Build 78 body off restore (cruiser #2)

[Curtice]

Some pics of the door patch. Was that hardest welding I’ve done. I’m sort of happy...the metal warped a bit so need to deal with that. Also some pics fitting the running boards and roll bar

 

[Curtice]

Fitting the seats and drilling holes for those brackets. Also transmission jump repair, speaker panels, and dome light. I could post a ton more, but good for now.

 

[Curtice]

Made some good progress over the holiday break on the engine and power train. I got the engine mounted up and bolted. Because it is a 3FE, has to deal with some alignment issues on the mounts. Solution was to widen the mounting holes slightly in order to allow for some adjustments in how it sits.

 

[Curtice]

Then got the clutch installed, mounted the transmission and transfer case. This part is fun because starting to see some real cool progress after endless months of body work.

 

[69LC]

Very cool build!

 

[Curtice]

Thought I'd do a post or two showing some of the detailed work, since the last few posts were pretty high level. So a few random things:

The hole in the side/jam of the door to bolt in the lower window channel was rusted out. Wasn't sure how to fix, so decided to weld in a washer in the correct spot (measured from the other door). Forgot to take a finished picture after grinding, but turned out pretty good.

Since I am going with the EFI 3FE engine, had no use for the firewall holes for the choke cable and carb linkage. Decided to close them up permanently (had considered some plugs or something, but decided I wanted to do more to help keep noise and air out). For the round choke cable hole, I was able to just use a hole saw and cut a round piece out of some spare metal. For the carb linkage hole was oval, so had to cut a rectangle piece, and grind the edges round. Again, I suck at taking pictures of the finished product apparently. You can see it in the last pic of the whole firewall.

 

[Curtice]

Cleaned and powdercoated the bellhousing:

Resurfaced flywheel. Flywheel is from a 2F, but in order to fit the larger bolt size for the 1992 3FE engine, needed to drill the holes out. Didn't trust myself to do this, so had the engine guy who turned it drill it out for me. Ended up great:

And a couple more pics of the engine mounting. The rear mounts are on the 2F bellhousing, so use the stock mounts. The front mounts though need to be from the 3FE, since the mounts are used as brackets for the alternator on one side, and the for the tensioning pulley and AC (still decided if I am going to do) on the other side. So I had to get 3FE rubber mounts to fit between the bracket and frame mounting location. But I quickly realized that I couldn't mount them the way they were supposed to go because the mounting screws are offset, and were offset the wrong direction. In order to fix, I had to flip the rubber mounts around, if that makes sense. Even then, I had to widen the frame mount holes by about 1/2" in order to fit them properly. The little dowel/nub you see on the mount is supposed to go on the underside of the engine mounting bracket into a little hole designed for it. But just wouldn't work that way. I have a little concern that they might start to slide/spin over time, but I don't think it will be an issue. On the passenger side, I actually had to grind that little nub off since it was in the way of sitting flush.

 

[Curtice]

I like to sit high in my vehicles. Just always have. I've raised the seats up in every car and truck i've owned. I'm not tall (5'9"), just prefer the vision and more comfortable. So I decided with this cruiser, since I am making it how I want and basically doing everything from scratch, that I would build the driver seat mounted higher, by just under 2". Earlier in this thread I showed where I welded the front right mount on the cross bar up higher. For the other 3 mounting locations, my solution was as follows. On the rear mounts, I used the taller brackets made for the passenger side, and a nylon block spacer to get the height needed. If I had better welding skills, there was probably a more elegant way to do the front left mount by fabbing a taller A bracket, but I didn't do that. Instead, I used the left over shorter rear brackets to give it some height. Once I had everything lined up, I marked and drilled the holes, then welded in support brackets and captive nuts on the underside.

I actually bolted up the steering column and everything to make sure I wasn't too high and that sitting in the seat would work...seems ok. I sit up very high on my 1980 and it works well.

The rear brackets were a huge pain. There is no access to the underside of the tub floor because there is a support channel there. What I ended up doing was getting a super long drill bit, and drilling first through the floor, then down through the bottom of the support channel. It is there that I welded on bracket ands captive nuts. I then had to buy 90mm long bolts to fit all the way through.

Lining everything up:

Getting holes drilled and support sheet metal on the underside:

 

[Curtice]

I've said a few times that I know it is probably not the greatest idea to learn how to weld on a cruiser, but i'm admittedly impatient so figure what the hell i'll just go for it. What i've learned is that my welds are sometimes ugly, but they are strong. For the stuff that doesn't need to be strong necessarily, i've done my best to weld and grind to what looks ok. This won't be a show car, so if I know that the metal will be covered or otherwise not visible, I'm not being too picky to get a weld absolutely perfect.

Transmission hump and gas tank cover both needed some repair. The gas tank cover just had a rusted out area where it bolts to the front floor. The transmission hump was all carved up and small holes drilled all over the place for who knows what reason. Some pics of those repairs. First the transmission hump:

Starting to repair and weld some of the holes. On this picture, you can see a rusted area on the flange on the left. That was a tough repair for me, since I don't really have the proper tools to make patch pieces. But you can see how I fixed in the following pics. Not perfect, but it will be covered .

And then final "product" where I did cheat a bit and used some putty to help fix the imperfections from my welding

 

[Curtice]

The gas tank cover

Problem area:

New piece:

Welded on

 

[Curtice]

Hey all - can someone help me out with my radiator support bracket? I never realized, but I think it’s missing some stuff (and already powder coated it...).

Here is a picture. Is there supposed to be a horizontal brace going across? It looks like maybe mine was cut by the PO and only the ends are left where attached? Also, is there supposed to me some upper mesh?

Here is a pic I found from another 1978 build that shows these pieces.

 

[spotcruiser]

Yep.

 

[Curtice]

Shoot. Ok thanks. Shouldn’t be too hard to make something. Just mad I didn’t realize before coating it.

 

[merbesfield]

Looks great. Did you considered moving gas tank out of cabin due to fumes?

 

[Curtice]

Looks great. Did you considered moving gas tank out of cabin due to fumes?

I haven’t. Are fumes a problem? I’m probably to far along at this point, but where do you relocate it to? Just remove it and put in a tank under the rear tub?

 

[FloridaPhillip]

Shoot. Ok thanks. Shouldn’t be too hard to make something. Just mad I didn’t realize before coating it.

Doesn't look like it would be a problem, but make sure the 3FE doesn't affect anything

 

[Curtice]

So I decided to go ahead and do AC. I was planning to eventually so figured I might as well do it now while it is easier. Decided to go with an Old Air Hurricane unit and in-dash vents. I have the compressor and bracket for the 3FE, but installing it will require me to relocate the battery. So have to figure that out. In the meantime, cut out some paper and mocked up where the vents would go. Vents are either round or rectangle, and given the placement options, I needed to do two of each. Here is the plan - you can see the cutouts.

The round vents on each far side are located off to the side due to the glove box wall being in the way (and made driver side match). I won’t have lower dash pads, so the rectangle ones fit nicely.

This also requires me to move the light and fog light switches. Plan to keep them in basically the same spot, just lower down. So got to work filling in the old side defrost holes and such:

Next step is to cut the holes

 

[Curtice]

One other small thing I did today was figure out the dome light switch. I want my dome lights to turn on when I open the door (don’t have the 3 switch version, so still need to figure that out).

On stock 40’s, the switch is located on the door jamb, just above the door limiter. It was mounted on a small raised bracket. So my initial thought was to replicate this. But then I realized the door also had a raised portion that appear to have been part of the actual door mold. Too complicated for me to try to do all this just for a switch.

So instead, I decided to put the switch on the side of the dash, to the left of the gauge cluster. The door when shut is just close enough to close the switch. Seems like it should work well.

 

[White Stripe]

I mounted my battery under the rear floor off of the shock crossmember. Has worked well for me. Cruiser is turning out nice.

 

[Curtice]

I mounted my battery under the rear floor off of the shock crossmember. Has worked well for me. Cruiser is turning out nice.

Whoa interesting. Got any pics in one of your build threads?