Beau's 78 2+2

[Beau M]

I guess its about time I started a thread for "The Piece" as my wife calls it. I have wanted a project car for some time now. I have tinkered around on many vehicles in my life, but mostly stereo installs, a head replacement, that kind of stuff. I have always like the Z's, and when I found they had strong aftermarket support and a good following, I decided to build my own. My goal for this car is to have a nice weekend and sunny day driver with a little oomph under the hood. Nothing crazy, just a nice car.

First, a disclaimer. I don't know what I'm doing. Everything I know I learned from doing, or catastrophic failures in the past. No classes, no formal training. So, I am going to screw up. I am going to do some things wrong, and my mistakes will probably cost me time and money. But, this is what I do for fun, and as long as I don't injure myself or burn down the house, I will be happy. With that said, here she is the day I bought her for 800 bucks. Non running. Oh, that's not me in the pictures.

 

 

 

 

The guy I bought it from said he noticed a head gasket leak. He started to take the head off, then lost money and motivation. I'm not too concerned with that, a swap was planned from the beginning. There in one small hole in the frame that I saw, and of course the lower body panels will need some attention. Other than that, it seems like a solid car. But, they probably all seem that way at first.

 

 

[Beau M]

So there it sat, in my driveway. I had to re-model my garage to fit it in. This required me to remove a wall, hang all new drywall, electrical, and build new benches and shelves. Oh, and some plumbing needed to be re-routed. That took some time, but the car is now in the garage. These pics are from the first day it was in its new home.

 

 

 

 

[Beau M]

I have decent room on all sides, but its a little close for comfort. So, I got some furniture dollys from Harbor Freight for 10 bucks a pop. They help in so many ways, I can move the car side to side and it props it up 6 inches, which makes a difference when you are working on lower body work.

 

 

 

Oh, here is one of my inspectors. All work must be supervised and inspected for Cat Quality.

 

[Beau M]

The first thing I did was take off the hood and the fender from the side I wanted to start working on. I have been bagging and tagging all the bolts and whatnot.

 

 

That's when I found this awesome surprise. I'm sure there will be more to come.

 

 

Well, my lovely wife got me a welder for x-mas. I have no clue how to weld, but Paulie and Vinnie make it look easy. I have been practicing on a few scrap pieces, and they haven't turned out too bad. My welder can't use gas, but I have a friend who used to say "A poor craftsman blames his tools". So, I work with what I got. I cut out the rust, and welded in a new panel. Then I made a new frame horn extension, and used seam sealer like its going out of style. Its very strong, I'm not worried about that at all. Its just butt ugly.

 

 

[Beau M]

I hate body work. Always have. So I figured, why not get it out of the way first. Its fairly cheap, and will let me know if I really want to get into this project. Here is the lower front quarter before I started. I read how you can chop up a coupe panel and whatnot, but lets be honest. I don't have the skill for that, and if I screw it up, I'm out the 50 bucks or whatever they cost. Having a 2+2 will be a PITA some times, but it just makes me use some creativity.

 

 

Then, I cut out the rust. What I found behind there was.. more rust. But its not cancerous, so I ground it down and slathered it in rustoleum.

 

 

Then I took a chunk of metal, an made some bends and whatnot. I wish I had a break to make nice angles, but I pounded them over the edge of a 2x2 instead. For the large curve, I bent it on my leg and eyeballed it.

 

 

[Beau M]

Here it is tacked into place:

 

 

And with some primer on it:

 

 

 

No matter how hard I tried, I could not get nice consistent tacks. Some are beautiful, sometime it blew holes in the seam. I got frustrated. The panel is nice and secure, but there are holes. Then I looked on my shelf, and all those years of watching McGyver and the A-Team paid off. I had some JB weld. I mixed some up and crammed it in the holes and gaps like it was the play-doh fun factory. It set up over night.

 

 

If this was going to fail, it was here when I had to grind it all flush. It smoothed out like a dream. It did'nt clog my sanding disk, just left a nice, hole free seam. I was stoked.

 

 

 

I threw some bondo on it, and it sanded down pretty good. I am happy with the results so far.

 

 

[Beau M]

I also shaved the antenna hole. Nothing too hard, but it was fun. I also think this will turn out good.

 

 

 

 

[Beau M]

Not much new to report. I unhooked all the wiring and whatnot from the engine to prepare for pulling it in the next few weeks. I took out the center console:

 

 

I also cut off the stock exhaust:

 

 

Then I started back in to the body work right behind the rear wheel well. This is going to be tricky.

 

 

 

I also picked up my new rear roll pan at the junkyard today for 38.00. Some assembly required. I hope this turns out good.

 

[Beau M]

I have no idea what I got myself into with this rear end. I think I have a way to get me out of the mess I'm in, we shall see. I started off by chopping out the old roll pan:

 

 

Then I chopped out the part from the tailgate I want to use. I think that because I'm replacing this, and the lower rear quarters are toast, I'm going to end up fabricating the entire lower 8" of the bodywork. Yikes. Here is the piece mocked into place:

 

 

 

 

Stay tuned.

[Beau M]

Big day today. My friend Ahren came over, and we yanked the engine and tranny out. It was way easier than expected, took us all of 2 hours, and this was the first engine pull ever for both of us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here she is gutted like a fish. Now I can work on prepping the engine bay for paint. It was nice to turn wrenches instead of cut and weld for a while.

 

[Beau M]

Not much new, still fixing rust issues.

 

 

 

Highly modified coupe panel from my new best friends, Tabco. When I am done, half the car will have been bought from them

 

 

[Beau M]

Welding, Welding, Welding

 

 

 

[Beau M]

I got a little more welding done this weekend.

 

 

 

[Beau M]

I picked up an engine for this thing yesterday. Its the one I wanted when I first got the Z. My mind changed a few times since then, but this one popped up at the right time, and seemed like a good deal. Supposedly it was rebuilt around 30K ago. Ford 302, converted to carb. Should be fun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Beau M]

Sometimes it feels like no matter how much I work on this, I make no progress. Anyway, here is what I have been up to:

 

Beau's ghetto body shop. I modified an 11 dollar dent puller to accept steel nails, which I clipped the points off and welded to the body. Works amazingly well.

 

 

 

I also have been hacking away at the rear end, its almost done. Here it is stripped and almost in its final place, getting both modified coupe rear lower quarter to match has been a real pain.

 

 

 

And here is a quick shot under the valve cover of the engine, it looks almost brand new. I dont know if thats good or bad.

 

[Beau M]

Small update. I just picked up a t-5 tranny for a reasonable price. Combined I spent 700 for the engine and tranny (so far). The flywheel looks like it will need to be re-surfaced and I will be getting a new clutch. I hope to have mounts mocked up by the end of the winter, but I really need to get cracking on my body work.

 

 

 

 

 

[Beau M]

Rear end update. I have been welding, sanding and applying bondo for the last few weeks. I was trying my hardest to get the metal as flat as possible, but I was getting frustrated in my search for perfection. I decided it was time to let some body filler do its job. Here are some pics after a guide coat of primer, its not totally dry but you get the idea:

 

 

 

 

 

[Beau M]

So I got tired of sanding, and started poking around with my engine. As I did so, I noticed I could not turn it over by hand. It would move about 30 degrees in either direction, then stop. WTF. There was no getting around it, it had to come apart. I thought maybe a nut fell in there or something when the previous owner had it.

 

On the stand:

 

 

Headers came off first:

 

 

 

Then the accessories and valve covers:

 

 

 

And finally, the heads:

 

 

 

The good news is the motor turns over by hand great now. Be bad news is there was no bolt, and I cannot see any where a valve may have contacted a piston. The pistons did have quite a bit of carbon build up, but that's the only thing I can see that is out of place.

 

I said earlier that this engine sort of sucks because of the flat top pistons that only came in the 86 engines. I think I will swap them out before I put this thing back together, I can see visible cross hatching on the cylinder walls so that good.

[Beau M]

Pulled the pistons out today. I then used a digital micrometer, the bores are the stock 4", and in pretty good shape. I may have a lead on some replacement pistons.

 

 

 

Labeled bags of parts.

 

 

Old pistons.

 

 

And, boy I hope the hole above the lifter holes is supposed to be there.

 

 

This is not what I had expected. I thought I would buy an engine and drop it in. Now, the whole project has been set back quite a bit. I don't see myself doing bodywork for a while, but maybe that's for the best. I was getting a little burnt out.

[Beau M]

Its been a while, but ripping apart engines takes time, especially when its mostly new territory. After I took out the pistons and stuff, I taped it all up and cleaned it as best I could.

 

 

I decided I could not handle having the crappiest pistons and heads ever thrown on a 302. I picked some pistons up for free from a awesome dude over on corral.net. They are forged units from a 90 mustang, and most importantly they have valve reliefs. I dropped my old and new pistons off at the machinist and had the new (ish) ones cleaned and pressed on my rods.

 

 

 

After ordering the wrong rings the first time around, I then go the correct metric sized rings.

 

 

So I rented this cheapo band ring compressor. That, coupled with my inexperience, resulted in me busting a ring. DON'T DO THIS. A new ring kit for one cylinder runs about 30 bucks, the whole set of 8 rings were 65 bucks. WTF. Anyway, here is what I did:

 

 

But, the other pistons went in OK after I got my system down. The new rings should be here any day for the other piston.

 

 

 

Now that I had decent pistons, I needed new heads. I just happened to find a set in the JY on a 1999 explorer. They are the GT40p heads, some of the best stock 5.0 heads you can get. Not bad going from the worst to the best. They will need new valve springs and a check-up at the machinist, which is the next step.