beertestr
Club Member
Time-wise these pics are from the end of April.. slow but steady progress on the build.
When we pulled the body from the original frame, the left inner mount under the firewall spun in the housing, and the rearmost mount on the rear broke the bolt, then spun the cage nut. I pulled the inner fender out to get to the front mount, and can't final mount my line lock or run brake lines until it's back in. So, I needed to fix the mount attachments on the body before I could go much further.
Starting with the back. This is what I had. We tried to weld a nut to the busted bolt and get it out with an impact, but the cage nut started to spin in the housing.
I guess I didn't take a pic before I pulled the cage nut out, so here's pic of it back in. I cut around the mount location on 3 sides, and bent the flap out until I could get the cage nut out. Here's a pic of it reinstalled, and the metal bent back roughly into position. This is looking at the mount from just under the license plate..rear bumper removed.
Here's what the cage nut looks like... Oxy acetylene torch there for heating the nut up. It's basically a parallelogram of steel with a formed hole that's threaded. On a 77-79, these are threaded M12x1.75, on a 91-96, these are M10x1.5. I am not sure when the thread size changed... sometime between 1979 and 1991
..
Get it Cherry red
All gone.. run a tap through the threads to clean them up, they were in good shape.
I don't have a pic of what I did to "refresh" the nut, but basically, the widest corners of the parallelogram need to be wider than the "cage" that they sit in to keep from rotating. These corners were deformed a bit, and I suspect the cage was deformed a bit too, allowing the nut to spin in the cage. This is likely due to the hammering with the impact I did trying to free up the bolt. I simply took the MIG welder, and built up these corners to a few mm bigger than that they originally were.. done.
I put the nut back into the cage, cleaned off the rust until I got to decent steel, and MID'd it all back up with a quick coat of paint..
For the front, the nut is accessible from the inner wheel well, if you take the inner fender out.
Here's what I made up for the front. I have no idea what I did with the piece that came out. REgardless, it was easy to make up another one.
This is where it goes. Pic is shot from over the left front knuckle, looking in.
Finally, I took some time and went midevil on the inner fender with a 4" angle grinder, and a big ass wire wheel. Wire wheel is rated for 9000 RPM, the grinder 10,000. Wear pants and safety glasses (I wore a face shield), as the wires tend to exit their intended location, and embed themselves in things like little darts. I had about 15 of the wire bits stuck to my jeans. The jeans slow them down just enough to only sting, but seldom get stuck in your skin..
A nice coat of POR-15, and it's hanging to dry.
Tonight, I'll install the starter before snugging the RH header down for the (hopefully) last time, and install the inner fender if it's dry enough. It should be, but it was still tacky as of 11PM last night, it was 45 overnight, and it's only getting to 60. Supposedly POR likes dampness to aid drying, so hopefully the damp weather of a rainy Monday will help.
When we pulled the body from the original frame, the left inner mount under the firewall spun in the housing, and the rearmost mount on the rear broke the bolt, then spun the cage nut. I pulled the inner fender out to get to the front mount, and can't final mount my line lock or run brake lines until it's back in. So, I needed to fix the mount attachments on the body before I could go much further.
Starting with the back. This is what I had. We tried to weld a nut to the busted bolt and get it out with an impact, but the cage nut started to spin in the housing.
I guess I didn't take a pic before I pulled the cage nut out, so here's pic of it back in. I cut around the mount location on 3 sides, and bent the flap out until I could get the cage nut out. Here's a pic of it reinstalled, and the metal bent back roughly into position. This is looking at the mount from just under the license plate..rear bumper removed.
Here's what the cage nut looks like... Oxy acetylene torch there for heating the nut up. It's basically a parallelogram of steel with a formed hole that's threaded. On a 77-79, these are threaded M12x1.75, on a 91-96, these are M10x1.5. I am not sure when the thread size changed... sometime between 1979 and 1991
..
Get it Cherry red
All gone.. run a tap through the threads to clean them up, they were in good shape.
I don't have a pic of what I did to "refresh" the nut, but basically, the widest corners of the parallelogram need to be wider than the "cage" that they sit in to keep from rotating. These corners were deformed a bit, and I suspect the cage was deformed a bit too, allowing the nut to spin in the cage. This is likely due to the hammering with the impact I did trying to free up the bolt. I simply took the MIG welder, and built up these corners to a few mm bigger than that they originally were.. done.
I put the nut back into the cage, cleaned off the rust until I got to decent steel, and MID'd it all back up with a quick coat of paint..
For the front, the nut is accessible from the inner wheel well, if you take the inner fender out.
Here's what I made up for the front. I have no idea what I did with the piece that came out. REgardless, it was easy to make up another one.
This is where it goes. Pic is shot from over the left front knuckle, looking in.
Finally, I took some time and went midevil on the inner fender with a 4" angle grinder, and a big ass wire wheel. Wire wheel is rated for 9000 RPM, the grinder 10,000. Wear pants and safety glasses (I wore a face shield), as the wires tend to exit their intended location, and embed themselves in things like little darts. I had about 15 of the wire bits stuck to my jeans. The jeans slow them down just enough to only sting, but seldom get stuck in your skin..
A nice coat of POR-15, and it's hanging to dry.
Tonight, I'll install the starter before snugging the RH header down for the (hopefully) last time, and install the inner fender if it's dry enough. It should be, but it was still tacky as of 11PM last night, it was 45 overnight, and it's only getting to 60. Supposedly POR likes dampness to aid drying, so hopefully the damp weather of a rainy Monday will help.
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