1969 Road Runner facelift

[northerndave]

Right, this was a brand new can. That little can put up quite a fight. I wish I had one of those old puncture oil cal spouts like my grandpa had at his service station for oil cans lol!!

My floor pan (cut) and marked, ready to drill

I did decide to cut it and weld a seam between the 2 wheel wells, it'll be good.

I just have to remember to weld my tank hangers on there before I install it.

 

[northerndave]

It's good you clarified... if you had used it for anything else then I might think you're from Warroad!:toothy5:

That's a vintage can too lol!!

I bet I bought that can of krylon back around 94.

Finally found a use for it!

 

[Bens69PlymouthSatellite]

Wow Dave really nice work!! I to am using the 1 piece trunk pan, and I to am trying to figure out a reasonable way to keep it a 1 piece and get it in w/o cutting my car anymore than I Have to! Nice thing is less welding than the 2 piece! Your trouble areas look very similar to mine,we almost have the same project here so I am very curious to see how u put the 1 piece pan in!! Also open to any tips! Great job!!

 

[Donny]

That POR 15 is tough stuff, the lid, yup, been there and done that!

 

[northerndave]

Wow Dave really nice work!! I to am using the 1 piece trunk pan, and I to am trying to figure out a reasonable way to keep it a 1 piece and get it in w/o cutting my car anymore than I Have to! Nice thing is less welding than the 2 piece! Your trouble areas look very similar to mine,we almost have the same project here so I am very curious to see how u put the 1 piece pan in!! Also open to any tips! Great job!!

As fate would have it my drivers wheel house was damaged from a side impact to the car some time before 1976. So, I have cut out the damaged wheel house areas on the left side of the car which I will be repairing later with sections cut from new inner and outers from AMD.

The amount that I cut from the LH wheel house allows me access from the left side of the car to slide almost the entire one piece floor pan into place.

I did decide to cut about 8" off the front of my one piece floor pan where it reaches over the shock mount crossmember. I cut it left to right at about the area where the top of the spare tire hold down goes.

Actually, a better reference would be that I cut it just barely above the top edges of the fuel tank strap brackets.

That's just what I decided to do, i could have peeled my old trunk floor the entire way forward and cut my wheel house open further to allow for the full replacement pan un cut.. but it was nice and solid above the fuel tank hangers and forward so...

 

[Bens69PlymouthSatellite]

Good tip dave where my spare goes is nice and solid as wel,l so maybe I will just give mine a little trim there as well!

 

[Donny]

That's a good plan; only replace the metal that's bad, so what if some of the AMD stuff ends up on the scrap pile, factory spot welds are pretty stout, and the less you have to replace, the better!

 

[northerndave]

155 holes drilled, ready to start welding.

Gas tank strap mounts get welded on first.

Plug weld every hole with the mig welder.

I was working on the long weld up front, the splice weld when I ran out of shielding gas for the welder, gotta make a run to town.

 

[northerndave]

Well, my back is still messed up, I'm walking around like Fred Sanford, not good.

But I managed to get a few things done today.

Started with the inner wheel house for LH side.

The new wheel house didn't match the shape of the original for splicing in a half like I planned.

So I cut it, tacked the top, pushed up hard so it lined up on top, then tacked the bottom. The problen is then the top split out, so I tacked a cheap vise grip in there spanning the gap, squeezed it together and tacked it.

Everything all welded up, trunk floor welds ground, starting to shape up.

Next I moved on to my rusty tail pan. I decided to save it.

Cut 2 bad spots out of the LH side.

Cut and shaped new patches.

There it is tacked in and I'm holding the old one for comparison.

 

[northerndave]

Continuing...

Both new patches in on the LH side.

Ok so here are the "pieces" as I chose to cut them from the rusty RH side.

Here's where I cut them from

The first piece of the puzzle coming together.

More pieces coming together.

This is how the first little piece fits in.

And here are the 2 pieces together that make up the outer end of the tail pan.

Tacked

Welded

And finally spot welded to the trunk floor lip.

 

[Propwash]

Wow! Great work Dave. Moving right along!

 

[detmatt1]

Yep , great work!

 

[northerndave]

I had really hoped to get the RH quarter hung over the weekend but my lower back is punishing me terribly. It really slowed me down.

I have outer wheel houses to fit, some inner rocker repairs, trunk extentions and extention end caps... then finally I can hang them big damn quarter panel skins.

I know I have some lower fender pathing to do as I move forward on the car, also a couple of small rocker patches.

Hopefully I find the fronts of the rockers and door hings posts in good shape.

I'm considering vinyl top delete.... at least temporarily... not certain on that though.

 

[Propwash]

Sucks to hear about the back Dave..Bad problem to have! Kinda like having bad knee's or a hip problem, just shuts a guy down. Get better soon buddy!

I have about the front half of a new AMD passenger side outer rocker you can have if the need comes up

 

[northerndave]

Lets hope I don't need that half of a rocker but thanks man!

I'm geting around a little better today with my back, more cramping than anything so I'm going to start pouring water down my neck hole, see if i can't hydrate that little problem away.

Overall I'm dissapointed in the amount of work I got done over the weekend but I am pretty happy to have the jigsaw puzzling tailpan work behind me. And I'm glad I was able to retain the factory shape of the tailpan even though it all gets covered up by the bumper anyways.

 

[northerndave]

I took a look at the wheel house and trunk extention fit to the quarter skin.

Actually what I was doing here was marking and measuring for wheel house placement.
I hung the quarter skin on the car by hand and transfered a measurement point from the new skin to the quarter on the car, then I fit the wheel house in the quarter skin the best it would fit, and I transfered measurement points from the quarter skin to the wheel house lip.

Finally I took my measurements based off the new skin and marked them on the car.

That's it for tonight, I'm working inside my brain tonight (making game plan for tomorrow) from the comfort of my chair with some icy hot on my back. I have a feeling I'll be in good shape tomorrow so I can make welding and grinding sparks out there again.

 

[northerndave]

Damn, the LH outer wheel house was kicking my butt tonight. I basically lined it up inside the cut original and traced out the pattern to cut the new one. I cut the new one and tacked it into place. One problem, it measured about a half an inch low for the quarter panel fit up. It had to come up, but when I moved it up it didn't fit up top anymore to the original wheelhouse.

So I had to make some slices to bring the new wheel house down and inward to intersect with the remaining original wheel house.

It did work out in the end.

And a test fit of the quarter skin was perfect.

If I had simply lined up the alignment tab holes, welded and hoped for the best I would have been screwed when i went to hang the quarter skin.

 

[oneway71]

Wow...that's great progress you are making; at this rate it will be in paint in May!

 

[rrTor-Red]

WOW..what progress you made on your car...looking good NorthernDave!

 

[northerndave]

Thanks guys, paint in May would be awesome but that's setting the bar pretty high with all that's left. I could have the back half of the car all buttoned up this week and start moving forward with my sanding.

The thing is I have glass to remove yet, probably a good % of my interior should come out, headliner needs to go in... engine should come out for painting under the hood, I need to drill the rivets out of my Air grabber duct work and seperate it from the hood for cleanup and blasting underside of the hood...

There is plenty of stuff left to do.

But having the new back half on the car will help inspire the rest of the project.