|
1967 Bench Seat ConvertibleOur mission will be to restore this one back close to stock to show a little and cruise a lot!
This is a low numbers, 1967 Bench Seat Convertible with factory air, power steering and front disc brakes. It has had a rough life, it has been a Midwest car starting it's life in Chicago. I have no idea how many owners it has had to this point, but some have done some numbers on her along the way. This may take awhile, but we think it will be worth it. Follow along with us as we take on this new challenge. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- January 2006 and let the fun begin!
If they only went back together as quickly as they come apart right? At this point I still had somewhat grand illusions that this could be pretty easy after working on the coupe. But as I got further into it, I find more and more rust and poor prior workmanship (that is being very kind). So after searching on the web on various forums for advice and a trip to a Mustang Restoration Shop, I decided to build a jig framework to support the car during it's many rust repairs. We will be doing inner and outer rockers, complete rear frame rails, and probably one of the new one piece floors that are now available. Lots of other projects have been keeping me away from the garage lately, but I look forward to getting back to this effort in the not to distant future! I may need some encouragement from my fellow Central Illinois Mustang Association members as this one will be a long challenge. This is a great hobby, a way to work out frustrations, by creating new ones!
So just how bad is it's under-side? Well she isn't pretty. Instead of just patching in the rear portion of the rear frame rails it will take complete rear frame rails. The front frame rails are bad where the front floor extensions and torque box is mounted, but otherwise the front frame looks decent.
Here are a few pictures of a little progress from over the winter... The pictures really don't show how messed up this really is! Someone along the road did some nasty patchwork and actually chopped out the inner rocker rails and pop-riveted some pieces that did next to nothing back to the rockers. No wonder the car had a sag to it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10/31/2006 After a long break to work on other projects around the house this summer I'm back to the Mustang! These pictures show some progress with the complete rear frames rails and transition panel now welded in. I used the Dynacorn parts and I'm very happy with the fit. The extra convertible bracing in that area is also back in now. I have some work to do dressing my welds. Later on I will come back to rear half and work on quarter panels and wheel housing's one side at a time. The 2x10 was added to temporally brace the rear seat area when I removed so much of the bracing to install the new rear frame rails. I also have a temporary 2x4 helping keep everything lined up properly.
I have one inner rocker and outer rock temporally tacked in place and most of the floor now cut out. This last weekend I added a jig to the framework to locate the front frame rail extensions. I patched the passenger side front frame rail and will be test fitting the torque box on that side soon. I'm looking forward to the day I can install one of the new one-piece Dynacorn Mustang floors. So far the jig framework has been a great asset to use to support and fit the various parts to. The caster wheels allow me to move the project out to the center of the garage to work on it or to move it help clean up under.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11/11/2006 This is one of the typical rust prone area's for these early Mustangs, the front torque box. I have already cut out most of the damage in the picture below, but you can see the front frame rail is also damaged. I cut out all the nasty area and sandblasted the area I would be working on. I then cut out the rust and welded in new material. At this point I'm just test fitting the extensions and I still need to trim the patch and weld on a piece of angle to finish that patch. I will then drill holes in the extensions and weld them in. Next I will be moving on to replacing the driver side rocker and inner rocker. Then I will come back to finish installing a new driver side torque box. This whole area will get painted with Master's Series rust preventive paint.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11/18/2006 After about 12 hours of work this week (who really keeps track?). I now have the driver side inner and outer rocker welded in place. I also have the driver side torque box welded in. Today I also cut the toe board pieces to fit (I'm going to try butt-welding them in) and I have this area sprayed with Master's Series rust proofing paint. So next week I should be able to weld the top half of the torque boxes in and the toe boards. A new front floor support should be here any day and then I can try fitting the floor.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11/23/2006 This is my first real attempt at butt welding. This is a process where you cut the patch to the same size (or slightly smaller) and weld it in instead of overlapping the joint. The thought is that there we not be a lap to trap moisture and have it rust, also it becomes easier to finish the bottom side to make the repairs less noticeable. It worked but I need more practice!!
This is the new one piece seat platform just sitting in position, it appears to be about 1/4" narrow, but not bad at all. The picture to the right is the new floor pan support with my old transmission cross-member. The new support is quite a bit narrower? Too bad I cut up my old one. I don't know if I will use spacers when I bolt this in or look at a new transmission brace or modify this one?? That is a long way down the road. Today is Thanksgiving and tomorrow I have the day off. I plan to start fitting the floor tomorrow. update 11/2008 : I have since figured out that the vendor shipped me a '65/66 floor pan support instead of a '67/68. Too bad I didn't figure that out before it was about 50% welded into place. It fits the pan fine, just not the cross member. I plan to install a AOD transmission at this point and I understand that the transmission mounts about 2" further to the rear of the car, so I will need to fabricate a special transmission cross member or modify what I have anyway. It still bugs me that it isn't right! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11/25/2006 The new floor is now about 75% installed. The floor went in with minimal trimming to install around the corners of the rear seat. Those pieces I will weld back in to complete the floor. I needed to kind of roll or twist the floor a bit to get it to go under the inner frame rails. After getting the floor sitting in place I put a few screws in starting in the center of the transmission hump both front and back. I then bolted the under floor convertible bracing together into a unit and jacked them up into place. I drilled up and spot welded the floor to the lower bracing and the front floor supports. Then today I installed the upper convertible bracing using a few bolts through the floor to help pull everything together nicely. I still have some welding to do at the front and rear as well as a some I will probably wait until the car is on a rotisserie or up in the air. I don't like welding over my head any more than I have to. The floor needed a bit of persuasion on the passenger side of the transmission support where you see I have a few bolts in place now to pull it together. Other than that it really fit well. I'm glad we went this route, it is a very nice reproduction floor.
If you are using this picture for reference.. I later learned that the factory installed the rear torque box covers before installing the floor. Not a big deal, I was able to install mine over the top with just one minor modification, but it should have been done before the floor. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1/10/07 It's been a year since we purchased the Convertible!! I have a little more done over the holidays so here are some updates.
I now have the trunk drop offs installed with the new rear cross member and convertible bracing. The rear light panel is also installed. I used an old gas tank to help align everything. Once the trunk area was complete I removed the rear supports that where holding the rear frame rails in the right spot and fabricated a new brace to mount to the bumper bolt area. Later I plan to add a rotisserie to allow me to rotate the car over to finish welding the floor easier and to paint and detail the under side of the car. It really makes a big difference to have the back of the car back together.
Next I started patching in new outer wheelhouses. As you can see in the picture there was a lot of rust that needed to be cut out and replaced. I approached both sides of the car a little different. I used but welds and will dress any areas that can be seen to hopefully make the repairs unseen when done. At this pint there is more work to do and I have decided to order inner-wheelhouses for this side to patch in as well. Hopefully the driver side I can make my own patches. I started rebuilding the door hinges, that isn't a lot of fun. I need to get the doors hung again before starting to fit the new quarter panel skins on. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8/20/2008 This update has been too long coming! After making some great progress the first year, several things came along that seemed to keep me from getting much accomplished on the '67 convertible project for well over a year! Rebuilding the hinges wasn't much fun, then I couldn't find the hinge mounting plates? Someday I will, but in the meantime I was able to track down an extra set thanks to a fellow Mustang fan. Then I decided I better get new fenders and doors and get them bolted up before trying to fit the quarter panel skins. Let me add I had decided to use reproduction fenders, doors and quarter skins. I knew they would take work to get them to fit well, but I decided with the price difference for the number of pieces I needed I could spend quite a bit of time messaging the pieces to fit.
I forgot to take pictures during the most of the fitting process. Actually several times I started to fit the quarter skins only to be frustrated and decided to take a few more days break. The skins seemed to be about 1/4" too long and later I found out that this is pretty common. Also the angle at the door didn't fit very well and it didn't really match the profile that well either. This car had quarter skins put on it by someone in it's prior life. The skins where lapped 2-4" in places with brazing done about every 5" or so was all that was holding on the skins. They didn't bother to fix the wheel wells or the trunk drop-offs so the quarter skin really wasn't fastened very well. They had hammered down the brazing spots and covered that whole area with about 1/4" of Bondo. I used the approach to butt-weld the quarters in and I had to go pretty high on the quarter to remove as much of the damaged and bent up original sheet metal as possible. Actually the day I started welding I was about to call it quits again, when I decided to just go for it and start in the lower front where the skin meets the rocker and tack weld it and start working it from there. I wish I took more pictures but it was a heat of the moment thing. I overlapped the skins and put sheet metal screws in about ever 6-8" or so along the upper edge of the quarter. After some persuading I was able to get it pretty well fastened in place. I knew the door jamb gaps looked bad but I decided I could deal with that later. Using a cutoff wheel I gradually worked my way across cutting both the new and old metal together between the screws holding them in place. I then started tack welding the metal that was butted together with a very small gap. Once it was spot welded I then took out the screws and finished tack welding the panel. Eventually I filled in the butt welds completely only working very small area at a time to try to avoid warping the panel.
Like I mentioned before the panel was a 1/4" longer than needed. To make it fit right I needed to remove that much material. I decided to make the cuts about an inch in front of the trailing edge so I can grind and dress the welds on both sides. You can see at this point the trunk drop-offs are still hanging to low. I will trim and weld this up later. I still plan to build a rotisserie and get the car on it's side hopefully this winter. It will be much easier to do this area then. I was able to use butt-weld clamps I found at Harbor Freight to help align the pieces as I started welding them.
This picture isn't that great, but it took some work to get the door jamb gaps to look good. The top and bottom was too bad but the middle area was like 1/8" too long and the areas at the crease where not very crisp. With the way the '67 quarter has the cutouts for the ornaments I decided it would be best to use the cutoff wheel and pull that whole area around until I liked the gaps. Some more butt welds and grinding pretty well finished up the quarter skin job for now. The butt-weld clamps came in handy in this area again since I pretty good access to the inside of the quarter panel. All the welds will probably need a little more grinding and sanding prior to final body work. I also have a little patch work to do the inner wheel well on this side. I have also done the same process on the passenger side. So the project is looking a little more like a car again. Well for a couple days it did before I took the fenders back off.
Next I took the fenders back off and turned the car around. The jig framework with casters sure comes in handy. Next I will take on repairing all four front inner apron pieces (taking care to save the VIN numbers) and the front radiator support. The car had some damage on this front corner and some pretty ugly patching and Bondo work (go figure). Still lots of work to do. I'm glad to have the quarter panel skins finally on the car. To me repairing the front end will be easy now after the rockers, floor, rear frame rails, trunk, tail light panel, wheel houses and quarter skins! Another little project when I fix up the cowls, is I plan to cut out the lower cowl sides for recessed 6" front speakers. I haven't heard much good about the kickboard speakers and they are too shallow to mount very good speakers in. I understand that the '68 Cougar had speakers mounted in the lower cowl. So I plan to give it a shot and to fabricate a metal enclosure to weld on the out side. With the fenders mounted no one should ever know they are there. You have to love saving a Midwest rust bucket from the crusher. Someday I can look back on all this and say man I had to have been crazy to do all that! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8-23-2008 Starting to seriously attack the front end!
The car had some front end damage on the front passenger side. So it needs a new radiator support and the battery inner fender. Bad rust on the other three inner fenders and around the shock tower tops where those pieces lap over, so I'm going to replace all the front end sheet metal. The car is mounted to a frame in several spots so I felt safe to remove all the bad at once. I figured I can do it all at once and have more access while I'm working on the firewall and cowl.
Click on smaller pictures if you want to see a little larger image. Some pictures after removing the top half of the cowl and the rear inner fender aprons.
The famous Mustang rusted cowl as well as some additional work needed to repair the firewall and sides of the cowl. Actually this isn't as bad as some of these old mustang cowls are when you open them up. For sure one of Ford's less brighter idea's was not to paint the lower half of the cowl. You can see what area had some primer hit it through the vent slots. The rest was bare steel! Bare steel and water make what now?? Free rust! You can see where leaves or trash would settle in the corners and help speed the rusting along. This is the single greatest reason the Mustang would have rust issues and eventually this water would soak the floorboards and cause the Mustang to rust from the inside out!
Looking better already! I still need to finish removing some of the lower cowl along the front and ends. I have the new one piece lower cowl on order. I hoped to save the top piece, but when I started removing it today I found too many bad areas on both ends and along the lower edge of the windshield to mess with saving it. So I will be ordering one of the new reproduction top panels as well now. I will sandblast all of this and get some good rust preventive paint on these surfaces while I have access to them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9-1-2008 Follow this link for information about a little modification I'm working on to install stereo speakers in the Kick Panel area.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10-21-2008 After several more hours of cleaning, welding and grinding I have the front inner fender pieces replaced along with the front radiator support. The newer heavier radiator support is another great new piece of sheet metal. The newer one piece lower cowl support is an excellent reproduction part and sure makes fixing the cowls right a lot easier than before. As mentioned before Ford didn't even paint this area originally and was probably the Mustang's worse flaw. The new piece came with a great black paint coating on it. I then sprayed two coats of "Master Series" silver rust paint and applied seam sealer on the hats. The next day I painted the lower cowl with a semi gloss black paint.
Today's project was getting the new cowl installed. I drilled a few holes along the front and two sides, and about every 2 1/2" along the windshield edge so I could weld the lower half of the cowl to a new top half. I should mention that the top half of the cowl is also a great reproduction piece. Then I drilled holes about every 2" all the way around the new cowl. I used a small air grinder to sand away the paint around the holes and from the firewall and windshield frame where the new cowl would be welded in. It took probably about 3 hours to prepare the cowl and get it welded into place. Dynacorn made two very nice pieces that didn't really need any work to fit. I simply put 1/2" bolts in the firewall to align the new parts and worked my way around the cowl clamping and welding.
With completing the cowl and the rest of the front end, I can really see the light at the end of the tunnel as far as sheet metal work and rust repair. There are still a few odds and ends to get done, and I have to finish welding in the floor, right now it is only welded in a few spots. I plan to either build a rotisserie or possibly only a couple stands or legs to bolt to the frame to hold the car on it's side so I can finish welding the floor and installing a few brackets that still need installed on the bottom of the floor.
If you are curious, I have around $4,200 in parts to date (that includes new doors and fenders). At least it looks solid now. Next project is get it on it's side and finish up the floor. Stay tuned.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10-30-2008 The next big project for me is I want to finish welding the floor from the bottom side. I debated a few days if I wanted to just jack the car up and weld on the bottom of it (not really), if I wanted to build a rotisserie, or if I could get by with building some strong "L" shaped brackets to support the car on it's side? After playing with some designs on the computer and figuring how much steel I would need to really build just brackets to support the car.. I decide to go with a rotisserie. I really like the design I found online Matthew Harwood's Rotisserie design I'm making a few minor changes to it, but it will be pretty close to what he shows in his design. I had a little 2x3 steel left over from the jig, and today I picked up the 3x3 3/16" wall square tubing. I was able to get all the 3x3 I needed and have it cut for about $225.00 in today's steel prices. I will need just a little bit of 2 1/2" square tubing and a few odds and ends to complete the rotisserie. The 8 darn wheels are going to cost a small fortune! Oh well, it should be a great tool to add to my shop and I'm pretty sure this won't be the last car project for me or my family. I'm really looking forward to seeing the car on it's side and to be able to easily weld and prep the underside of the car.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11-09-2008 Check it out! I still have a few holes to drill for additional bolts to properly secure it now I have found a good center of gravity. This is pretty darn cool.. I can completely rotate the car, it clears by about an inch on at the rear quarters to the rotisserie leg supports. It clears my 7' garage door by about 3 inches when the door is up. I will probably add a tube between the two stands but honestly I think this is solid enough it probably isn't needed. The casters I bought from Northern Tool roll nice (but don't lock) so I will need to chuck the wheels. I sure don't want this thing to roll down my driveway!
This will really make the job of welding the floor and finishing the bottom side of the car a easy project now. I rolled it over 3 or 4 times and man did a lot of sand and crap come out of the frame rails from when I tried to sandblast those areas! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4-15-2010 The past year to year and one half have been crazy for me. A big project at my day job ate up nearly half of my weekends! Then two more grand-babies and all the rest of life getting in the way. But every once in a while I would sneak out to the garage and work on a few more welds and do a little more grinding and filling. I decided to cut out the area of the floor board that had ribs for the '65 rear parking brake cable and I smooth that area out. This isn't ever going to be a Concours car, so I did a little extra seam sealing than the factory did.
After messing around way too long on the bottom of this car, I finally called it good and shot the second of two good coats of Master Series Silver. This sprays great, but is some nasty stuff. Plenty of ventilation is a must and a good mask. A fresh air system would have been really nice.
This bottom hasn't looked like this since January of 1967.
And then a day later a good coat of Master Series AG 111 Satin Black. This is a newer satin black 2 part paint that is chemical resistant. This is hard to get a good picture of the black. It isn't as glossy as this picture looks. It isn't flat or glossy, but a little more glossy than I was expecting for satin?
This car was originally a Dearborn Mustang and it had what was called a slop grey paint (all the left-over paint mixed together). From what I could see left on our old sheet metal our car was almost black with a little sheen to it when cleaned up. So this should be plenty close enough for a driver. With using some really good paint on the bottom of this car, I plan to only put some under-coating in the wheel-well area. The rest I think I will leave to allow it to be washed easier. For sound deadening I plan to use one of the new products on the floor and firewall area. Considering that we plan to drive this car in nice weather, it should hopefully be another 40-50 years before someone has to cut and repair much metal on this car! Next week I think I will actually put the car back down on the rolling jig. Then I can fix a couple small areas on the A pillar that needs some work and get the doors remounted and start on some finish body work!! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5-29-2010 The last few weeks I have been fitting reproduction doors, fenders, working on gaps and starting the worst of the body filler. I seems so weird not to have rust to cut out and replace! Hopefully it will have paint before the end of summer!!
A new addition to the shop, this blasting cabinet will be great for cleaning up various suspension parts, brackets and pulleys heading down the homestretch.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7-16-2010 Bodywork isn't the most fun thing to do in the world, but at least you know you are getting closer to paint everyday. It has taken awhile to work on the gaps and get the filler flat. I took the day off today and rolled the car outside and shot 3-4 coats of 2k build primer on everything. I'm going to try to leave it alone for a week or so and let it have a chance to cure and shrink then I will try blocking it out and see what it looks like. I know there are a few little spots to address, but hopefully it is getting pretty close.
Now we really need to make sure we are going back to Springtime Yellow. Between my wife and I we have 7 children and I don't think any of them like the yellow. But it really is what Kim and I want that counts here. Tomorrow we are going to try to check out a car show down towards St, Louis. The idea of yellow has been planned all along and hasn't totally grown on us. This is really one of the hardest parts of a restoration.. what color to paint? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I took this picture in Springfield, IL at the National Show a few years ago and I used it for my inspiration all through the rust repairs! This is what our car looked like when it was born in it's original Springtime Yellow paint.
July 17, 2010 Not to offend the Springtime Yellow lovers out there, but this color never truly grew on us. We aren't the car show points type people and we have no plans to ever sell this car, so we have decided to say to hell originality. We are going to paint our '67 with a '65 Mustang Color call Twilight Turquoise and then drive the heck out of it. It has a little metallic in it and in base coat / clear coat and is an awesome color!
This is the Marti report for our '67 Bench Seat Convertible that confirms what options were originally ordered on our car.
|
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
