Proteting Assets

It's been a week of severe weather in the midwest this past week.  Missouri got hit starting Sunday in Joplin.  Then this lovely system decided to place it's bullseye eastward.  It was Indiana's turn last night.  As I watched the line of storms laced with tornado watches that turned to warnings cross the Illinois border I decided I better try and get at least our Fusion into the garage, especially with reports of golf ball sized hail.

So in a matter of 20 minutes, I had tools stored, parts picked up, and the fastback moved over into a bay of the garage with enough room for the Fusion to fit.  (Thank heaven for those roller dollies)...

This is pretty much how the garage looked throughout the winter so I only have one vehicle (my truck) to clean ice and snow off in the mornings.   Anyway, the system rolled in on schedule, but lost some of its punch by 10 PM with no heating of the atmosphere to sustain the supercells that were dropping tornados 50 miles to our south.   The hail ended up being pea-sized and lasted only for about a minute.   So no damage was done, except possibly some to my wife's pure-bred roses.   This is twice so far this year I've gone through this exercise, but better to do this than deal with $1,800 worth of hail damage as I did with our last car.

It sure is nice to see the major front structure of the Mustang done.   I still have to add the brackets for the hood bumpers and drill some holes for the wire harness clamps, but that's easy compared to the rest.

Next week, barring any unforeseen circumstances, I should be back at it putting the brackets on the radiator support and then moving on to the inside.   As it's been said, "You eat the elephant a bite at a time."

The Last Hurrah - Front Crossmember and Radiator Support installation

Last night, with a fresh tank of Argon/CO2, I went back at it to finishing up the welding in of the front crossmember.   The challenging part is that almost all the welds were overhead while laying on my back.  Not fun.   The first weld was the bead weld across the strut rod supports to the crossmember.   Before......

... And after...

I started the plug welds from the rear of the crossmember and worked back and forth from left side to right side allowing the metal to cool between welds.  A shot of compressed air helps here.   I got enough of the plug welds in that it was time to do the bead weld to connect the back of the crossmember to the strut rod supports.  This is the only weld that I could do in "normal" position.   Afterwards, I removed my temporary rectangular tube support.   My welds actually look better than the factory welds, which makes me wonder if I should have made them look "sloppy", but that's not my style.   Who's gonna look for them under the radiator anyway?

So here's what it looks like from above when done...

... and here's what it looks like from underneath...

I am going to dress these up after I get the car on the rotisserie.  But for now, this work on the front body structure is pretty well done....FINALLY!

Sometime it's hard to imagine that this is what I started with...

...but now it's all pretty!

Next step...  Finish gutting the interior and start on the driver's side floor replacement.

Amost there--Front Radiator and Crossmember Install

After an almost 3 week hiatus, I was able to get back on the Mustang yesterday late afternoon.   I won't bore you with the details of such a long layoff, but as with many of our lives, each of us face the challenges of health, family, and commitments.  Anyway...

I got the new spool of wire in and the MIG welder is up and running.  The next step was to finish off all the plug welds of which I believe there were 46 in the radiator support and 28 in the crossmember...

Then came the grinding down of all of these little buggers with my 2" and 4" grinders with 36 grit pads....

Now, you have to understand that I am an engineer by degree and in my pre-pastor days, I spent 14 years in manufacturing facilities, 8 of those overseeing engineering support of welding operations.   So that makes me very picky about how the welds look.  I probably spent an hour going back and filling in the most miniscule pinholes and imperfections as I will have no plastic filler in this work.   Even though 90% of this will be covered with fenders, radiator, AC condenser, grill, etc.  I'll still know it's there so it has to be as right as right can be.   The results, however, are very nice and worth the effort....

 

The final step in the process was to cover the bare metal with some etching primer to keep the surface rust at bay until I get to the epoxy primer.

You're saying, "Wow!  He's finally done with it."   Well....yes....and no.   Remember the welder that was acting up due to a shortage of MIG wire?   It started it again as I began all the welding on my back to attach the crossmember to the strut rod supports.   Guess what?   As I was troubleshooting the problem I checked the pressure regulator setting and it was reading a little low.  I went to adjust it back to the proper setting and noticed  the main tank gauge was just about on zero!   I was loosing my shielding gas pressure.   That meant I would be wrapping things up for the evening.

I stopped by my local "Thrifty Supply" and now have a fresh tank of Argon/CO2 and will be back in business.  Maybe tomorrow I can say, "It's FINALLY done,"  but based on recent history, I'll wait to see if it really happens.