69 Barracuda FB. The next evolution

The driver side bent flange pieces are now welded together and attached to the car. After I'm done with the fuel lines, pump and filters, the floor will be drilled and spot welded to the top of those horizontal sections of those flanges.

Walking around the car, I hit the surface rust around the trunk opening and the rear valance area with some rust reformer. Those areas will get sanded back later when I'm ready to smooth out the drain channels.

Over the driver door drip rail area, I chipped out the last of the old cracked sealant down to the rusty metal below. The rust on this side was way worse than the other side. Even after using a wire wheel and a RO sander, there was still lots of rust remnants in the bottom of the entire length of the top channel. So once again, it got hit with rust reformer to kill the rust.

And a side note, I really need to watch where I put my hands when welding. I dropped the MIG torch while under the car, and without thinking I reached over my shoulder to pick it up. Instead of getting the handle, the still hot wire got pinched in the inside of one of my knuckles. Second degree burns suck...
 

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RUSTY Cuda said:
That floor area in the last pic doesn't look too healthy!
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It's tons more solid now than how it was when I got it. Still have a ways to go before I'll be happy with it though.

I went back out for a bit and got the pass side flange fully welded in.

Next up will be welding in the flange along the back of the floor edge. I need to lift the sides of the body a bit, pass side more than the driver side, before I can align that rear flange for welding.
 

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Today I ordered more fuel system parts and some materials to mount them to the car. Not much else going on at the moment.

EDIT: I forgot to add pic of the parts that arrived today. Here it is.
 

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Santa arrived a few months early, driving a big yellow Central Freight truck instead of his usual sleigh. Probably because the package wouldn't fit down the chimney.
 

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I'm going to set the car on it's wheels and then cut a bunch of holes in the old floor pans to pass some straps through. The straps will hold up the subframe connectors so I can weld solid them at each end. After that, I'll cut the floor halves out, one side at a time and clean up the flanges and edges. I'm going to spot weld the flanges and tack the edges as much as possible while it's on the floor.
 
Tonight I started making some brackets for the fuel pump and fuel filters out of some 1/8" x 1.25" angle. These pieces will be welded to the front side of the forward fuel tank crossmember. I notched out one side of the top 3" of each piece so each piece will have a some stability front to back. Then I set the fuel pump mount on the angles to get the spacing for the mounting holes. I used a nutsert tool to install 1/4" nutserts in the holes. A couple of the upper ones were left out so they can be installed after the angle brackets are welded to the crossmember. The inserts need to pass through both the bracket and the crossmember at the same time on those top two holes.

I still need to make one more bracket for two 6AN bulkhead pass through. That bracket will run along the gap on the pass side between the tank and the frame rail.
 

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gomopar440 said:
I'm going to spot weld the flanges and tack the edges as much as possible while it's on the floor.
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That seems like a good way to demonstrate the meaning of manufacturing tolerance and the concept of tolerance stack-up.

Personally I wouldn't weld panels together unless they are on the car. Half the time they end up mis-aligned anyway.
 
Agreed. What I meant to say was "while the CAR is on the floor", not "while the parts are on the floor".

The car's body has obviously taken a hit along the driver side at some point in it's history. I'm pretty sure fitting the trunk and floors with the car sitting on it's wheels is going to be necessary.

The body around the trunk, for instance, is kind of floppy right now. The back of the body is barely attached to the ends of the frame rails and needs to be aligned before I can final weld the trunk floor in to re-secure the body to the frame rails. I'm not exactly sure how to measure alignment for the floor pans or subframe connectors yet. But I'll need to figure that out pretty quick.
 
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Today I addressed a small issue with the mounting bracket of the fuel pump. The bore is too tight to fit the pump body, and when it is spread apart enough to clear, the clamping flange gets out of alignment enough that the bolt wouldn't fit anymore. To get the flanges back into alignment, I ground away a little of the inside edge of the split area so I could slightly bend those flanges together without creating hard pinch points on the pump body.

The first pic is after the grinding and bending was done. The second pic shows how after spreading the opening apart to fit the pump, those flanges now fall into alignment enough that the bolt hole and the threaded hole were aligned with each other. The closure screw works like it should now.

I also made a bracket for the two 6AN fuel bulkhead connectors. The holes for those bulkhead connectors won't get drilled until I actually have the connectors in hand.
 

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I've used them before on other projects, with good results. You can get an adequate nutsert kit from your local Harbor Freight, but you'll only get 6 sizes of nutserts, and only 10 of each in those sizes. I have enough 1/4-20 nutserts for mounting the fuel pump and filters, but I'm going to need quite a few more before I'm done with this project. It's pretty easy to get replacement nutserts relatively cheaply in bulk from Amazon thankfully.
 
gomopar440 said:
've used them before on other projects, with good results. You can get an adequate nutsert kit from your local Harbor Freight, but you'll only get 6 sizes of nutserts, and only 10 of each in those sizes. I have enough 1/4-20 nutserts for mounting the fuel pump and filters, but I'm going to need quite a few more before I'm done with this project. It's pretty easy to get replacement nutserts relatively cheaply in bulk from Amazon thankfully.
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I bought one of the cheap kits that has a one-hand rivet gun and max size 1/4". It works so far.

They sell a two hand job that goes to 5/16 but that seems like it would be harder to use

I saw this and decided if I ever have a project where there's a lot of rivnuts used I'd get one of these.



But really, this is probably all I need
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