I’d Love to see you tackle the cowl yourself and save that 2-3K.:wink:

That’s a lot of $$

 

When Mig welders were first introduced to the mid market shops the salesman would usually train in the span of 20 minutes the shop secretary how to weld. The best sales tool ever!
I've been a "hobby" mig welding since 1988 starting with the original Lincoln Mig 100 and now with a Miller 215. I had were I work buy a Miler 211 when I got tired of dragging my machine to work and have taught 3 people how to use it it an hour or less. A real Mig welder pays for itself the first time you use it. I wouldn't rely on some unmotivated smuck to fix my ride!

The Miller 211 is the perfect welder. Autoset and forget! My much more expensive Miller 215 offers more complication without better results. Even a mediocre welder in the hands of somebody who cares about the results will yield a superior result over smuck who could care less.

Fix your car and learn stuff! I'd buy a machine shop if I could just to prove that it could be done right!

 

I learned to MIG weld in the early 8's. I worked for a Swedish company (Arenco) that made high speed packaging machinery. We had bought out a small mom and pop packaging machine company because they made something similar in theory to what we sold for the patten. along with the rights came 1 guy who build the stuff and a MIG welder. I knew how to arc weld so I guess I had a little edge. But same thing, he said if it sounds like bacon frying you're good. He told me when he interviewed with that company, he knew how to arc weld but never used a MIG welder. So he said on his interview with them, they asked him if he knew how to MIG weld. He said yes, totally BSing them. He truned on the machine and guessed at the settings and demonstrated in front of them that he knew and pulled it off.

 

Near Indianapolis or Brownsburg you'll find race/auto fabricators doing side work or work between gigs. If you do it yourself and get stuck you may be able to get one to come out and help. It's a lot of work but with the right tools and determination you can do it.

If you need to move the car with missing structural steel you can box/brace it in with tubing to make sure it holds shape. (don't mistake that for "boxing" a frame) Before you cut/spot drill the parts out use tubing, 1" sq .065 wall will work just fine, and some sheet or flat stock to gusset and support the unibody. You're basically building a small substructure in the cab of the car. When you start taking bits like the firewalls and floors out you'll need the rigidity even if you aren't moving the tub.

 

You should set your goals a little lower if you want to drive this car anytime in the near future. Your plan seems like it could easily turn into a full restoration. I recommend you just tackle the cowl. Stay focused on that one thing... don't tear into the brakes, interior, etc and see how long that takes you. If you should finish early then you can tackle another project.

david

 

^^^^^^ I agree. That sounds like way too much work to accomplish in a month for a beginner. It will be spring time and your car will still be half way torn apart.

 

I don't realistically expect to get it all done in a month. I'll still have some free time once school starts again (probably 5-10 hours a week).

 

That's a pretty ambitious list for the time frame. I'd pick the floor OR cowl which ever is worse and go from there. As for a Mig my choice is a Hobart 140

 

The problem is, a lot of the things that need to come off to do the cowl, also need to come off to do the floor and vice versa. I'd rather not disassemble the car over and over again. But maybe I'll have to.

 

my cowl is wasted ,but I did the floor 1st and then did torque boxes the flowing winter.ideally I should have done them at the same time but....

 

Bah, just do the whole thing and bust your *** to get there! With two months of nothing but time, you can do it even as a novice. As others have said, the important thing is to brace the car with some square tube to keep it from collapsing or getting out of square when you remove the cowl or floors. There are numerous auto body threads around here that will show you the most common place to put those braces.

It's the "any other structural rust I find" part that will get you. Is the car currently stripped? I assume not, but you might want to start checking the rest of the body real closely now to prevent surprises in a couple of months when you start this. Lower quarters are common, for example, and can usually be checked as simply as bothering to shine a light into the quarter inside the trunk and running your hand down the backside to feel for blistering / weird repairs.

You could also go ahead and pull the majority of the interior now so you have a better idea of what's going on. If you're driving the car, really all you need is seats and seatbelts - the rest is just finery

 

@Kelly_H, thanks for the input. The lower rear quarters are a little thin but the wheel arches are fine. And the car doesn't need to be dismantled to fix the quarter panel rust so I'm leaving it alone for now. I'm more talking about the pieces that attach to the cowl and floorpan or anything else that would require the disassembly I'm doing, for example I'm not going to weld a new cowl to a rusted out firewall (might not be a great example because my firewall seems fine.)
This guy didn't brace the car while doing the cowl. He seems to have not even jacked it up off the ground!

Depending on how my floors look I might just replace the front sections rather than the whole thing. It might be more welding, and the end result might not look as pretty, but less chance of the body warping right? And frankly I don't really care what the floor looks like as long as it's structurally strong, not warped/misshapen, and won't rust again.

I'm probably going to leave all the cosmetic exterior stuff like quarter panels alone since I'm a novice with a MIG, then pay soimeone who knows what they're doing to perform a much prettier repair with a TIG when I'm ready to get it painted. So probably not for a few years.

 

I don't mean to discourage, but this is a long and daunting list. Surely not impossible, but this is a lot for a college kid to knock out by himself. I daily drove my 66 in college and the rusty cowl was a non-issue. You have the rest of your life to get this car there.

And speaking pragmatically, that $7k would go a long way to buying a car in better shape that doesn't need all of this time and money thrown at it. Just sayin'.

 

I don't think it's actually going to cost $7k (more like $2-3k if I do all the work myself.) $7k just happens to be the maximum I can afford to spend.
I would consider selling it and buying a nicer car, but even with the money from this car and the cost of the work, I'm not convinced I could find one that actually needs less work. I could certainly find one with prettier paint, but lots of "resored" cars seem to still have rusty cowls, rusty floors, and bad bondo repairs. The car I already have has very little rust aside from the cowl and front floors. It has lots of little dings but no major body damage ever, original paint, no bondo.
In the words of many a Craigslist seller with a rusted-out automatic 200CI 1965, "I know what I have." I would love to be proven wrong, but I don't think I'm going to find something that's actually rust-free/ repaired correctly for less than it would cost to repair what I already have.

But maybe it would make more sense to wait until I'm out of college to fix it? I'll never have a full month of free time again, but nights and weekends could go a long way I suppose.

 

A big thing is to be well organized. Bag and label all parts. And do not throw anything away until your done. Some parts are hard to come by and people charge a boat load for them. Good Luck.

 

There's something to be said for that full month of free time. You might consider making it bite-sized and see how far you can get. For example, you really only need to remove seats and carpet, which can be done in +/- 2 hours, to do the floor pans, especially if it's just small patch stuff (as opposed to a full floor pan). Start there, see how far you get and get some practice on the welder where it matters least. Then you can regroup and see if you need to completely disassemble front sheet metal, windshield, etc and attack the cowl.

 

@BlakeTX I like that plan. In fact I think I'm going to go forward with that sooner than originally planned. I had not considered how minor the required disassemby would be to just do the front floors.

Then I can either go ahead and use my month off to do just the cowl, or decide to leave the cowl for now, buy a cowl cover for the rain, weld some subframe connectors to the newly repaired floor, and call it good.

It's not exactly small patch stuff. Most of the front footwells on both sides are thin enough (from leaky cowl) that they need to go. But I think the back just needs minor patching.

And if I'm not doing a full floor, the rear axle can stay in and I can make the leaf springs a minor project for another time.

 

Post some pictures and lets see what you have. Is it a fastback? Maybe use the month to get it drivable and just have fun with it. Worry about the fixes after school. No car is worth less than a completely disassembled car. If you need money, a driver is usually worth more


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

It's a 1970 coupe, nothing special. It is currently drivable. I've had it for nearly 11 months and put 13,000 miles on it, despite having two other cars and not driving it all last winter (road salt, and doing a T5 swap). I could just keep driving it as-is, but I think BlakeTX's suggestion above seems like a good plan to address the rust (prevent its spread, strengthen the unibody) without it turning into an overwhelming, neverending project.

 

Be very easy to see $7k go into a coupe most of which would never be seen again... depending on how bad the cowl is, there are ways to sneak in from the side with a plastic fix...

Getting a mig and playing with it for a month watching youtubes would be a great use of the month. Hobart is also a good name. Get the gas option!!!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Speaking as someone who did his own floors at 15 years old with NO IDEA what he was doing....

I would tackle one project at a time. Floors are one of the best to learn on IMO because they are hidden! Now, I did not do the one pieces chongo panel, I did the full length tubs in mine, toe boards, and a pieces of hte tunnel that had been hacked away for shifter by someone in the 80's.

I'd start there, learn what you are doing, then move to the cowl.

One lesson I didn't want to hear back then that I live by now is to only cut out what needs cutting out. I wouldn't do the one piece floor if I can do it with tubs.

MIGing is not hard, but practice on sheet metal. I didn't have YouTube 14 years ago (or if I did, I had 56k dial up!).

Go slow, brace the car, take measurement, take a bite at a time!

 

I'd love to see the pile of parts that would keep me busy for a month (p/b aside)...dont tackle the rear end unless you have new springs etc... dont pull the engine unless you need or have another crank on hand...
What you listed above keeps an entire Overhauling crew busy for a month!

If the guy on CL is a mobile welder it might be cool. You do 90% of the prep then they come weld it for a few hundreds at a time, I might guess. But you are so blasse about "install cowl:eyeroll:
Start treating it now, phospho or naval jelly on the heavier stuff near where its going to be be cut away.will save tons of grinding. Then the acid diluted with water and through a sprayer goes everywhere a leak would have gone. then a 'lil bit of used motor oil to go where no coating will reach.

 

@69StangRestomod how long did it take you to replace the pans, as a 15 year old with no idea what you were doing?

My old Scoutmaster is an auto restorer and does good work. He has offered to replace the cowl and floorpan this winter, and charges $60 an hour. He is unwilling to give me an estimate without seeing the car, as there's always previously unknown damage discovered during the job.

 

I really don't know, I cut the pans out, in a day or so, then about a year later is when I got around to putting floors in. I also put tow boards in and did other things like cut a hole in the torque box so I could paint the inside of it, then patched it back up.

I would say it would only take me a weekend to repeat the work. Doing it for the first time, assuming you already know how to weld, have the tools, I id guess somewhere in the 40-50 hour time frame for a first timer with really good mechanical aptitude.

 

So here is the order I would go about this if I was you.

-remove interior (see how bad the floors are, order the new floor pieces accordingly)
-remove trans & driveshaft (as they will only get in the way)
-cut floor out (as others have mentioned only cut out what you need to)
-put in new pans - (here is where you will learn to weld)
-paint/coat tops and bottoms with something

IMO properly motivated and with the right tools ready to go the above is a maybe 3 day project.

Next, weld-in sub-frame connectors.

Then, and only then, if you are feeling really good about what you got done with the floors, take the next step of disassembling the front end, and attacking the cowl, but as others stated this will be a much more difficult and time consuming project. But it certainly can be done in the course of 3-weeks especially if you are not looking for some complete re-spray of the car along with it.

Or skip the cowl for now and do all the other mechanical things you talked about.

 

I would highly suggest you stick to the most pressing issue of repair at this time. You're not going to get all that done, no offense.

 

I'd say do the floors first. Like someone said earlier, learning to weld on the floor pan is best because it will be covered up. That's how I learned to weld, I've since welded all over the car and I have a lot of confidence in it. You can too. Few things, you need to learn how to butt weld and lap weld. Lap welds need to have some weld through primer and totally sealed from moister. Flux core welding is possible with .30 but it really takes practice, gas makes smoother, nicer welds, but you need to refill the tank. Good luck!

 

I'm doing floor panels right now. Literally right now. I just came in to take a break. I'm doing two driver side rear panels.

I've got 5 or so hours stripping the interior and prepping to remove the panels. All panels, everything on the dash, wheel and column, seats, carpet and deadening. Then I masked the entire interior, glass, headliner, the works. The prep includes getting the sealer out, taking the chassis coat from under where some of the welds are going, finding the welds and marking them. Then I determined what I needed and ordered it. There is another 4 hours or so today removing the panels and prepping the remaining material to fit and weld the panels. You can just hack the panels (or floor) out of the car but the preferred way is to drill the spot welds, cut where you have to and fit the panels back in the car. It's my first restoration but I've been building production model based race cars for quite a while. The techniques are similar and the tools are identical. I suspect it will take a good hunk of the day tomorrow to get the new panels fit and welded in.

If you paint it with a rattle can and don't paint any of the other areas on the floor you didn't work on you could do that in the first part of the day then restore the interior. That's likely to take a day in and of itself. If you're going to prep and repaint the entire floor properly it's going to take a couple of days, a good part of that time waiting for the coating to cure enough you can restore what you took out.