We have got to go back!

 OMFG!

I just had a look at the new 2024 Mustang. Sure, it doesn't look too bad, but it got me thinking about what we might have lost along the way...and I am thinking it has something to do with purity of design. It's a style thing. Sure, it is not about performance, nor economy, and perhaps a little less about sound as well.

For me, anyway, the overarching requirement of a motor vehicle has to be how easy on the eye it looks, and as far as the new Mustang goes, well, there's only one way to go, and that is back. If this is the future, then...

We have to go back!

But why stop there? Surely this applies to scores of vehicles, and I hasten to add own very own Annabel to this lot. 

Who could seriously suggest the last F100 had it all over the second generation truck? You won't get me queuing up any time soon for one of those 80's rust buckets!

Gotta say the other one that comes quickly to mind is the legendary Mazda Rotary. Now, sure, I'll take some liberty here and not go right back to that little toy thing they used to make called the R100 (or even those horrid looking RX3's and RX4's) Mazda made a pearler of car between the years of 1992 and 2002 when they created the sensational RX7 FD. Arguably the most beautiful Japanese car I have ever seen.

So, how could these guys get it so wrong when they came up with that RX8 monstrosity? 

Seriously, is there even one panel on the RX8 that looks like it belongs there? I don't think my father ever said these words, but some old guy must have muttered them in my ear once, and I'll use them now to say the RX8 looks uglier than a hatful of arseholes.

Tell me if I have gone barking mad!

 Folks, please tell me if I have gone barking mad, but I think my approach to the repair of the dashboard is relatively sensible, if not a little extreme and unorthodox. 

You see, I am basically sacrificing a left hand dash to repair my very scabbby right hand dash. The original dash that came out of the truck is the LHD unit. Here in this great land of snakes and spiders, we drive on the right side of the road.

When I bought this project it came with both LHD and RHD dashes. Sadly (or not) the LHD dash had been taken out and no further progress was made. It appears that at some stage a very tired old RHD dash had been sourced by the previous owner, but it is in very shoddy condition, with considerable rust issues and multiple patch jobs already made to it. 

I am planning on chopping the good section out of the LHD one and welding it into the RHD one. Not sure whether to try my hand at Mig welding it or get some help to Tig weld it, or maybe even fork out and buy a propane torch and silver solder it?

Paper thin for a good 8 inches. No way just to patch it. This whole piece has to be cut out. So, whatever I do, this is gonna need a patch job. My theory is it is easier to match to contours of the dash by cutting out a good existing dash.

See how crap looking this is? On a positive note, the holes do line up with the mounting area in the cab, but the patch job here is already rusting away itself. Full marks to previous owner for trying to save it. But I think I have a better idea.

There are also some issues with the fitment of the glove box lid. I have no idea why, but the RHD glove box lid is almost half an inch out at the right hand top. This could simply be because the RHD has has a different contour, but I am suspecting it is probably bent up. Either way, the whole section where the glove box lid sits has rusted out as well, so I might as well swap glove boxes over while I am at it. 

Welding works of art: from Classical to Ultraviolent

 You cannot say we have not been having fun welding bits of this truck up. Some pieces Peter and myself have been working on have come off...others, well, like a fat butt in lycra, you could say they need work. The good news is here is where I leave Pete for a while as I concentrate on getting the truck into a nicer shape by tidying up the rough spots and getting the cab prepared for 2k epoxy primer, which should be on the cards in the next couple of weeks. 

Good news is the Beetle is back in the garage and that makes my wife happy, so things are definitely on the improve there.

Check out some of our artisitc creations:

It doesn't get any more hardcore than this! We're looking at the front corner of the underside of the firewall. What is going on here is a work of genius. No, I am serious...It's just sometimes hard to recognise genius when you first see it. I have drawn a couple of lines to show you how dramatic this welding effort is. Two distinct pieces of carefully constructed scrap steel lovingly moulding into meaningful shapes to accent the gently sweeping lines of the vehicle, matching delicately with the contours of the panel. 

It takes inspired creativity to design an edgy piece like this, and there really isn't anything on the truck that rivals it

Except, if you look at this:

You are looking at the welding of the 1956 f100 lower front cab mount. In other words, this thing (see below)

They were originally just tack welded in place in a few spots.  Well, the one above sure ain't gonna go anywhere fast. However, therein lies the problem. you see, I think these plates are designed to flex, else what would be the purpose of their design? Looks like I will have to get the old grinder out again.

I don't blame Peter. He is not a mind reader and he has done some great welding for me. Really, it is quite unfair for me to highlight these doozies, but it's all meant to be fun and not an insult as I really would have been up shit creek without his help.  Pete has taught me so much about the theory and practice of welding in such a short time that I now feel confident to tackle some jobs myself. Not before I have eaten some humble pie. And that came during a practice session where I welded a T joint and a butt joint only to discover almost zero penetration. In fact, I produced a beautiful weld. Only thing was it was about three mm from the joint. 

They're not all scary stories, though. Here's a nice new piece of plate replacing the rusted out rocker panel section. We opted not to replace the whole piece as it was easier and the metal was still good. 

Next step for me is to start cleaning up the cabin. Prettying up the welds and hitting it with primer eventually. Then we can lower it again and mount it for good. 

Another crack at the firewall

 Well, the old tart arrived with a whopping butt ugly square shaped cut made in the firewall. I can only surmise that somebody tried to locate the steering shaft in the vicinity and gave up. 

There were two distinct cuts back then, and since then I trimmed it away to make one larger cut. I showed Peter what needed to be done and I suggested I would break out the new hammer and dolly kit and knock a new piece of plate into shape, but Peter said that would take forever and offered this solution.

Well, not the most elegant solution, but definitely the most avant-garde. 

I had a long think about his solution and decided (while I boiled an egg) that nup, that has to go.

He was right about it taking a while to shape up a new piece, but since this is quite visual from inside the firewall engine bay, it has to look nice. 

This is where I am at. I'm having a crack at welding this one myself over the weekend. Couple of magnets with metal plate holding it in place for the time being.

So, why did I sack Mark?

 They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Then, if that is the case, glaze over this photo and tell me what you see?

This, ladies and gents, is a piece of 5mm plate. It has been cut and shaped somewhat haphazardly to somehow reflect the shape of the front of the 1956 F100 chassis rail. The part that runs from the stabiliser bar down to the firewall on the outside. It was cut using a 9" grinder. The person who cut it took two days to do so. Cut it and shape it, mind you.

Unfortunately, the shape does not really reflect the chassis at all. It looks more like a giant steel SS (shit stirrer) paddle. And because it has been so weirdly and loving and longingly crafted, it made it really hard to line the horizontal piece up against it for later welding. 

Mark, resident welder (who never produced an actual welder) and who stayed with us, sleeping in our spare room, while my wife diligently cooked for him while his dogs peed on the carpet and shit on the grass, spent two solid days cutting and shaping this piece of metal.

One wonders whether he used a Dremel? 

But, no, he used a 9" grinder. 

And he took two days to cut and shape this one piece out. In fact, while he was here (four days) he managed to cut and shape two pieces of steel and cut a couple of brackets off the chassis and lay a lick of primer on a couple of panels. Not bad for a guy asking $300 a day. 

I could not and STILL don't believe anyone can take this amount of time to do a simple job like this.  But that is the truth. 

So, I hear you ask, why didn't I just do it myself? Well, I would have except that Mark was dead keen to bring his grinder down and get into it. Me, believing that the cutting of some plate was only going to take a couple of hours at most, could not comprehend what I was seeing.

He arrived at our place late Monday night. Stayed overnight. Next morning we both  got stuck into things. I noticed after a couple of hours that progress on one piece of plate was taking an extraordinary amount of time, but I left him to it as I went up top to do other things. During the following few hours all I could hear was the grinder going full steam, and I thought he must have nearly cut all the steel plate needed for the project (4 plates in all), but when I went back in the afternoon, he was still working on the one piece of plate. 

That night I went back to the garage and spent a lot of time just trying to comprehend what he had done in a day, and I couldn't get it in my head. I made a decision then that his time here was very limited.

The next day I asked Mark how long was he planning on staying and he said about a week before he went to the next job. I realised then that that was simply out of the question. Besides, we were planning on a weekend away, so I said he'd have to head out a few days earlier, like, on the Friday night.

Like a fool, I gave him the benefit of the doubt, wrongly thinking that he would rev up and get into cutting the plates out and tacking them into place by Tuesday. 

That didn't happen, either. Instead, more of the same. Sometime mid Wednesday he'd decided he had done enough sculpting of one piece and made a start on the second. 

I had to work Thursday and Friday, and on Thursday I sent a msg to him asking if he could get the plates tacked onto the chassis today. He replied that he still had a lot to do. When I arrived home from work Thursday night he was grinding down the second plate. It was nearly 6pm. When I got inside my wife told me to tell him to stop working as he has been grinding all day, so I went out there fifteen minutes later and he was still grinding the same spot! 

So, at this stage, three solid days and at $300 a day I had a bill for $900 for two plates! That ain't workin'! 

No, not for one minute was I going to hand over that kind of cash. I may be gullible, but I am not an idiot and am not made of money.

Back at work on Friday, and early in the morning I sent another msg to him (he never gave me his phone number- it was always through Facebook) asking again whether he could have the plates at least tack welded on, and he rudely told me I had no idea how long it took to cut metal and drill a dozen holes. 

Well, after all that we did for him, and the hospitality that we showed to him and his two stinky dogs, that was the last straw. I did not explode as I was two hours away and my wife was alone with him and I did not trust him to storm out and take stuff from the garage, so I played it cool until the evening.

By the time I got home, he had packed up and gone. 

All I can say is good riddance to the con artist! 

Just for a comparison; I took the other two plates that he didn't get around to cutting to Xpiggy fabrications in Unanderra and Brendan cut them out on his plasma table and charged me the grand sum of fifty bucks each and it was done basically while I waited. Just to put it all into perspective...

Welding up the front cab hinge section.

Had to cut the old hinge out due to it being totally rusted and now am faced with welding the new piece in.

Bought this piece from Denis Carpenter and it seems pretty good, though the hinged area looks a little flimsy, the actual frame is made of reasonable steel.

Of course, like an ignoramus, I cut a tad too much steel off the new piece and now it's a couple of mm too short. The plan is to slide some copper plate behind the weld

and weld this new section on.

Tell you what, I am sh*****g bricks over this as the alignment has to be super spot on. I have measured the distance between the centre bolts from one hinge to the other on the side I haven't tampered with, so

I should just match that with the new piece and theoretically the hinge should mate up with the door when I fit it up.

Wish me luck!

Critical to get the alignment right. Not there yet!

This section needs to fit flush and the rocker has to be pulled inwards a fair bit to allow correct fitting.

See how much meat I need to fill. Like a dill, I cut too much off even after several measurements!