Floor Repair - Part 3: Driver's side seat riser

I had decided back during vacation day planning for 2012 that I would take my birthday off and put in a full, and hopefully, uninterrupted day on the fastback.  That day was yesterday.  It was a pretty full day of work.  Uninterrupted?  More on that later.

With the bottom of the car media blasted, it certainly made it easy to see where I needed to finish up the new floor on the driver's side.  Because hanging sheet metal is not my "day job," the floor came out "OK" but not what I would consider Concours level.   But a welder I worked with on a large refrigeration chiller prototype years ago at Trane Co. told me, "Welds don't have to be pretty.  Just strong.  I've seen pretty welds that snot would hold together better and welds that looked like snot that were unbreakable".    I guess I can live with snotty, strong welds.

I wanted to get the rest of the pinholes filled and got that process going.  Once again, the flood light shining on the inside of the floor illuminated them for me.

You can see the light shining through one of the spot weld drill holes I needed to plug.  All the other pinhole welds are visible before grinding.   I ground them down and then proceeded to install the emergency brake cable pivot mount.

After that, I plugged the spot weld drill hole....

With all the welds ground down to the point of not getting into the base metal too much, I called it "done" for right now.  A skim coat of "Metal-to-Metal" filler will make it look seamless. But before I could begin that process, I needed to install the driver's side seat riser.  That way, if there were any repairs or cleanup I needed to do on the bottom, I could fix those before adding the filler since filler + heat = mess.

I got out the driver's side seat riser.  This was one of the first parts I bought along with the front floor pans and passenger seat riser from "The Paddock" if you remember that parts supplier.  They were an hour's drive from my house which was nice since I didn't have to pay for shipping.   They went belly-up in 2009 and the company went to auction in 2010.   So that tells you how long these parts have been sitting around the garage waiting for installation.   This is the underside of the new riser....

....and this is the underside of the old seat riser.   Notice anything different?   There's an extra support member that isn't included with the new part.  Why it's missing is anyone's guess.  It was probably a cost reduction item.  But my gut tells me if it was there on the original, it should be there on the new part as well.

I went through this on the passenger seat riser and knew I would have to deal with it on this side.  The only problem was the part of the brace that extended out underneath the front edge of the mounting flange was rusted away like the front of the riser flange was.  I determined that it wasn't a big deal since the mounting points on the brace to riser were all in decent shape.   I proceeded to drill out the spot welds and remove the brace.

I used my blasting cabinet with glass beads to clean it up.  I cut off the offending rusty flange and test fit the piece into the new seat riser...

It fit with a little tweaking.  But I also wanted to make sure the seat riser would be in the proper position before final welding.  This was a hard lesson learned on the passenger side.   Before cutting out the riser, I used a 48" long level and laid it across the top of the holes of the riser, noting where the point the level was located on the transmission tunnel and the top of the rocker panel.  I measured the distance and marked it on each of the 4 holes so that I could get as close as possible to the original location with the new riser and marked the dimension at each hole.

 

It took quite a bit of bending, grinding, and manhandling to get it to fit properly. Such as it is with aftermarket parts and not original tooling parts.  One big issue was the front flange didn't match the contour of the floor.  Since I was going to have to modify the flange to match the contour, I also needed to know where the spot welds would go so I didn't end up with one in the middle of the transition bend.   I went to my factory weld and sealant manual and saw where the welds were located...

I marked the bends for the change in floor contour and then placed the marks for where I would drill out the holes for the plug welds...

The "scribbled" area was the location of the bends in the flange.

I bent the flange and began the trial-and-error process of trying to get this to fit.  I also had to make sure I was as close as possible to the dimensions of the measurements from the old seat riser.

After much fussing and fitting I got this to fit as best I could.  I was within a 1/16" to 1/8" on all my measurements from the old seat riser and figured the original factory parts probably weren't any closer.  There weren't any dimensions for locating the seat riser in the factory manual.  So it's always good to measure as close as possible the part position before removal.

With the fitting behind me, I proceeded to drill out all the holes on my drill press for the plug welds.  There were a couple I had to do by hand since I couldn't get to them with the drill press.   I ground down the drill burrs and got the inside of the brace  primed and painted.  There wasn't any paint on it from the factory obviously.   I used Duplicolor etching primer followed by a top coat of black...

 I also did the inside of the seat riser where the brace would cover it...

I also primed and painted the floor where the seat riser would cover...

I did a final fit and tweak of the brace to the riser so that I didn't distort it when I welded the brace to the riser. I marked the plug weld holes on the seat riser and removed the paint so I'd have clean metal for welding.

After welding, I finished the painting of the brace and underside of the seat riser...
 

I didn't bother grinding down the plug welds on the brace.  I mean, really!  Who's gonna see it, right?   I did a final fit of the seat riser assembly and it needed a little more tweaking.   After a couple of fittings and modifying,  I marked the plug welds on the floor and removed the paint at those locations.  I did the same on all the flanges of the seat riser.  I put the riser in position and used self-drilling screws to anchor it to the floor and snug up the flanges to the floor for plug welding.  I did have to do some persuading with my body hammer to get the flanges tighter in places.  One of the difficulties of doing these plug welds was that the thickness of the seat riser is greater than thickness of the floor.  Even with a 5/16" hole, the weld arc at times wanted to arc to the side of the hole in the riser.  I ended up putting the MIG gun at virtually point blank in the center of the hole and pulled the trigger.  After 2 seconds I had a nice pool on the floor pan and pulled the gun away in a circular movement around the hole in the riser that got good penetration in both pieces of metal.

This is the front flange of the seat riser.

This is the rear flange of the seat riser.

This is the finished product.  The plug welds weren't pretty, but the penetration was good.

I did check the underside of the floor to verify the penetration was sufficient....

Nice penetration with the heat ring and slight blistering in the center of the weld.

Here's a "panoramic" view of the floor.  All the welds had good penetration. :-)

I was satisfied with the results.   I then removed the screws and plugged the hole from the top side.  Then came the fun part of grinding down all those plug welds.   As is typical for me, I'll have to go back and do some welding touch up where I didn't get a complete weld at a few places around the edge of some of the plug welds.  I'm sure they're strong enough, but it will give me peace of mind.

Here's a view of the floor from the rear of the car.   I did notice from my measurements and this picture that the forward corner at the transmission tunnel of the passenger seat riser was about 1/4" lower than the driver's side.  Bugger.  When I installed it way back when, I had done a fit of the seat riser and then put the brace in and "assumed" it was OK.  It wasn't.  By the time I realized it, I  already had a majority of the welds in place.  I can compensate for it easily enough with a shim.  I wasn't happy with myself for not doing the double-check, but hey, that's that and I'll deal with it later.

Left side freshly done.  Right side...5 years old!

I didn't get a chance to finish up plugging the screw holes that are still visible from the bottom.  I was interrupted by a phone call that one of my cousins had a massive heart attack and died.  That was quite a shock to us all.  He was a die-hard Blue Oval guy.  He only owned one non-Ford vehicle and that was a 69 Firebird 400 coupe.  He didn't keep it for long and sold it.  He bought an old 80's LTD 2 door that he built and raced on circle tracks.  He helped his sister on her '67 Mustang coupe by installing a "Grab-a-Track" suspension system that she runs in SCCA competition.   So our family will miss him.  Some way to celebrate a birthday.  But as life often goes, you take the good with the bad.

Blasting Off

There was a break in the temperatures this week...if you call a predicted high of 89F degrees on Saturday a break.  This summer heat wave has definitely hampered progress on the fastback.  I much prefer colder weather since you can always put on more clothes.  When it's hot, there's only so much you can take off...legally.

But weather aside, I've been pondering the next step on the car...finishing up the driver's side floor, or start work on the trunk drain lip or start on the rusty toe board...some part of the car that I could stand a chance of work in this heat.  So what did I decide to do was to jump into the fire and media blast the bottom of the car.  I already got a small start when I did my little "test" last week and made a nice mess in the garage.   I would be more prepared this time around.

For starters, I followed Sven's advice for personal protection equipment.  I somehow misplaced my respirator.  So a trip to Lowes snagged a nice 3M tekk respirator with the P100 cartridges.  These are good for, paints and toxic gasses including acid.   It may be overkill, but I have only one set of lungs I'd like to see finish this project.

Then, from my last experience I posted previously, I didn't want to be covered in a mess of blasting media.  So I also picked up a "monkey suit" to keep me as media free as possible.  It has a hood and "booties" along with elastic at the wrists.

To be sure that my blasting wouldn't allow media to get in places that I didn't want, I obviously moved the fastback into the driveway.

I moved all the vehicles to the end of the driveway hoping that the blasting force and the breeze wouldn't carry it onto the cars.   Hopefully they would be out of harms way....

Then after getting all the equipment and media staged, it was time to suit up.   I definitely won't win any beauty contests but it's about function, not form.

Now it's on to the work.   I got the Mustang rolled on its side.  I started on the driver's side rear seat floor and moved right towards the firewall.  Then I did the area over the rear axle and moved to the rear of the car.  I started on the passenger side and worked my way forward to the firewall again.  The top and bottom of the car on the rotisserie is a good "before" and "after" view.

This all sounds so nice and easy, but it was anything but.   First of all, my media blaster held only 20 pounds at a time.  That was good for maybe--maybe 4-5 minutes of blast time.  Then I would have to purge the air, load it up, re-pressurise, and blast away.   I had put in my last load that emptied the first 100 pound bag of media.  When I got done, I could have broken out the other bag, but there was, for all practical purposes, 100 pounds of media in my driveway, minus the losses from the wind, what was in the car, and what ended up in the yard.   After sweeping the media into a pile, I noticed there was a lot of foreign debris.  I had a screen in the garage I put over my media pail. 

Then I scooped up some of the media and poured it onto the screen, shaking it back and forth to sift it through.

When I got done, the debris was visible.   I dumped it off the side of the drive.  I took the sifted media and put it in the blaster.  It worked with no problems.

So this is the process that took four and a half hours.  I got the bottom of the car done and did do the front frame rails and the lower part of the firewall.   I did do some of the fender aprons where there was surface rust.   I had to take breaks to re-hydrate and move the car into position as the sun progressed to get the best visibility.   By 4 PM, I was hot, I had finished dumping the third round of media recycle, and the temperature decided to go north of 90F degrees.

Of course, not all was sunshine and roses.  I did find during the process some more of that wonderful iron oxide deposits called rust.   The passenger side trunk drop-off definitely showed it's true colors.

There are rust holes in the lower 2 inches.  The rest looks good along with the trunk floor, which is a relief.  So I'll need to order that part and add that to the list of rust repairs.  (Any suggestions on vendors would be appreciated)   The rough looking metal at the top of the picture is actually undercoating that needs to be removed.

Then I found some pin holes in the passenger side rear floor.  This isn't to bad and can be easily patched.   There's a small one on the floor just inside the right rear fender well that will also be an easy fix....or I hope all of these will.

When my wife asked how it was going, I mentioned the rust I found and the extra work needed.  She rather stoically says, "Better to find it now than later."   I guess that's true, especially after what Alex found late in the bodywork and paint process.  I took the 3" square tubing off the rotisserie so I could spin the car 360 degrees and blow the media out of it.  That took several turns to get most of it out.  The rest will have to be by shop vac.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do about the factory undercoating in the rear wheel wells.  It was not budging much, even with repeated passes.  The body color paint came off, but that was about it.

This was all I got done.  I was tired, hot, and had a mess to clean up.   I got some help from my better half getting the car back into the garage since my back was getting pretty stiff.   So the fastback is back where it started the day, and in much cleaner condition.  It may not be a "professional" job, but it's better than manning a whirly-bird and sander.

I think at this point I'm going to call this quits on media blasting since I can get the rest of the car, particularly the inside,  cleaned up with the braided wire brush. 


Reflecting on this exhausting and demanding task, I will say it was worth the effort.  I was able to get some nooks and crannies cleaned out that would have been difficult any other way.   I identified a couple  more areas of rust repair.  and the cleanliness of the metal is better than using a whirly-bird.   Messy?  Yes.  Demanding?  You betcha.   Would I do it again?  In a heartbeat.

Now it's on to ordering the trunk drop off and getting back to the underside of the floor work.  With family coming in for the Brickyard races this weekend and the continuing 90+  temperatures in the forecast this coming week again,  it may be better than a week or so before I get back on the Mustang.  But at least it's ready to go whenever I am.

Floor Repair - The Underside Part 2

This floor work has been a slow process, painfully so at some points.  In part it's due to things outside my control, such as today being the 30th day that the high will be above 90 for temperature.  Unfortunately I don't have an air conditioned garage and even if I wanted to put a 12,000 BTU AC unit in the garage window, there are none to be found either in stores or Craigslist.  The other part that's hampered progress so far this summer has been a rather relentless schedule.  The second week of June was the push to get ready for Vacation Bible School.  The third week in June was VBS and as the "music man" I was the person doing all the music for all the age groups.  It was 4 hours of non-stop singing and playing the guitar.   The last week in June I flew out on Sunday afternoon to Phoenix and Sedona for a few days to spend some time with my wife who was in between conferences.  I got home on  Wednesday evening and then repacked and left 12 hours later for a 2 day convention in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  Then it was back home Friday night with one day to pack myself and my 88 year old mother in law for a vacation to northwest Michigan to the family cabin.  I got up there on Sunday evening and got her settled in.  My daughter and her family joined us as well.  Then early Monday, I drove down to Grand Rapids to pick up my wife who took the "red eye" from Phoenix after her conference ended.   Keeping up with an almost 2 year old and a 4 year old can keep you busy, along with caring for an 88 year old.  I did all the cooking for the family.   But my son-in-law and I had great fishing this year and there were no major maintenance things to do this trip.   I got home a week ago today and was faced with what happens so often--a backlog of work from being gone for two weeks.  But that's how life goes.

I do have to say, I have been working on the car.  It's that it wasn't the Mustang.  My daily driver '97 Honda Civic with just over 279,000 miles decided that the AC compressor only wanted to cool the car for 5 minutes and then do nothing.  The local shop who does the work on my "fleet" when I'm unable to diagnosed it as a bad thermocouple.  Unfortunately, Honda/Acura thermocouples are internal to the compressor which means the compressor had to be replaced.  I got a "kit" from discountacparts.com.  I got the compressor, receiver/dryer, and expansion valve, all which have to be installed for the compressor warranty.  The shop removed the R-134 so I could safely open the system.   I now know why they wanted  $1,200 to put the parts in.  Getting to the evaporator in the dash was a 3 hour project by itself.  Access to the compressor and dryer was nominally better.  To make a long story short, the AC project stretched over 8 hours and 3 days.   I got it back together just before my 2 weeks of travel.   I got the car back to the shop this past week and now have working AC. I figured it was good practice for the Mustang when I put the factory AC back in it.

So as this past weekend approached with not much on the schedule and the promise of cooler temps and rain, it sounded like a good time to get back on the Mustang.   Well, as Meatloaf sang on his "Bat Out of Hell" album, "Two out of Three Ain't bad."   I did get some work done on the Mustang, but it was hot and dry.

The first order of business was to finish the bagging and tagging of some of the parts I hadn't  taken care of.  I finished drilling out the rivets that held the plastic clips for right side rocker panel molding so I could put them with the rest of the parts.  With that behind me I picked up the garage that had a myriad of things laying around from vacation, the AC work, and the accumulation of crap from who knows where that just gets thrown into the garage.  

As I was doing the garage cleaning I moved some tools out of the garage like my welder and media blast tank.  Then I thought, "Hmmm.   It would be fun to finally connect that blaster up and see how it worked."    It had about 10 pound of media I had previously put in it hoping to try it before this.  That should be enough for my "test."

With the hose connected and everything on the blaster adjusted, I began on the floor bottom behind the new driver's side floor pan and the transmission tunnel.   Here's a picture of the area"before" being blasted....

...and then here's the "after" pictures.  It took all of 3-4 minutes, if that, to look like this...

The good news is that it really did a nice job.  In fact, there are placed on the seam weld where you can't even see the weld joint.  I was very pleased with the results.  I would have kept going, but I ran out of "black beauty" and decided the test was successful.   Like I said, that was the good news.

Now for the bad...   I realized I had blasted away all my markings for the welding pinholes.  That's not that bad of news since I can put my halogen flood behind the floor and find them again.  The real bad news was this...

The media was pretty thick on the floor

At first, the media on the floor didn't look so bad.  I though that with the angle of the car and the direction of the blasting I'd be OK as far as controlling where the media went.  WRONG!   It was everywhere in the garage...EVERYWHERE!    So my little 5 minutes of blasting turned into an hour of cleanup and I still have more to do.   It even got up into the garage door tracks.  Great.

To be able to clean out the garage better, I moved the Mustang out into the driveway.   It too was full of the media in places I wouldn't have expected, the interior being one of them.   I rolled the car over while simultaneously trying to blow the media out of the car. 

This is the first time it was outside on the rotisserie.  One side effect of moving the fastback outside is that it was a real showstopper.   People were slowing down and gawking at it.  Another side effect is that I could see the work I've done and what has to be done much better out in the daylight. 

I got the majority of the mess cleaned up and got the Mustang back in the garage.  Obviously, there was one big lesson learned.   BLAST OUTSIDE!  And close the garage door too!   Live and learn, right?

I was hoping to get to work on it Sunday afternoon, but by 1 PM  the temperature was already north of 90 degrees and climbing.  I can't run my fan while welding because I'll loose all my shielding gas.  Then there's the issue of keeping myself hydrated enough, which has been a struggle lately.  So I'll be waiting for the temps to drop to something reasonable which right now I'd take anything in the mid 80's which is what our normal high would be.   But that's ain't happening anytime soon.  The temperatures this week are forecast to be in the mid to high 90's.   So I'll have to revisit my plan and maybe move onto another part of the car that doesn't require welding.   Besides, I've got that passenger side toe board to replace.  And there's the rust in the upper right corner of the trunk lip that needs to be repaired.   So I'll see if I can get the garage more comfortable and move on with something else.   I'll take progress...any progress...at this point.  

Finally...Seeing Judah

After patiently waiting for10 days and enduring an 620 mile drive that included taking my 88 year old mother-in-law with me, I finally got to meet my grandson.  He's as cute as cute can be, especially when he was dressed wearing this...

Tomorrow I hit the road to head back home...and another 11 hour drive.   Let's see...spending 2 days out of 4 traveling?  Tiring.  Filling up with  fuel 4 times in 1,250 miles?  $172.   Seeing my kids and new grandson?   Priceless! 

Floor Repair - The Underside part 1

An hour here and hour there...that's how it's been on the Mustang of late.  With high school graduations last weekend and this one, I've had a handful of open houses to attend.  I really don't mind since I've been mentoring these young adults as their pastor for the past 10+ years.  They are moving ahead in life in remarkable ways...nursing, pre-law, engineering, theater, the Marines.  I am proud to say that these half-dozen young adults give me hope for our future and I feel privileged to be part of that in some small way.   I've also been the primary care-giver for my 88 year old mother-in-law while my wife is with our daughter who gave birth to little Judah last week.   My M-I-L has been struggling with her recent decision to give up driving.  I've been her chauffeur taking her to hair appointments, the grocery, and other errands she did on her own.  I don't mind because I know she is safe and everyone else on the road for that matter.  Welcome to the "sandwich" generation.

After I got home from one of these open houses, I decided to hit the garage again.  The weather was near ideal in temperature.  So I opened up the garage door, fired up the classic rock radio station, and set out to start working on the underside of the floor.  The top looks pretty good from the passenger compartment.  The underside?  Well, that leaves a little to be desired...

This is the "wide angle" shot of the floor on the driver's side.

It looks pretty rough as this is where I added the rod to make up for the gap in the floor seam and the patch where the E-brake cable bracket was located.

This is the section ahead of the transmission crossmember and showing the bottom of the toe board I replaced.  It's obvious that I'll need to do some serious metal work here.

I need to get the metal work done on the driver's side first since I have to put the seat riser in and want to be sure all the welding is done before I put the skim coat of Everlast Metal-to-Metal to take the last of the imperfections out of the floor.   (Bodywork on the underside of a car.  Who'da thunk???)

The first step I took was to position the car on it's side which was easy with the rotisserie.   Because I hadn't begun work on the floor bottom, I took my 4" grinder with a braided wire brush and cleaned up the metal and crud.  I noticed on the areas were there wasn't any surface rust that the bottom of the floor was painted black.  If I worked an area long enough, I stripped the black off to find bare metal with no other color primer, once again confirming the factory black.

Just as I was getting started, I noticed a guy on a motorcycle pull into my driveway.  I didn't know the bike or the guy.  He said he was riding by, saw the rotisserie and stopped to take a look.   After brief introductions, I showed him around the Mustang and some of the interesting facts about the car...being a 1-of-1, where that info came from, the VIN locations, the paint info I got off the MCA forum, etc., etc.  Basically, I was giving him the archaeology of my '68 Mustang.   He has a restored 1924 Franklin and was sharing the archaeology of that manufacturer with some fascinating detail.  To make a long story short, 45 minutes later, he departed and I got back on the car.   This is going to keep happening and I've gotten used to it since a person can't drive past the house when I'm working on the car and not notice it, especially when the sound of grinders, sanders, compressed air, and weld flash draws attention to it.    Anyway....

I took my 2" air sander and 4" electric grinder, both with 36 grit sanding heads to work down the welds and rod remnants.   Then I started spot welding some of the noticeable places along the joint were I needed to add metal.   After that first pass, I looked at the floor through the passenger compartment and could see numerous places where there were pinholes.  I used a white paint pen to push the paint through the pinholes and then marked them on the bottom side...

This is the view from the passenger compartment of the driver's side floor to transmission tunnel joint.  You can see some of the bigger pinholes of light along the weld joints.

This is the underside of the back half of the driver's side floor pan where I started the spot welds and marked where the pinhole areas needed to be repaired.

This is the front half of the floor pan.  The long circled area is where the metal got thin from grinding out the flange of the old seat riser.

I fixed these areas and continued to add metal to the joint where the wider gap and metal rod was added.  Then I'd go back and look at the floor from the inside to see where the pinholes still remained.  I swear they were multiplying the longer I worked on it.   Part of it was that as I filled the larger, more noticeable pinholes, smaller ones became more visible.   So what I did was put my halogen light on the passenger side of the floor to provide enough bright back lighting so I could see any pinholes from the bottom...

The halogen work light gave enough light to see the pinholes from the other side.

After getting the light set up, I looked carefully along the joint to mark where I saw any light coming through.  Unfortunately, there were plenty of places, each one that I marked with the white paint pen...

All the white "tick marks" are where a pinhole was found.

Talk about tedious work.  The trick was to fill the spot without blowing through.  This is when I wish I had a TIG welder for this type of fine work.   As is usual, there were a few spots that did blow out and then I started the "stitch n grind" process to fill the area.  In one area around that square patch I put in, I was able to use my copper backup I made.  I held it in place on the back side by reaching through the shifter hole in the transmission tunnel.  That was nice.   I may enlist the help of someone to hold it in other places where I need to fill the pinholes.  It works as such a great heat sync and backer.

I was focusing on the area of the floor where that square patch is because I needed to put the E-brake bracket back in place.  I took the pivot arm off the bracket and then glass bead blasted it.  That media blast cabinet was worth the $70!   Now I have this nice clean part to weld back on the car...

I aligned the bracket with the two spot weld drill holes in the floor to find out how it will fit with the repair joints in the floor...

It fits pretty good, but I'll have to get those pesky pinholes closed up and do the finish grinding, that I'm sure will show even more pinholes.

I closed up shop as I had about an hours worth of light and needed to get the grass cut before the rain moved in tonight and tomorrow...or at least that's what's forecasted.   I'm hoping I get an evening this week for a couple of hours to finish up the transmission to floor joint and get this bracket reinstalled before I leave for west Iowa in the Omaha area to see my new grandson.   I'm taking this Sunday off so I can be there for his baptism...and to give him the Mustang swag I ordered that came in the mail, that looks awesome.   I've got to start this little guy off on the right foot in both his spiritual and automobile development, right?   Because that's what grandpa's do...or at least this one.