Rear Leaf Front Bolts

I had a spare hour with the kids in bed and my sweet wife on a girls trip to see friends in Houston, so I took the opportunity to get out in the garage and take care of the rusty bolts preventing my convertible back end from laying in the correct spot.

Not much to do except cut the bolt head off with the washer and grind down the stump that was left.

I think the next project is to replace the drivers side torque box and front section of the rear frame rail.  Once I start doing this I can really see if the rear frame rail hump section has miraculously survived or if my screwdriver method isn't as good as I thought.

The passenger side front bolt.  The back end was about 3" too far back.

Adios!

Back end was pretty easy to slide forward by myself.  It's not precisely in place, but that will do for now.

IT'S ALIVE!!!!......kind of.

That's right.  It's almost Halloween and I've started the bad Frankenstein puns.  

At long last, here is Frankenstang!.....sort of.

This last weekend I didn't get a lot of time to work on the car, but I got what looks like a lot of progress.  I finished removing the back end of the coupe and was able to easily lift it off the back of the jig with help from my brother that lives down the road.

Putting the convertible rear portion on the jig was little more difficult.  I'm pretty sure it was close to twice as heavy as the coupe back end.....who knew rust was so heavy?

At this point, the convertible back end is about 3 inches too far aft since the front bolts of the rear leaf springs are still rusted to the rear torque box.  The upright on the jig fits snugly up against the inside of the rear frame rails so with the bolt heads sticking out I couldn't get it in place.  My next task is to cut those bolt heads off and slide the back end into place.

Removing the back end of the coupe was the easy part.

Kept the transmission tunnel and a good chunk of the roof at the top of the windshield

Before the transformation

After the transformation
(insert evil laugh here)

                                                  

 

Prepped for surgery

The left overs

 

I also removed the convertible top since it kept getting in the way while I was trying to poke around and find the rusty parts I need to clean up.  It was pretty simple after removing the bolts holding the rear window and curtain.  Whoever replaced this top the last time must have lost about half of the correct bolts.  There 2 different sizes of large lag bolts holding things together.  After that, it was just 6 bolts on the sides and the whole top came off in one piece.

Drivers side rear curtain bolts to remove

Bolts under rear window

Passenger side bolts

Top extended one last time before I store it away

View from the back

This might have made it lighter if I would have done this before lifting it onto the jig.
Maybe I'll think of this the next convertible I do.

This will make it much easier to work on.

With it up on the jig, I had a lot more room to climb underneath and start doing my screw driver test. (see earlier post on this method)  You wouldn't know it from the pictures below, but the drivers side rear frame rail is slightly better than the coupe.  I only need to remove the front and the rear part of the frame rails rather than the entire thing.  The frame rail hump didn't spring any leaks when I poked at it with my screw driver.

Whats left of the drivers side rear torque box and frame rail
This is before I took the air hose to it and removed 10+ years of spider webs.

I'm still a bit dubious that this part of the frame rail isn't rusty....After all, check out
what's left of the rubber mount bracket.

One of the previous owners frame rail repairs.  I'm not the best welder, but from the looks of this car
I know I'm definitely not the worst.....by a long shot.  Most of these welds remind me of
a pile of hocked up loogies.

From the looks of things this car has been "restored" at least twice.  The first time it got a nice coat of yellow over the original silver frost paint.  The second time, I'm not sure if the owner even sanded it before slapping on the bondo over the riveted on galvanized quarter patches and painting it red.  

It might be a little early to start thinking of the color, but my plan is to paint it Ford Laser Red with a set of Perl White GT stripes with the Deluxe Ivory interior.  This isn't the original factory colors, but I just can't get that excited about the silver frost paint with black deluxe interior that it originally had.  This won't be a contours level restoration so I might as well finish it the way I want. right?  Any thoughts?

I am a little curious about the chrome trim behind the '67 scoops.  I've never seen anything like this before as part of any option package on these mustangs, so I'm guessing it's some aftermarket add on that helps cover up poor body work on that ridge around the scoops.  Any ideas where these came from?

I kind of like the yellow with the black GT stripes......that could be a nice choice for the final color.
(minus the rust and cobwebs)

I guess the genius behind the galvanized metal is that it didn't rust!.....and it's not really a good
idea to weld galvanized metal (nasty fumes) so that's where the rivets came in handy. right?????
REALLY?????

A New Jig

Looks like I haven't posted anything for about 2 months.  It's been a busy couple of months with my son in soccer, family campouts and hunting season in Utah.

First of all, I uncovered what's left of my convertible and re-assessed the work to be done.

Uncovered and up on some "jack stands"

Needs a complete new trunk floor and dropoffs

 Needs new rear frame rails and torque boxes (but so did the coupe)

Hard to tell but this is a repaired rear frame rail and torque box.

I decided to use the front half of the coupe since the frame rails, dash and firewall are in good shape.  Without a solid frame to start from I decided a frame jig was absolutely necessary.  So I went to the local scrap yard and found a bunch of 1x4 steel tubes for about $50.  I decided that I would make the jig from the  dimensions in the back of the 1967 Mustang Shop Manual to make sure it all goes together correctly.  After welding this together I tested it out on my coupe and it fit with very little grunting.

This is the base of the frame....still had the uprights to weld on.

Added 4 3" swivel casters with brakes

After adding the uprights I fitted it to the coupe frame to make sure I got everything right.

I had to "shim" the jig up to fit under the car, but later took the car off the jack stands and everything stayed flat and level.  Looking down the main rails of the jig showed that they remained straight which means that the weight is spread out fairly evenly.

With the coupe on the jig I've decided to cut the front end off and remove the rear end.  Then I'll roll the front end over to the back end of the convertible and put that on the jig as well.  In the mean time, I realized that the whole back end of the coupe was going to be so awkward and heavy I might as well cut it up into a few pieces.  I started by taking the top off so I could get a preview of what the next few weeks would hopefully bring.  With the door braces and the jig underneath I think it was pretty well fixed.

In my excitement to mount the coupe to the jig I didn't realize that I should have taken the rotisserie mounts off before I mounted the jig, so the rear mount will have to stay on until I cut the rear end off.

This is the closest thing to a convertible that I've had in nearly 8 years!