Inner fenders - Rust, Defeated!

"Just give it a tap tap tappy!"

Minor frame box repair

After fighting with an inferior patch panel to repair the rusted battery apron, struggling, and ultimately failing and having to rip out the bad repair, I ordered a nicer replacement panel. This time around I decided just to grind out all the spot welds and replace the entire panel. Glad I did, since when removing the whole panel I discovered that the rust that ate the battery tray, core support, and battery apron had also eaten holes in the frame box underneath. So before I could focus one the battery apron, I needed to repair the frame first. It was not a huge deal, but totally required. I also took the opportunity to arrest some of the rust inside the frame box and wiring tunnel under the core support.

 

 

Battery apron repair

New battery apron, plug welded in

After completing the frame patch, next task was to replace the battery apron. I used my new sheetmetal punch to  make the holes for the plug welds. After fitting and snugging the panel, I plug welded it in.  Some self-etching primer was applied when finished. This also tied the core support back to the unibody, which had been flopping around while I chased the rust problem down.

Interestingly, I will not be putting the battery tray back in since we're relocating the battery to the trunk. My friends in the LS Mafia suggest the pocket might be the perfect place to locate a turbo! (Noted. No turbo in the plan, but hey, they're right about the fitment possibilities)

 

Driver's side inner fender rust repair

Rust repair patch, fitted to the driver's inner fender

The inner fender on the driver's side was not nearly as rusted as the passenger, but there was a strip where a flange was plug welded on, and trapped moisture had rusted it through. This did not warrant a full panel replacement, so I decided to fabricate a patch to repair it in place.

Inside the fresh air intake, under the cowl- repaired with fiberglass and epoxy

I also repaired the fresh air vent intake inside the cowl on the driver's side with some fiberglass and epoxy so that it would both not rust any further and not leak. This was to fix the pinholes that might let rainwater into the interior of the car when it rains, but without having to perform a complicated and time-consuming disassembly of the cowl and firewall portion of the unibody 

I finally welded in the patch and it looks good. Welding to the old metal can be tricky, but I am getting better at it, as evidenced by the increasingly neater welds.

Take that, Illinois!


More pics

Treating rust in the wiring box under the core support

Test fitting a fabricated frame patch

Using my sheetmetal punch

The fresh air vent after rust treatment, but before the pinhole repair

Fabricating the inner fender patch - test fitting to see if contours match

Using spray paint to mark where I need to cut

Adjusting fitment of the patch with a hammer and dolly

Finished patch

Long wintery gap, full of hand wavy. Now we're back at it!

Yeah, my last post was in December. Why no Mustang progress? So winter happened, no heat, compressor idle, and an electrician who is 5 jobs deep happened. I took some time off. It's been pretty mild in Illinois for the last 2 weeks though, so I put on my longjohns and jumped back in. Still waiting for the electrician though. As appropriate, we'll probably have shop heat by July!

Screwed up some sheet metal

This looks almost ok in this pic. I wasn't happy with it though.

Sorta. I cut the rusty battery apron so I could section in some new sheet metal. As luck would have it, the replacement piece was not very good quality- it fit poorly and was, I dunno, just weird. I went for it and cut it in, but there were some unsettling gaps. I mean I measured 4 times, templated, traced, all that. But after tacking it in place and removing and reworking, then tacking in place again I decided it looked like shit and tore it out. For giggles (and because the welder was burning through inexplicably), I gauged the metal, and found that it was weird because it was 20 gauge sheet, not 18 (crap). So I "saved" $20 on this cheaper panel. And it cost me more since I threw it in the trash after all that cutting and fitting, then ordered a better quality one. That's not even factoring my time spent trying to push a bad position. Dad was right. Just pay for quality and shut up, it's easier and cheaper in the end.

water in, water, detergent, and debris out!

Dead mouse count up to 7

I thought I had found all of the rascals, but when I blew some compressed air into the end of the cowl to do a quick clean-out there was nesting and skeletal mouse bits. I didn't expect the cloud of crap that blew out the other side when I started. Turns out the fresh air intake was filled in places one can't see with more mud wasp and mouse nests. After an hour, I chased the last of the debris out. I finished up by dousing the channels with detergent and flushing with water. I didn't have to open up the cowl, so a huge win there.

Found a new challenging thing (spoiler alert: more rust)

So why was I flushing out the cowl? While waiting for the new battery apron I decided to get back on the horse and start work on the driver side cowl, which rusted through where it mated to the firewall and the floor. I did not get a shit-cheap panel for this replacement (made sure this time) so we're ready to rock. I cut some of the firewall and some of the cowl back. I noticed once this was opened up that I had easy access to the fresh air intake. Since it'd be easier to work with that removed, out it came. Then the fun started. I noticed immediately that the flange for the cold air intake (the part that keeps water that gets in the cowl vent from pouring inside the car) was rusted pretty badly, with a few holes all the way around.

Fresh air intake flange - rusty but savable

This is a common weakness in the '65 Mustang. I just figured that since the cowl looked ok from the inside, it wasn't a thing. Given that replacing the cowl would be a gigantic crazy deal, I resolved to repair the fresh air intake with a sleeve epoxied in place. I ended up removing the cold air flapper, cleaning it up and repainting it with POR15. I removed the wiring harness since it was in the way (and we're replacing it anyway), then hit the panels inside the car with a wire wheel. I finished by arresting all the surface rust on the inside of the firewall and cowl with POR 15.

More pics

Cut out a bit of rusty firewall, saving the rib

Broke some spot welds, looking to replace most of the cowl side with new sheetmetal

removed the fresh air flapper -it was filled with debris!

prepping the air flapper for rust arresting epoxy

all done

cleaned up the inside of the firewall

firewall and cowl painted with POR15

fresh air intake cowl flange painted with POR15

Wait, wasn't it just summer?

Sorry for the dearth of updates. I had taken a break to do some minor things, and in the spirit and fashion that only I can seem to manage, they all unraveled into fairly involved things. Here's a list of things I did in the last 6 weeks:

Shop Truck Winterize

Ah my trusty old shop truck. I spent the summer hauling engines and gear and rear-ends and whatnot. It was time to give it some love before winter snuck up, especially since there was an ominous sounding "clunk" coming from the front suspension when steering at low speeds. I also knew that the front shocks looked terrible. I probably should have spent more time diagnosing, but to me "clunk" means "replace all the damn ball joints and tie rod ends" (and maybe even the steering pittman arm). Shotgun loaded, online parts catalog deployed- a week later I was under my old GMC with a pile of parts and an impact wrench. Unfortunately I learned that GMC beancounters engineered the lower ball joints instead of GM engineers and the result was a mess that required time-intensive and destructive pnumatic and fire-breathing techniques to disassemble. Lucky for me the replacements only required an impact tool. All in all a job that took 4 hours in my head took 2 weekends. C'est la vie. Truck drives like new now, and the front suspension should last until the rapture!

Air Compressor

I had an odyssey involving my workshop air service that ended interestingly.
My dad left me a heavier-duty 5HP air compressor with a 50 gallon tank which for all I could tell might have been usable. The electrical box cover was removed, and looked like someone took a messy stab at fixing some sort of problem. Electrical not being sorted, I couldn't really test the motor. There was also some orange RTV gasket goop sticking out from underneath the head, so I knew someone had performed mechanical work on it for reasons unknown. Since I grow increasingly impatient with my small, underpowered pancake compressor in the garage, I really wanted that big tanker to work. So I loaded it up out of my storage unit, delivered it to Mike at Cox Electric in north Urbana, and asked him to go through it.
Mike did his thing, finishing with an apologetic call to report that the motor was bad, the crank was bad, the bearings were bad- in all, not worth fixing. After thanking him and paying for his service, on a lark I asked whether or not they had anything suitable for a small garage like mine. Normally, Cox is a repair shop, not a sales joint. But that day Mike just happened to have something that another customer had turned in to exchange for a larger unit. He explained that it was a fine, low-hours unit they had just inspected and tuned up. I slipped behind the counter, went back in the shop and took a look.
I turned the corner and saw it. My eyes scanned from its foot, mounted on a heavy pallet, upward, past a vertical 80-gallon tank and stopped at the 7.5 horsepower motor and drive belt turning a crank connected to two soupcan-sized pistons configured in an air-cooled V. Overkill, it was complete and utter overkill. This unit could drive four of my shops if I ran them full time. "That'll do", I said.  Won't bore you with the logistics of moving that thing, but I will pause to thank fellow car enthusiast friends Jeremy and Josh for swinging by to help move and unload. Not a dainty endeavor.

Furnace

It's getting cold, and in anticipation of winter, I purchased a furnace. The back of my house and garage needed their own unit to stay comfortable. I spent part of November building a mechanical room in the back of the house, arranging for my HVAC contractor to fabricate a plenum and run new ducting, then install the furnace.

Electrical

I would like the ending of the compressor story to be me plugging it in and using it to finally blasting those darn stubborn leaf spring bolts loose with my impact wrench. I would like the ending of the furnace story with me under the car not freezing my ass off. As luck would have it, I opened the main panel in my garage and realized there was no place to properly add the needed breakers or circuits. To solve, I decided to install a garage subpanel. I needed it also for the welder and workbench outlets as well anyway. Then I realized the next problem in the stack: there was neither the room nor any open lugs to clamp down the fat 2-gauge wiring needed to add my subpanel. Stupid fused main. The proper way to do this would be to replace the main fuse panel with a breaker panel. That lead to realizing the need to pull the meter on the outside of the building, and probably moving the entire main (old feed is in place that may require updates due to new code requirements). This tightly-coupled mess all of the sudden turned into something I need to bring the power company and licensed electricians (personal rule - as good as I am with electrical, I will not mess with any main feed). It's a lot of work, but it is a huge project I had been avoiding. I just really dislike that I need to do it right now.

So there it is. Nothing really going on with the Mustang in the past 6 weeks - I have been jigging up and practicing stitch and plug welds on 18 gauge. Helped out my buddy Jeremy with welding up a 4" exhaust flange for his new turbo setup (pretty cool), and he in turn helped me out with moving that monster air compressor. I plan on getting back down to business soon, after all, my workspace is no better or worse than it was last winter. I'll just bundle up in my Carharts until I get my shit sorted.

Happy birthday, dear chux0rMustangproject- happy birthday to you

Has it really been a year? Guess so! In October of 2015, I rolled into our main work bay the 65 Mustang gotten out of a barn and purchased from my buddy Jason, and initiated this 2-year restoration project. I suppose this is a great time to stop and reflect on things.

Although I know a few things, the goal was and is to learn the rest by just doing it. In many ways this project doesn't have much to do with cars as much as it is about conquering some of my demons. Number one demon was the notion that I don't know enough to do this. As much as I've picked up over the years, I always labored on the sidelines under the notion that I needed to be some sort of super expert to even begin. Stupid, right? If you don't start, nothing will ever happen! I wasted so much time paralyzed by this thing, afraid that I'd mess something up. Ridiculous, I know. No more. I acknowledged I will definitely mess something up, and that it's no big deal. In fact I have already messed up a couple things, then went back and recovered, and in doing so have learned a great deal. Number two demon is patience. There are really no quick fixes on this project- all of it requires focus and patience. Focus I have in spades. Patience? Well let's just say I think I am getting better at this. The penalty of course for being impatient is you get to redo whatever you just rushed and messed up.  

Full disclosure: The 2-year time estimate I pulled out of my ass. I had no idea what I was in for, but 2 years sounded like enough time to stumble into problems, figure out what needs to be done, learn the stuff I needed to learn, and get at it. I might be right, who knows. Right now feels middle-ish. Here's everything the kid and I have done:

Engine overhaul.

We didn't think the engine needed major work at the get-go, but I suppose one needs to expect this every now and again when picking up a non-running project. I thought maybe it was just a starter and a fuel delivery problem, but when I found the valvetrain trashed, I knew we were going to have to tear it way down. First time I've pulled apart an engine all the way to bare block. Not bad for making shit up as I go! It's also worth noting that I benefited greatly from my local machinist, who knew exactly what I needed even though I didn't really know at first everything I needed to ask. Learned tons about what to do, and what not to do. I like the way it turned out. Can't wait for the next engine build!

Rrrrrrrust! Welcome to Illinois.

Like the engine, the rust didn't seem terrible until we picked at it a bit. It's still not, like crazy rusty, but there's just more than I thought there would be. The rust in the floors and firewall and trunk and wheelhouses was all just masked really well. I peeled away slowly all of the tin patches, the body-filler, the undercoating, and the riveted panels to reveal the rust that was always hiding there, and set out to figure out the best ways to address it a) properly and b) permanently. Luckily I had already taken some welding classes at my local community college. After adding a welding rig to the garage and making about every rookie mistake a greenhorn welder can make, I got dialed in and down to business.
As for sheetmetal, one can buy any panel on this car from a variety of restoration catalogs, and I have bought some big ones to replace large sections of rusted floorboard, but I am fabricating smaller patch panels with no or simple bends.

Highlights

I've taken a wire-wheel on an angle grinder to the belly at 10,000 RPM after kicking back off a corner, ooooh baby. Yes, it left a mark. I've overtorqued and broken bolts after looking up the right torque specs to the wrong engine, requiring a trip to the machinist. I learned how to gap rings, lash valves, assemble the rotating assembly, and disassemble an entire car down to the bare chassis. My garage boogie is close to perfect enough for JoAnne to suggest a web cam. This could be a thing. Jegs and Summit like me so much I get full catalogs sent every month, making my bathroom magazine holder happy. Best is yet to come.

The next 12 months

In the next 12, you will see welding, priming, painting, wiring, chassis work. We are going to tub the rear end. We'll drop our new engine in. We'll install a modern 5-speed transmission (and learn how to drive stick!) We'll install the interior. Paint and detail. Vroom.

Best of Pics, last 12