Finally got back to the battery tray apron. I had intended on just replacing the whole panel, but one of my friends at 7173 Mustangs.com convinced me to just patch the bad stuff… so here we are. I’ve since ground down the crappy welds on the bottom
Lots going on here over Christmas Break, so here we go:
Tore open the cowl and found this. It’s typical for the cowls on these cars to rust out… but this one’s a little worse than I was expecting. Oh well – got plans to repair it soon, and easier than I originally thought.
Passenger side cowl damage – the air horn was mostly gone, and the latex coating in the shape of an air horn was pretty much what was left. Also got a way to fix this as well.
Here’s my Christmas Present all bolted down and ready for a carb. Edelbrock 2750 Dual-Plane Performer intake manifold. SWEET! The stickers that came with it alone are worth 5 horsepower each – LOL!
Valve covers on after re-checking the adjustment on the roller rockers. Also picked up a Mr. Gasket ported breather, and an Edelbrock breather for the driver side (which will double as the ‘710’ cap. (LOL!)
My pal Jim noticed I didn’t have a fan for it yet, and generously gave me the cut-out from the box for the flex fan he bought for his 1963 1/2 Galaxie 500 XL. I don’t know – doesn’t look like the ‘blade pitch’ is aggressive enough.
Noticed that I had one more heater hose outlet on the water pump than I needed. Gonna hafta figure out what to do about that.
It ain’t cool if the chrome don’t shine. It’s all about the details. I took a page from Jim’s book and polished the emblems for a little extra bling on the cool new intake manifold I got for Christmas.
My Master Mechanic pal Jim hooked me up with the old fan and fan clutch from his 1963 1/2 Galaxie 500 XL after getting a flex fan, and the Holley Black electric fuel pump he had stashed in his garage. Thanks Jim!
After I finished the battery apron, I prepped the floor pans to receive the seat platforms. This is after cleaning the black paint away and spraying down some weld-thru primer.
Got the seat platforms in. I had to modify them to sit lower, since they weren’t the correct platforms, but they work after test fitting the seats. Also, moved ’em back a few inches for more legroom. This picture is skewed a little – because they really are in line.
In another picture, I showed the Redneck Engineered air shocks (because the previous owner bashed through the stock shock mounts). Here’s my solution – took a piece of angle stock, trimmed one side off to make it flat stock, and bent it to mostly fit the contour of the cross-member. Gonna weld it in-place tomorrow
Since the outer edge is just hanging out there with no support, I chopped off a small piece of the left over battery apron and made a support bracket to weld on. Sorry for my crappy old 3.2Megapixel camera’s crappy auto focus.
Here’s the passenger side shock mocked up in-place with the new mount I made. Looks like it should work.
This is the driver side shock mocked up in the bashed-in stock shock mount location. So far, so good.
Moved to the trunk area and this is what we have after removing all the trim and tail lights. Not so bad, but still needs to be removed to fit the trunk pan in there.
Passenger side is a little more damaged, but repairable. I have the junkyard guys cutting the trunk surround out of the same car I stole the front clip from, so it shouldn’t be too bad.
Here’s the damage to the passenger side tail light area. Looks pretty bad, but I have a new piece to replace the bad stuff with.
Here’s yet another piece from the poor ’72 ‘donor’ car at the junkyard. The yard dawg cut it off a little short on the trunk surround (toward the left), so I’ll have to use the other side to graft in more of the weatherstripping channel. It’s all good.
Got the suspension apart and after a little bit of picking, discovered that these old school Lakewood traction bars came in Yellow! (and right now, they’re actually a blah shade of rust)
OK – after ‘blasting for almost two hours (as my back has been so good about reminding me), here we are with a fresh coat of black Duplicolor High Temp Engine Enamel. Painted both so the surface rust doesn’t start coming back before I get them installed next weekend. Gonna run some Rust Bullet through the insides when I get the chance. The picture of the other one didn’t come out so well… but they both look like this.
Here’s the trunk with a better view of the ‘Redneck Gas Tank Hammock’ I’ve been talking about. Yee-hah, Y’all!
Here we are at the end of the day after cutting out the rest of the nasty trunk pan. I decided not to waste my time with the spot-weld removal drill bit and just took the air chisel to the whole thing and separated all the spot welds the hard way. Quite therapeutic, actually.