More body repairs

Once again it has been verified that the time spent in the garage effectively reduces the time spent blogging. So here is a catch up of what has been done during the dark evenings of the passed winter.

The body metal works with big replacement panels were done the previous winter before the summer pause. In the autumn the the car was transported back to my home garage.

Autumn leaves fall and Mustangs return home

I intended to have all the remaining patches and minor body work done by the Christmas but, as usual, things do not go as planned. This time it was my back that had other thoughts. So it soon was Christmas time until I was able to start the work.

The car was lifted on the jack stands and the axles and suspension were removed. What I now had on stands was the basic unibody, the single piece of Mustang steel. 

The rear support of the gas tank was heavily rusted and needed to be replaced. It was easier to work with the tail light paned off so that was replaced as well. With the car came a new (made in Taiwan) trunk lid, which was test fit. The shape of the lid did not match at all the shape of the transition area arc between the lid and rear window so I will stick to and recondition the original lid.

Rear support for gas tank

Tail light panel replaced

Reproduction trunk lid

Original trunk lid

The lower edge of the rear window frame got half of dozen patches. The braces by the trap door had been rusted due to leaking rear window seals. I am not sure if replacement panel are available, but a friend of mine made them for me. The upper edge of the opening will still require some hammer and dolly handling.

Trap door opening

The rust had eaten it’s way through the front frame rails and the lower areas of the shock towers. Someone might have seen these as a justified opportunity to make a conversion to different type of front suspension, like Mustang II –type of solution. I didn’t.

Keep clean to avoid this

Arning drop underway using template as guide

The frame rail was repaired first with a 2 mm thick piece of steel. Then the lower areas of the shock towers were patched with same stuff. I loved welding these as it was able to use high current as there was enough metal to take the heat.

In order to increase the rigidity of the front I welded my own application of the additional “Boss 302 supports" for the shock towers. These changes, along with the fact that I added an angled reinforcement brace to the firewall and that the shock towers were prepared for export brace and Monte Carlo bar, should give the front enough triangular structure to make it stiff. At the moment the body surely is rigid. Any of the four stands may be removed and the body position remains.

The rear ends of the subframe connectors were designed to conform with the shape of the rear frame. I am quite happy with the looks of the end product of my subframe connectors. Shouldn’t they look that good, you might even think that Ford designed them.

In addition to these more visible repairs, there must have dozens of smaller patches welded and almost endless hours of grinding, grinding, grinding down the welds with angle grinder, sanding disks and by manual scraping. Finally, after the first week of April, the unibody was good to go with some painting. But that's worth for another post.