Rapom's Rocket - just another Duster build thread

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Nothing finished riveted in but the fab work is almost done. Battery tray bolted in and the plastic taillight panel in place. Had to make a metal cover for the electric trunk release mechanism which I riveted onto the plastic along with a squeeze of seam sealer for good measure. This panel will be covered in some kind of nice material (leather?) someday to make it all seamless and perty.
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I changed the way the backseat block off panel was fitted from the interior side to installing it from the trunk side of the brackets which looked cleaner and also required refitting it into the hole. Hours of taking it out, hand filing and puttin it back in until the fit was A-OK.
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Perimeter rivet holes all drilled thru panel and brackets. Cardboard template of another panel which will be bolt in and removable to cover the wiring, solenoids and possibly speaker locations.

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A reminder of where we started:

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I know everyone is anxiously waiting on pictures of the tires and wheels on the car. So here you go, tires:

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I know, that was mean to get you all hyped up. Just have not mounted them yet. I don't even want to take a chance of scratching one so they have stayed in their factory shipping cartons nice and safe stacked in the corner of the shop.
 
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Spent some time over the winter researching and learning what I could about sound and heat dampening materials. I ordered 3 boxes of some Chinese stuff made by Noico which had really good comments from several professional shops who do these kind of installs. Best thing about it is it comes in a black foil without logos which was very important to me as there are several areas in the interior that the are going to be covered but left exposed. Ya tired of reading yet??? I've been at this for several hours and I have some more to cover but I think I'll save that for a later date. Until next time.....
 
I would HIGHLY recommend welding the floor over rivets so much flex will be going on I would think...that's just me though...looks great though
 
No concerns that there will be any flexing going on in the trunk or anywhere else in the car for that matter. I've installed a lot of chassis stiffening elements over the years. There are 4 additional cross members along with the fully welded and gusseted K member. These include lower core support, upper 4 link and two cross bars that are part of the fuel cell cage. Sub-frame connectors, which are tied into the rocker panels, run front to rear. The hinged 1/2" thick plywood fold down rear seat separator has been replaced with a structural aluminium panel. I didn't use thin material for this. It's an 1/8" thick alloy that's noticeably harder (stiffer) than the sheet aluminium I've used on other projects. I think this alone will go a long way in tying the back half of the body together. Up front the car has the factory firewall to fender top struts which, of course, I modified with new mounts and a cross bar.
 
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One of the first modifications I made to this car was to build these brackets. The idea was to complete the triangular bracing started by the two factory fender struts al-la Ford Mustang Monte Carlo Bar. I've been waiting for years to get the motor back in so I could build the cross bar (custom air filter housing in the works that it needs to clear). Last week I went to my steel supplier and picked up 5' of 3/4" OD tubing. Cut to length with a couple of tabs welded on the ends and it's done.

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Another item that needed to be tidied up was hooking up the clutch master cylinder to the slave cylinder. A 28" AN-4 steel braided hose with one 90* and one straight end was "Summitized" along with two AN-4 to 1/8" NPT fittings.

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OK.... I ***-sumed that the fitting in the slave was the same as the M/C. WRONG!
After some poking, prodding, head scratching and finally hair pulling the simplest answer was to re-tap the cylinder of the slave for the new fitting. It "looked" like there was enough meat to make new threads. What could go wrong?

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Thankfully nothing did. Plenty of meat to cut new threads and I managed to not booger it up. Everything hooked up and appears to be functional.

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One other thing I did over the winter was to address the self imposed problem I created when selecting the fuel cell that I did. Ultimately I needed a sip, or two, to deal with the solution!
My cell's dimensions and capacity were right in the ball park I was looking for but it is not baffled. Without having a custom cell built ($=OUCH) I wasn't going to find one either. At the time I said "screw it, I'll deal with it later". Well later finally came when I discovered Holley's HydraMat fuel pickups. I "Summitized" PN 16-102 and mounting kit PN 16-202 and set about installing it in the cell. Hoooweee... let me tell you that was quite some fun. The mounts had to be bonded to the inside of the cell. By cramming my arm through the filler neck opening as far as it would possibly go the tips of my pinkies would juussst reach the back two mounting points. So clean, rough up the surface, clean again, apply bonding agent, position the mounts correctly and then press it home. The mounts have plastic fixtures with double sided tape on the feet to hold them in position while the bonding agent cures. So I wait the required 24 hour cure time and attempted to remove the fixtures by twisting them back and forth to break the tape loose. 4 for 4 the mounts came off with the fixtures. Damn bond never set. Now I know why there was two packets of bonding mix in the box. No mention of why. So let's do it all over again cuz the first time was such a joy. Thank God it worked as advertised on the second go. Don't know how I could ever get any pictures to show you but I thought you might enjoy my pain.
 
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Spent the last few days putting the polish on some turds that needed to be addressed in order to check them off the "to do list". Pic 1: First up was making spacers for the bucket seat mounts I constructed ages ago. Initially I made up some temp spacers out of whatever junk looked like it would stack up to the aprox height needed and that is how it has sat for years. After climbing in and out of the car over time I came to the conclusion that the seats were angled back too much. Not a whole lot but enough to address. Pic 2: Found some pucks, from what I think is a body lift kit, the right height for the inboard mounts but the hole was for a much larger bolt. A few minutes digging thru the hardware box and a bushing with the correct ID and OD was found and it was long enough to get two out of. The factory outboard mounts are ski ramps stamped into the floor sheet metal. I had some 1/8" angle iron that was welded together to make wedges, from some long forgotten project, that the middle third of worked perfectly to level out the seat base. Pic 3: You can't really tell anything has changed in this picture but I just wanted to show it off now that everything is in it's final place. Check that one off the list.

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Next up was addressing the exposed inner hinges of the seat backs. The original covers were long gone when I found these seats in a pick-n-pull a decade ago. Besides keeping pinkies and toes from getting lopped off there are some sharp "protruberances" on the hinge which would shred the seat belt webbing which lays across this area. I used some scrap aluminium sheet cut from the front spoiler project to bend up these covers. I might remake these a little differently, or, I might not. The list is getting shorter.

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Another non interesting accomplishment was addressing the the trunk extensions. The entire underside of the car has been cleaned, painted and/or undercoated except for this area and the trunk floor panels I just built. So a couple of afternoons were spent wire brushing off road crud, wiping down with acetone, treating with rust encapsulator, painting and then undercoating these areas.

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Today I put the finish on the underside of the remaining two trunk floor panels. Once they're riveted in place the underside of the car will be d-o-n-e!!!
That begs the question, what's left? Take the windshield out, fix any rust, replace the dash, rebuild the heater box, hook up the wiring, install sound deadening and carpet, build an exhaust, get it running and work out all the bugs. Then blow it completely apart for body work and paint and then put it back together again. Then I'll actually get to drive it. Maybe...

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rapom65 said:
Spent the last few days putting the polish on some turds that needed to be addressed in order to check them off the "to do list". Pic 1: First up was making spacers for the bucket seat mounts I constructed ages ago. After climbing in and out of the car over time I came to the conclusion that the seats were angled back too much. Not a whole lot but enough to address. I made up some temp spacers out of whatever junk looked like it would stack up to the approximate height needed and that was how it has sat for years. Pic 2: Found some pucks, from what I think is a body lift kit, the right height for the inboard mounts but the hole was for a much larger bolt. A few minutes digging thru the hardware box and a bushing with the correct ID and OD was found and it was long enough to get two out of. The outboard mounts are ski ramps stamped into the floor sheet metal. I had some 1/8" angle iron that was welded together to make wedges, from some long forgotten project, that the middle third of worked perfectly to level out the seat base. Pic 3: You can't really tell anything has changed in this picture but I just wanted to show it off now that everything is in it's final place. Check that one off the list.

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What are those seats our of? They look exactly like my 96 Avenger seats only in way better shape.

Cley
 
I found these seats in the cab of an old brown Toyota mini-truck at a pick-n-pull. Obviously someone stashed them there intending to come back. To bad, so sad, this rat got to the cheese first! The driver's slide release handle was missing and during one of my junking forays I found an exact match plastic trim wise, but the seat material was different, in IIRC either a Mitsubishi or an Isuzu sport compact of some sort. I absolutely love these seats. They have every feature of a good racing bucket, are totally adjustable manually which means zero electric motors which means light weight. I think they match the car perfectly in style, intent and performance. The best part is they only cost $60.
 
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Yes they are exactly like mine. I'm missing the twist knob toward the front. I may have to 3D print one or something.

Cley
 
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