Monday and Tuesday this week I had the day off from work, and the Christmas festivities were over, so I spent two solid days working on the Shelby clone project. The only interruption was to send the book manuscript on disc off to the printer on Monday; hopefully I'll be able to get the printed copies by the end of the month.
Before I got started on the car today I called ATI. I still hadn't received the transmission I ordered earlier this month, and wanted to know if they could give me a schedule. It turned out that the Powerglide to FE bellhousing had not arrived at ATI from the foundry yet, and would probably not arrive until mid January. So, I will have to wait until then to see my new transmission.
In the shop this morning I decided on a change in plans. Rather than working on getting the new quarters and other sheet metal welded in place, I decided to work on finishing the roll cage instead. I figured that the roll cage would help strengthen the frame structure of the car when it was finally welded into place, and I thought that would be a good thing when I was welding on the sheetmetal. So I started with the roll cage on Monday morning.
In short order I had the passenger side roll cage front upright bent and tacked into place on the front hoop, and sitting on it's 6" X 6" plate on the floor. Next I started working on the sidebars that go from the front uprights to the main hoop, across the middle of the door opening. Here I had to stop and figure out how best to proceed, because the main hoop was positioned just behind the door openings, and the front uprights were positioned just ahead of the door openings. So, when I put in the sidebars, access to weld to outboard side of the sidebars was very limited because they were up against the interior panels of the car. I wasn't all that great at welding in confined areas, so I spent some time figuring out the best way to do this.
In the end I settled on the idea of welding in the sidebars across the door openings from the inside, and making these welds as solid as possible, 180 degrees around the tube where I had access. Then, since the sidebars were going to be configured as swing-out bars, I could cut them at the connection joint up near the main hoop on each side. Then, I could cut the tack weld between the front hoop and the front uprights on each side, and completely pull each front upright and its attached side bar out of the car. This would give me access to weld completely around the sidebars where they attached to each front upright. Then, I could pull the main hoop forward past the door openings(since it still had not been welded to the back half frame rails) to get access to the outside half of the sidebar stubs that had been welded to the main hoop, so they could be welded all the way around. Finally, the main hoop could be repositioned, the front uprights could be repositioned, the sidebars could be clamped together into alignment where they had been cut, and the front uprights could be welded to the front hoop.
This work took me most of the day Monday to get accomplished. I also had to add a gusset plate to the front upright / front hoop junction on each side, because the angle of the front uprights to the front hoop was pretty extreme. After I got the gusset added and everything welded from underneath, I pulled the 6" X 6" plates out of the way, pushed the whole cage back a few inches so that the main hoop was off the back half frame crossbar, and dropped the whole cage through the floor again so I could weld the top of the front uprights and gusset plates in place. After I was done welding, I took the opportunity to paint over the top of the cage bars with a chassis epoxy, since I wasn't sure that I would get this opportunity again. I finished the day by putting the cage back into its final position, and cutting the side bars down near the front of the door opening, where they would pivot open when finished, and then painting the rest of the cage where the welding had been completed.
Tuesday I worked on getting the front frame support bars installed. These bars run from the front cage uprights forward along the top of the fenders, and then bend down to weld to the front subframe up near the front end of the car. My plan was to cut the shock towers and inner fenders completely out of the car at some point, so these two bars had to run close enough to the front fender mounting points so that I could add tabs to the bars later for mounting the front fenders. Therefore I wanted the bars to run straight along the inner fenders at the top for a good four feet before they curved down to the front frame rails.
Also, the attachment of the bars to the front hoop was a concern. Where the bars would attach was ahead of the door opening, so I wouldn't be able to easily weld around the entire joint with the cage in the final position. I had thought about this already, which was why I hadn't welded the cage to the back half frame or the 6" X 6" plates yet. My plan was to tack the front frame support bars to the front uprights, and then pull the cage straight back so that the joint was exposed through the door opening, and I could easily weld all around the front upright to front frame support bar joint.
In order to do this I had to make sure that the front frame support bars went straight through the sheet metal to the front uprights. Where they had to go through, they had to penetrate the sheet metal of the car in two places, spaced about 10" apart. If they went through at an angle, it would be impossible to pull the rest of the cage straight back and get access to the joint for welding.
In order to make sure the hole for the bars came straight through the sheet metal, I tool a 1/4" diameter 12" long drill bit and lined it up from the engine compartment to aim straight at the driver's side front upright. The drill has a level on top, so making sure to keep the drill level, I drilled through the outside sheet metal, and then farther in through the inside sheet metal. Using these holes as a position indication, I used my plasma cutter to cut the holes in the sheetmetal, from the engine compartment side for the outside panel and from the interior side for the inside panel. Then I fed a test piece of chrome moly tubing through the holes, and made a few more trims with the plasma cutter, until the tubing would slide straight through and contact the front upright.
Next I bent up the driver's side front frame support bar, notched it to fit against the front upright, and trimmed it at the front of the subframe rail to fit on the top. I had to cut away the inner fender forward of the shock tower in order to get the bar positioned where I wanted it. I trimmed the bar to fit the subframe rail, clamped it in place, then climbed into the interior to weld it to the front upright from the inside. I repeated the whole process on the passenger side, then pulled the cage straight back and finished the welds through the door openings. Finally I pushed the cage back into its final position, and after double checking the position to make sure I had everything right, I welded the main hoop and the rear support bars to the back half crossmember.
This was another milestone for the car. I still had more welding to do on the cage attachment points, but now the cage was set in place and wasn't going anywhere. I was planning on finishing this work up on the weekend
Wednesday and Thursday I was back at work, but we had Friday off for New Year's, so after some family obligations in the morning I was back out at the shop. I started by welding the 6" X 6" plates to the floor of the car, and then welding the front uprights to the plates. This was a little tricky due to access issues, and I had to use a mirror behind the front upright tubes in order to see what I was welding around the back side of the tube. Fortunately, this isn't as tough as it sounds, and if you go in small increments it can be done; it just takes some patience. From there I built some 1/8" plate pieces to weld onto the front subframe where the front frame support bars welded on. Since the front subframes are just glorified sheet metal on these cars, I wanted to use the large 1/8" plates to spread the load on the subframes. After I tacked the front frame support bars in place up front I moved back to the back half frame rails, which were still only tacked in place. I removed the wheels, tires, and axle housing for access, and welded the back half frame rails securely to the rocker panels and the rear 2X3 rectangular steel tube that was welded to the taillight panel. Finally I cut two more short pieces of chrome moly to run from a different spot on the rocker panel back to the back half frame rails, for additional strength.
On Saturday I focused on the front end of the car. I wanted to cut the core support and inner fenders out, but before doing that I had to put a framework in place to support the front of the fenders and other front end pieces, plus the radiator. After an hour of thinking about the best way to do this, I decided on a simple framework made from 1" X 1" 16 gauge square tubing. As I was getting going on this Steve showed up with a couple of hours to help out. Between the two of us over the next couple of hours we got the square steel tubing welded in place, and also welded some tabs onto the front frame support tubes that were lined up with the holes in the inner fenders that the fender bolts went through. Then we used the plasma cutter cut away all the core support, inner fender, and shock tower sheet metal. This was an extremely cathartic experience for me; I have hated the shock towers in Ford Mustangs for years and years, but have never completely removed them from a vehicle. As we pulled the pieces away and threw them in the scrap file, it felt like a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Look at all that room! The cammer and the headers would fit in here with no problem now.
After Steve left, I decided that with the inner fenders and shock towers gone, I could mount the struts on the spindles and see what they looked like. Sure enough, as soon as I got back to the front end, things started going wrong again. The first thing I did was to try to fit the adapter plates included with the Fatman kit to the spindles. These are two pieces of 1/8" steel plate that act as spacers between the '94-'04 Mustang spindles and the '79-'93 Mustang struts, because the brackets on the bottom of the Mustang struts are spaced farther apart than the width of the ears that they bolt to on the spindles. The adapter plates in the kit came in pairs, welded together with a nut in between them. A jacking screw was threaded into the nut, to be used for camber adjustment by jacking the strut away from the spindle. Unfortunately, this assembly did not fit on the spindle; it was too narrow. This wasn't that big of a deal to me because I was going to replace this assembly with some custom plates anyway, but I wondered what kind of a jig they had used to build something that didn't fit. Next I grabbed one of the struts, which had been sitting in the box next to the car for the last month or so, and test fit it. I figured that even if it was loose it would give me an idea of what I needed to do with the strut upper mounting point. However, I was surprised to see that the strut fit perfectly onto the spindle! There was no adapter required! This would have been fine, except that I was relying on using those adapter plates to allow pivoting of the strut so that the upper strut mount could be moved outboard. Essentially, I couldn't use the strut as it was.
This was another big disappointment, and I didn't really know how to proceed. I plan to give the people at Fatman a call on Monday and ask about this. I left the shop a little discouraged on Saturday night.
Sunday I decided to leave the front suspension work again, and worked at getting the sheet metal welding done on the quarters, trunk drop downs, and outer wheelhouses. The driver's side went along with no trouble; I kept a wet rag next to the panel as I was welding, and just went around and around each quarter panel, welding a button at a time, until I had the seam completed. Underneath I welded the outer wheelhouse and trunk drop downs in place after some additional trimming of these parts, and plug welded throught the quarter panel lip to the outer wheelhouse. On the passenger side, I decided I wanted to reposition the quarter panel just a little, so I drilled some more holes, took out Steve's sheet metal screws and put in some Klecos in slightly different locations to move the panel an eighth inch here and there. Finally I got to welding, but kind of petered out by late afternoon without finishing the welding work on that side. I'll get to it later. I went inside because I need to start getting going on building a web site to advertise my book. With the book at the printer the clock was running on this, and I didn't have the first clue about how to put a web site together, so I wanted to start reading a book I'd purchased on the subject. Hopefully I can talk to the people at Fatman next week and solve my problems with the front suspension install, and get back to work on the car next weekend.
