BUILD THREAD Janky- A Mexican Monte Clone
- Thread starter UC645
- Start date
Alrighty, picking up from last year:
Car went on the back burner for around a month, but with the 4th of July coming up and a decent break from work along with it, I painted the mirrors, trunk filler, and the quarter extensions in the sketchiest setup I had:
All in all, turned out well. Had a sag in one of the mirrors, but that sanded out decently.
Trunk filler was installed the next week.
Fast forward a bit, Canfield came around and I pulled the trigger on wheels, since Holley discontinued the Rocket Racing wheels I was eyeing.
A square set of Ridler 650s in 18x9.5 with +6mm offset. And here I realized a made a mistake. I had referenced the length of the Foxbody axle before I bought these, only to realize that the website I went with mixed up the Ranger and Fox measurements, and these wheels would be just under a 1/4 inch from the outside edge of the quarter panel. Doh!
This sparked a ton of mulling about, figuring out what the best course of action was, and I came to the conclusion that it’d be best to just throw the kitchen sink at it with a custom width Ford 9 inch. That was ordered last week, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
After all of that, I test fitted the NOS replacement bumper cover I bought at that summer’s Canfield meet:
It actually didn’t fit half bad! Only modifications that were needed was to drill the holes for the bumper corner trim to complete the trim from the quarter panel. Made them larger than necessary to allow for some adjustment of fit.
With nothing else to tackle at the time, I decided to wetsand the quarters and passenger door. Left the driver’s alone due to a small chip that needs repaired.
Not half bad, if I’d say so myself.
After that little dive, I painted the rear bumper cover:
Side note: during this time I learned that the fuel tank I had in the car had the incorrect filler neck in it. When I bought it, the seller said it was from a Cutlass and I didn’t think nothing of it, a G body is a G body after all. Yeah no. The filler neck hit the bumper cover, and I went to the junkyard and robbed a filler neck from a MC there. Went to remove the one from the Cutlass tank, and discovered that filler was brazed in. In my hubris, I thought I could melt the brazing out. I thought wrong, and ruined the tank.
Ended up buying one from Tanks Inc. and it fit perfectly, with that came some fuel system alterations that I didn’t take pictures of, but I’m still running that old Carter pump.
Fast forward a few days and I’m wet sanding the rear bumper cover when I make a mistake and take it clear back to primer on a corner:
Unfortunately I had got the paint and clear really thin here due to my hack setup for painting this cover, and that made burning through the paint shockingly easy.
Had little choice but to attempt my first spot repair, and with a lot of help and pointers from Rktpwrd I did just that:
Should’ve put an application to Serve-Pro, because that looks like it never happened 😛
From there I re-wired everything up front save for the HVAC harness, and made up a little bracket assembly that takes up the space the overflow bottle:
Fast forwarding through this past month, and I’ve wet sanded the roof (THREE BLOODY TIMES):
Acquired a car cover:
Installed most of the rear bumper trim and tail lights:
Installed new taillight sockets and LED bulbs:
Sylvania Zevo LEDs are no joke kinda bright.
Over the last week, I’ve been finishing up odds and ends for the rear, including a trunk lock cover. Long story short, the trunk lid I have was a victim of a break in, and the lock boss is all kinds of messed up, but intact enough to hold a lock. I didn’t think it would be an issue, but it’s rather unsightly:
I put off fixing it because I had no idea where I’d get a patch, and my metal working skills are subpar at best, but I should’ve attempted it. Oh well, not ripping it apart now, maybe at a later date. But this needed covered. I had found this style of lock cover a few years ago with parts I got with the car:
(Continued in next post)
Car went on the back burner for around a month, but with the 4th of July coming up and a decent break from work along with it, I painted the mirrors, trunk filler, and the quarter extensions in the sketchiest setup I had:
All in all, turned out well. Had a sag in one of the mirrors, but that sanded out decently.
Trunk filler was installed the next week.
Fast forward a bit, Canfield came around and I pulled the trigger on wheels, since Holley discontinued the Rocket Racing wheels I was eyeing.
A square set of Ridler 650s in 18x9.5 with +6mm offset. And here I realized a made a mistake. I had referenced the length of the Foxbody axle before I bought these, only to realize that the website I went with mixed up the Ranger and Fox measurements, and these wheels would be just under a 1/4 inch from the outside edge of the quarter panel. Doh!
This sparked a ton of mulling about, figuring out what the best course of action was, and I came to the conclusion that it’d be best to just throw the kitchen sink at it with a custom width Ford 9 inch. That was ordered last week, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
After all of that, I test fitted the NOS replacement bumper cover I bought at that summer’s Canfield meet:
It actually didn’t fit half bad! Only modifications that were needed was to drill the holes for the bumper corner trim to complete the trim from the quarter panel. Made them larger than necessary to allow for some adjustment of fit.
With nothing else to tackle at the time, I decided to wetsand the quarters and passenger door. Left the driver’s alone due to a small chip that needs repaired.
Not half bad, if I’d say so myself.
After that little dive, I painted the rear bumper cover:
Side note: during this time I learned that the fuel tank I had in the car had the incorrect filler neck in it. When I bought it, the seller said it was from a Cutlass and I didn’t think nothing of it, a G body is a G body after all. Yeah no. The filler neck hit the bumper cover, and I went to the junkyard and robbed a filler neck from a MC there. Went to remove the one from the Cutlass tank, and discovered that filler was brazed in. In my hubris, I thought I could melt the brazing out. I thought wrong, and ruined the tank.
Ended up buying one from Tanks Inc. and it fit perfectly, with that came some fuel system alterations that I didn’t take pictures of, but I’m still running that old Carter pump.
Fast forward a few days and I’m wet sanding the rear bumper cover when I make a mistake and take it clear back to primer on a corner:
Unfortunately I had got the paint and clear really thin here due to my hack setup for painting this cover, and that made burning through the paint shockingly easy.
Had little choice but to attempt my first spot repair, and with a lot of help and pointers from Rktpwrd I did just that:
Should’ve put an application to Serve-Pro, because that looks like it never happened 😛
From there I re-wired everything up front save for the HVAC harness, and made up a little bracket assembly that takes up the space the overflow bottle:
Fast forwarding through this past month, and I’ve wet sanded the roof (THREE BLOODY TIMES):
Acquired a car cover:
Installed most of the rear bumper trim and tail lights:
Installed new taillight sockets and LED bulbs:
Sylvania Zevo LEDs are no joke kinda bright.
Over the last week, I’ve been finishing up odds and ends for the rear, including a trunk lock cover. Long story short, the trunk lid I have was a victim of a break in, and the lock boss is all kinds of messed up, but intact enough to hold a lock. I didn’t think it would be an issue, but it’s rather unsightly:
I put off fixing it because I had no idea where I’d get a patch, and my metal working skills are subpar at best, but I should’ve attempted it. Oh well, not ripping it apart now, maybe at a later date. But this needed covered. I had found this style of lock cover a few years ago with parts I got with the car:
(Continued in next post)
However, the hole was too large to properly hide that ugly area, so out came the bondo.
Not half bad. Not as good as a not-so-ugly trunk lock area, but it’ll do.
Wednesday, I took delivery of the white paint for the lower trim:
This stuff’s so white it cuts the crust off it’s toast.
And finally, I finished the vertical bumper trim and the lock cover yesterday, and installed them, along with a very special emblem:
This was a 3 owner car, originally sold new in Florida, and that’s the dealer emblem from the dealership that sold it new back in 1984 as a plain Jane white with tan interior V6 MC. Who woulda thought it’d end up like it currently is?
It’s got a few nicks, but I’m not fixing it, showing it’s age just adds more character to the car.
And finally, I’ll leave with the building blocks for another special touch I’ve come up with:
Here’s hoping I can pull this one off.
Well it's official: I'm absolutely hooked on this build now. I accidentally set the kitchen on fire once, Serv Pro came out and cleaned for an entire week. You do better work.
You still want the neck out of that tank so a replacement can be stuffed in; go find a rad shop. They use oxy-propane or oxy-mapp gas kind of like plumbers do. Might be moot as a lot of shops won't touch a tank even if it has come from a hulk and been in the yard for a long minute. Insurance rates and actuaries are murder on the business.
Last post:
This is gonna be a few posts, me thinks.
Picking up from where I left off:
After finishing up the taillights and rear trim, I moved on to protecting the lower edge of the quarters and the rocker panels with some raptor liner in a spray can:
This stuff is nuts. It works well, but you’d be better off buying a kit, as this little can has enough air pressure in it to raise the Titanic by itself.
The bedliner will hopefully keep Pennsylvania’s tendencies to rot vehicles out from the ground up at bay for a while.
But, the main point of this was to help hide the rocker panels- more on that when I’ve finished the exterior.
In between this, I picked up a 9 inch center chunk:
OG Ford casting for a late 60’s Mustang, with a polished 3.89 gear set that I’ve set aside for later use.
Then I pulled out the SS nose for prep work.
Had a couple places to fix, a crack in the bottom outer corner of the driver’s headlight area, the driver’s turn signal opening had a couple to fix, and the passenger turn signal opening had a scallop taken out on the bottom edge.
One light coat of epoxy primer and 2 coats of filler later:
Had a burn trough when sanding this on the main lower body line, but all in all it sanded out fine:
The following morning, sprayed in base/clear:
Followed up with wet sanding to 2000 grit, taking a couple pointers from D, taping off the body lines so o don’t burn through them:
And a couple days later, the car finally saw the light of day for the first time in 2 years:
The same day, the hood came off to get prepped for paint, and I took delivery of a new oil pan courtesy of Kevko Racing.
Which means I’d be needing to pull off some shade tree mechanic magic to get that installed.
As sketchy as this looks, it worked out quite well!
Had the driver’s fender off the same day to fix some paint chips on the driver’s door, and the motor ready to pull:
Had the pan swapped out the next day, but found out the hard way I should’ve put the starter in with the engine, rather that wait to install it after the engine. Had to take the passenger header off, but not out to fit the starter in the car. Sucks to have to go though that process from now on, but you gotta make sacrifices for good performance.
(Continued in next post)
This is gonna be a few posts, me thinks.
Picking up from where I left off:
After finishing up the taillights and rear trim, I moved on to protecting the lower edge of the quarters and the rocker panels with some raptor liner in a spray can:
This stuff is nuts. It works well, but you’d be better off buying a kit, as this little can has enough air pressure in it to raise the Titanic by itself.
The bedliner will hopefully keep Pennsylvania’s tendencies to rot vehicles out from the ground up at bay for a while.
But, the main point of this was to help hide the rocker panels- more on that when I’ve finished the exterior.
In between this, I picked up a 9 inch center chunk:
OG Ford casting for a late 60’s Mustang, with a polished 3.89 gear set that I’ve set aside for later use.
Then I pulled out the SS nose for prep work.
Had a couple places to fix, a crack in the bottom outer corner of the driver’s headlight area, the driver’s turn signal opening had a couple to fix, and the passenger turn signal opening had a scallop taken out on the bottom edge.
One light coat of epoxy primer and 2 coats of filler later:
Had a burn trough when sanding this on the main lower body line, but all in all it sanded out fine:
The following morning, sprayed in base/clear:
Followed up with wet sanding to 2000 grit, taking a couple pointers from D, taping off the body lines so o don’t burn through them:
And a couple days later, the car finally saw the light of day for the first time in 2 years:
The same day, the hood came off to get prepped for paint, and I took delivery of a new oil pan courtesy of Kevko Racing.
Which means I’d be needing to pull off some shade tree mechanic magic to get that installed.
As sketchy as this looks, it worked out quite well!
Had the driver’s fender off the same day to fix some paint chips on the driver’s door, and the motor ready to pull:
Had the pan swapped out the next day, but found out the hard way I should’ve put the starter in with the engine, rather that wait to install it after the engine. Had to take the passenger header off, but not out to fit the starter in the car. Sucks to have to go though that process from now on, but you gotta make sacrifices for good performance.
(Continued in next post)
After that fiasco, I fired the car up again with a new High Volume oil pump and switched to some 20w50 oil:
That oil pressure put quite the smile on my face.
In between all of this, I painted the hood:
Unfortunately, it was really hot that day, and must of been tipping over 90 in the tarp garage, and my clear started spraying dry, but I had to roll with it. The hood sat for the better part of a month before I got to wet sand it, the hot days baked the clear on, and I had to start wet sanding with 1000 grit just to get this clear to start to sand flat. Thankfully I only had one burn through on a corner that was easily fixed.
My pictures and memory is rather sparse for the next week, but I got the mirrors installed, and fitted new weatherstripping to the driver’s side window and door.
A couple days later, I painted the lower trim:
I’d almost argue that this white is a little too white, but it’s perfect.
After that I installed the door panels:
The driver’s upper needed a new window sweep, but that was all these needed aside from carpet for the lowers. Had to fix an old repair to get the window switch to fit in the door panel properly.
After that, I ordered a diff kit from Quick Performance, and set it up over the week.
I’m still hoping I have this set up correctly. The pinion bearings were a little on the tight side with a solid spacer, but if I added the minimum shim thickness I had on hand, the rotational torque dropped to 3 inch pounds, and I couldn’t run that.
That evening I buffed the hood, and at that point, I was sick of looking at the thing between the heat and frustration of wet sanding it for a solid 5 days to get it somewhat flat.
The Friday before Labor Day, I picked up a uhaul trailer, loaded the car up, and took it down the the shop to swap in the QP 9 inch rear I pulled the trigger on a while before all fo this:
Small tip, 56 inches wide is just a smidge too narrow to fit 9.5 wide wheels with 5.25 backspacing. The wheels will hit the inner wheel tubs on a MC- with a notched frame of course. 57 inches wide will get you close while allowing for spacers to dial in your fitment where you want it.
After my father and I got the car down to the shop, I got a visual representation of how much of a beast this man still is:
25 minutes. I was gone for 25 minutes returning the trailer and fetching us dinner and he had the whole rear suspension out.
From there, it was a bunch of checking and fitting, and fitting and checking before I broke out more parts and weld sway bar mounts on the rear:
I know this was risky, but I went slow, and let the housing cool between every 1/2 inch or so of welding, plus this is 1/4 wall axle tubes. I’m reasonably confident I didn’t warp the housing.
Reasonably.
Later that night we found out I couldn’t use the tailpipes I already had made for the car, so I had to use the set of A body tailpipes I got from a garage clean out the beginning of the year. But not without some cutting and fitting.
(Continued in next post)
That oil pressure put quite the smile on my face.
In between all of this, I painted the hood:
Unfortunately, it was really hot that day, and must of been tipping over 90 in the tarp garage, and my clear started spraying dry, but I had to roll with it. The hood sat for the better part of a month before I got to wet sand it, the hot days baked the clear on, and I had to start wet sanding with 1000 grit just to get this clear to start to sand flat. Thankfully I only had one burn through on a corner that was easily fixed.
My pictures and memory is rather sparse for the next week, but I got the mirrors installed, and fitted new weatherstripping to the driver’s side window and door.
A couple days later, I painted the lower trim:
I’d almost argue that this white is a little too white, but it’s perfect.
After that I installed the door panels:
The driver’s upper needed a new window sweep, but that was all these needed aside from carpet for the lowers. Had to fix an old repair to get the window switch to fit in the door panel properly.
After that, I ordered a diff kit from Quick Performance, and set it up over the week.
I’m still hoping I have this set up correctly. The pinion bearings were a little on the tight side with a solid spacer, but if I added the minimum shim thickness I had on hand, the rotational torque dropped to 3 inch pounds, and I couldn’t run that.
That evening I buffed the hood, and at that point, I was sick of looking at the thing between the heat and frustration of wet sanding it for a solid 5 days to get it somewhat flat.
The Friday before Labor Day, I picked up a uhaul trailer, loaded the car up, and took it down the the shop to swap in the QP 9 inch rear I pulled the trigger on a while before all fo this:
Small tip, 56 inches wide is just a smidge too narrow to fit 9.5 wide wheels with 5.25 backspacing. The wheels will hit the inner wheel tubs on a MC- with a notched frame of course. 57 inches wide will get you close while allowing for spacers to dial in your fitment where you want it.
After my father and I got the car down to the shop, I got a visual representation of how much of a beast this man still is:
25 minutes. I was gone for 25 minutes returning the trailer and fetching us dinner and he had the whole rear suspension out.
From there, it was a bunch of checking and fitting, and fitting and checking before I broke out more parts and weld sway bar mounts on the rear:
I know this was risky, but I went slow, and let the housing cool between every 1/2 inch or so of welding, plus this is 1/4 wall axle tubes. I’m reasonably confident I didn’t warp the housing.
Reasonably.
Later that night we found out I couldn’t use the tailpipes I already had made for the car, so I had to use the set of A body tailpipes I got from a garage clean out the beginning of the year. But not without some cutting and fitting.
(Continued in next post)
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