Hi guys, my name is Dave. I run a restoration shop in northern MN and I thought I'd share this project here. This is a customer's car, husband and wife brought me this car. It belonged to the wife's father, he ordered the car new from the dealer in 69. The wife (customer) drove this car in high school.
I don't have a ton of time for posting in forums and I don't know how much interest there will be anyways, but I'll put a few photos out and if there is interest I'll try to keep the post updated as the project moves along.
front torque boxes and connecting structure both ways was in bad shape. I ordered torque boxes from sherman which came pre welded. I had to split them apart to install. We also had to rebuild at the rocker and the rear of the front frame rail.
That's a pretty fair cavity excavated. Now we start building back out.
Next we had to rebuild the rear portion of the front frame rail and tie it in to the new torque box.
The inners originally had a large access hole for the factory spot weld and assembly tooling, much like the interface of the inner rocker to torque box. I eliminated that for strength purposes. Here I'm fitting a backer plate for my final inner frame plate to attach to along with the butt weld.
There we go, nice and solid.
Next is rebuilding the dogleg support for the trans X-member. We already did it, I just don't have the photos uploaded yet.
The dogleg brace for the trans X-member had rotted off. We salvaged the rear plate that the X-member attaches to, we located the piece, suspended from the bottom of the car with temporary tacks, rods etc, then built a new brace arm.
We're currently performing the same tasks to the passenger side of the car.
Wow Dave!
Why do I get the feeling this is the "tip of the ice berg"? My '67 Ranchero had rust in the front corners of the wheel houses , and the panel above the (stock) single muffler. Since it isn't a load area , I pop riveted patch panels from a wrecked donor Fairlane to fix it and undercoated over the repair. I'm not trying to hid it , just eliminate the swimming pool I get everytime it rains. LOL This was a "how to" feature vehicle in a major magazine and I had no idea it was rusty.
Nice work you're doing on that one.
Randy
Actually the rest of the structure on this car is very good. It's this interface from rockers to front frame rails that has basically rotted away. We had to cut the inner rocker back quite a bit further on the passenger side to get to good metal, the outer is pretty much junk as well.
We ended the day on a good note, the cutting is done and we've began building back outward. Tomorrow we should have the passenger side all repaired.
I've located some donor quarter panels for this car, I believe I'm ready to pull the trigger on that purchase. Anybody viewing this that knows of some decent ones please let me know.
Nice work Dave, man, looking at that Ford, pics anyway, you wouldn't think the rust monsters had such a hold on her!
You got boxes from Sherman?
You post an address or contact # for Sherman
Thanks & do keep up posting your progress
Roy
I actually ordered the T-boxes and a set of floor pans through... (don't laugh now)
Rock auto.
I always check rock auto on all of my projects and compare the price against that of dearborn, macs, classic undustries, NPD etc. I don't always go with the cheapest, I'll pay quite a bit more for a premium quality body panel and I'd buy 2 of them and throw one away before I'd buy a bargain priced option that doesn't fit well.
But in this case I wasn't seeing a bunch of options for 69 fairlane/ranchero T-boxes or floor pans. I know rock auto usually lists sherman parts, In this case I decided to give it a try.
I wish they offered them in halves (not welded) because we had to drill the welds and split the halves to fit them. But it worked out ok. We did tome tweaking on the parts, no more than I would expect though.
We have the passenger side buttoned up now, I'll post pics after a bit. Working on the trans support arm for RH right now.
I'm of the old school of body repair theory "replace only what's needed", so we cut our new panels up and use the chunks we need rather than cutting out good sections of original metal.
My one and only shop employee besides myself, has gotten very good at fitting panels.
This repair area is covered by a chunk of the front pan and a chunk of the rear pan, that's why it's so pieced together. The slits are from the pan manufacturer, reliefs cut prior to stamping. The panels again were by sherman and I have to say I think whey are very good floor repair stampings.
We took the repairs out to the inner rocker, floated seams over floor brace flanges where possible and fit for butt joint on open spans. I like to do it this way, I really don't care for overlaps anywhere in my body repairs.
the car will go onto a rotisserie next week, then we will roll it outside and blast the belly, coat with black epoxy.
After that we will be waiting for a pair of quarter panels to arrive from Arizona.
I didn't like how the factory bed floor drains dumped water right on top of the rocker, the water would then have to run forward to the front of the rocker and drain inside, or back and drain inside the rocker. Once inside the rocker it would have to find a drain hole and exit the bottom of the rocker.
We thought this would be a nice improvement.
Of course we will trim those hoses off close to flush with the inner rocker plate. But now the water from the bed floor is routed to the ground rather than the inside of the rocker.
I didn't like how the factory bed floor drains dumped water right on top of the rocker, the water would then have to run forward to the front of the rocker and drain inside, or back and drain inside the rocker. Once inside the rocker it would have to find a drain hole and exit the bottom of the rocker.
We thought this would be a nice improvement.
Of course we will trim those hoses off close to flush with the inner rocker plate. But now the water from the bed floor is routed to the ground rather than the inside of the rocker.
I know it's been almost 2 years since this thread was updated, but I would love to see how this truck turned out. Are there more pictures? Would love to see them!
I know it's been almost 2 years since this thread was updated, but I would love to see how this truck turned out. Are there more pictures? Would love to see them!
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Today he bought a 1976 Ranchero 500
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I have a bunch of pics, but can't upload any.
The site won't let me upload anything over 195KB and...
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