Wheels and Tires - and Some Imagination

Its been a little while since I did any hard/fast updates on the car.  Truthfully, I lost a little steam going hell bent cutting up the Lincoln Mark VIII. 

Not all progress was lost though.  I bided the time hanging out with the fam, replacing the siding on the front of the house with Dad, and accumulating some Mustang parts along the way.

The most significant of these is a narrowed rear end and axles which should fit under my car.  It just needs cleaned up.

The other is a set of late model Mustang wheels and tires.  Dad was over the other day and we decided to prop one of the wheels inside the rear of the car to see what it looked like.

We saw this:

 

Seeing this has put a little fuel back in the tank.  Time to start finishing up the welding on the front of the car, grinding and cleaning up my initial welds. (with the TIG this time - HA!)

 

Then I can put wheels under the front and temporarily hang a fender on the front and see how it looks.  We'll go from there!

Cutting Up a Perfectly Good Mark VIII

OK - the time has arrived.  The wife is sick of seeing the Lincoln in the driveway.  It won't start when its cold out, so I pulled it into the garage after tucking the Mustang into the back corner of the shop.  Its time to start dismantling this beast of a car.

First came the bumpers and front fenders.  For some reason I thought I might try to re-sell some of these pieces, then decided to scrap them.

Then came the hood, the doors, the back glass.... Oh- the back glass.  Word to the wise, don't pry on it with a screw driver.  That pop you hear will be the last thing you hear before you are showered with thousands of pieces of glass.  And it gets everywhere. 

Here's me and the car getting ready to take our last cruise.

 

I even took some video with my camera.    I still have the AOD if anyone is interested... this proves it works!

 

That last drive took place while Margery's uncle Tom and aunt Marcia were staying in town for Katherine's baptism.    It was neat to see the look on everyone's faces - as I drove the car up and down the street.

 

Here's a shot of the Mustang in the back of the garage.  The Mark VIII seat is used to act as the source of truth to tell me when I've got the truck in the garage far enough to close the door.

 

 

 

Now that the last drive is done- its time to really get down to tearing the car apart.  What to do first?  Make it a convertible!

 

 

Thank you to the inventors of the Sawzall.  Without it, this blog post would not be possible.

So - while I was doing all this dismantling, I knew I needed to cut the car into small enough pieces that I could put it into the back of my truck and haul it to the scrap yard.  And - I knew I wanted to keep the wiring harness as intact as possible.

By keeping the harness together, my hope is to lessen any issues that one would have in getting the engine to run correctly when placed into the Mustang.

A few steps further....

 

 

And then the rear half the car was gone...

 

 

 

Now its time to start pulling the engine out.  The neat thing with the Mark VIII is that the engine can come out from the top and the bottom.  I opted for removal from the bottom, so I used the engine hoist to lift the car off the engine.

 

Here's the start of the process...

 

 

And with the engine out of the car!  So Nice!

 

 

Finish Welding the Cross Member

I won't go too in-depth into the steps taken to (finally) weld in the front cross member, but I dropped a bunch of change with the auto body shop, so I need to finish getting the cross member put in.  Here's a shot of it.

What do you mean the FRAME ISN'T SQUARE ?!?!?

Serious frustration has ensued.  I thought I had licked the issue with the front driver's side impact on the front subframe rail.  I pie cut the member and straightened it with the welder and some applied pressure.

But - in the end not only was the rail pressed towards the passenger side of the car, it was also pressed towards the rear of the car.

This became very apparent when I tried to mock in the front K member for the TCI Mustang coil-over kit and noticed I could not get the thing square in the frame rails.

Seen above you can see it sitting between the rails... all fine and good.  But on that driver's side, I needed to pull it forward to get it square, which only pulled it out of square on the passenger's side.

I put in a call to TCI to ask about how tolerant one could be with the cross member being out of square.  I was told 3/8ths was about as far as one could go... and go figure, I sat right at 3/8's of an inch out of whack. 

 

 

After some heavy thought, I decided I would take it to a shop to have the frame pulled back into specs.  I measured every which way and could tell quickly that the back half the car was 100% true... but the driver's side ahead of the rear seat needed work.

 

I had to get the car tied down to the auto body dolly so I could safely transport it. (oh and cut the sub-frame connectors loose so the rear and front were no longer tied together)

 

 

And off to the body shop!  With a little help from Deacon in the blue coat.

 

 

 

This site was a bit surreal... Following my car down 1st street.

 

I didn't take any immediate pictures after I got the car back.  What I can say is that the car did get pulled and it did allow me to square my cross member up.

What I'll also say is that I paid a LOT more for the work that I had expected.  Double what I expected.  Needless to say, after having other work done in the same shop (on our van) I am less than confident in me taking the Mustang (or any other car for that matter) back that direction.

But - the work needed to be done and its done.  And I'm working with a squared up car.

Passenger Side Rear Quarter Panel

Now its time to work on the passenger side.  Before starting into this, I noted that the car door already didn't match up very well to the quarter panel.  So - I used my camera to document where the quarter was high/low and where it lined up correctly.

Once documented, it was time to start cutting metal out of the rear quarter panel.

 

 

 

 

And the first panel mock-in...

 

 

Cleco time part 2!

 

And now time to weld it in.

 

 

 

Now that its welded in, I ground down the welds and sprayed them with primer to keep any premature rusting.  You can tell there is a seam there, but hopefully once I'm in the bodywork phase I will be able to successfully hide the seam. (we'll see on that one)

 

 

 

Next step on deck - having baby #3 and then we'll see where things go after that!