Build Thread '83 T-top Coupe - Cliff Notes Edition

[Davedacarpainter]

It's out.

I welded the perimeters of the tubes. Got a little sloppy at the end because my HF light decided to stop working.

Whatever, I'm taking it to work tomorrow to do the dressing of the welds. That way those little metal shavings don't end up all over my garage floor just waiting for me to lay down.

 

[Davedacarpainter]

I got the welds dressed this morning.

I’ll sand it all down and get it coated with POR15 today.

My football games don’t start till 2:30 tomorrow, so I’ll have time to get the seam sealing done on the floor pan in the morning.

The reason I’m going a bit overboard on the web supports is that the t-top bar doesn’t offer much structural strength. Hopefully the some day engine will be in the 500/500 power range. I’ll want a little strength.

 

[Davedacarpainter]

I sanded it down, etched the bare metal and sprayed POR15 on it.

 

[Davedacarpainter]

Today......Monday........what did I do?

I mean other than wake up and curse life for keeping me so dang good looking......

I got the cs painted green today. Yesterday I coated it with chip guard.

Did I take a picture? No......Tomorrow.

I got home from work, put away the fresh beer, and flopped down under Booger. I realized at this point that the passenger side wouldn't be as easy as the driver's side.

Apparently, the great land orca that used to own this mustang and destroyed it's original floorpan with their formidable tonnage didn't mind dragging the passenger side over every curb and speed bump along the way. I don't actually know the original owner, but I'm thinking their great big butt in this mustang may have been the original impetus for the cool look of a lowered mustang (Without lowering springs).

The pinch weld is FAR from straight, though much better than it originally was. I spent roughly an hour and a half just cleaning the metal. I spent all that time on the inside and outside of the pinch weld. It's not perfect yet, I will clean the edges better. The driver's side gave me fits when I welded the jr to it. I'm hoping this time it'll be nicer if I pay attention to cleanliness.

Just for kicks I ground into the lower front 1/4. I knew it had mud in it, I just wanted to get an idea how bad. I think I might order a lower patch from LMR. The area was fixed by drilling holes in it to pull the panel out. Then they filled the holes with mud. It doesn't go into the rocker though, that's a good thing.

 

[Davedacarpainter]

Ok, truth be known, here's kind of what I was expecting from my first tig welding experience.

I was very close to that in real life, lol. I have a metal bench that I'm using for a welding bench as I learn to tig. It has a drawer in it that I was sure was empty. Well the neighbor across the street apparently decided to grill today without making sure I was okay with it. I smelled smoke and naturally I figured I lit the Murder House on fire, landlord isn't gonna like that.......

So I'm checking sht out, trying to find the source of the smell. I open the drawer and there's a nice full canister of butane I use for my mini-torches! It was right under where I was welding! Moral of the story, don't be a moron, moron's die in explosions like this.

I went to HF and got a cheap set of tig gloves, I tried with the mig gloves and couldn't manipulate the filler rod at all. $10 with a 20% off coupon. Much easier to work with.

Here's the results of my initial experience. The piece of metal with the holes blown in it was my learning experience that the pedal control completely overrides the amperage control on the welder. When you put your foot down on the pedal, you get full current running to the torch. Notice how long the hole is? That took maybe a millisecond to do, lol!

I dirtied up the tungsten electrode maybe about twelve times before I learned not to dip into the puddle. You see, I already knew not to do that, but I did it anyhow because I'm not your average stupid.

The second piece of metal is where I really just tried to start focusing on moving the torch smoothly and dabbing the filler material. I got better as I went along. Trying to separate what my left hand is doing from my right helped. I kept raising the angle that I dabbed the filler rod in almost like the slight (15*) angle of the torch as I went along, kind of hard to hit the puddle at that angle! lol! Though you can consistently hit the electrode. I think I like the foot pedal more than the finger switch at the torch. I like being able to control the amount of current in the weld.

Not terribly bad for my first try.

I'm going to practice more over the next couple weeks with different thickness of metal and different sized electrodes and filler rods. I like tig welding A WHOLE LOT MORE than mig. No sparks and mess like that.

I had to go to my storage unit to get my belt sander to clean up the dirty tungsten. While I was there I looked at Booger for awhile. The flared quarters may be out. I'm getting a little melvinized about keeping the original lines of the car now.

The right quarter still has the ugly bodywork issues though that will take work. I do still have the skin from the donor junk door. I can use pieces of it to section the damaged front lower part.

So, no Booger in the garage yet. I'm going to try to get this tig thingy down a bit more first.

 

[Davedacarpainter]

Have not seen an 83 T-Top Coupe in this thread in a long time

Oh yeah! What's this then?

 

[Davedacarpainter]

Here's the facts.

I have a 1983 GLX t-top coupe fox chassis coupe, and I can prove it, so just shut up, alright?!

The old Booger up on the trailer for the trip to the Murder House.

Sitting on the driveway at TMH.

Me sitting in Booger after maybe drinking "a few" Dirty Bastards with my brother.

Soooo, how does Booger fit into the tiny little Murder Garage? It's tight boy! I'll have to do some ciphering there......

Proof Booger fits with the door closed, lol.

 

[Davedacarpainter]

Ok, doing some thinking tonight.

Here‘s a couple ideas I have.

One is replacing the cross bracing behind the rear seat with maybe rectangular tubing. Tubing size and type is in the air right now.

Why? I‘m going to remove the upper control arm mounts for the SRA and replace it with a tubing structure to provide the same side to side support it did, well, better really.

As you can see, I can add in a rear shock tower brace with the new X-brace.

This is speculation right now. I don’t want to put in a full roll cage or anything that will interfere with the t-tops. I DO want to make this car as solid as I can.

@Hoytster what do you think about tubing type and size?

Next weekend I’ll be welding in the chassis support, then I’ll build the upper control arm replacement bracing.

 

[Davedacarpainter]

Just to show I’m really working on Booger.

The Murder Garage is going to take some getting use to. It’s a tiny little bastard.

I have the car in position so I can get the passenger side chassis support welded in. That’s the first priority.

That priority has a few steps involved before I can weld in the support.

Just like the other side, I need to seam seal first, then spray the rocker chip guard, then make it green.

I believed I could have that done before the weekend, and maybe still can.

This is the seam sealer i’m using for the bottom of the floor pan. I’ve used this through various tasks including the seam sealer on the doors when I was too stupid to have flowable seam sealer on hand. I only found this one half tube here at the house. I thought I had more, and probably do, just not real sure where.

This sealer is fantastic stuff, and expensive (if I had to pay for it, that is). Though it says heavy body, it’s quite fluid when it comes out of the mixing tip. It gets deep in the seam.

So, maybe tomorrow night I’ll seam seal the floor pan. It’s perfect weather here to use this and have it harden properly overnight.

In theory, tomorrow night I’ll seam seal. Then wednesday night I’ll spray the rocker chip guard. Color on thursday, and welding Saturday morning.

Once that’s done I will have to do the death defying act of getting Booger fully up on jack stands and drop that IRS.

After that I’m trying to decide if I should go ahead with the hard tail or welding up a bitchin’ X-brace for behind the rear seat.

Actually, next I’ll be cutting out the upper control arm brackets and making the new brace between the subframes. Then the X-brace, or hardtail. Maybe a hardnose (the front mounts of the IRS).

 

[Hoytster]

And just a thought, but I would do away with the whole factory rear seat brace and do a more traditional x-brace with shock mount supports. Minimal amount of bars and you are triangulating between the frame rails and c-pillar. Markups in blue below.

 

[Davedacarpainter]

Ok, I worked late tonight, damnit.

Damnit because it cools off quickly this time of year and I need a steady 70* or above temperature for about an hour for the seam sealer.

When I get home at five thirtyish, it’s good. When I get home at 6:30, not as much.

I did get the seam sealer though! Very nice from what my buddy tells me. He said it will ”flow“ smooth even upside down, and not sag.

Plus it can be spread on bare metal. That’s a huge plus to me. 3M’s product demands a primer over bare metal. Plus I got a free applicator gun! Sure, it’s a little ugly, but did I mention it’s free?

I’ll seam seal tomorrow night assuming I can get my butt out of work at a decent time.

I‘m going to take an ultra rare day off friday. I truthfully don’t remember the last time I actually took a day off, other than surgery and the two days I took off for pneumonia (Ah! Two glorious days away from work then!). I don’t want to start drinking too early, so I may wait until seven before I crack the first brewski.

So tomorrow I need to get Dave’s thinking cap on to be sure I bring home all the stuff to get the floor pan ready to have the cs welded in.

I’ll weld the cs in sunday. Saturday is reserved for college football (it’s a bonding thing for me and @CarMichael Angelo btw ).

Here goes Dave’s first attempt at TIG welding on Booger, I’m sure it will be excellent!

 

[Davedacarpainter]

Okie dokie! I got everything I need to get the chassis support in!

Oops! I meant this picture, sorry........

Of course one doesn’t do one without the other, right?

Anywho, got off early and I’m getting ready to go spooge the seam sealer on the floor pan.

Then tomorrow morning, once it hits sixty outside, I’ll be after it.

Rocker chip guard first, then a thirty minute to one hour break waiting for it to dry.

Then I’ll spray sealer, color and clear on the bottom of the floor pan.

I’ll let that dry till Sunday, then begins my TIG on Booger experience. I’m not worried though.

 

[Davedacarpainter]

Wow! what a day! Sun is shining, it’s a beautiful 73* outside right now. Most excellent.

Im really just getting after things on Booger now. It was a wee bit too cold this morning for the paint. It’s perfect now though .

So I cleaned my bathroom, went grocery shopping (to include two beautiful racks of spare ribs from the butcher!) and some other general bs.

So I finally sanded the seam sealer and scuffed everything else real nice like with a red scotchbrite. Then I masked off the welding areas.

I sprayed the two layers of rocker chip guard next.

Thats it for about an hour, then I’ll go out there and spray the sealer, color and clear and be done till Sunday.

 

[Davedacarpainter]

Just finally getting back to it. I got it scuffed with a red scotchbrite again and then sprayed sealer

Then green

Im going to clear coat it in a few minutes.

 

[Davedacarpainter]

Ok, all shiny

This is the small inline air dryer i use right before my gun. These work great.

So now it’ll be sunday before i move on to welding.

 

[Davedacarpainter]

So I got out into the garage for a bit today.

I wanted to get all the rosette weld areas drilled along the pinch weld and clean up all areas to be welded. Those spot weld holes took me a little over an hour to drill out by themselves.

I put the cs up there to mark where I need to clean the jacking rail for the rosette welds.

I sprayed weld through primer over the bare metal areas and will do a final grinding of those areas to reveal enough clean bare metal for welding.

So tomorrow night after work I’ll at least spot weld a few areas to hold it in.

I’m going to use my TIG torch to maybe seal up those holes before adding filler. Hopefully to block out the crap that made the other rocker such a pita to deal with. I’m pretty interested in seeing what this will do. I’ll let you know.

 

[Davedacarpainter]

Soooooooo, out to my IBMG (Itty Bitty Murder Garage) goes I.

First, got to get the compressor on to run my die grinder to clean the areas that’ll need welding on the chassis support and body.

Then I got the support up under the car and decided I wanted to do the first tack weld along the pinch weld.

Now came play time with the tig.

I first wanted to try my theory of running the torch around the rosette holes to seal up the layers of the pinch weld to try to block off the crap between the layers.

Tonight was an interesting learning night for me.

First I tried straight dc tig at 80 amps. That successfully blew a nice hole in the drilled out hole! So I dropped it to sixty and was right on the edge of a blowout again, though it was hard to tell because the dirty nasty crap between the layers made for popcorn, smoke, and a nice crappy smell. The nasty stuff likes to burn on straight dc. It sounded like when I MIG’d the other side.

So I’m thinking, “It’s layers of thin gauge, like 20-22, let’s give the old dc pulse a go”.

Now this kind of works. I first went back up to 80 amps, it could easily take more. I used about 5hz to begin with and went up to about 25. I played with it for a bit and about 105 amps works really nice. For the thin pinched sheet metal, it works great..........

Remember that thick freaking tubing I used for the CS? The dc pulse at 105 doesn’t seem to be nearly hot enough for it to burn into it. It’s almost like it needs to be preheated to weld.

Hey @RaggedGT , chris, I need advice. Help a brother out here.

I‘m curious as to wether I should just go back to MIG for the chassis support. TIG welding produces amazing welds but is really, really difficult when you have about twelve inches of access and are laying down on the floor using one hand for the torch and one hand for the feeder.

Or maybe a combo of both? I was able to seal an edge of the two panel towards the front of the pinch weld. The question is, is it sealed enough to come in with a MIG, or will that just cut back through the TIG weld and give me the damned popcorn fest I had last time?

So, what did I really accomplish tonight. I gained knowledge, super knowledge even!

Tomorrow I’m breaking out the MIG to get it at least tacked in. I remember that pinch weld crapola from the other side very well , I would like to have pretty welds to show off, but am willing to accept ground down and filled welds too.

 

[Davedacarpainter]

Totally over your rear-end

 

[Davedacarpainter]

Alright, I went out to the garage and cleaned a little at first. Seems I have a rather large family of spiders taking up residence in and around Booger! Not no more.....

I got my mig all set up, plugged in and turned on. Turned on the gas, wait a minute, it’s already on!

My son had borrowed it to weld something a couple months ago, damnit. I had a little gas left, enough to tack the support in there. I’ll get a new bottle tomorrow.

My first welds were a little sloppy, what’s new there, lol. Got better real quick though, I also still have my handy grinder too.

You know what? This was a lot of fun.

It’s a little hot today, so I sweated. We have a cold front rolling in this week, that’ll be nice. We’re talking 50’s for highs on wednesday!

Anyhow, picture of it on Booger. Pretty dang solid with just the tacking.

As soon as I get the new bottle of gas I’ll do the perimeter welding thing and do a little grinding and get it coated.

First chance to use my new welding helmet for serious stuff on Booger, it’s really a nice welding helmet.

Im really looking forward to having this part completed, I’m pretty excited about the new bracing I’ll put in where the upper SRA mount is.

 

[Davedacarpainter]

I know the 1.5" DOM tubing I used for that reinforcement was just barely small enough to clear the upper control arm mounts on the IRS cradle. You'll be fine using square there and it'll probably be easier to attach to the floor since it's square. I ended up plug welding the floor to my round tube. Just be careful to place the tube where it won't interfere with the upper control arm mounts.

I’m going to strip the IRS down to the frame as soon as I‘m done welding in my chassis support. That dang thing is just too heavy to even think about fitting in over and over as i do the uca replacement and the hard tail. I’ll be hollering at you here shortly Chris. I’ll need to do some mind picking.

In the mean time I got a nice full 80lb bottle of argon hooked up.

Just doing the final preparations prior to getting after it now.

I would like to finish the welding part tonight. Then clean up starts tomorrow night. (that’s code for grinding)