Oops I'm doing it again....I lost my head...

OK, it was a balmy football night, plus raining outside....or at least rainy. Time to do some updates! I haven't been much on the computer as I've been busy with a bunch of stuff, as life does to ya.

Here's where I am in the frame repair:

 

I am working on placing the 3rd and 4th "reinforcements on the tops of the brackets. Presently am working in the ladder bar to bring all 4 holes up to 10mm size, per normal fasteners. I was cheating and using 3/8" bolts from a Cougar....

You can see in the above shot, my relocated sway bar bolt hole (closest to shock tower mount on right). Since this one went so well, I decided to do the same to the one stripped out (oversized) hole on the right hand frame rail! It too came out very nicely, but no picture. So now I can run stock 5/16" bolts all the way around. A 220V home welder is a handy thing to have!!!

Need a little time on a mill, some welding, grinding, then more welding.... stay tuned.

Just got this in the other day too! My new idler pulley standoff!

 

Yet another gift came, from across the pond...Roger Brotton had this made up to duplicate the one that was on the engine that I sent him with Goose #760. I added the black shrink wrap (not shrunk yet!) as a possible upgrade from black electrical tape....! (Shown on a stock cast iron intake.) It will work on aftermarket intakes nicely.

 

Here is a project that didn't make it far from the workbench.... It needs thinner leather, and less shiny buckles!!! ...and flat head rivets....

 

And perhaps you have been following the e-brake cable discussion in another post...or not... Here is the most reasonably priced end that I can find, that actually almost fits!!! Option that is still on the table....design table...is to make it using a simple "U" shaped piece and eliminate the little link that is on my rear brake affair..... The challenge remains to get a crimped end on the cable, and then close the opening so that the two end surfaces are touching each other in a "closed fashion" rather than open as shown. (That's why the U-thing may work better.) Top to bottom pieces... 1) Only aftermarket piece that I can find...expensive and loooonnnngggg!!! Needs to be much shorter... 2) Aftermarket "would work" but
"can't get it anymore!" 3)Side view of recent "most bestest" contender... 4) Original brazed on brass eyelet. 5) Top view of uncrimped "possible suspect".... Of course then there are probably about 3-4 different lengths to deal with, and the pesky ferules, and the different types of housing or sheathing.....sheesh!

 

I spent this last Saturday trying to get this running.....a 1962 Comet station wagon, with a solid cammed 302 and a 9" rearend in it already! We got it running fine, but stopping was a different matter altogether! Going to retrieve it with a trailer on Thursday hopefully! This car belongs to an old friend that needs to sell it, so I will do some work to it to get it operationally fit, and then offer it up to the masses! Original owner car!!!

 


So, I have been busy!!! Even on my own car!

Steve

OK, time for an update!

Thanks for the leads on the marine aspect! They have something that looks interesting...but have not had the time to stop at the nearest outlet to look at the parts....but they are viable, even with some machining required....

Back to my frame repairs!!! Here is a shot of the ladder bar installed, prior to the welding of the final two "improvements #2" to the mounts of the ladder bar.

 

I've also put the reinforcement for the trans brace in place (actually it is sitting where the actual trans mount goes...). This is meant to limit frame flexing in this area caused by the upper a-arm forces acting on the thin box tubing during aggressive turns. More on that later when I get to that portion....

Here is a closeup shot of the final area of welding that needs to be done. I missed getting by the metals shop on Friday to pick up a thicker walled piece of tubing to use as the sleeve/mount for the top of the shock tower new 3rd and 4th mounting bolts. Spare sleeve is shown standing on the ladder bar.

 

The original .500 OD tubing that I used was about .050" wall thickness once it was drilled out for a 10mm bolt. That just didn't seem like enough metal for me, in a stressed point such as this. Mild steel could tear fairly easily...only .050" thick. I upped my wall thickness to almost .120 by going up to a 5/8" OD tubing in a last minute running change....so now I'm running for new tubing and back to the neighbor's lathe to cut some new bits!

Once I have these bits in hand and fitted, I can weld them to the proper places on the top of the shock mount and I will be done with the repair portion of this adventure! Then it becomes refinishing and refining from there!!! ...and of course now we're hitting winter and barely 60 degree days....not good for painting cold steel parts!!!!! Will have to get creative and hope for an Indian summer!!!

Ciao!
Steve

OK, new bits of steel (shown on right) are cut, bored to 10mm i.d. and fitted to left and right shock supports. (That is what the flat spot is...to allow it to fit down closer to the support. Welding takes care of strength issue here as force of motion would be upwards, away from the thin flat area.)

While I had the lathe set up, I also modified my upper shock bushing adapters to a 10mm ID. Previously they were 3/8"....because I cheated and installed US bolts that I had lying around....! Now every shock mounting hole goes back to stock 10mm sized stuff....and nylocks!
 


Welded up LH support...
 

Welded up RH support...

 

All done!!! Well, almost....

 

I had to use the straps to pull the frame rails in ever so little to get all the thru bolts to slip in. At this point, all 4 bolts slide in and out loosely! That will never happen again! Seriously.... I fitted the ladder bar with body weight working against the suspension (upper rear a-arm) sitting on the ground. Once the engine etc is mounted, I may actually need to spread things apart, OR, use a combo of the jack and jackstands in different locations to get bolts to "slip easily" back in place. At least two bolts at any one time should be a slip fit!!!! Minor details....

So what now??? I want to clean up some of the welding areas to get splatter and some high spots lowered a hair, where I dwelled a bit to long with the MIG tip....

I want to make up some quick "shock dummys" to use while I refinish the rest of the engine bay....so that the shocks are not in the way of sanding dust and other such sorts of crap....while I am stripping off old frame/chassis/firewall paint in preparation for new paint and heat insulation/padding! I think I have some 1" square tubing scrap around here somewhere.....

Ciao!
Steve

Wow! It's been so long since my last update I almost forgot my password!!! OK, it's been just under 4 months since I last posted. It's been 3 months and aprox 3 weeks since I've worked on the car! Since my next task was stripping and painting, I've had to wait for pleasant weather in order to have the garage door open...and to muster up the will power to get back out there! So tough to do when it's 50ish degrees out....We hit high 60's this week, low 70's....spring is here! I'm back in the garage! I kept busy doing ebay sales and some tilt-colums...they only need parts cleaner and no paint....so I could convince myself to do them....but freezin my butt off not to mention my fingers, and trying to will paint stripper to work....nope. Not going there!!!

OK, that is a lie. I must have found some time to work on it, because I made up the dummy shock struts! Used some aluminum angle stock I got from Home Depot. Figured I could re-use it to make a fan shroud support at some time in the future... when I get ready to build a fan shroud for a new set of electric fans....but that's a different post...

So, shocks are out, struts are in, removed all the cross member bits so I could get at things with paint stripper, sanding tools, and whatever else comes up!

Here is what I started with on Tuesday this week: (5 pics of stuff so I can figure out where to put it all back to...)
 


I have not yet pulled off the sound/heat insulation from any of the forward areas of the bulkhead, nor the RH side. Only from the left side where you can see the cardboard template I'll use when I work up the new insulation material...
 

I'll be leaving the ballast resistor out. No need for it with the DuraSpark II module and coil. Good shot of the Bosch voltage regulator.
 

Here's where I mounted the DuraSpark module. Gotta watch out for the jack mount on the other side here!!! The rubber/canvas wheel well shield is not stock. PO had these build and installed way back during it's rebuild where it got the Boss 302 engine. Not sure how well they work......
 

Good shot of the original style starter solenoid. This type with the "bump" button on the top are still available! The solenoid to the right, is there to supply a full +12V to the DuraSpark module during cranking. Once it stops cranking it works off of +12V from the run circuit of the ignition. This relay was from a mid 70's Ford Galaxie or big Merc, "horn relay" is the official name, so should be able to handle the current....
 

The wire holder and the bracket for the LUCAS washer bottle are held in place with aluminum pop rivets, so I hit them with the drill and popped these parts off for refinishing, and to make it easier to clean the panel and get at stuff in general!
 

A few minutes with a long scraper/putty knife and this is what it looked like! I also pulled out the wiring on the RH side, marked the wires with tape labels, and secured it neatly with 4" pieces of two sided 1" velcro strips. Now I can move it around nicely to work around it. The four 4-link bars are removed and the chassis is actually sitting on jack stands. I will be dropping the upper and lower a-arms so that I can degrease the mounting areas, clean, and repaint. Going with a silver to brighten things up in the engine compartment! A 1" thick piece of closed cell foam on the crossmember works wonders to sit on when cleaning!!!
 

I dug out an old can of aircraft paint stripper and went to town on the LH panel area. This is where I closed it down on Tuesday night. Oops! Didn't take a picture of where I stopped on Tues! I only got the forward LH side, up to where it turns to the right. I got to this point after another night with a small paint brush, can of stripper, a couple of putty knives, a plastic pickup tub, and a roll of towels and a box of plastic gloves! Oh boy!!!

Here is where I stopped late last nite:

 

By now I'm figuring I have 10 weeks before Reno. Actually 11, but I have a trade show and a weekend away scheduled with the wife, and I'll need a break from this thing any way, end of April.... Progress will be good as long as I can get the painting and refinishing of the engine compartment done. Stuff like upper and lower a-arms go on the "optional list, as they can be done just about any time easily. The 4 link rods will be done now....they are not so easy once the engine is back in....unless you have a car lift....go ahead, make me jealous!

My plan is to take Fridays of from now until June. I have the time, and the boss is happier if I take it that way actually....his pucker factor goes way up when I'm gone for too long......

Another night spent with stripper and tools...and here is where I left off a few minutes ago. Oh, I also found that a small brass and or stainless "parts brush" really cam in handy in all of the spot welded areas, cracks, seams, and even the flat panels...


 
What I found under the black paint on the panels was some sort of white-ish filler primer sort of stuff. Sometimes it comes off easily, others, not so good. There is also adhesive glue from the insulation still on the walls....and surface rust....then there are the spots where it seems "super bonded" or burnt on! Could be the stripper not working properly...it's old.....

OK, I am out of stripper! Used up my stock of brass brushes, half of the stainless one I started with, and have one new one in reserve. Time to hit Home Depot...in the morning.


You can see that I stopped over the wheel well opening, where the rear panels meet the front panels. The rear sections are pretty flat, so I hope will go rather quickly. I hope.... Will need to be careful with the stripper around the rear valance area, so may take out the AC condensor to gain more access....it isn't charged...so....we'll see!

I was very pleased to see nice clean steel under most of the metal. It looks orange now, like rust, but it is surface rust that has formed from the stripper absorbing moisture in the air....or something like that. I will clean this off some more with sandpaper and then protect with something like Galvaprep and follow with Prepsol as a cleaner just before caulking the seams/corners, and paint.

Some of the paint on the chassis frame is very resistant to the stripper, and other sections, once hit with stripper, slides right off.... We'll see what happens with a new can....

I also may have baked this paint on via the header heat....but I repainted most of the chassis back when I was putting it back together last time. I'm pretty sure it was just rattle can Rustoleum, semi gloss black, maybe high temp..... It held up well, except the areas closest to the headers and where I ruptured a brake line and hosed it down with Dot4 fluid....

So, the bad news is that I will be spending at least 2 days more on cleaning down the chassis to get it ready to paint. The good news is that I'll only be spending about 2 more days cleaning and prepping for paint!!!! I did buy a new DA sander for this job...may have to bust it out and see what it does! I have some minor metal displacement from spotwelds that I would like to "dull" down. Small points of sharp steel formed and I hate cutting myself on them when I'm working on stuff..... I'm not going to go crazy and fill spot weld divots, only remove the sharp tips and points of displaced metal.

Here are some shots of my bulkhead juntions, where sheet metal body meets bulkhead, and where rear frame section meets bulkhead.

From Left to Right:
 

Here is the center section. Some guys have a big opening here with two large round tubes visible....not here!
 

 

Here are the 4-link attachment points. I have heard guys tell of these cracking too, so if you are in here, check it out, again L to R top, then L to R bottom.

 

 

 

I didn't get into this area with the stripper all that well. Something to do tomorrow....

 

I'm glad to be back on this!
Steve