Had a bit of a lazy weekend on the coupe, fitted up the tyres I plan on running to try and get some further motivation.
A new dash insert has been made to suit the 41 Cluster I have for the car, at this stage it needs a fair bit of work to make look a bit flasher but happy with location of the cluster and shifter. Minor rust repairs have been made to the inner wheel tubs and primer on ready for the next stages.
Bit of a catch up here, had a few months of little productivity but in the last three weeks we have achieved a bit. We managed to borrow a rotisserie to finish some floor fabrication and get the floors sand blasted inside and out.
Here's a few from after the blasting, pretty happy not to see many holes! We also found the firewall welding done by a previous shop hadn't been finished judging by the daylight on the left hand side visible in the first shot.
Next step was to get some primer on and put some underbody protectant on the floors as this car will be a driver. Hopefully in the next few weeks I will be able to get the body back sitting on the completed Chassis and get the car home for reassembly. There's a bucket load more work to do yet but looking forward to seeing it back on the ground.
We wheeled the body out of the booth on the weekend and I started work on cleaning down all the surface rust off the metal using a Scotchbrite disc and hitting the fresh steel with some Gibbs, hopefully next week the body will go back on the chassis again. I figured cleaning the body was a whole lot easier while it was already on the rotisserie. After the shell was finished I started attacking all the bolt on panels too, I ran out of hours with only the trunklid (boot) and one door still needing to be done.
Hello, from Norway. Here's some pics of my 40 DeSoto Cpe. Owned her since 2008. Had a 350 egen i got her, replaced it with 360, but now she is getting a rebuild 57 341 Hemi. She's finally got the right heart. Lars. Sent from my ANE-LX1 using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Love your Desoto Lars! I considered dropping a Desoto Hemi I have into my coupe but will save it for my next project. Thanks for sharing pics of your coupe!
Question to youre frame, I saw that you boxed the frame. Did you weld dowm the frame to a table so it wouldn't twist by welding? Perhaps you could give me your steps in afew words how you boxed it. Regards Marcus
Hi, Marcus. Framejob was started in USA. A complete original Mustang II was welded in to the frame. Front stubs with radiator support is made of 3"x 2"'s. I reinforced the installation and boxed it in and made it look a bit more like original. I don't think they used a welding frame. Good luck ! [emoji106][emoji41] Sent from my ANE-LX1 using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
A little bit of progress in between work has seen the brake lines and fuel lines run and over the weekend we dropped the body back onto the chassis, maybe for the last time but realistically probably not
I spent yesterday fitting some of the front sheetmetal back on and sorting out where the alternator is going to sit and clearances for headers, this weekend I hope to get a lot more of the front sheetmetal on and make up some brackets for the alternator. We also have to modify the rear body mounts but otherwise it seems to be going back together OK. Cragars are back on until we finish the bodywork.
Not a huge amount of progress visible here however we have spent a fair bit of time getting the body mounted up properly and modifying the inner guard for the alternator clearance. Other jobs included making some block hugger headers for the Poly to clear the steering and trial fitting the front sheetmetal and bootlid(trunk). The next major job will be getting the trunk to fit better and repair the opening which has a few minor issues. We'll get the correct wheels on and get rid of the excessive ride height too.
I have a question re the front floor?............these originally had a one piece full width panel that bolted to the lower firewall, each side 8-10 inches in from the rockers and across in front of the seat edge.....has this been replaced by a welded in panel?...............and you mentioned the alternator mount...........doesn't the Edelbrock P600 intake have a pair of bosses at the US passenger side front of the intake?............I used these which the stock intakes and Wieand 4 barrel intake has to mount the alternator on my 318 Poly....see pic.....the 2 caps screw bolt heads are just visible near the 2 red wires from the alternator.............andyd
HI Andy, the whole firewall has been fabricated and welded to the front floors which you can probably see in the earlier photos whilst the body was on the rotisserie. I see what you mean regarding the alternator mount, we have put the fuel block there for the moment. Having now seen that I wish I hadn't been so hasty modifying the inner again.
Oops.....I meant the US drivers side is where those 2 bosses are............as for installing a Poly............the only modification I did to instal my poly was to make a small, 3" x 4" x 1.5" deep box on the lower edge of the firewall to gain clearance for the stock 1962 Chrysler Royal throttle linkage when I built the car....its located just to the right of the distributor & is barely noticeable.........all the inner panels, chassis & firewall are unmodified tho' the firewall was smoothed and a recess created for the pendant pedal brace and brake booster as this old pic shows.........I mounted the engine 2-3" lower than your cars..........andyd
Progress has been painfully slow throughout Covid, my work has seen little time for the coupe to progress. A small bit of progress of late has been getting the bootlid to fit better with a lot of trimming of the lid and the opening. Rear bumper is now the focus of my attention with a fair amount of work to get it straightened out and sitting flush with the rear splash guard before getting it chromed. The shot below is part of the progress work on the boot lid. The only other progress has been more work on the dash getting it ready for paint.
A bit of a delay on updates here, the rear bumper splash panel was cut off and remade so it was level across the back and we have tucked the rear bumper in closer to the body again. Rear bumper irons were also fabricated and the bumper straightened out. A little more fine tuning has been done to get the bootlid fitting better too.
IMHO only..... 1. Black welting needs the least maintenance and upkeep, but it looks stock. 2. Chrome welting is pretty, but require polishing and it will flake over time. 3. Pattern your own out of stainless...that is the most work but the biggest payoff. 4. As Andy would say.......I’ll go back to my corner now....lol.
All valid points, the lazy me says the low maintenance option and the fact I have black fenderwelt already, but the stainless idea has some merit and will be investigated.
The Jalopy Journal
