POR-Weld

 I continue to work on the 'Stang on Tuesday and Wednesday after I get home from work. I have been using a circular air tool to clean the engine compartment and underneath the car in order to prep it for a sealing coat of POR-15 as well as a bit of rubberized undercoat. My dad is on vacation this week and was able to take some time out of his projects to spray two coats of POR-15 under the car and in the engine compartment. The next step before actually bolting up the suspension and steering is to shoot a coat of etching primer and a coat of paint. The car is really starting to look better with a uniform color. I think we are going to cut out some of the radiator support (pictured to the right) and drop in a radiator from a 67-70 Mustang which will allow for better cooling. It's not absolutely necessary to cut the front, but it opens it up for a wider set radiator and allows for more airflow. The 65-66 radiator is 17" wide while the 67-70 radiator is 20". Details can be found on Mustang Steve's website on how to do the installation.

While I cleaned up the interior to get it ready for a coat of POR-15, my dad cut a piece of sheet metal to overlay a section in the trunk due to it being slightly rusted out. I prepped the trunk to expose the metal for a clean weld. Of course once the car is put back together, this area will be covered up with carpet, but we still want to have a good piece of metal there. We'll also be coating the trunk with POR-15 before also laying down a coat of rubberized undercoating. As you can see in the picture to the left, the gas tank is out leaving a gaping hole, but it will be replaced with a 22 gallon tank from a '70 mustang. That gives me an advantage of 8 gallons over the standard 16 gallon tank found in a '65-66 Mustang. I figured since we would be replacing the gas tank anyways, we may as well increase the amount of miles we can drive with a bigger tank.

I also took some time to fill in the holes drilled in the driver's side door for the mirror since they were a bit bigger than they should have been; the metal was thin so I had to turn down the heat on the welder. I used our air tool to grind down the weld and will flush it off with some Bondo when the time comes to begin bodywork.

POR-15

The past couple of days I have done some different things with the car. I started to grind down the welds underneath where I welded in the new rear floor pans and also started cleaning/brushing the undercarriage to prep for painting the rust sealant known as POR-15. From the reviews that I've read and the pictures I've seen, the stuff is pretty amazing. Tonight I primarily went to my parents house so that my dad could help me put in a new front CV half shaft (axle) on my Civic, but I decided that I didn't want to spend the time on it. My dad did pull a cover on the transmission to find an oil pan bolt sitting in the housing. I'll eventually need to pull out the transmission since it's been making lots of noise lately when the clutch is not pushed down.

Yesterday I coated the rear end with POR-15, but unfortunately I didn't take the time to degrease it and it showed today on a few spots. To correct the problem I decided to take some sand paper to it to clean it up. I decided to also clean up the backing plates for the rear end and coating them with POR-15. They had a good amount of surface rust on them, but they turned out pretty nice after cleaning and coating them. I also had the opportunity to coat the brace the mounts under the engine between the lower A-arms, but I didn't get a picture of that. I still need to coat a fair amount of parts such as the hood latch, hood hinges/springs, bumper mounts, inside car doors, inside floor pans, undercarriage, engine compartment, and trunk. Of course before I can coat these parts, I need to prep the surface and that takes the most time.

I'm looking forward to putting together the front end again (steering and suspension) so that I can drop in the engine and transmission. My dad was straightening up the garage yesterday while I was there and he un-buried the engine that will be placed in the 'Stang and it got me excited...

More Welding

Tonight I worked on welding holes that were drilled by some previous owner where the driver's seat is since the rail broke and they didn't want to just fix it. I also welded in a couple of random holes as well as some seams in the floorboard of the driver's side.

My dad cut a piece of sheet metal to fit below the cowl under the hood where the export brace mounts to. After he cut it to fit, we used some vice grips to hold it in place. You can see that we used another piece of sheet metal to help ensure that the piece being welded in would stay flat.

Once I laid some spot welds down we were able to remove the vice grips. I was pretty wiped out tonight so I decided not to use the grinder to smooth out the welds and instead decided to do it another day. We'll use a sealer to seal the rest of the seam and then use some POR-15 to coat this area along with the rest of the engine compartment. I still need to drill the 4 holes in this new piece of sheet metal for the export brace, but we'll do that before we coat it.

The POR-15 is scheduled to arrive on or about Friday so we'll use it on Wednesday after spending some more time cleaning and prepping the metal.