Progress Thread Low budget 89 LX build, Car is apart again

Damn man! Where do you live? I had a 90 notch that I sold with way less rust then that and thought it was bad. Didnt want to deal with it.

I’m in the collision industry as well, glad we don’t have to deal with rust on the cars we move through the shop.
Ha Ha! I live in Ohio, just south of Akron, rust kills a lot of vehicles here, they salt the roads and also use a liquid brine, I think that's a lot worse. It all comes down to maintenance, people are too cheap or too lazy to wash the crap off of their cars. We see a handful of people every week at the shop asking about getting rockers and cab corners fixed on 5 or 6 year old trucks, we turn them away because we don't want to deal with it either, there are shops around here that specialize in just rust repair, they can have it.
My last 2 trucks I have went south to buy, it's easier to drive 10-12 hours away than deal with rot, I should take my own advice and go south for a fox body, but this car was basically free, and I like a challenge.
 
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All right, have made a little more progress, got the front suspension and K-member out, it didn't really fight me too much, I only had to heat 1 bolt, and the bolt where the right rail was rusted through, there was really no need remove.
Tonights round of photos are especially ugly, you guys and gals who don't live in the rust belt, and only get to work on nice cars don't know what you're missing!
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Drivers side outside,
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Driver side inside
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Passenger side inside, this got a lot worse, as soon as I put the impact wrench on the K-member bolts, it pretty much desintegrated.
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Passenger side outside
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This is where I'm at for now, it might be a while before I make anymore progress, I have a few things to fix on my ultra low budget PT Cruiser, then I'm handing it off to my oldest son while I repair all of the collision damage on his car. I want to get his car done pretty quickly, so I don't loose my motivation on this mess.
 
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Not to be negative, but are you sure you want to get in to repairing that car? How are the other areas? I know you have the aprons but what’s your plan with the rails? Yikes! That’s probably one of the worst I’ve seen.
 
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Not to be negative, but are you sure you want to get in to repairing that car? How are the other areas? I know you have the aprons but what’s your plan with the rails? Fabricate some new ones? Yikes! That’s probably one of the worst I’ve seen.
Oh, trust me I've thought long and hard about this, the rest of the car is in pretty good condition, at least by Ohio standards. I have every thing from the firewall forward, (except the radiator support) from the donor new edge car. If I didn't have the donor sections, I don't think I would tackle this one. Also, I wanted too see if I can make the New Edge rail and strut tower work.
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This is the passenger side from the donor car, I don't plan to use it all, I will probably section the rail behind the oval hole in front of the sway bar mounts, and use the lower 3-4 inches of the strut tower, I will have to figure it out as I go.
 
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Oh, trust me I've thought long and hard about this, the rest of the car is in pretty good condition, at least by Ohio standards. I have every thing from the firewall forward, (except the radiator support) from the donor new edge car. If I didn't have the donor sections, I don't think I would tackle this one. Also, I wanted too see if I can make the New Edge rail and strut tower work.
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This is the passenger side from the donor car, I don't plan to use it all, I will probably section the rail behind the oval hole in front of the sway bar mounts, and use the lower 3-4 inches of the strut tower, I will have to figure it out as I go.

I still can't believe nobody has thought about this before. If anything, you can re-purpose the 3 alignment bolts for the k-member with the metal sleeves for much cheaper than an LMR rebuild kit for $260 per side.
 
Ill be watching Gravydog, good luck! Im in the same industry as your are my friend. Got some work ahead of you for sure!!
 
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I had a little bit of free time tonight, my son's Scion Tc frame off restoration doesn"t start until Saturday, so I decided to make a little Mustang progress. Since the Passenger side is the worst, I figure I'll do that side first.
So I started by trimming my donor section. Actually, I started by starring at the donor section, and the car for a while, I took some measurements, and here's what I came up with, the rail itself measures the same, it's probably stamped on the same tooling they used on the fox body's, it has several different holes that the foxes don't have, the sway bars mount differently, but you could weld the fox sway bar mounts to the new edge rails, which is what I will do, and there is no hole for the bolt for the front bumper absorber, but if you're skilled enough to replace a rail, I'm sure you can figure out where to drill the hole.
The strut towers are the same size, they would weld right in where a fox body strut tower fits, but the top where the strut bearing plate bolts to the tower is different, you could probably use the bearing plate from the new edge and it would work out fine.
The aprons look to be similar, but the radiator support mounts to them different, and the holes for air boxes and other accessories are different. I don't need aprons, and these aren't close enough to use anyway.
So I did get the pass side donor trimmed out, I'm not putting the whole rail in either side, this car has been hit in the front before, and the radiator support has been replaced. Whoever replaced it back in the day did a good job, but none of the factory spot welds are there, it's plug welded and stitch welded in a few spots and I don't want to mess with it.
Anyway, here's some pics.
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Passenger side donor section, those big odd shaped holes at the front of the rail wouldn't be used for anything on a fox, and somewhere between them would be a hole for the front bumper absorber.
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This is the first part I need to trim off, at the junkyard I just ruff cut around the rail with a Sawzall.
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This is the spotweld drill bit I'm using, it has a small cutter in the center to act as a pilot. You can see i have already drilled some of the welds in this picture.
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Here is the other side of the rail, the spot welds are drilled, you only want to drill through the first layer of steel, or you will end up with a hole in a spot where you need to weld later. I also cut that little stitch weld with a cutoff wheel.
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Here I have it removed, after I drill the spotwelds, I use a panel separator and a hammer to peel the pieces apart. There is a little piece still on the bottom of the rail, I cut it off and then drilled the welds after the piece was removed, this is one area that I might not be able to have access to reweld on the car.
 
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This is after I trimmed the strut tower, drilled the apron spotwelds, and cut the rail. I left the rail longer, and kept more of the strut tower than I need.
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These are the holes to mount the sway bar on a new edge, the fox has a bracket welded on instead, no big deal to transfer it to this rail.
This is where we're at for now, next is to strip all of the A/C components off the passenger side of the car so I can start trimming and measuring. we'll see if I can make some more progress before Saturday.
 
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Well gang, the engine and tranny came out without much of a fight once I got the fuel lines disconnected this morning. I actually enjoy how easy this car is to work on compared to the more modern junk I usually have to fix. I separated the tranny from the engine and took a look at my clutch, nothing jumped out at me as the problem, but there is some heat scoring on the flywheel and pressure plate, I'm gonna replace everything since it's apart.
Nothing else got done today, helped a friend with his car this afternoon. The next step will be dropping the K-member and the front suspension so I can get at those ugly frame rails.
Here's a few pics from today.
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Obligatory half in half out pic.
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Driver side rail and strut tower, check out the missing bolt on the steering shaft!
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Pass side frame rail, strut tower, Damn that's ugly, it's actually broken right in front of the K-member. I think the condensation from the A/C lines contribute to this. Makes you wonder how long it has looked like this, I mean this doesn't just happen overnight. The guy I got the car from only had it for a few months, he made sure I knew about it, it was the first place I looked anyway, but he said when he got the car he didn't know. I guess sometimes you don't know what you don't know.
Anyhow, this is where I'm at for now, I'll update as I make progress
It honestly looks like someone rattle canned the rusted area black to help hide it at some point?
 
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