Primering the cowl

The cowl panel required wetsanding and a couple of patches before it satisfied me enough to be primered. It seemed as it never had been covered with a good coat of paint.

After the rust was removed I pulled out my spray gun, mixed some Temacoat GPL-S Primer, hardener and thinner and took my first lesson of painting with spray gun.

I also painted the firewall which had been grinded earlier. The last coat of paint was too thick and caused some orange peel effect.

The grille panel looks better that it ever has looked after the '60s.

A detail of the coated cowl vent. Maybe I could have done better with the seam weld between the cowl vent panel and the center area, but I think this will do. The black paint looks so good that it is a shame to hide it with the cover panel.

Before closing the box I sealed the seams around the vent cylinder with body sealer. The grille panel was spot welded back and covered in order to avoid dirt to get in.

Good bye cowl vents. Hope to see You again. But not earlier than after another 44 years.

Shooting myself in the leg

When this UFO flew back to my garage in December, I told my friend who was helping me at the time, that I'll drill out the 200 spot welds and open the cowl to be able to fix the cowl wents. He asked me whether I was planning to shoot myself in the leg as well. He is the one with Corvette and does not understand the full meaning of rust repairs. The spots are marked red now, so that I'll see them better when I drill them out. They may not be 200 altogether, I lost count after 150.

And here are the new cowl vents waiting to be installed. The new life insurance for the floor.

It took one evening to drill. I lost six drills and two spot weld cutters while opening the cowl. A lot of rain and autumn leaves have have gone through here. And a lot did not. Causing the cowl to rust.

The driver side looked like this.

And the passenger side was not much better. Safety instructions: Always wear rubber boots when driving in the rain.

Starting from the driver side. First I safely cut away the most but left the upper edge. On this side there are three lugs and a hole for wiper mechanism. I left them in place so I could place the new repair panel on top of them and mark their position.

Next evening I cut away the rest of the rust and welded the repair panel. The holes for wiper lugs were drilled where I had copied the marks.

The passenger side is easier as there are nothing else to be positioned than the cowl vent itself. The red mark on the windshield frame and the fender apron form a straight line against which the cowl vent hole must lean on.

On the third evening I was able to weld the passenger side.

I did not have cone-shaped bore at hand so made a change in my plans. Instead of drilling the opening and welding lugs, I transplanted the part from the old panel.

The cowl vent grille panel needs a lot of grinding and intensive care before the coffin can be nailed up. But my leg still feels OK.

A competitor for AD Inc.

What on earth is this piece of sheet metal ?
Is it a reproduction panel which can be obtained from NPD for $18.95, manufactured by American Designer Inc. in Canada ?

You guessed right ! It's not.
I made it out of 0.9 mm sheet metal plate using cardboard as a pattern and a hammer as a tool. There is no repair panel available for this part of the floor unless you want to buy the full center transition floorpan which is both expensive and difficult to replace.

There is a small flange in the transition crossmember that was suitable for seam-welding.

The darning on the left side is made by the Swede, not by me.
I might consider establishing a sheet metal workshop and competing against American Designer Inc. with higher quality and lower prices. The is a huge demand in the market for this product.

Or maybe I should just settle down and replace the driver side as well.

Reinforcement pans

This is a lower reinforcement pan for '65 Mustang painted with Nexa Autocolor P565-909 1K etch primer. These were used in convertibles only to stiffen the self-supporting unibody. I have drilled some holes to the flange already. The four bigger openings are factory-made.

These are pressure impregnated boards which I used for compressing the pan against the floorpans. Any other type can be applied but I had these near my hands when I designed these helpful tools.

The bolts I had were too short so I had to use something else available to act as a washer.

Time to weld the spots. I started from the outer edge where the reinforcement pan meets the inner rocker with a couple of spots the moved forward on top of the floorpan and finally used a couple of bolts and lugs to pull the flange against the propeller tunnel.

The floorpan area covered by the reinforcement pan had earlier been primered. The holes are for inserting the seat lugs and for spraying the anti-rust compound.

The bolts are left there. I may later exploit them for hanging fuel and brake lines.

The inner flange was seam welded all along the flange. This seam costed me a shirt. It caught fire from splashing weld. The seam weld between the floor pan and the propeller tunner is left below the flange. The picture below shows two things. It is a reinforcement plate to be bolted between the two reinforcement pans. It is important to check that the pans are in line with each other so that this plate can be installed. I did not fit both pans simultanously. Instead I installed one and after that aligned the other using this plate.

The other thing seen in the above picture is the blue color. I painted this plate about a year ago with P565-909. The plate went throught the 2500 bar high pressure wash and it remained slightly blue. The etching obviously had worked, very adhesive stuff, but requires a top coating later.

I'll reuse the original seat platform. It is waiting for some hammering, grinding and primering.

Restructuring the right fender

Just to make sure I will not run out of things to do, I fetched my fenders from the shed where I have stored them over the winter. I prepared them for the high pressure wash by removing the emblems.

There is a structure in the rear of the fender. I got afraid that the corner would not be strong enough to sustain the extreme pressure as it mostly was made of rust, rivets and putty. The bolt in the picture is one of my dirty-fixes-for-the-first-summer.

If the structure and lower part would vanish, I wouldn't have the reference points left to fit and match the repair panels. So I had to make an exception and fix this before cleaning it. First I cut the worst parts and placed the fender brace on top of the old one and marked the red line. No need to say but the brace, manufactured by American Designers Inc. , made an excellent fit.

Once the correct position could be determined, the repair brace was narrowed a little to leave a few millimetres for the fender sheet metal to be twisted inside. Then the brace was finally welded.

Before the final welding I had to test-fit it against the car body about a half-a dozen times because there is a knot in the brace which has to meet a similar hole in the outer rocker extension. I placed a tape above cutting line and marked some distances between the tape and the bent shoulder of the lower part of the fender.

When I was sure that the reference points were marked correctly I welder the repair panel using spot and seam welds.

The gap between the fender and outer rocker looks good. The flange twisted to inner side of the fender will spot welded after the wash and primering.

The fender is ready to be delivered for the high pressure wash. The driver side fender is better and does not have to be pre-repaired.