65 Mustang Restoration: Post #21, 8/30/10 Radio-Dash repair, Radiator Support, RF floor

65 Mustang Restoration

Sorry it's been so long since my last post,,, just extremely busy. We've been working on the car, off & on, but just haven't had time to do any posting.

Over the last couple of weeks, we finally got around to installing the right side floor pan. We coated the inside of the frame sections that would soon be covered by the floor pan, with Eastwood's Rust Encapsulator. On the ledges of the frames, where the floor would be welded at, we sprayed those areas with a weldable primer,, which was also sprayed on the front end of the car, where the radiator support & battery apron will go.

We then went through the fun of welding in the floor pan. We used a combo of welding techniques,,, spot welding, where the panels overlapped or rested against each other,,, and several feet of butt welding, along the front, center, and a bit of the back side. This takes a lot of time and patience to keep from warping the panels. Since we went the extra mile to butt weld the panels together,,, and since the metal is a rather thin gauge,,, Brent was under the car holding the copper spoon against the seam,,, moving it around as we skipped around with the welder.

Self-tapping screws are very useful to suck the floor pan down to the frame sections,,, definitely something you do before any of the welding is done. As you can see in the next pic,,, I've got a good start on smoothing out the welds(where needed).

And check out the new seat platform,,, see anything unusual with it?

I had a set of new seat platforms for a 65 Mustang that I was going to modify,, (cut & lower) since Brent & I are so big,,, But then the article in Mustang Monthly came out about Dynacorn's new 69-70 Mustang seat platforms,,,, that basically said, that when fitted into the 64-68 stangs,, it would lower the seats.

That sounded just like what we were looking for, so I got a set of them the other day, and was very pleased to see that there is quite a difference in the height of the 69-70 platforms. Also when I set the right side platform on the floor I just installed, the new platforms fit waaaaay better than the 65 platforms,,, go figure! I'll go a bit more into detail of these in a couple of days.

Now present day,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Today, we spent several hours re-organizing the garage & both sheds,, trying to clear out all of the clutter & and removing all of the parts that were in our way,, until they're needed. WOW,, what a difference! It's always nice to have some room to move around,, and to be able to get to things a lot easier.

I then figured we'd give it the ole college try, and see if we could repair the screwed up dash, where someone thought it would be wise to terrorize the sheet metal in the Radio area. I've been dreading doing this, but now that the garage was clean,,, what the heck. Here's some of the processes that we went through.

What we started with: (Nice huh?)

I got one of those radio repair panels,, and decided it was best to leave those nice factory edges alone, and basically just do a repair patch.

So I trimmed off the edges of the new panel and marked the old area that needed to be removed, and easily cut it out with a nice 4" cutting wheel on the die grinder.

Once the new panel was fitted into place,,, I proceeded to tack it into place. Then, with a bucket of water, and an old cloth rag ready to go,, I welded in the panel, an inch at a time,, constantly changing positions & wetting the newly welded areas to keep it from warping. And this is what it looked like.

It doesn't look like much at first,,, but with a little patience & a couple of types of grinders & sanders,,, it comes out looking like this:

Even I was surprised at how well this came out,,, I thought for sure we'd have to use some bondo to finish this panel off,,, but once I was finished,,, primer will be more than enough to make this repair invisible to anyone.

We also started the process of fitting the radiator support & the RF battery apron on the car. What a difference,, different brands of parts make, when it comes to fit. I just had to get a new battery apron from CJ Pony, because the last piece of crap I bought, didn't fit worth a hoot. These parts seem to be much better,,,, I just wish I had some dimensions to go off to double check the alignment of everything before I go welding everything together.