Progress Thread The "grátis" 1966 Coupe - final sheet metal repairs

02 281 GT

Agreed...My wife has great Boobs

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Oct 11, 2020

#621

• Oct 11, 2020

• #621

The replacement passenger fender apron arrived yesterday. I spent some time fitting it today. I was able to get the measurements from the cowl to the front of the firewall pretty close. The new apron is a nice thick gauge metal, but I'm thinking it isn't Dynacorn. The driver's side apron is a much sharper stamping with a lot less wrinkling. The new one is also one piece where the driver's side is two pieces spot welded together.

I was able to get the crossmember pretty straight.


After straightening out the crossmember, I refitted the aprons and radiator support. I brought out the fenders to see how it all looked. I picked up these fenders in Dallas as a set along with a hood from a '66 GT. They're in better shape than my originals, but they'll still need some work.




In other news, the roof is in a bit of a sorry state. This is what happens when your father-in-law uses a car as an ad hoc storage unit. How would the body wizards among you handle this?

 

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02 281 GT

Agreed...My wife has great Boobs

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#622

• Oct 11, 2020

• #622

And I somehow lost my body hammer. I set it down and it literally disappeared. Looked all over the place for it and no dice. I think one of the kids took it, but they deny.

 

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02 281 GT

Agreed...My wife has great Boobs

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#623

• Oct 11, 2020

• #623

@horse sence how do you go about installing all new engine bay metal? I'm assuming you start with the radiator support since it really only goes in one spot?

 

02 281 GT

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Oct 12, 2020

#624

• Oct 12, 2020

• #624

Minor progress today. Spent part of the day picking up a gas bottle for the welder. After that, I decided to go ahead and remove the factory sway bar mounts along with the small part of the shock towers that is sandwiched between the bottom corners of the aprons and the frame rail. As I've mentioned before, I'm going to be installing an IFS on this car at some point.

The new regulator is sturdy and fancy.


While under the car, I noticed that there is even more accident damage to the lower control arm mounting point I hadn't noticed before on this side. I'm glad I'm just going to be pulling all this out.

 

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wicked93gs

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#625

• Oct 13, 2020

• #625

A little tweaked, but I honestly doubt it would make any real difference with the way the LCA on these is designed...nothing that couldn't be aligned out anyway. I cut out the shock towers on my last '66, but I don't think I would ever do it again. What I would do is replace the '66 towers with 67+ towers...I have seen a 5.0 Coyote fit between those...really limits you on headers and the like...but I am pretty sure you could get end up with a completed swap if you were determined to keep the shock towers.

 

02 281 GT

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#626

• Oct 13, 2020

• #626

wicked93gs said:

A little tweaked, but I honestly doubt it would make any real difference with the way the LCA on these is designed...nothing that couldn't be aligned out anyway. I cut out the shock towers on my last '66, but I don't think I would ever do it again. What I would do is replace the '66 towers with 67+ towers...I have seen a 5.0 Coyote fit between those...really limits you on headers and the like...but I am pretty sure you could get end up with a completed swap if you were determined to keep the shock towers.

Click to expand...

I don’t know. I’ve been spoiled by all the room on the sides of the engine in the fox platform and my Mercury.

I’ll give it some thought. I have plenty of time to think it over.

And in current events, it’s time to build a welding cart!

 

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2Blue2

will be trying this sex one when I can find it

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#627

• Oct 13, 2020

• #627

Just a suggestion

 

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wicked93gs

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#628

• Oct 13, 2020

• #628

2Blue2 said:

Just a suggestion

Click to expand...

Why stop there? Just build racks all around the shop and fill them with welders! I actually just use some metal cart I was given for my TIG/ARC welder...my MIG is so old and cheap it doesn't deserve a cart.

 

wicked93gs

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#629

• Oct 13, 2020

• #629

02 281 GT said:

I don’t know. I’ve been spoiled by all the room on the sides of the engine in the fox platform and my Mercury.

I’ll give it some thought. I have plenty of time to think it over.

And in current events, it’s time to build a welding cart!

Click to expand...

There is a big downside to keeping the stock towers though I have found...you are stuck with rear-steer...not a problem in and of itself, but does limit how low the engine can sit...especially if its a more modern modular engine.

 

02 281 GT

Agreed...My wife has great Boobs

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#630

• Oct 13, 2020

• #630

wicked93gs said:

There is a big downside to keeping the stock towers though I have found...you are stuck with rear-steer...not a problem in and of itself, but does limit how low the engine can sit...especially if its a more modern modular engine.

Click to expand...

Not planning a mod motor, but I’m more than likely going with an IFS. I’d prefer to have the room and rack and pinion steering over the old stuff.

 

wicked93gs

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#631

• Oct 13, 2020

• #631

Nothing I can say against more room, but rack and pinion is not better steering...its just cheaper and easier to package...OEMs swapped to it to save money after all. I have no problem with a good rack, but a rebuilt box will be less effort to turn than a new rack(manual steering vs manual steering) while being just as precise, or so says everyone who has swapped. Power steering has certain advantages though...namely, being able to run a better ratio.

 

02 281 GT

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#632

• Oct 13, 2020

• #632

Didn’t get too far since it’s the wife’s birthday today. Had to get cleaned up for a night on the town.

I at least got the bottom tray done. I may not have enough angles for the sides of each tray. I may have to improvise if I can’t get some more tomorrow. I think I bought all TSC had.

 

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02 281 GT

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Oct 14, 2020

#633

• Oct 14, 2020

• #633

Going to hopefully finish the cart tonight. I had a plan of how I wanted to secure the bottle, but I got an idea and decided to purchase one of these instead.



I can weld it directly to the cart. It ought to keep it pretty stable. Once it’s complete I want to look into a way to store the 100’ extension cord I have on the back end.

 

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02 281 GT

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#634

• Oct 14, 2020

• #634

The cart is 95% done. I just need to finish up some finer details and then paint it. That'll have to wait until the bottle holder arrives on Saturday.

I probably could have completed this much sooner. However, I was taking my time since this is my first real welding project besides plug welding on the Mustang.

Got the top tray built. Getting the uprights situated so I can get the top tray welded in place. I actually made a mistake with the top tray. The Chinese cart is open on the front of the tray. I built it with four angles and made it enclosed. It's not long enough to fit the welder, so I'm going to have to cut the upright portion of the front angle.


I decided to notch the angles in the rear so I could get as much weld area as I could.


I got everything clamped in place. I ended up clamping the remaining angles I had to the front straight pieces since they had a little bit of a bend that was skewing things.



Got that done and moved on to the caster mounts. I was initially going to weld them on the outer edge of the cart body with gussets for support. I ended up deciding against that and welded them partway underneath the cart. I still added small angles for gussets. Two bolts for each caster go into the bottom tray area. This will give it much better support when it's loaded down with the welder, bottle, 100' extension cord, and whatever else I happen to put on it. I'll probably store my clamps on the bottom tray. The caster mount pads are 3/16" plate.


With that out of the way, I built the middle tray and clamped it in place. I had already drilled the holes for the casters at this point. Boy was that tedious.

 

02 281 GT

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#635

• Oct 14, 2020

• #635

@Noobz347 For some reason, the forum wouldn't let me post this as one post. I didn't get any error message saying I had too many images or anything.

All done with the casters installed. I still need to grind welds and sharp corners down in some places. This ended up turning out much better than I expected. I was worried that it would be tweaked somehow and never sit straight. Thankfully, the combination of a lot of clamps, prodigious measuring, and some levels gave me a result with which I'm very happy. This is straight as can be and rolls very nicely. I may change out the casters in the future for polyurethane. We'll see.


I took a few bits off the old cart that I'm going to reuse. The bend pieces were bolted to the side of the old cart for places to hang the ground and gun leads. I'm going to weld them to the front straights on the new cart. The front handle and its supports will also get welded to the new cart. I couldn't be happier.


The only other things that remain are to grind the aforementioned sharp corners and welds that need it and to weld on the bottle holder when it arrives. I will also likely add an 11-gauge 3"-wide flat piece to the bottom underneath where the bottle will sit for extra support since it will only be sitting on the 16-gauge that comprises the bottom of the trays. I would have bought 14-gauge, but 16 was the thickest TSC had.

Tomorrow I'll likely be taking a break from the car so I can get some yard work done. I have some vines to clear out from the outside of the fence.

 

Noobz347

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#636

• Oct 14, 2020

• #636

02 281 GT said:

@Noobz347 For some reason, the forum wouldn't let me post this as one post. I didn't get any error message saying I had too many images or anything.

Click to expand...

I think the limit is 5 images per post. If it errored out, something was probably jammed up in communication somewhere.

 

02 281 GT

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#637

• Oct 14, 2020

• #637

Noobz347 said:

I think the limit is 5 images per post. If it errored out, something was probably jammed up in communication somewhere.

Click to expand...

That's weird. There's a post of mine on the last page with seven images.

 

Noobz347

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#638

• Oct 14, 2020

• #638

02 281 GT said:

That's weird. There's a post of mine on the last page with seven images.

Click to expand...

I just looked, It was set to 12, I just reset it to 10 (that's per post).

Other limitations are 10,000kb file size. Check your uploads and see if any of them exceeded this. Pixel limitation is 1920 x 1920. So if you're shooting at the top end of your latest iPhone with the 24 Megapixel image sensor, you might want to reduce the image size.

Most folks that are shooting pics specifically for uploading to the internet, do that in 1080p (1920 x 1080) resolution. It doesn't make too much sense to shoot above that for forum purposes because we run software that resizes them before storage anyway.

 

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02 281 GT

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#639

• Oct 14, 2020

• #639

Noobz347 said:

I just looked, It was set to 12, I just reset it to 10 (that's per post).

Other limitations are 10,000kb file size. Check your uploads and see if any of them exceeded this. Pixel limitation is 1920 x 1920. So if you're shooting at the top end of your latest iPhone with the 24 Megapixel image sensor, you might want to reduce the image size.

Most folks that are shooting pics specifically for uploading to the internet, do that in 1080p (1920 x 1080) resolution. It doesn't make too much sense to shoot above that for forum purposes because we run software that resizes them before storage anyway.

Click to expand...

I actually still take most of my pictures with a Nikon D3100. The phone only comes out if the Nikon is out of reach.

 

Noobz347

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#640

• Oct 14, 2020

• #640

02 281 GT said:

I actually still take most of my pictures with a Nikon D3100. The phone only comes out if the Nikon is out of reach.

Click to expand...

I think that camera has a mode where you can record RAW and some other chosen format at the same time? Perhaps you can set the second save for 1080p? I have the Canon/Yang version of your Nikon/Yin so I don't know how your modes work.