes, not sure how without damaging it. I didn't really even look at it though, so maybe it is obvious. By this point I didn't feel like putting in the effort.

I really am not sure what to do at this point with the car. As my wife was trying to tell me, I did buy it knowing that this sort of stuff might be there. I am not in any rush to get it done. It is fixable, but it might be way out of my range.
I may continue working on it, ignoring the front rust stuff for now, knowing that some of the stuff I want to do to the back half of the car would help me get welding down to where I may be able to fix that later. But I don't have the money to spend on it if I end up parting it out. Plus if I am going to part it out, I would rather do it sooner than later so I could put my Pinto driver back in the garage.



Russ

No need for guilt. I knew going in that this was a good chance.
If it is just the sheet metal then it will be a pain. And it is/was an A/C car.

I guess the best thing for me to do right now is to keep disassembling the car. If I find more problems then I would need to take the parts off for parting it out anyway. If not then it will be easier to fix what rust there is with it apart.


Thanks,
Russ

Well, I just took a good hard look at the passenger side subframe. It is toast. There is a rust hole on the inner side under the battery area. And someone had already welded on a piece of diamond plate on the outer side about where the firewall starts and then heading back. Plus in front of this plate there is a big rust hole, so obviously they didn't get all the rust, probably just welded right over it.

I give up. I don't even feel like trying to part it out, unless it was someone local so no packing/shipping. I think I am just going to go ahead and call one of those junk car places, cause this one is junk.

Thanks all, been fun.
Russ

Thanks.
I just am kicking myself for not looking harder before I bought it. I know better but I can't seem to get it in my head that I am not in Phoenix anymore and cars are junk back here.

I did have an idea last night while trying to relax by playing my favorite video game. The car is scrap. SOOO, I can't make it any worse, right? So I am thinking that it would be a good practice car for learning to weld on. I can get some scrap sheet metal and try patching in holes and reinforcing places that I was wanting to do anyway. I was sort of hesistant about doing this before since I don't have the experience and didn't want to screw up, but now with this car it really doesn't matter. Plus, I can go ahead and strip it out, get the rear out and when I have time swap it into the Pinto, drive the Pinto awhile to make sure this rear is ok, and then use the 6 and 3/4 rear to put into the II when the time comes to have it towed off. And I really do want to get the rims from the II onto the Pinto. Shined up they will look really good on it I think. And I am pretty sure that my tires will fit ok on them. Just need to make sure the rims aren't warped.

My big problem is that I have depression and am not on the meds I should be on. I cope pretty well most times but sometimes(this being one) things just get to me too much. I have to remember that patience is usually worth the effort I have to make to have any.

Now my big worry is that my welder will just trip the breaker. We just rent the place we live, and the wiring sucks, to be blunt. The garage is tied into the attic circuit, not even on it's own. But I am going to fire it up this weekend and find out. And my welder isn't even that big. It is a Lincoln HD 100 (or is that 100HD?). I don't have the mig kit for it, but if the circuit breaker holds, then I can look into getting it.

Thanks,
Russ

LILCBRA said:

go ahead and practice on it. you might find that it is easier than you think, then you can build your confidence with it, then find that just maybe you feel like tackling all the work there. you just have to remember that anything can be accomplished with enough skill and will power. good luck with it, and always remember that it is just for the fun of it.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the encouragement. I needed that.
Fun, this is fun.
Repeat constantly.

Russ

78CobraII said:

Russ,

I'm pretty sure that if you own a Mustang II and you are happy all the time there are some serious recreational drugs involved!

The welding practice sounds like a good idea. Just make sure you have everything else on that circuit unplugged!

You might check to see if your instrument cluster plastic support is still good. Someone could always use one of those.

If its good, you might just weld the metal dash support from your MII into your Pinto and install the dash on top of it. That would mess folks up at the car shows!

I've always wondered if you could mount the front clip from a MII onto a Pinto wagon...then maybe cut the roof off and make a pickup.

Click to expand...

You won't believe this, but i had to drive the Pinto today, wife needed her car. Not for a job unfortunately.
Anyway, I was looking at the dash and wondering if the II dash would fit.
Not something I would really attempt since I need the Pinto driveable, but an interesting idea. I am going to check into if the II column would work, cause I really could use a tilt column and modding the II doesn't sound that hard with that Granada thing. Although one thing different for sure is the Pinto (79) still has the wiper switch on the dash.

I have two dashes. The one in the car, and one that the p.o. had from another car he owned. That one is pretty broken up around the mounting places, but the instrument cluster looks ok. Has the aluminum or stainless trim, the one in the car has woodgrain. I need to steal the lights from it, missing a couple in the Pinto, but I will look to see if it seems ok. That I could ship, I am sure. It might be an 8 cyl, not sure. I need to see what adapter is on the back of the tach. The car it came from was a CobraII, not sure what year, I think a 78. I also have the fenders and doors from that car. One of the doors got a bit crushed though, had it laying in front of the car on the tow truck and the driver turned the winch on to tighten it up and the door got rammed into a support. grrrrrrrrrrr. I was really po'd, but I put the stupid thing there.

What is it with these things? The Pintos have the same plastic cluster problem.

Thanks,
Russ