Friday, September 17, 2010

Sept. 16 , Rocker and Torque Box

We started the evening by cleaning and spraying the areas of the frame rails that will be covered with the new items. We used a rust inhibitor by 3m. It was kinda expensive but I don't want to ever worry about those areas again.
We bought the floor to firewall extensions for the floor. The Floor Pans that we bought did not go high enough to cover the areas that we cut out to get the the torque box. We had to remove the Heater Box too. It's not a big deal but it requires removing the glove compartment box to get to the to of the Heater Box.
After we removed the Heater Box, we dry fitted the Rocker and the Torque Box again. Now it was time to start tacking things in place. Mark took a bunch of time to get things lined up. He is very careful and I see he really wants this to be right. If we screw up this part, everything from this point on will be a mess.
We sprayed the new parts with a "Weld Thru" primer. We were not that impressed. It caused the welds to be harder and used a lot more material in the weld itself. That equates to more grinding when the welding is done. This was a pretty expensive product too. We will have to see about this product. We also were not fond of the fact that the color was silver??? It was hard to see where we covered. It is our intention to prime the entire area after the assembly and also undercoat the car. The East coast is terrible on cars. Too much humidity. Denver is looking better and better.
We got the Torque Box and Inner Rocker in place and now it was time to trim and fit the Floor to Firewall extension.

Mark marked..???, anyway, Mark put a mark on the floor where he wanted to attach the extension. We chose not to remove move of the floor knowing we would spend a bunch of time butting up the sheet metal. I know some folks believe in butt welding all this but this will be a driver not a show car. Being this deep into the project you may be asking yourself why stop here?? Well...Mark has given hours and hours of time to the project. At this point if I sold my daughters I might be able to start to repay him. I trust him, but the man needs to be paid for the work without being punished for being a friend. It will look great and be strong enough to accommodate the new power plant that is due to arrive next week. WE GOTTA GET'R DONE!
Dee's birthday is quickly approaching... Good thing she will have one next year too, we might have a chance at that one.