Nov '13 - Teardown/Frame Prep

One of the first orders of business was to pull the motor and tranny to get a closer look at other components. I wanted to route the fuel lines differently and the frame mods for the IRS would be much simpler with the car taken down to the frame. I was not particularly thrilled with the black powdercoat on everything, I like a little more color to help things show up better (and be easier to clean).

I rested the motor/tranny partially on the pickup bed while I unbolted the bellhousing and set the motor up on a stand. The transmission is a 5-speed with a fairly low first gear so I decided on 3.55 gears in the rear diff rather than something steeper. The 4.6L motors are pretty reliable and get decent mileage...high 20's or even low 30's are possible if they're really babied, but there's no fun in that.

One catch was the FatMat sound insulation in the cockpit. Most builders don't put that on until it's close to final. Taking FatMat out once it's been stuck to a clean surface is an incredibly messy proposition. I tried dry ice to get it to contract and pull away, but that didn't work, so I resorted to using a propane torch to melt it enough to remove much of the foil. This was incredibly tedious and smelly and still wasn't getting all of the melted adhesive/butyl rubber goop off of the panels, so I gave up and ordered new panels from FFR. Here's one cockpit panel with much of the tarry goop still stuck to it. Nasty stuff you don't apply until you know for sure you won't want to re-do things later.

And here we are with many of the panels removed, engine out, and just suspension parts to disassemble.

Here's the bare frame being carted off by a really good welder that also happens to work at the best Ford engine shop in the region. He took it over to his shop to remove a few unneeded brackets and weld in the IRS cage and upper control arm mounts.

And about a week later he brought it back with the bare steel parts nicely welded in place, with powdercoating ground away where it needed to be for a good weld.

And a view from above.

A closeup of some of the welding, nice consistent beads. It takes real skill (which I don't have) and with many things, a lot rests on good prep work.

And now with those niceties out of the way it was time to clean the frame up and and least prime and paint the bare steel areas. I opted to go a step further and scuff all of the remaining powdercoat and paint the whole frame with Rustoleum hammered copper. Should make it stand out just a bit and should look good with any of the body colors I'm considering. A shot again of the IRS additions:

And looking back at them from the front...

And a wide shot of the whole frame, ready to begin assembly. Now the project really gets started!