I had every intention to get more done today than I did… but its hot, and after bending into the car for 4 hours I am beat…. But the crossmember is now in.
Todays plan was to get the crossmember in, seat belt mount done, and bolt up the front subframe… and maybe cut off the front scuttle…. I was definitely over ambitious for today.
So first things first I needed to grind the excess weld on the e-brake mount, but after staring at it I felt it would be easier to cut it off. Not sure if I made a hole under it or uncovered one but I ended up having to put a patch in.
With that done, it was time to drop in the crossmember makes some marks for plug weld holes and be on my way… so I thought. I don’t know if it is because my floors are so out of wack or if I messed up the sill profile or the crossmember was just not quite right but lets say getting this thing in was utter hell.
As you can see from the pictures the crossmember is sitting on the exhaust tunnel and pretty flush to the sills. I had measured it from the rear bins before removing and it lined up there again. I ended up bending the tab in several places and had to use my floor jack to raise the floor pan to the cross member. I didn’t feel too bad doing this as the floor jacked into place with ease, so I am guessing it was just sagging a bit. Once I was confident I could get it all welded in place I etch primed the floor then painted inside the cross member and the section of floor, all I had was some krylon rust preventative stuff but I figure it will never been seen and it can’t hurt to have some extra protection.
Once the paint dried it was time to start welding it up, I didn’t want to do all one side at a time so plug welding took some time, was like weld, weld, move jack, weld, weld. But finally after some time all the plug welds were done. I only ground back a few that will be semi visible with the carpet in, otherwise I left everything as it was. I haven’t looked under the car yet to see if I have any that fell through a little, I figure I can tackle that later on.
That was all I managed to get done today, I have other things to do and it seems the temp outside jumped really quick so it was rather hot in the garage. I also need to find a place to fill the gas bottle for my welder… Noticed I was a bit low today.
The Rust chronicles 