Restoration Log Archive

Dan to the rescue

Posted January 28, 2013 By jack

Well, it looks like Dad’s welding mishaps were too difficult to fix after all. Since we didn’t want to inflict any more damage than had been done already, or delay our project any longer, we decided to leave it to the professional. Dan, who runs the muffler shop across the street from TLG, was kind enough to finish the job for us. He quickly patched up the blowout holes, and now all I have to do is grind down the excess metal. Next step: rear quarter panel replacement. These will probably be spot welded in place once the old ones are cut out. Dan told my dad that the 1969 Boss 302 had fake side scoops like ours, but I’ll have to run a fact check on that—I’m pretty sure I remember the Boss looking a bit more sleek.

Dan cleans up nicely

Back in business

Posted January 8, 2013 By jack

First post of the new year! This year I resolve to finish restoring the Mustang by my high school graduation on May 31, and if I put the pedal to the metal I might just do it.

We visited the garage last night for the first time in a while (my winter break was spent skiing). Dad and I worked to finish the job we had started by filling in the remainder of the holes around the battery tray we fabricated with weld tacks and grinding down the excess metal to reveal any missed spots. The grinding took some time (even with a 36-grit sanding disc on the pneumatic die grinder), but I took it down to a manageable level. Grinding away at the metal also cleaned up the surface for further welding, but that didn’t stop my dad from making of mess of my hard work…

Now that we’d moved to a smaller guage wire (from .030 to .024), Dad discovered that it was possible to lay a continuous bead along the sheet metal. Dad’s zealous trigger finger, combined with the fact that grinding made the metal thinner and that one of us had accidentally bumped the wire-feed dial from 30 to 40, led to numerous blowouts. By the time I had stopped him from wreaking havoc on my car, Dad had managed to place a few sizable holes in the place of what had just been smooth, clean welds. It was time to leave before we got a chance to perform any repair work, so at least I have a plan for my next jaunt at TLG.

Expect a much more frequent posting schedule in the upcoming months. I plan to visit during the week whenever possible, and every weekend.

October and November have been somewhat slow and lonely at TLG.  Jack and I finished a thorough cleaning of the bare Mustang unibody after having stripped all the paint from the body and we acid-etched the carcass for basic metal preservation and rust prevention while we go through the next few prep steps.

And that’s when Jack’s cross-country season and college applications kicked in…

While I’m glad Jack has his priorities in the proper order, I’m not spending as much time in the garage now that Jack’s been really busy.  I will be back in the garage the 2nd week of December to get the Mustang seams “leaded” and perhaps even replace the rear quarter panels while Jack’s busy with other (more important) activities.

I hope he is pleasantly surprised with the progess when he comes up for air.

In other exciting news: Three Lions Garage has its first British occupant on the way since we sold the ’55 Elva and ’35 Morgan three wheeler.  While visiting the Classic  Motor Show at the 2,000,000 square foot National Expo Centre Birmingham two weeks ago I met several interesting groups of like-minded gearheads.  The show is the largest classic auto event in the UK and it’s safe to say it’s BIGGER THAN HUGE!  I can’t accurately describe how big it is other than to tell you that I ended up walking 9 miles (!) in about 6 hours at the show.

I browsed the vendors section (in which they were selling everything new and used related to classic cars) and met with  fellow members of the Citroen Car Club ltd, the 2CV club and the Messerschmitt Owners Club.  I took the opportunity to visit with Andy at the stall rented by Hortons Books, my absolute favorite rare and new automotive book dealer, run by Ben Horton and his wife Jennifer.   I found some mirrors for the ’27 Rally and also procured some hurricane hats and goggles for Jack and me to use in the upcoming California Mille.  But I digress…

Near the end of my visit I saw three beautiful vintage Land Rovers owned by members of the Birmingham Land Rover Group, a motley crew of spirited Land Rover enthusiasts.  They couldn’t have been more friendly and were quite a fun bunch.  I started speaking with one of their members, a retired R&D engineer at Land Rover and within an hour I was the proud new owner of a 1978 Land Rover Series 3 Safari edition 109 Estate.  This acquisition solved my “holiday gift for Linda” conundrum.  She will be ecstatic—or so I hope…

business end of Linda’s holiday gift

crash dummy and canoe not included

Grandad’s Tank

This multiple-award-winning car has only 38,000 original miles on the odometer, is fully loaded with every available option and was sold fully “kitted out” with all the bits shown (including roof rack, sand ladders, jerry cans and spare water tank) but sans canoe. Even more desirable is that this vehicle has been under the loving care of a very talented retired Land Rover engineer, and getting to know Ken has been the most enjoyable element of the entire experience.

Linda’s “new” car sailed from Southampton, UK on a roll-on/roll-off vessel which is due in Port Hueneme, CA at the end of this month. I can hardly contain my excitement.

Next Steps

Posted October 2, 2012 By jack

I would have liked to finish my restoration project by January 7, 2013 (the last day of winter vacation), but that’s simply not going to happen. Between cross country practices and meets, school work, college applications and essays, it’s a minor miracle that I still find time for optional items like a decent nights sleep or a social life. My courseload and team committments kept me out of the garage much of last year and this year I want to do a better job of scheduling my time to fit in more wrench time.

As a start, I compiled a list of what’s left in the restoration:

  1. Finish cleaning the car. This will be done step by step, starting with the underside and working our way around.
  2. Prep the bare metal using an acid etch to prevent rust and for better paint adhesion.
  3. Lead in the left quarter panel and other exposed seams.
  4. Prime the sheet metal, using weldable primer on the areas where we plan to replace sheet metal.
  5. Repair rust spots in the battery tray and frame rail (something we started before re-prioritizing).
  6. Replace the sheet metal in the quarter panels. The replacement skins arrived in a ginormous box, so we can now get those hideous side scoops off.
  7. Repair bad repairs in roof and engine compartment.
  8. Paint underside of the car before continuing to step 9…
  9. Weld in chassis reinforcements and roll cage.
  10. Determine if doors need work and strip door trim.
  11. Install suspension and wheels to get the car rolling again.
  12. Tow it to Precision Auto Body, have it painted, and begin reassembly.

While it’s not very detailed, I’ll use this list as a high level sequence to guide me through the next few steps while I flesh this out into a more detailed plan for the rest of the project.

Onward!

A job weld done

Posted September 12, 2012 By jack

With the car stripped of primer, cleaned of glass, and ready for bodywork, Dad and I took some time off to work on another important task, something that would have to be finished before we could continue any further: teaching me to weld.

Dad figured that as long as I needed some metal to practice on, I should make something useful in the process, so he drove down to Maxx Metals in San Carlos and picked up a few angle irons with which we built a stand for our bench vise. He has a nice Hobart MIG welding unit that was just right for our purposes. After making me watch a short instructional video and giving me some basic pointers, Dad let me start practicing on some scrap before we started assembling the stand. Dad came up with a design for a square base with 16 in. sides and a platform with 8 inch sides connected by 4 angle irons of 30 inches. Some quick trigonometry showed that the 30 inch pieces would have to be angled in at 79.1311°, so we rounded up to 80 and pulled out the plasma cutter, which proved extremely useful for cutting our 6 gauge steel. With the legs cut to the correct angle, we used a grinding wheel to clean up the metal before welding, threw on a few tack welds to hold the structure in place, and finished welding together the stand.

With that project completed, we moved back to the Mustang. With only two spots of serious rust on the car, we decided to start by replacing those. We pulled the plasma cutter back out and excavated the battery tray, which looked like Swiss cheese. We may decide to place the battery in the trunk later on, but the corrosion would have to be removed regardless. I smoothed out and cleaned up the edges with a grinding wheel while Dad used some posterboard to make a stencil for cutting new sheet metal. Dad trimmed and bent the metal until the fit was good, pulling out the body hammer to really lay down the edges for a close fit. We pulled out the welder, and I started by laying a few tack welds to keep it in place. However, I had never welded anything thiner than 3/16 inch, and when I went to lay down a bead, I blew through the metal pretty quickly. Dad did the best he could to patch up what I had done, and then I went back to placing tacks to avoid making the matter worse. Sometime soon I’ll grind down the welds and see which ones need replacing or reinforcing. Hopefully it’s not too ugly.

Stay tuned for…

Posted August 21, 2012 By dad

High Voltage hi-jinks

image

learning to weld

fun with the plasma cutter

proud of the vise stand fabricated for TLG

The Night Shift

Posted August 4, 2012 By dad

because of our busy schedules, we fit the work in when we can.  This has caused us to institute the Three Lions Garage night shift.  The funny thing is…it’s our only shift lately.  As they say: “You gotta do what you gotta do”.

BADDA BING BADDA BOOM

Posted July 16, 2012 By jack

And just like that, we’re on the other side of the restoration. No more disassembly, no more removal, no more stripping; now, we’re putting Humpty Dumpty back together again.

On Friday, Dad and I erected a small structure of aluminum poles in the garage, 20ft x 10ft x 8ft in all. While I was working out on Saturday morning, Dad picked up a heavy-duty air compressor and all the necessary safety equipment we would need for the day ahead. We met up at the garage, draped our containment structure with tarps, and hooked up the blaster to the compressor. We donned our Tyvek coveralls, breathing masks, face shields, and earmuffs. Then we began to blast.

Me and the OG

The ground glass that the DB150 uses cuts through primer and rust surprisingly fast, which made the stripping process fairly quick: in all, we did the entire car in only 3 hours over two days. The part that slowed us down, however, was the immense amount of body filler on the roof, which took a lot longer to blast through. In places, there was Bondo laid 1/2 inch thick.  Beneath these spots we found holes poked through rippled sheet metal, evidence of a cheap repair job (we’ll clean these up later with a hammer and dolly, and hopefully do a much better job at applying the filler). Another factor that slowed us down was the face shields—every time one of us accidentally blasted into a pocket or depression, the media would shoot right back at us and cover our shields, which needed periodic cleaning.

Aside from the roof, we also cleaned up the entire underside, both rear quarter panels, the cowl, and parts of the engine compartment and inner wheel wells. Preparation and clean up took far more time and effort than the actual blasting. After the first day, we found that the entire garage had been dusted with a light layer of glass, so on the second day we added an overhead cover to our blast booth. Even then, all of the glass left a complete mess. The drop-clothes that we laid down caught a lot of it, but were so heavy when we rolled them up that they needed to be put on a dolly to be transferred to the dumpster. After much hosing and sweeping, we finally cleaned the garage, sidewalk, rotisserie, and booth materials (the face shields we consigned to the trash).

Getting glass off of the car was much harder, so we’re letting it dry before we try to vacuum it out. Then we’ll apply a rust inhibitor to all of the exposed sheet metal and get ready to start body work.

A not-too-subtle diversion

Posted July 12, 2012 By jack

Whoa. Considering how long it’s been since my last post, I’m embarrassed to say that the status of the Mustang is largely unchanged. Not that I haven’t been working at the garage; far from it. But the taxi has been so much of bother that I haven’t found time to work on the car that actually deserves my attention.

The London Taxis Inc. TXII that my dad purchased has been nothing but trouble from the beginning. For as long as we’ve owned it there have been electrical problems galore. We first noticed when the battery was dead every other time we went to start the car. Thinking there must have been some appliance draining power, we installed a battery cut-off, which slightly extended the battery life but failed to fix the problem overall. Our next thought was to check the alternator’s voltage output, which registered low. Larry, our TXII expert in South Carolina, sent a new one and suggested we also increase the belt tension. We replaced the alternator and attempted the tighten the serpentine belt, whereupon we discovered that the belt tensioner had been stripped by the previous owner, and the tensioning spring stretched as a result. We replaced the tensioner, tensioning spring, and belt, and finally achieved the right tension. However, as if that weren’t enough to deal with, we performed a voltage drop test across the alternator cable and negative battery terminal, which registered at a whopping 0V. When we tested it against the positive battery terminal, though, we got the full 12V. Seeing this, Dad was able to recognize that the cable connection between the battery must have been grounded someplace between the starter and the alternator. Rather than messing with the wiring harness, we installed a bypass cable straight from the battery to the alternator, and now the car runs fine (hallelujah).

With all that finally out of the way, I returned to my long-neglected project. With the ‘stang on the rotisserie, I removed and inventoried every last part on the body: emergency brake cable, brake fluid lines, assorted rubber plugs, interior trim brackets, etc. On to the stripping…. I helped Dad move the Citroen H-van out of the way so we could put the Mustang in a place to begin stripping the primer and body filler currently on the car. Apparently, many paint shops won’t supply a warranty on a car that has been soda-blasted, because the soda reacts with acid-based chemicals laid down before the paint, so Dad sold our soda-blaster to buy a Dustless Blaster, which uses a combination of water and glass beads to strip paints and primers in a much cleaner and environmentally-friendly way. This weekend we’ll erect a small containment structure of pipes and drop-clothes.

Prepare for blastoff.