73 on a slow road to recovery... by Done Yet?

9 minute(s) of a 308 minute read

Subframe tare down....

Today i began to strip all of the parts from my subframe. I rented a coil spring compressor to aid with the spring removal. Heres a pic of my subframe before removing any parts.

Everything came a part pretty easy not to many road blocks. Heres a pick of the coil spring compressor installed on one of the springs, after it was taken out of the contriol arms.

It sure dont look like much mounted to the subframe, but heres all of the pieces removed.

Once stripped the frame was wire wheeled to help cut down on the sand blasting time Being this is not my favorite thing to do. This last pic is the frame partially wire wheeled.

After cleaning the heavy gunk off the frame with the wire wheel i began the task of sand blasting. Im only about 1/4 done with the blasting, I guess that means i will have sand in my ears one more day

3-6-2011

A few more hours of car time.

I began where i left off yesterday blasting my subframe, i used alot more sand then i thought i would need. I went through 5 bags and ran out of sand  So i guess this means i will buy more tommorrow and finish up the blasting after work this week. I moved on to cleaning up the fuel vapor canister that is positioned in the back seat area of the car. I was able to get this piece cleaned primed and painted. The pic is just of the part cleaned.

Next up was my last wheel house to strip, I found some rust that turned into holes once cleaned up. So this area was cut out, and the repair piece taken off of the donor skirt.

Once it was welded in place both sides were ground as smooth as i could get it being the weld was in kind of a dip.

The i stripped and treated the rest of the repaired wheelhouse.

3-10-2011

Update on a little progress.

Ive been working on the car for the last few nights after work. I continued on my stripping down the subframe and finally got her finished. Once it was stripped it was treated with ospho to keep the flash rust at bay until i can repair a few mounting holes this weekend then it will get coated with epoxy primer. Heres a few shots of the stripped frame.

Ive also been working on cleaning up the front backing plates and spindles. Once they were clean they were primed and painted. I also took the bearings out of the rotors to replace them, and they looked like new. So i cleaned and repacked them with grease and installed new seals after i resurfaced the rotors and coated them with wd-40 to keep the rust off until they go back on the car.

Stay tuned as i try to keep this project moving in the right direction.
Thanks for stoppin bye Rob

3-11-2011

Did a little shopping

WOOOHOOOO! Finally was able to pick up my much needed epoxy and the top coat for the dash firewall, subframe and maybe the underside of the car.
Now i can prime all of the bare metal pieces that i have stored in my shed. Ive got my work cut out for me.

3-12-2011

How to repair subframe mounting holes.

First off the repair pieces were purchased from NPD. Lay your repair pieces over top of existing hole and draw a line around the outer edge.

Next i will show you how to cut a round hole with a cut off wheel. This works better if your cut off wheel has a little wear on it and it is not full size. You need to make a bunch of cuts from the inside and stop right before the line that was transfered. See the pic below.

When your done slicing it will look like this.

Now use the cutoff wheel and cut out the rest stopping before the line. Once you have removed all of the slivers of metal turn the cutoff wheel upright and clean up the edge of the hole without grinding past your line.

Now switch out the cut off wheel for a deburring tip (shown in the next pick) And carefully trim the outer edge of your hole until your repair piece fits nice and snug like shown.

If you should grind too much and you have a loose fit no problem just hold the repair piece with a maganet.

Now you are ready to tack weld in your repair washer, just make sure it sits flush until tacked all the way around. Once tacked go ahead and finish welding it in place.

Now turn the frame over, make sure your welding seem is ground clean, and weld the underside of your repair.

Now go ahead and clean up your welds your repair is complete.

Letting the epoxy fly....

Once my subframe repair was done i broke out the wire wheel and gave each of the following panels a quick once over to remove any residue left behind from the ospho, then each panel was wiped with wax and grease remover then shot with epoxy.

Once the paint gun was cleaned up and the welder put away it was miller time.