Nick and Rick Learning as We Go

[NicknRick]

Unfortunately you are coming into the story in the middle so I will fill you in on what you missed in the first few years of the project. There was the elation of buying a car followed by the sick feeling you get when you start finding rust. Then there was scraping, wire wheeling, grinding, more wire wheeling, cutting, and more wire wheeling.

The frame from firewall forward is covered in two coats of POR 15 paint and two coats of POR topcoat. I had good luck with POR products but thought I would try something different in the trunk. So today we are using three Rustoleum products.



We prepped the areas to be coated in accordance with the directions on the primers. The new trunk pan was washed with Dawn soap and rinsed thoroughly as it will get the prime over metal primer. We did the same for the inner wheel well but in addition we wiped it down with a prep solvent since it will get the prime over rust primer. The directions called for mineral spirits but I couldn't find it in Sacramento. It may be banned for air quality reasons.

It worked well having two painting projects going at the same time as I could work on one as the other was drying.

Here is the passenger side inner wheel well after cleaning, after priming and after painting. I did one fairly heavy coat of primer and paint.







Here is the trunk pan primed and painted, and with tape stripped.

 

[73vertproject]

Wow. Looking very nice. Good work - keep the updates coming!

 

[Jeff73Mach1]

I like what I see! Then again I type in braille

 

[jbojo]

Your project is coming along nicely. Keep us updated on the progress.

-jbojo

 

[NicknRick]

Rick here: I have been busy finding and then ramping up at my new place of employment. Luckily, Nick has got the bit between his teeth and has charged ahead with the project. My last post we had the patch for the trunk pan painted and ready to install. Nick decided he wanted to do the welding so after watching a bunch of videos and practicing on some scrap he dove right in. Starting at the rear and working forward Nick replaced:

Trunk pan (partial)

Both L and R turn downs

Both L and R floor pans

Right seat risers

Added sub-frame connectors

About 1/3rd of the lower cowl

Upper cowl

Both L and R fender apron rear extensions

We are just waiting to receive the left seat riser which is the last piece to be welded. Working from back to front turned out to be a great approach as Nick got to learn on the more hidden parts and the cowl and fender extensions (which need to fit well) look and fit great.

We have a lot of photos so let me know if you want to see something in particular.

(I need to relearn how to insert photos, I'll be back shortly)








Next Up...Floor Pans

 

[protouringstang73]

Looking good..

 

[73vertproject]

Coming along nicely. Thanks for the update!

 

[caspianwendell]

Keep em coming

 

[NicknRick]

And Now the Cowl

 

[Mister 4x4]

Oh yeah... been there, done that - lookin' GREAT so far. Good job, Sir! ::thumb::

 

[mjlan]

Nice work!

 

[NicknRick]

Here is an update on our progress.

View attachment 31833

 

[NicknRick]

It's been a while since I last posted so here is what I've been working on since. After I finished welding in the front floor plans I started working on repairing the rh bottom cowl that rusted out. Here are some pics of my repair.




I was just learning how to insert pics in my last post so there was only one picture of my cowl repair. Here is the rest.

















After I finished welding in the top a bottom part of the cowl I grinded all the spot welds and the paint the cowl and firewall with two coats of POR 15 cassis black and two coats of POR 15 black cote.

 

[NicknRick]

my next project was to clean and repaint the front and rear suspension parts. I first started with the rear end and leaf springs. I painted the rear end semi gloss black and the third member red. I also replaced all the brake lines. I painted the leaf springs a dark grey color. sorry for not having a lot of pics of the rear end details but I installed the parts before I thought to take pics.







Next I degreased and painted my transmission. IT's a 3 speed manual which I painted the casing with HVT caliper paint aluminum color. I painted the gear linkage semi-gloss black. I also painted the bellhousing, z-bar and clutch lever with the caliper paint.















The front suspension was next on my list of things to paint and replace. I painted the coil springs, spring covers, brake dust shields, strut rods and spindles semi-gloss black. The calipers, center linkage and steering gear box with castblast.

before















after








when I was replacing my cowl I needed to grind down the spot welds that were left when I cut out the old rusted cowl. When grinding I accidently caught the firewall insulation pad on fire and made a big mess where the heater blower sits. After that I decide it would be a good idea to remove the insulation. That took me down the rabbit hole of removing the instrument panel, steering column, pedal assembly and heater box. It took me about 3 hours since I haven't replaced them before. It wasn't as difficult as thought it would be. Since I had to take everything out I decided to repaint everything. I painted the pedal assembly and assembly support semi-gloss black. I also took the time to paint the firewall and entire inside of the car white. I also had to drill holes in the firewall for the air-conditioning. I went with the classic auto air unit after a lot of research. currently everything is bolted back in the car except the air-conditioning unit and the instrument panel because the wiring harness needs to be repaired. I'll talk about the electrical later.



















Other thing that I replaced was the weather-striping on the entire car. I started with the doors since I need to fix the rust on the a-pillar. It took me a while to take the glass out of the lh door. I then took the door of the car and worked on repairing the rust. I then took the quarter windows out and replaced the weather-striping. I made the unfortunate mistake of scraping out the seal between the chrome piece that is connected to quarter window. I was able to find some rubber and get the piece connected but it took me a couple of tries and around 3 hours to finally figure out how to get the piece to squeeze between the glass. I also replaced the pins and bushing of door hinges. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, I looked on youtube on how to replace them and seemed to be straightforward. The only problem was how to crimp the end of the pin. I decided to weld all around the pin.

 

[NicknRick]

The two previous posts have been about repairing rust and painting parts so lets talk about interior. my car is a mach 1 and has fold down rear seats. I had replaced the foam and recovered the two front seat 6 or 7 years ago. I recently completed recovering the back seat and fold down seat. I took the fold down seat apart completely sanded and repainted everything. Then I re-carpeted the back of the fold down seat and trap door. I then recovered the back of the fold down seat and the bottom seat. I then next worked on re-dying the plastic trim. I re -dyed the kick panels, a-pillar trim, trim around the doors and the quarter panels. I also replaced the felt weather-striping on the quarter panels. I only have the front quarter panels as the previous owner took the 2 back ones out and put his speaker boxes in the trunk divider sheet metal. I replaced the sail panels with new ones. the only thing I didn't replace was the headliner.


































In the beginning when I first bought the car I was going to drive the car and fix it up as I go. The firs thing I did was replace the rear drum brake components and put new drums on. I then took the car out for a drive around the block, when I got back the radiator was overflowing. That's when we decided to take the engine out and have it rebuilt. Our engine builder told us he found a blockage in the water pump that caused the overflowing. The engine was originally a 302 with a 2 bl. carb. the engine was rebuilt my engine builder was nice enough to store the engine until I got the car back to him to install the engine. he stored it for about a year and then he told me he was moving to a new shop and need me to pick the motor up. I pick the motor up and placed it my garage ever since. That was around 2008.

Last week I decided to pull the motor out of it hiding place see what it looked like. I was surprised of how well it looked. I also needed to install the compressor bracket for the ac to the engine.







here is a pic of my original intake and carb

 

[OLE PONY]

Looks like you are putting a lot of hard work into it. Can't wait to see the finished car.

 

[midlife]

Thanks for the pics. I snagged the shot of the back of the dash cluster in the dash structure, as that really shows the available room back there for my wiring.

Good job at "whileimitis!"

 

[73429mach]

Great Job. Keep the updates coming.

 

[NicknRick]

The previous post has shown you my progress in the past year. Now I'm going to show what I'm working on now. For the past few weeks I've been working on the electrical problems. After looking at the wiring diagrams for our cars I finally figured out that my car did not originally come with a tachometer. The po decided to add tachometer. From what I can tell he spliced in a tach connector for the printed circuit and switched out the entire gauge cluster with a tach cluster. I also have the 3 gauges in the center console, but don't have the wiring for it. I plan on adding autometer 2 1/16" ultralite volt, water temp and oil pressure gauges. Yesterday I shipped my tachometer out to rocketman for conversion. I also plan on sending my underdash harness out for repair. The po also decided to add a dashmate radio to the car which I am planning to reinstall. After reading posts of what people did to cars I decided to upgrade the cluster lighting to LEDS. I also am replacing the voltage regulator and starter relay.